Microsoft is software company that doesn't understand hardware.
I dunno. If their peripherals (like their optical mice) had been created by any smaller company, we would have considered that company's hardware to be pretty damn good. It's only because Microsoft is so enormous that accomplishments like the IntelliEye disappear in comparison.
In light of all this, my personal feelings about preliminary injunction motions have changed from "negative" to "neutral", and my view of their tactical suitability has changed from "overly ambitious" to "apparently necessary". Apple needs to get leverage, especially in the United States, but also in other jurisdictions, before it comes under too much pressure due to some companies' FRAND abuse.
Thing is, if Apple successfully manages to fend off FRAND abuse while enforcing it's own patents, we end up with a very perverted situation -- the more frivolous a patent is, the more it's worth -- because "rounded corner" patents are free of mandatory licensing requirements, while fundamental technology patents have their value capped.
Supposedly, there's a similar issue with used medical equipment and supplies. I've heard of charitable donations getting into trouble because it was considered to be illegal export of medical waste.
If you want biological molecules for drugs, the last thing you want to do is try to synthesise them Why not just open up yeast to genetic engineering and have the modified yeast create your molecules by the ton? Once you have the research and modifications done, you can grow those yeasts for pennies.
I'm sorry, but this is an example of a +4 moderated comment that doesn't know what it's talking about, and does not understand the basic gist of the regulatory issue that this article is dealing with.
Nobody is synthesizing anything, biopharmaceuticals are by definition substances (non-small-molecule) derived from biological organisms, whether engineered or naturally occurring. A bit of explanation: Small molecule drugs (like say, asprin) are chemically simple. As such, it is easy to demonstrate equivalence of a generic to the original; you show all your chemical bonds are in the right place, and that your formulation is rolled up in a pill that gets absorbed the same, those kinds of tests are sufficient for approval.
But biomolecules were treated differently, for the reason that it was impossible to do the same kind of analysis -- an analysis could find all testable parameters exactly the same, but things would work differently simply because it came out of a different manufacturing process. So there were no "generic" biologicals. A second company could copy something like say, Amgen's erythropoetin protein -- but although an identical protein, it would be considered a separate drug, and go through a new approval process just like it was a brand-new drug.
Generic companies have long clamored to allow biologicals to be treated the same as chemical entities,skipping the extremely lengthy and expensive process of doing clinical trials and such again. And of course, the originator companies argued that bio-similars should go through safety trials, too (as they could not be conclusively proved to be identical to the original). So, we had a regulatory tug-of-war running for the past... two decades or so, that has finally been settled (or so it seems at the moment).
As for the various issues of production via various types of organisms is something I don't want to get into right now, but let's just say we're dealing with techniques far more sophsticated than yeast expression these days.
For pharmaceuticals, small-molecule drugs and biologicals have long been regulated under two different tracks, for reasons both historical and practical (including the problem that biologicals simply aren't amendable to the kind of complete analysis you can do on small molecules). Sometime ago (maybe about a decade or so?) back, the FDA decided to modernize things, and start applying principles from the former track to the latter. There were a lot of facilities that used processes little-changed since being invented back as far as the 50's and 60's, that were shuttered; recent product and vaccine shortages happened not long after the number of manufacturers dwindled (for some products, from double-digits down to 1-2 sources).
Anyway, wanted to give an example of the limitations of characterizing biologicals. A while back, there was a case involving an Erythopoetin drug (used to treat certain kinds of anemia). The FDA mandated a change in manufacturing, in a big push to get rid of animal-derived raw materials (in this case, anything bovine-derived, following the mad-cow scare). The protein drug in the new formulation was found to be exactly the same by every testable parameter -- sequence, folding, everything else -- and seemed to function the same when examined in animal and human subjects. But when it was released for use in the field, there was a sudden spike in cases of pure red blood cell aplasia (where the body simply stops make any RBCs). Little details in the manufacturing process can sometimes make an enormous difference.
To use an analogy, biologicals are sometimes like arcane and kludgy code that nobody fully understands; once you somehow get it working, there is good reason to not to poke it, and to fear that it might break in somebody else's hands.
