...and what is your view on software that brings entertainment? I enjoy using GIMP to create things, there are plenty of music creation software packages, and FOSS (video) games. None of those "improve" my life, they're just ways to kill some time while having fun.
Big Pharma is corrupt as all heck. They don't "research new drugs," they research how to make minor changes to existing drugs so they can re-patient. They just had an ex-industry insider (from relatively high in the ranks) condemn them to our congressmen.
Don't get me started on how much of the "research" money comes from the government.
I'll willing to accept that there might be a perfectly rational, moral reason the drugs are priced the way they are... but I haven't heard it yet.
Could Antigua have produced the medicine as part of their court winnings, or is that limited to copyright only? I would love to buy exact copies of name brand drugs at their true value, while sticking it to big pharma at the same time!
Our education system sucks for anything other than churning out workers. Read up on the gents that kick started our current system. They freely admitted what they were doing and why (what they weren't doing was churning out intelligent individuals). Then go out and ask your teacher friends (high school or below, if you have to pay for college it isn't truly public) what they think of the system. You'll get an ear full, and a new understanding of the world.
Honestly, the students may be able to add, subtract, multiply, read, and write but they sure as heck can't understand. Try sticking their faces in front of an essay with more than 5 paragraphs, and see what you can get out of them (hint: it will come out exactly like a form letter, have bad grammar and syntax, and make you want to blow your brains out!) God forbid you try this with a serious text, they would skip straight to Spark Notes or Wikipedia!
Now, ask them their opinions on anything. Sorry, that's a trick question - they don't learn to form their own opinions until after they leave their cookie-cutter school.
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. -President Woodrow Wilson
Our system is nothing less than brainwashing, aimed at the children of the masses, to make them easier to control when they are grown. We are defective by design.
/rant
How can carriers continue to justify the high cost of their apparent super-premium data transmission?
Uh... what part of "supply and demand" did you not understand?
A "set up"? As in, he would never have allowed himself into the situation if he had known the question beforehand? I would sure hate to vote for someone based completely on what they want me to know about them (read "their press releases"). Maybe you meant it was a "set up" because they used the nice polite cripple kid that will suffer and die without something (read "marijuana") to control his pain and loss of appetite. Personally, I think the point would be just as valid coming from an old homeless unwashed hippie that was in the same situation, but the point of the clip was to show the ignorant public that nice clean normal people that happen to be suffering from a medical problem need marijuana, not just dirty "druggies" or the scum of society.
Sure he was "polite", but he was "polite" while saying that he A) wants the kid to suffer/die, for no reason other than false science and a sense of moral outrage and B)wants the kid to do this while rotting in prison for trying to get help from other sources.
Might I add that the kid can easily get weed with very little chance of getting caught and going to prison - but weed from non-pharma sources can be tainted in various ways that make it more toxic (depending on whether the dealer has added other drugs, or where/in what type of soil it was grown in, and how close to other types of plants). Knowing the cost of medicine in general in this country, I'm sure he would actually pay more per ounce for the medical marijuana than some of the higher end Purple off the streets.
That being said, I want to pick my candidate based off of both the issues and what type of person they are. I'm iffy on the first one for Romney, but I now know where I stand on the second
I'm stuck at playing for 9~10 years here, but I think the big difference may be in composing. I've never had the talent, time, or inclination to compose - in general, my musical theory has suffered. My friends and siblings laugh at my inability understand some "elementary" thing or another, but 9 times out of 10 I'm on par with their performances. Music is the one area I simply can not think in.
As I've dropped music lessons from my life for the last few years, I've had no one to push me to perform all the little extras that are not strictly needed to play a piece. Sadly I know I'll be stuck at the same level of knowledge and ability, but lack of pressure has allowed me to begin enjoying my music.
PS:My method only works for me because I have a freakish muscle memory, in that I can still play ~90% of the music I've learned, by heart (after studying the first line or so off the sheet to get me started).
I can play amazingly complex songs, at terrific speeds... but only from memory, and only at full speed. The moment I've learned the song, I burn the sheet music. If I try to use it, I spend so much time thinking about where my hands/fingers should go, they stop performing correctly. If I try to slow the song down enough to teach others, I find I can not remember which note comes next in the sequence.
When I stop thinking and just let my hands do their own thing, they move people to tears.
