Trust a government employee to fail to realize what's really fucked up about the situation.
What's really fucked up is that the IRS, which asks for, demands and is granted access to a great deal of personal information for practically every American, isn't taking that fact seriously.
I can't agree more. However, this is a massive system composed of people, and people are imperfect and failures happen. There're policies in place to prevent leaks, but if people ignore the policies, there's not much that can be done. The percentage of people who have IRS laptops is very small, and any sensitive information is supposed to be encrypted, etc.
There're over 100K people in the IRS. Some of them are bound to be retarded about things like this, as they would be in any large organization....I can't disagree about the soul-sucking, though. The only reason I have this job is 'cause it pays well, has great bennies, and actual job security in an age where that's almost a myth nowadays. But, still, the nation'd be a lot less productive without things like schools and roads.
Average employee costing $5-10K a month? LOL! The largest portion of IRS employees are GS 3-6, making, at the top end of that scale, about $17/hr (and that's if you're in NY or somewhere else that qualifies for the largest locality pay increases.) Tack on witholding (which just goes back to the IRS, at least temporarily, and you can bet your ass they're getting interest on that) and deductions for health care, SSA, TSP investment and such, and the average employee is taking home 2K/month. If they've got health insurance -- and a lot of the employees don't, particularly among the part-timers, temp, and term employees -- that's maybe an extra $300-500 in premiums covered by the gov't.
Actually, I work for the IRS, so let me set the record straight. I've seen the original paper, which was published months ago: the users involved didn't give out their passwords, they changed them to one requested by the "tech support" person (and these calls came in to extensions which the public doesn't really have access to, for the most part.) Still highly stupid, but most of the people at the IRS don't know much about computers, and while they've generally got "don't give out your password" down, they didn't seem to equate this to "if you change your password to something someone suggests, that's the same thing."
Also, this is mostly an internal threat; without access to the IRS intranet, I'd say that 99% of those compromised accounts would be useless to someone outside the IRS.
But, whatever. This is what happens when you have what amounts to a major data center staffed primarily by people who're just barely computer literate. AFAIK, memos about the problem have gone out to ~everyone and meetings have been held at the lowest levels to inform the staff that doing this is Bad.
What's really fucked up is that several of the employees that fell for this were at the highest GS levels. I can understand how the problem would be prevalent among the lower-level off-the-street employees, but you'd think that someone who was getting paid $100K+ a year would have a clue about data security.
What worries me most about this isn't the idea of armed robots, it's what'll happen when some guy sees the robot coming and shoots/blowsup/beats the crap out of it. I have a feeling he might wind up getting shot by the cops on the scne, for what is only a crime against property. The anthropomorphization of battle/bomb defuser robots has already been documented in Iraq and elsewhere.
...And that being said, the development and implementation of a skyhook is necessary for large-scale lage scale space facilities, both for their construction and getting the materials to 'em. Once you have a skyhook and some additional infrastructure, building a true spaceship -- one which isn't meant to land, ever -- is much simpler. Getting things to LEO from geosynchronous orbit would require comparatively tiny amounts of propellant. Also, since, ideally, the counterweight is slightly -past- geosynchronous orbit, if you simply threw a tennis ball while standing on the side of the counterweight antipodal to earth at the right time, it would wind up on the moon. Eventually.
Now, as far as the Van Allen belt goes, I'm unconvinced that it's quite as much of a problem as people make it out to be. The particles which make up the VEB are charged particles, pretty much, so if you have sufficient power, you can actively shield against them using magnetic fields or electrostatic charges of sufficient strength.
Actually, if you use thermal depolymerization, the process can run on the output after an initial start-up investiture of energy, with a net surplus (in the form of diesel fuel). Thermal depolymerization works like this: [organic matter] + [water] + [heat & pressure] --> [natural gas] + [diesel fuel] + [water] + [mineral wastes]. Depending on the fuel stock, you can get enough natural gas to run the process from the process itself.