Ingestion: may cause effects similar to hypervitaminosis A
Because it binds to retinoid receptors. The news summaries circulating are a little mis-leading. It's not exactly a "skin cancer" per say, but rather skin manifestations of certain kinds of leukemia. The drug treats certain types of leukemia by forcing the cells to complete differentiation.
I used to use Alta Vista as my main search engine, back when they supported boolean queries (the "NEAR" keyword!). When they dropped that capability, I abandoned them.
I'd completely forgotten about that, it was quite useful. Are there any modern search engines that support a NEAR-type search parameter?
States are given flexibility in designing their SCHIP eligibility requirements and policies within broad federal guidelines. Some states have received authority through waivers of statutory provisions to use SCHIP funds to cover the parents of children receiving benefits from both SCHIP and Medicaid, pregnant women, and other adults. SCHIP covered 6.6 million children and 670,000 adults at some point during federal fiscal year 2006, and every state, except Arizona [1] has an approved plan.[7] Despite SCHIP, the number of uninsured children continued to rise, particularly among families that cannot qualify for SCHIP. An October 2007 study by the Vimo Research Group found that 68.7 percent of newly uninsured children were in families whose incomes were 200 percent of the federal poverty level or higher.[8] In FY 2008, the program faced funding shortfalls in several states.[9]
Doctors... could you perhaps ask your billing office to do a statistical analysis on how much you actually ended up getting paid for various procedures?
Larger organizations will actually do this regularly, and there are actually consulting agencies that can do the analysis for small offices. For an example of some aggregate data: http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/insurerreport
There must be some positive benefit to working with the insurance companies or you would have found a better way?
Insurance companies have the customers captive. If you don't work with them, you don't get the patients in their pool.
The old fashioned style of solo private practice is gradually going extinct due to the overhead and lack of negotiating leverage vs. insurance companies. Now, if you're good at marketing and handling the business side of things, you may be able to do a "concierge" or "boutique" medical practice -- which is part of the reason for the popularity of specialties such as dermatology and cosmetic surgery (who handle lots of cash-only patients).
This, "Ohmygod! They agree with me on W, X, Y, and Z, but disagree with me on A and B, oh the horror!" attitude that seems prevalent is saddening. I know that I am not going to agree with everything that is espoused or even actually held as a belief by a candidate that I choose from. I have to pick the candidate that I think will do the best job all around, and issue-politics and muckracking doesn't help me see the bulk of the positions that a given candidate takes, only the ones that the opponents of the candidate think will be the most onerous.
That's a good way to look at things. I make a conscious choice to discard ideological positions when choosing what candidate to vote for -- especially ideological positions regarding social/cultural issues. Cultural issues provoke strong emotional reactions (in myself, too), but they really don't have anything to do with the ability of this country to function as an ongoing concern.
Instead, I make an effort to overcome my own instincts, and pick the candidate who is most intelligent (usually easy choice), and more importantly, most wise (very difficult choice). I'm kind of split on charisma-- it can result in superficiality, but makes a difference in the candidate's ability to lead others; I've come to appreciate good speaking ability very highly though, as muddled speech can hint at a confused thought process.
Japan needs to rebuild their infrastructure in many places, so they need to allow their currency to appreciate, so that more investments would be put into it, so they could buy more, and they need to stop listening the insane Keynesian charlatans, who really caused their economy to stagnate for 20 years. Nobody should be bailed out and nobody should be protected from rising currency with government intervention. Having currency fall looks good on a quarterly statement due to more sales in devalued currency, but it's terrible for the actual citizens and consumers, who have rising prices because the government destroys the money.
You'll be happy to hear that the Yen has been running record highs for many months. It's probably reduced the costs of their recent jump in fossil fuel use (following the post-Fukushima shutdown of nuclear power), but hasn't been all that good for their unemployment rate.
Allow disabled people to use a computer without a keyboard
I hope this because sufficient reliably and compact that we can get Professor Hawking one, before he loses the last vestiges of voluntary muscular control.
I wonder how this move will end up interacting with things like Consumer Reports? A lot of value-conscious shoppers read those ratings, and will end up being unable to find the store equivalent model when they punch it into Google Shopping or some other search engine.