Everything is copyrighted, so I would have to die and go to heaven before I could follow your suggestion. If everything wasn't copyrighted, I would think I had died and gone to heaven. Some things just happen to have a very open license.
Of course my actions might be illegal, that is my point. I'm being illegal because there is not a sane legal option. I did not leave outs, I left suggestions on how they can see more than a penny's worth of my money. If my current actions were stopped, they still wouldn't be getting a dime of my money.
It isn't just about torrenting, either. If I wasn't torrenting, and it wasn't an option, I would be sneaking into the theaters with friends. for the $10.50 of a ticket, I would expect more than one person to be able to enjoy the one time experience. I pay less for a legal DVD that I can legally show as many of my friends as I want, as many times as I want. Supposedly I can even legally copy that DVD so my friends can have their own - I can do it with a CD, just try telling me DVDs are suddenly different because they use a different laser and have a higher capacity. They're both just little magical plastic disks of entertainment to me.
If the MPAA starts going after downloaders as hard as the RIAA has, I probably will switch to theater hopping. After all, what is the worst that could happen? Small fine, after being kicked out of the establishment? They're more likely to skip the small fine part, if I remember my childhood correctly.
Btw, it isn't like "borrowing" someone's camera. Maybe like "borrowing" a private webcam that's being used for security purposes - I can view all I want, but that doesn't stop those that want to legally use it from doing so as well. (It's actually a fun past time, there are tons of unsecured security cams on the public internet that you can access after a quick google search)
...because they only download movies they wouldn't watch otherwise. Wouldn't watch at the current prices, yes. If I wasn't downloading, I would be waiting for the DVD. Even then, I wouldn't be buying - I'd rent or borrow. I'll start paying for things when they start setting a price I like, in a respectable time frame. If they released the DVD the same day/week/month as the theatrical release, then they would see more of my money. I'd pay a little extra DVDs that come out early, but still have special features/deleted scenes/etc.
Same with the programs and games - need something decent but more my price range, or they'll continue to lose out on any of my money - though I usually just stick with freeware, so I can share my love with uptight "I just want to stay legal" friends.
...that I use it for downloads all the time, and never took the time to notice I could sign up for an account? That being said, what do they keep track of on your account? I don't want something tied to my name that could be used against me in court.
I hate to say this, but the companies placed their time and effort (read "money") into developing this drug. They have a right to distribute that time and effort as they see fit. You can't force them to help you just because you can offer something in return for their help. As autonomous beings (or corporations) they do have the right to refusal.
Really, they don't give a damn about your father - only the money his insurance could give them, or the money his lawyer could take away from them. Right now they're focusing on eliminating the second, while increasing the first. How much more would you pay after enduring another year of this? It's not like this is a disease that directly kills the poor bastards effected by it. How much less would they have to pay if they find there are significant permanent side effects before making the decision to sell to millions of patients?
And frankly, he and my family would be willing to try anything to help him. ...and that right there is the reason the government requires these studies. Unless you want to believe me when I say, "I heard tazering an Alzheimer's patient in the left underarm while stomping his nuts will greatly improve his condition" (I'll guarantee 1 out of 10 study medications will have worse side effects with less results). It is not a question of killing versus curing, it is a question of possible torture for no result vs slight improvement (with optional possible torture).
I really feel your pain - Alzheimer's destroys both your loved one and your opinion of your loved one, but your dad simply was born too early. Be glad that you were born at a time where you can know that in 10 years you won't have to worry about this horrendous disease.
I hate people who mod this comment down, and people who hate people who mod this comment down, and people who hate the people who hate the people who mod this comment down! That just about covers it.
If you mod me down i shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. (I'm not sure how, but it's what I believe, and I believe everybody should believe in something - just not in anything)
Don't worry, I'm sure their rocket-launcher's computer's tracking interface will freeze up just moments before they press the fire button, so they'll have to fire it by visuals. Then, it will tragically fire 5 minutes later, while they're bashing the thing against the ground trying to get it to Just Work.
I consider them hippies cause they wore the clothes, did the drugs, and somewhere along the line a 10 year old half-brother showed up out of nowhere, and their rules were extremely lax. It was "this is what I would like you to do" not "this is what you should do."
I was 3 when I first played a video game. It was PacMan on an Atari. Never really cared for it, though.