True worshippers are indeed rare, but, again, like catholocism, there're lots of people who just go to church (use their products)every Sun(day) and that's about it. And lapsed MS users, like lapsed Catholics, are a dime a dozen, and still define their world in terms of Microsoft even if they despise it.;)
Y'know, most of the time you're put on hold, its because the person on the other end of the line needs to do research, account adjustments, or go to their manager and go "I have no idea what to do with this situation/something weird's going on here, I need help." Insisting that they not put you on hold only extends the time it takes because they need to put part of their attention on you, and, as is the case of people who refuse to be put on hold, your complaining. Similarly, they can't just have you go "this is wrong, fix it," and then have let you go because they'll get yelled at if they stay out of ready-status while working on your account. So, have some sympathy for the reps and complain to the upper management. It's slightly more effective than yelling at the reps about company policy and procedures -- after all, anything's better than a 0% chance of changing things, and that's exactly what you've got when you're complaining to the reps.
...Have you ever actually mailed anything? They don't check anything, unless the package is -particularly- skiffy. This means that you just have to be a neat, thoughtful terrorist who takes care of the little details like making sure there isn't any wiring sticking out of your package before you ship off your bomb or carton 'o anthrax. There's -no- way for the USPS to scrutinize all of the mail that goes through it, and that'd be illegal right now, anyway.
Actually, this is the way that most of the innovative research is done in the US; however, the pharm companies here have great marketing departments lying through their teeth about where they get all the really good ideas. -Most- of the research they actually do is just moving atoms around in extant compounds to get something that works the same but is newly patentable.
Okay, you -do- know that the molecular make-up of medicines is public knowledge? No? Well, you do now.
Whether the molecule is created by Company A or by Company B doesn't matter; it's the same molecule and will do the same damned thing. You don't need to run it through clinical tests again -- it's the same damned drug, it's already passed testing. So, so long as proper quality controls are kept -- and they will be, if a company wants to keep a contract worth hundreds of millions of billions of dollars -- there's no difference between the two.
It's sad that reality doesn't always work the way you think it does, but that's life, and I expect that you in particular should get used to it.
To answer your question, yes it is about recovering R&D costs. For pharmaceutical companies to make money, they must offset ridiculously high research costs by selling drugs at a high price.
For one thing, they tend to offset the prices of R&D by getting government funding or purchasing the rights to produce something a university created and which, prior to the current age, would generally go into the public domain. In reality, most of the R&D that drug companies have been doing has consisted of shifting atoms around on rings so that a molecule was just every so lightly different, qualifying as a new drug but doing pretty much the same damned thing -- the same thing that designer drug makers have been doing in basement labs for about the same time.
Note that Brazil wasn't asking for a super-special cut price. They were asking the same price that Merck gives Thailand. I agree that their loss of profit was due to Merck's own arrogance, but this was a quite legal appropriation of a patent.
The important thing to remember is that the profit will be used to create new and better drugs Except that, for the last 20 years or so, drug companies haven't been paying to create new and better drugs. Most of the innovative drugs are the result of federal subsidies to colleges and other institutions. Instead, the drug companies have been doing the same thing that designer drug makers have been doing for roughly the same time -- popping an atom onto some irrelevant part of the molecule, producing something that works essentially the same but has a newly patentable configuration.
Because the government was the owner of the patent, they had the right to dictate terms to whoever they were giving the patent to. If I'd been in charge, I'd've projected the population who'd be receiving the drug over the next year, figure in the true expenses of production and distribution, amortize the costs of drug trials over the time period where they're going to be covered by the patent, and then let 'em charge up to, say, 100% more per pill. Reviews once every two years or so to readjust the figures. Once the one-time costs were paid off, if the drug was still under patent, I'd require them to recalculate the maximum allowable price.
Actually, it seems more to me like "hey, you're selling it for $.xx here, why the hell can't we get it for that price? No? Oh, you wanna charge us double, just 'cause we're not them? Screw you, then." And I'm perfectly OK with that.
Have you ever gone through the US medical system? There're long waiting times -here- for basic (non-time-sensitive) procedures. More canadians I know are happy with their health coverage than americans are with theirs.