I already am wary of going with the Walmart equivalent models, since they often cost-optimize their versions to be a bit cheaper (in both cost and quality).
I also am still using Windows Mobile 6, on the HTC Touch (thanks to being on a legacy Sprint SERO plan).
Breaking legacy compatibility has allowed MS to ditch a lot of baggage, but the big problem is that I need to have access to specific applications. I could get more WP7 games and social-widgets than I care for, but important software I actually need (such as Epocrates medical reference) just never made the migration from WM6 to WP7. It's ironic, given that so much of the dominance of Windows on PCs comes from its backwards compatibility and the huge library of applications available.
Maybe they just expected developers would line up just because they were Microsoft -- but without backwards compatibility, WP7 had no more advantage than other latecomers in overcoming the Customer/App chicken-and-egg problem.
They have vast numbers of them on every subject from how to choose what type of cat to have as a pet to FPGA programming. In fact there is probably one about teaching your cat to program FPGAs.
Charlie Stross totally needs to write a short story about this concept.
"Uranium in nuclear fuel rods is in a chemical form that is “pretty insoluble” in water, Navrotsky said, unless the uranium is oxidized to uranium-VI — a process that can be facilitated when radiation converts water into peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent"
Hmm... is there any way that the peroxide (or related free-radical products) could react with the chloride in sea-water to yield hypochlorites?
A hydrologist named Chen Xing objected to this policy on the basis that it would lead to water logging and alkinization of farm land due to a high water table produced by the dams. Not only were the warnings of Chen Xing ignored but political officials changed his design for the largest reservoir on the plains. Chen Xing, on the basis of his expertise as a hydrologist, recommended twelve sluice gates but this was reduced to five by critics who said Chen was being too conservative. There were other projects where the number of sluice gates was arbitrarily reduced significantly. Chen Xing was sent to Xinyang.
Read "sent to Xinyang" as "exiled", a punishment used since the time of the emperors.
It would indeed be wonderful if the ancient Saharan monsoons returned. But from the last page of your link:
Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers. Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added. "Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."
This research must be purged. [/current state of intelligence debate]
A guy named Dr. Thomas Bouchard did something similar studying fraternal vs. identical twins, and found a genetic contribution of about 75% (for intelligence, not age-related decline in intelligence).
His work is considered one of the landmark studies on the heritability of intelligence. And yes, various groups attempted to suppress his research and get him fired.
How dare people drink their tap water! After all, how are bottled water companies expected to turn a profit when people can just turn a knob on their faucet and get water on their own?
Acutally, this is pretty much what is happening with the Research Works Act working its way through Congress.
Currently, publications resulting from Federally funded research must be available to the public, but the journal industry is trying to end free access -- despite the fact that publicly funded research isn't paid for by the journals, written by the journals, or peer reviewed by them.
Do the mechanisms which originally created life still occur? Or is "The Genesis Event" so rare that it was a one-time occurrence billions of years ago?
Any modern-day "genesis events" would face some serious barriers. One is the presence of oxygen in the great majority of environments on earth -- the primordial atmosphere was almost certainly reducing prior to the development of photosynthesis. Another is the presence of already-evolved life-forms, who would be glad to munch on any piles of organic molecules with pretensions of self-replication.
While we're on the general topic, I'd like to remind folks about another bill being considered, the Research Works Act. Previously covered on Slashdot here, the act is being pushed by the journal industry, and would reverse the current requirement that papers resulting from federally funded research be freely available to the public.
Slashdot Mirror
Good luck getting Japan to listen
Taking things to the opposite extreme, what about "games" that are all story, with minimal game play, like Ren-Ai games?
Or to take it even further, kinetic novels, such as Planetarian?
Microsoft is software company that doesn't understand hardware.
I dunno. If their peripherals (like their optical mice) had been created by any smaller company, we would have considered that company's hardware to be pretty damn good. It's only because Microsoft is so enormous that accomplishments like the IntelliEye disappear in comparison.
In light of all this, my personal feelings about preliminary injunction motions have changed from "negative" to "neutral", and my view of their tactical suitability has changed from "overly ambitious" to "apparently necessary". Apple needs to get leverage, especially in the United States, but also in other jurisdictions, before it comes under too much pressure due to some companies' FRAND abuse.