That is relatively close to my timeline, except I was raised by hippies. None of this coddling, think of the children BS. I was taught right and wrong, the differences between fantasy/fiction/reality, that I could say or do anything as long as it did not hurt another person, and that a person's word should never be broken. I was let into the real world.
That being said, I grew up cussing, watching what ever tv program I wished (not based on ratings), playing any make-believe game I could think of no matter the content, asking to be taught math, playing chess or checkers, reading/having REAL books read to me, realizing sex would eventually happen and it's natural, watching/being told family pets die, burying dead pets, watching/being told family members die, knowing not to steal but knowing I easily could, etc.
Sure, I am not "Normal" - but when I look at how my friend's families are, and how "Normal" people act or (don't) think - I'm ecstatic about my childhood.
We are not two separate species. There is not Homo sapien youngus and Homo sapien adultus, there is no age where suddenly we naturally understand the world. We learn through knowledge and experience. I understood more than my friends/classmates simply because I had started learning (just about everything) at an earlier age!
What I'm saying is, let go of most of the control! Don't try to create a list of the only things little junior is allowed to do/try. Sure you'll take out all the bad things, but you'll also miss most of the good. Sure, he'll specialize in hop-scotch, tag, pong, and super mario brothers... but he'll completely miss out on everything else - everything that will eventually be important to him, become his real life.
If I find them playing Grand Theft Auto at the next-door neighbor's house at the age of 10, I'm going to have a stern talk with the parent. They can't use the excuse "video games are harmless" because I'd just show them my International Game Developers' Association card - they knew I knew better than them.
Harmless? No, I'll give you that. There is almost nothing, from tv to video games to books to playing with the neighbor, that is harmless. The trick isn't protecting your child from harmful materials, but teaching them how they should act and think about those materials in a non-harmful way.
I wasn't aware of a legal requirement for showing where you bought... well, just about anything short of firearms.
...and doughnuts!
"I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughtnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home....Under "D".'"
No no no, you've got it all wrong. They're too comfortable with windows only. All that FOSS is just geek-ware and anathema to the average windows user. What we need to do is install some some new brand loyalty before we uninstall their "trusted" windows/security-blanket.
PS: when did open software become about competition and stifling the non-open industry? I thought it was about enriching EVERYONE's experience?
Slashdot Mirror
...and what is your view on software that brings entertainment? I enjoy using GIMP to create things, there are plenty of music creation software packages, and FOSS (video) games. None of those "improve" my life, they're just ways to kill some time while having fun.
Big Pharma is corrupt as all heck. They don't "research new drugs," they research how to make minor changes to existing drugs so they can re-patient. They just had an ex-industry insider (from relatively high in the ranks) condemn them to our congressmen.
Don't get me started on how much of the "research" money comes from the government.
I'll willing to accept that there might be a perfectly rational, moral reason the drugs are priced the way they are... but I haven't heard it yet.
Could Antigua have produced the medicine as part of their court winnings, or is that limited to copyright only? I would love to buy exact copies of name brand drugs at their true value, while sticking it to big pharma at the same time!
Did kdawson just call himself a tool?
Our education system sucks for anything other than churning out workers. Read up on the gents that kick started our current system. They freely admitted what they were doing and why (what they weren't doing was churning out intelligent individuals). Then go out and ask your teacher friends (high school or below, if you have to pay for college it isn't truly public) what they think of the system. You'll get an ear full, and a new understanding of the world.
Honestly, the students may be able to add, subtract, multiply, read, and write but they sure as heck can't understand. Try sticking their faces in front of an essay with more than 5 paragraphs, and see what you can get out of them (hint: it will come out exactly like a form letter, have bad grammar and syntax, and make you want to blow your brains out!) God forbid you try this with a serious text, they would skip straight to Spark Notes or Wikipedia!
Now, ask them their opinions on anything. Sorry, that's a trick question - they don't learn to form their own opinions until after they leave their cookie-cutter school.
We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. -President Woodrow Wilson
Our system is nothing less than brainwashing, aimed at the children of the masses, to make them easier to control when they are grown. We are defective by design.
Uh... what part of "supply and demand" did you not understand?
No mater my hate for Microsoft, I can not bring myself to feel anything but love for a video originating from the TED Conference!