For 90% of the photographic community, accuracy and precision are the absolute best things. You can always muck with the image to make it less accurate, to conform to your vision -- this is what the art of Photography is, but, without an accurate and reliable starting point, you could never work any technique reliably. While there are a few photographers out there who embrace the chaos of crappy cameras, outdated, no-name, imported film, and improper processing, these people are kind of like modern artists who throw some paint at a wall and show the walls where they actually got something interesting out of it. There are a few photographers who take truly professional-level pictures with very consumer-level equipment, but they do this through a thorough understanding of the abilities and limitations of their tool.
And while that photog may indeed take some pictures with point-and-shoots, I bet he's got twenty thousand dollars worth of bodies and glass along with him, too, when he goes out on assignment.
You're arguing apples and oranges, here. While no one can deny the sheer convenience of a camera you can fit into your pocket, we were discussing image quality, not convenience.;)
Also, on the flip side -- you may look like a dork, but when you're at a public event with a big, white lens made even larger by its hood, and probably with a flash unit stuck on top, people get the hell out of your way. People assume you're press, or working for the event, or whatever. This is freaking great at conventions and large public events, sometimes gaining you access to places, people, and things that you would not have otherwise had. Of course, lugging the thing around can be hell on your back, but these are the sacrifices we must make.;)
By default, most digital cameras -won't- take a very 'vibrant' picture straight out of the box in default,.jpg mode. They'll tend to take very realistic pictures. But a good hand at levels and curves and such will make that picture pop. (Just as with a film camera, digital images must be developed, except in the digital age, instead of using graded papers, you use the curves tool. Instead of playing with the exposure and developing times for the print, you use levels. High-end digital cameras are made to expedite this kind of work, by default not applying strong saturation boosts, contrast enhancements, or whatever, even when you're shooting in absolute-idiot mode. It's essentially set to capture the most realistic image, not the most pleasing one. You set the camera to automatically apply different levels of these settings when you're shooting in.jpg mode, but, out of the box, they're going to be set very 'neutral.' Given that I've seen several of those toys before, the 400d rendered the most true-to-life image. The 400d also did the best job of capturing the entire dynamic range available -- and higher-end digital cameras have more dynamic range, in general, than consumer jobbies.
But, in any case, it's unfair to compare a high-end cameraphone digital to a high-end prosumer digital, when everything's on automatic. A high-end camera is -meant- to be futzed with, even if you're just going to use it as a point and shoot. It's the difference between a mac user and a linux user -- the mac user, yeah, it works right out of the box. The linux user -- jesus, he'd be stupid to just install everything by default with most distros, and, though he may use his computer to play open-source versions of solitaire half the time, the other half of the time, he's doing particularly nifty things with the flexibility and power of the OS. Consumer point-and-shoots make it hard to take really -bad- pictures, but also make it hard to take very -good- ones. dSLRs allow you the full freedom to screw up or to exploit the power of the artform.
I freaking envy the white balance in the Nokia's top image, though. That's the most neutral grey I've ever gotten straight out of a camera without using a grey card to set the white balance.
"This is a flawed analogy completely, although it should be noted that ordinary blasting caps are part of the process used to trigger a nuclear explosion. How else do you think the fission products get put together to initiate the chain reaction?"
Well, one, this isn't a completely flawed analogy. In this case, a highly physically unstable geological area is being affected kinetically by smaller shock. "All" you need to do is to get one good crack down to the magma, and foom. (Also, blasting caps work kinetically on the molecules of an unstable substance -- the high-velocity blast wave propagating through the high explosive causes the sudden deflagration of the substance -- it gets knocked apart, essentially -- and, well, foom.)
So, yeah, it's feasable to use a nuke to set off Yellowstone. It'd have to be a -large- nuke, and it would be best if the charge were shaped downwards, somehow, but it's certainly in the realm of possibility.
The fallout from the nuke would be immediately dissipated over a wide area by the supercanes generated by the caldera going off, and would likely by masked by the natural radioactivity of the ash. The radiological consequences are, in any case, much less worrying than the kinetic and thermal results of YS going off.
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Trust a government employee to fail to realize what's really fucked up about the situation.
...I can't disagree about the soul-sucking, though. The only reason I have this job is 'cause it pays well, has great bennies, and actual job security in an age where that's almost a myth nowadays. But, still, the nation'd be a lot less productive without things like schools and roads.