Thing is, if Apple successfully manages to fend off FRAND abuse while enforcing it's own patents, we end up with a very perverted situation -- the more frivolous a patent is, the more it's worth -- because "rounded corner" patents are free of mandatory licensing requirements, while fundamental technology patents have their value capped.
Supposedly, there's a similar issue with used medical equipment and supplies. I've heard of charitable donations getting into trouble because it was considered to be illegal export of medical waste.
If you want biological molecules for drugs, the last thing you want to do is try to synthesise them Why not just open up yeast to genetic engineering and have the modified yeast create your molecules by the ton? Once you have the research and modifications done, you can grow those yeasts for pennies.
I'm sorry, but this is an example of a +4 moderated comment that doesn't know what it's talking about, and does not understand the basic gist of the regulatory issue that this article is dealing with.
Nobody is synthesizing anything, biopharmaceuticals are by definition substances (non-small-molecule) derived from biological organisms, whether engineered or naturally occurring. A bit of explanation: Small molecule drugs (like say, asprin) are chemically simple. As such, it is easy to demonstrate equivalence of a generic to the original; you show all your chemical bonds are in the right place, and that your formulation is rolled up in a pill that gets absorbed the same, those kinds of tests are sufficient for approval.
But biomolecules were treated differently, for the reason that it was impossible to do the same kind of analysis -- an analysis could find all testable parameters exactly the same, but things would work differently simply because it came out of a different manufacturing process. So there were no "generic" biologicals. A second company could copy something like say, Amgen's erythropoetin protein -- but although an identical protein, it would be considered a separate drug, and go through a new approval process just like it was a brand-new drug.
Generic companies have long clamored to allow biologicals to be treated the same as chemical entities,skipping the extremely lengthy and expensive process of doing clinical trials and such again. And of course, the originator companies argued that bio-similars should go through safety trials, too (as they could not be conclusively proved to be identical to the original). So, we had a regulatory tug-of-war running for the past... two decades or so, that has finally been settled (or so it seems at the moment).
As for the various issues of production via various types of organisms is something I don't want to get into right now, but let's just say we're dealing with techniques far more sophsticated than yeast expression these days.
For pharmaceuticals, small-molecule drugs and biologicals have long been regulated under two different tracks, for reasons both historical and practical (including the problem that biologicals simply aren't amendable to the kind of complete analysis you can do on small molecules). Sometime ago (maybe about a decade or so?) back, the FDA decided to modernize things, and start applying principles from the former track to the latter. There were a lot of facilities that used processes little-changed since being invented back as far as the 50's and 60's, that were shuttered; recent product and vaccine shortages happened not long after the number of manufacturers dwindled (for some products, from double-digits down to 1-2 sources).
Anyway, wanted to give an example of the limitations of characterizing biologicals. A while back, there was a case involving an Erythopoetin drug (used to treat certain kinds of anemia). The FDA mandated a change in manufacturing, in a big push to get rid of animal-derived raw materials (in this case, anything bovine-derived, following the mad-cow scare). The protein drug in the new formulation was found to be exactly the same by every testable parameter -- sequence, folding, everything else -- and seemed to function the same when examined in animal and human subjects. But when it was released for use in the field, there was a sudden spike in cases of pure red blood cell aplasia (where the body simply stops make any RBCs). Little details in the manufacturing process can sometimes make an enormous difference.
To use an analogy, biologicals are sometimes like arcane and kludgy code that nobody fully understands; once you somehow get it working, there is good reason to not to poke it, and to fear that it might break in somebody else's hands.
Ingestion: may cause effects similar to hypervitaminosis A
Because it binds to retinoid receptors. The news summaries circulating are a little mis-leading. It's not exactly a "skin cancer" per say, but rather skin manifestations of certain kinds of leukemia. The drug treats certain types of leukemia by forcing the cells to complete differentiation.
I used to use Alta Vista as my main search engine, back when they supported boolean queries (the "NEAR" keyword!). When they dropped that capability, I abandoned them.
I'd completely forgotten about that, it was quite useful. Are there any modern search engines that support a NEAR-type search parameter?