A "set up"? As in, he would never have allowed himself into the situation if he had known the question beforehand? I would sure hate to vote for someone based completely on what they want me to know about them (read "their press releases"). Maybe you meant it was a "set up" because they used the nice polite cripple kid that will suffer and die without something (read "marijuana") to control his pain and loss of appetite. Personally, I think the point would be just as valid coming from an old homeless unwashed hippie that was in the same situation, but the point of the clip was to show the ignorant public that nice clean normal people that happen to be suffering from a medical problem need marijuana, not just dirty "druggies" or the scum of society.
Sure he was "polite", but he was "polite" while saying that he A) wants the kid to suffer/die, for no reason other than false science and a sense of moral outrage and B)wants the kid to do this while rotting in prison for trying to get help from other sources.
Might I add that the kid can easily get weed with very little chance of getting caught and going to prison - but weed from non-pharma sources can be tainted in various ways that make it more toxic (depending on whether the dealer has added other drugs, or where/in what type of soil it was grown in, and how close to other types of plants). Knowing the cost of medicine in general in this country, I'm sure he would actually pay more per ounce for the medical marijuana than some of the higher end Purple off the streets.
That being said, I want to pick my candidate based off of both the issues and what type of person they are. I'm iffy on the first one for Romney, but I now know where I stand on the second
I'm stuck at playing for 9~10 years here, but I think the big difference may be in composing. I've never had the talent, time, or inclination to compose - in general, my musical theory has suffered. My friends and siblings laugh at my inability understand some "elementary" thing or another, but 9 times out of 10 I'm on par with their performances. Music is the one area I simply can not think in.
As I've dropped music lessons from my life for the last few years, I've had no one to push me to perform all the little extras that are not strictly needed to play a piece. Sadly I know I'll be stuck at the same level of knowledge and ability, but lack of pressure has allowed me to begin enjoying my music.
PS:My method only works for me because I have a freakish muscle memory, in that I can still play ~90% of the music I've learned, by heart (after studying the first line or so off the sheet to get me started).
Or, for the nerdier version: Piano!
I can play amazingly complex songs, at terrific speeds... but only from memory, and only at full speed. The moment I've learned the song, I burn the sheet music. If I try to use it, I spend so much time thinking about where my hands/fingers should go, they stop performing correctly. If I try to slow the song down enough to teach others, I find I can not remember which note comes next in the sequence.
When I stop thinking and just let my hands do their own thing, they move people to tears.
Everything is copyrighted, so I would have to die and go to heaven before I could follow your suggestion. If everything wasn't copyrighted, I would think I had died and gone to heaven. Some things just happen to have a very open license.
Of course my actions might be illegal, that is my point. I'm being illegal because there is not a sane legal option. I did not leave outs, I left suggestions on how they can see more than a penny's worth of my money. If my current actions were stopped, they still wouldn't be getting a dime of my money.
It isn't just about torrenting, either. If I wasn't torrenting, and it wasn't an option, I would be sneaking into the theaters with friends. for the $10.50 of a ticket, I would expect more than one person to be able to enjoy the one time experience. I pay less for a legal DVD that I can legally show as many of my friends as I want, as many times as I want. Supposedly I can even legally copy that DVD so my friends can have their own - I can do it with a CD, just try telling me DVDs are suddenly different because they use a different laser and have a higher capacity. They're both just little magical plastic disks of entertainment to me.
If the MPAA starts going after downloaders as hard as the RIAA has, I probably will switch to theater hopping. After all, what is the worst that could happen? Small fine, after being kicked out of the establishment? They're more likely to skip the small fine part, if I remember my childhood correctly.
Btw, it isn't like "borrowing" someone's camera. Maybe like "borrowing" a private webcam that's being used for security purposes - I can view all I want, but that doesn't stop those that want to legally use it from doing so as well. (It's actually a fun past time, there are tons of unsecured security cams on the public internet that you can access after a quick google search)
For whoever tagged this "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" *(I just about pissed myself laughing).
...because they only download movies they wouldn't watch otherwise. Wouldn't watch at the current prices, yes. If I wasn't downloading, I would be waiting for the DVD. Even then, I wouldn't be buying - I'd rent or borrow. I'll start paying for things when they start setting a price I like, in a respectable time frame. If they released the DVD the same day/week/month as the theatrical release, then they would see more of my money. I'd pay a little extra DVDs that come out early, but still have special features/deleted scenes/etc.Same with the programs and games - need something decent but more my price range, or they'll continue to lose out on any of my money - though I usually just stick with freeware, so I can share my love with uptight "I just want to stay legal" friends.