What's really fucked up is that the IRS, which asks for, demands and is granted access to a great deal of personal information for practically every American, isn't taking that fact seriously.
I can't agree more. However, this is a massive system composed of people, and people are imperfect and failures happen. There're policies in place to prevent leaks, but if people ignore the policies, there's not much that can be done. The percentage of people who have IRS laptops is very small, and any sensitive information is supposed to be encrypted, etc.
There're over 100K people in the IRS. Some of them are bound to be retarded about things like this, as they would be in any large organization.
Average employee costing $5-10K a month? LOL! The largest portion of IRS employees are GS 3-6, making, at the top end of that scale, about $17/hr (and that's if you're in NY or somewhere else that qualifies for the largest locality pay increases.) Tack on witholding (which just goes back to the IRS, at least temporarily, and you can bet your ass they're getting interest on that) and deductions for health care, SSA, TSP investment and such, and the average employee is taking home 2K/month. If they've got health insurance -- and a lot of the employees don't, particularly among the part-timers, temp, and term employees -- that's maybe an extra $300-500 in premiums covered by the gov't.
Actually, I work for the IRS, so let me set the record straight. I've seen the original paper, which was published months ago: the users involved didn't give out their passwords, they changed them to one requested by the "tech support" person (and these calls came in to extensions which the public doesn't really have access to, for the most part.) Still highly stupid, but most of the people at the IRS don't know much about computers, and while they've generally got "don't give out your password" down, they didn't seem to equate this to "if you change your password to something someone suggests, that's the same thing."
Also, this is mostly an internal threat; without access to the IRS intranet, I'd say that 99% of those compromised accounts would be useless to someone outside the IRS.
But, whatever. This is what happens when you have what amounts to a major data center staffed primarily by people who're just barely computer literate. AFAIK, memos about the problem have gone out to ~everyone and meetings have been held at the lowest levels to inform the staff that doing this is Bad.
What's really fucked up is that several of the employees that fell for this were at the highest GS levels. I can understand how the problem would be prevalent among the lower-level off-the-street employees, but you'd think that someone who was getting paid $100K+ a year would have a clue about data security.
What worries me most about this isn't the idea of armed robots, it's what'll happen when some guy sees the robot coming and shoots/blowsup/beats the crap out of it. I have a feeling he might wind up getting shot by the cops on the scne, for what is only a crime against property. The anthropomorphization of battle/bomb defuser robots has already been documented in Iraq and elsewhere.
...And that being said, the development and implementation of a skyhook is necessary for large-scale lage scale space facilities, both for their construction and getting the materials to 'em. Once you have a skyhook and some additional infrastructure, building a true spaceship -- one which isn't meant to land, ever -- is much simpler. Getting things to LEO from geosynchronous orbit would require comparatively tiny amounts of propellant. Also, since, ideally, the counterweight is slightly -past- geosynchronous orbit, if you simply threw a tennis ball while standing on the side of the counterweight antipodal to earth at the right time, it would wind up on the moon. Eventually.
Now, as far as the Van Allen belt goes, I'm unconvinced that it's quite as much of a problem as people make it out to be. The particles which make up the VEB are charged particles, pretty much, so if you have sufficient power, you can actively shield against them using magnetic fields or electrostatic charges of sufficient strength.
'Cept I know several canadians who've told me about their health-care experiences that lead me to believe this assertion is full of shit.
Actually, if you use thermal depolymerization, the process can run on the output after an initial start-up investiture of energy, with a net surplus (in the form of diesel fuel). Thermal depolymerization works like this: [organic matter] + [water] + [heat & pressure] --> [natural gas] + [diesel fuel] + [water] + [mineral wastes]. Depending on the fuel stock, you can get enough natural gas to run the process from the process itself.
True worshippers are indeed rare, but, again, like catholocism, there're lots of people who just go to church (use their products)every Sun(day) and that's about it. And lapsed MS users, like lapsed Catholics, are a dime a dozen, and still define their world in terms of Microsoft even if they despise it. ;)
Exactly. Apple has a cult. Linux has a cult. Microsoft is the equivalent of Catholocism. ;)
Y'know, most of the time you're put on hold, its because the person on the other end of the line needs to do research, account adjustments, or go to their manager and go "I have no idea what to do with this situation/something weird's going on here, I need help." Insisting that they not put you on hold only extends the time it takes because they need to put part of their attention on you, and, as is the case of people who refuse to be put on hold, your complaining. Similarly, they can't just have you go "this is wrong, fix it," and then have let you go because they'll get yelled at if they stay out of ready-status while working on your account. So, have some sympathy for the reps and complain to the upper management. It's slightly more effective than yelling at the reps about company policy and procedures -- after all, anything's better than a 0% chance of changing things, and that's exactly what you've got when you're complaining to the reps.
...Have you ever actually mailed anything? They don't check anything, unless the package is -particularly- skiffy. This means that you just have to be a neat, thoughtful terrorist who takes care of the little details like making sure there isn't any wiring sticking out of your package before you ship off your bomb or carton 'o anthrax. There's -no- way for the USPS to scrutinize all of the mail that goes through it, and that'd be illegal right now, anyway.
Actually, this is the way that most of the innovative research is done in the US; however, the pharm companies here have great marketing departments lying through their teeth about where they get all the really good ideas. -Most- of the research they actually do is just moving atoms around in extant compounds to get something that works the same but is newly patentable.
Okay, you -do- know that the molecular make-up of medicines is public knowledge? No? Well, you do now.
Whether the molecule is created by Company A or by Company B doesn't matter; it's the same molecule and will do the same damned thing. You don't need to run it through clinical tests again -- it's the same damned drug, it's already passed testing. So, so long as proper quality controls are kept -- and they will be, if a company wants to keep a contract worth hundreds of millions of billions of dollars -- there's no difference between the two.
It's sad that reality doesn't always work the way you think it does, but that's life, and I expect that you in particular should get used to it.
To answer your question, yes it is about recovering R&D costs. For pharmaceutical companies to make money, they must offset ridiculously high research costs by selling drugs at a high price.
For one thing, they tend to offset the prices of R&D by getting government funding or purchasing the rights to produce something a university created and which, prior to the current age, would generally go into the public domain. In reality, most of the R&D that drug companies have been doing has consisted of shifting atoms around on rings so that a molecule was just every so lightly different, qualifying as a new drug but doing pretty much the same damned thing -- the same thing that designer drug makers have been doing in basement labs for about the same time.
Note that Brazil wasn't asking for a super-special cut price. They were asking the same price that Merck gives Thailand. I agree that their loss of profit was due to Merck's own arrogance, but this was a quite legal appropriation of a patent.
The important thing to remember is that the profit will be used to create new and better drugs Except that, for the last 20 years or so, drug companies haven't been paying to create new and better drugs. Most of the innovative drugs are the result of federal subsidies to colleges and other institutions. Instead, the drug companies have been doing the same thing that designer drug makers have been doing for roughly the same time -- popping an atom onto some irrelevant part of the molecule, producing something that works essentially the same but has a newly patentable configuration.
The US CAN stop people from shipping Anthrax in the mail. How? By manually inspecting the contents of every package, box, and envelope?
Because the government was the owner of the patent, they had the right to dictate terms to whoever they were giving the patent to. If I'd been in charge, I'd've projected the population who'd be receiving the drug over the next year, figure in the true expenses of production and distribution, amortize the costs of drug trials over the time period where they're going to be covered by the patent, and then let 'em charge up to, say, 100% more per pill. Reviews once every two years or so to readjust the figures. Once the one-time costs were paid off, if the drug was still under patent, I'd require them to recalculate the maximum allowable price.
Actually, it seems more to me like "hey, you're selling it for $.xx here, why the hell can't we get it for that price? No? Oh, you wanna charge us double, just 'cause we're not them? Screw you, then." And I'm perfectly OK with that.
Have you ever gone through the US medical system? There're long waiting times -here- for basic (non-time-sensitive) procedures. More canadians I know are happy with their health coverage than americans are with theirs.