Did I just feed the trolls? Sorry.
...that I use it for downloads all the time, and never took the time to notice I could sign up for an account? That being said, what do they keep track of on your account? I don't want something tied to my name that could be used against me in court.
Really, they don't give a damn about your father - only the money his insurance could give them, or the money his lawyer could take away from them. Right now they're focusing on eliminating the second, while increasing the first. How much more would you pay after enduring another year of this? It's not like this is a disease that directly kills the poor bastards effected by it. How much less would they have to pay if they find there are significant permanent side effects before making the decision to sell to millions of patients?
And frankly, he and my family would be willing to try anything to help him.
I really feel your pain - Alzheimer's destroys both your loved one and your opinion of your loved one, but your dad simply was born too early. Be glad that you were born at a time where you can know that in 10 years you won't have to worry about this horrendous disease.
How weak is "weak"? Are we talking tactical nuke that could take out a city block weak? or just, damn now It is a tumor weak?
I hate people who mod this comment down, and people who hate people who mod this comment down, and people who hate the people who hate the people who mod this comment down! That just about covers it.
If you mod me down i shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine. (I'm not sure how, but it's what I believe, and I believe everybody should believe in something - just not in anything)
Ah, you're obviously talking about our national-CCTV in action.
...what, you actually think we DON'T have one? Who's crazy now!
o.0
The things giving us cancer will detect things that will give us cancer? All right, I'll take twenty!
Don't worry, I'm sure their rocket-launcher's computer's tracking interface will freeze up just moments before they press the fire button, so they'll have to fire it by visuals. Then, it will tragically fire 5 minutes later, while they're bashing the thing against the ground trying to get it to Just Work.
I consider them hippies cause they wore the clothes, did the drugs, and somewhere along the line a 10 year old half-brother showed up out of nowhere, and their rules were extremely lax. It was "this is what I would like you to do" not "this is what you should do."
The racists are. Just because you don't agree with them does not make them wrong (or so Republics and Democracies tell me) ;)
That is relatively close to my timeline, except I was raised by hippies. None of this coddling, think of the children BS. I was taught right and wrong, the differences between fantasy/fiction/reality, that I could say or do anything as long as it did not hurt another person, and that a person's word should never be broken. I was let into the real world.
That being said, I grew up cussing, watching what ever tv program I wished (not based on ratings), playing any make-believe game I could think of no matter the content, asking to be taught math, playing chess or checkers, reading/having REAL books read to me, realizing sex would eventually happen and it's natural, watching/being told family pets die, burying dead pets, watching/being told family members die, knowing not to steal but knowing I easily could, etc.
Sure, I am not "Normal" - but when I look at how my friend's families are, and how "Normal" people act or (don't) think - I'm ecstatic about my childhood.
We are not two separate species. There is not Homo sapien youngus and Homo sapien adultus, there is no age where suddenly we naturally understand the world. We learn through knowledge and experience. I understood more than my friends/classmates simply because I had started learning (just about everything) at an earlier age!
What I'm saying is, let go of most of the control! Don't try to create a list of the only things little junior is allowed to do/try. Sure you'll take out all the bad things, but you'll also miss most of the good. Sure, he'll specialize in hop-scotch, tag, pong, and super mario brothers... but he'll completely miss out on everything else - everything that will eventually be important to him, become his real life.
If I find them playing Grand Theft Auto at the next-door neighbor's house at the age of 10, I'm going to have a stern talk with the parent. They can't use the excuse "video games are harmless" because I'd just show them my International Game Developers' Association card - they knew I knew better than them.
Harmless? No, I'll give you that. There is almost nothing, from tv to video games to books to playing with the neighbor, that is harmless. The trick isn't protecting your child from harmful materials, but teaching them how they should act and think about those materials in a non-harmful way.
"I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughtnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario that I would have to prove that I bought a doughnut. To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't get that doughnut, I've got the documentation right here... It's in my file at home.
No no no, you've got it all wrong. They're too comfortable with windows only. All that FOSS is just geek-ware and anathema to the average windows user. What we need to do is install some some new brand loyalty before we uninstall their "trusted" windows/security-blanket.
PS: when did open software become about competition and stifling the non-open industry? I thought it was about enriching EVERYONE's experience?