For 90% of the photographic community, accuracy and precision are the absolute best things. You can always muck with the image to make it less accurate, to conform to your vision -- this is what the art of Photography is, but, without an accurate and reliable starting point, you could never work any technique reliably. While there are a few photographers out there who embrace the chaos of crappy cameras, outdated, no-name, imported film, and improper processing, these people are kind of like modern artists who throw some paint at a wall and show the walls where they actually got something interesting out of it. There are a few photographers who take truly professional-level pictures with very consumer-level equipment, but they do this through a thorough understanding of the abilities and limitations of their tool.
And while that photog may indeed take some pictures with point-and-shoots, I bet he's got twenty thousand dollars worth of bodies and glass along with him, too, when he goes out on assignment.
You're arguing apples and oranges, here. While no one can deny the sheer convenience of a camera you can fit into your pocket, we were discussing image quality, not convenience. ;)
;)
Also, on the flip side -- you may look like a dork, but when you're at a public event with a big, white lens made even larger by its hood, and probably with a flash unit stuck on top, people get the hell out of your way. People assume you're press, or working for the event, or whatever. This is freaking great at conventions and large public events, sometimes gaining you access to places, people, and things that you would not have otherwise had. Of course, lugging the thing around can be hell on your back, but these are the sacrifices we must make.
By default, most digital cameras -won't- take a very 'vibrant' picture straight out of the box in default, .jpg mode. They'll tend to take very realistic pictures. But a good hand at levels and curves and such will make that picture pop. (Just as with a film camera, digital images must be developed, except in the digital age, instead of using graded papers, you use the curves tool. Instead of playing with the exposure and developing times for the print, you use levels. High-end digital cameras are made to expedite this kind of work, by default not applying strong saturation boosts, contrast enhancements, or whatever, even when you're shooting in absolute-idiot mode. It's essentially set to capture the most realistic image, not the most pleasing one. You set the camera to automatically apply different levels of these settings when you're shooting in .jpg mode, but, out of the box, they're going to be set very 'neutral.' Given that I've seen several of those toys before, the 400d rendered the most true-to-life image. The 400d also did the best job of capturing the entire dynamic range available -- and higher-end digital cameras have more dynamic range, in general, than consumer jobbies.
But, in any case, it's unfair to compare a high-end cameraphone digital to a high-end prosumer digital, when everything's on automatic. A high-end camera is -meant- to be futzed with, even if you're just going to use it as a point and shoot. It's the difference between a mac user and a linux user -- the mac user, yeah, it works right out of the box. The linux user -- jesus, he'd be stupid to just install everything by default with most distros, and, though he may use his computer to play open-source versions of solitaire half the time, the other half of the time, he's doing particularly nifty things with the flexibility and power of the OS. Consumer point-and-shoots make it hard to take really -bad- pictures, but also make it hard to take very -good- ones. dSLRs allow you the full freedom to screw up or to exploit the power of the artform.
I freaking envy the white balance in the Nokia's top image, though. That's the most neutral grey I've ever gotten straight out of a camera without using a grey card to set the white balance.
"This is a flawed analogy completely, although it should be noted that ordinary blasting caps are part of the process used to trigger a nuclear explosion. How else do you think the fission products get put together to initiate the chain reaction?"
Well, one, this isn't a completely flawed analogy. In this case, a highly physically unstable geological area is being affected kinetically by smaller shock. "All" you need to do is to get one good crack down to the magma, and foom. (Also, blasting caps work kinetically on the molecules of an unstable substance -- the high-velocity blast wave propagating through the high explosive causes the sudden deflagration of the substance -- it gets knocked apart, essentially -- and, well, foom.)
So, yeah, it's feasable to use a nuke to set off Yellowstone. It'd have to be a -large- nuke, and it would be best if the charge were shaped downwards, somehow, but it's certainly in the realm of possibility.
The fallout from the nuke would be immediately dissipated over a wide area by the supercanes generated by the caldera going off, and would likely by masked by the natural radioactivity of the ash. The radiological consequences are, in any case, much less worrying than the kinetic and thermal results of YS going off.
If he were smart, he'd trade the better cards to other players, who're less intersted in the trinkets, for the points they've accumulated.