I thought children got free healthcare in the USA? Please don't tell me I'm wrong...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Children's_Health_Insurance_Program
States are given flexibility in designing their SCHIP eligibility requirements and policies within broad federal guidelines. Some states have received authority through waivers of statutory provisions to use SCHIP funds to cover the parents of children receiving benefits from both SCHIP and Medicaid, pregnant women, and other adults. SCHIP covered 6.6 million children and 670,000 adults at some point during federal fiscal year 2006, and every state, except Arizona [1] has an approved plan.[7] Despite SCHIP, the number of uninsured children continued to rise, particularly among families that cannot qualify for SCHIP. An October 2007 study by the Vimo Research Group found that 68.7 percent of newly uninsured children were in families whose incomes were 200 percent of the federal poverty level or higher.[8] In FY 2008, the program faced funding shortfalls in several states.[9]
Android users who are able to run Chrome Beta (that is, who are running ICS) are literally the 1%, according to Google's platform pie charts:
"Google's Android Update Alliance Is Already Dead". Doesn't look like that 1% segment is going to expand all that fast either.
I'd been thinking about buy a Sprint Marquee, but LG's being quite squirrelly about whether it will ever get an upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich.
Doctors... could you perhaps ask your billing office to do a statistical analysis on how much you actually ended up getting paid for various procedures?
Larger organizations will actually do this regularly, and there are actually consulting agencies that can do the analysis for small offices. For an example of some aggregate data:
http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/insurerreport
There must be some positive benefit to working with the insurance companies or you would have found a better way?
Insurance companies have the customers captive. If you don't work with them, you don't get the patients in their pool.
The old fashioned style of solo private practice is gradually going extinct due to the overhead and lack of negotiating leverage vs. insurance companies. Now, if you're good at marketing and handling the business side of things, you may be able to do a "concierge" or "boutique" medical practice -- which is part of the reason for the popularity of specialties such as dermatology and cosmetic surgery (who handle lots of cash-only patients).
This, "Ohmygod! They agree with me on W, X, Y, and Z, but disagree with me on A and B, oh the horror!" attitude that seems prevalent is saddening. I know that I am not going to agree with everything that is espoused or even actually held as a belief by a candidate that I choose from. I have to pick the candidate that I think will do the best job all around, and issue-politics and muckracking doesn't help me see the bulk of the positions that a given candidate takes, only the ones that the opponents of the candidate think will be the most onerous.
That's a good way to look at things. I make a conscious choice to discard ideological positions when choosing what candidate to vote for -- especially ideological positions regarding social/cultural issues. Cultural issues provoke strong emotional reactions (in myself, too), but they really don't have anything to do with the ability of this country to function as an ongoing concern.
Instead, I make an effort to overcome my own instincts, and pick the candidate who is most intelligent (usually easy choice), and more importantly, most wise (very difficult choice). I'm kind of split on charisma-- it can result in superficiality, but makes a difference in the candidate's ability to lead others; I've come to appreciate good speaking ability very highly though, as muddled speech can hint at a confused thought process.
Japan needs to rebuild their infrastructure in many places, so they need to allow their currency to appreciate, so that more investments would be put into it, so they could buy more, and they need to stop listening the insane Keynesian charlatans, who really caused their economy to stagnate for 20 years. Nobody should be bailed out and nobody should be protected from rising currency with government intervention. Having currency fall looks good on a quarterly statement due to more sales in devalued currency, but it's terrible for the actual citizens and consumers, who have rising prices because the government destroys the money.
You'll be happy to hear that the Yen has been running record highs for many months. It's probably reduced the costs of their recent jump in fossil fuel use (following the post-Fukushima shutdown of nuclear power), but hasn't been all that good for their unemployment rate.
Allow disabled people to use a computer without a keyboard
I hope this because sufficient reliably and compact that we can get Professor Hawking one, before he loses the last vestiges of voluntary muscular control.
Kinda like "Zieg [sic] Heil," hey?
Move Zieg. For Great Justice.
I wonder how this move will end up interacting with things like Consumer Reports? A lot of value-conscious shoppers read those ratings, and will end up being unable to find the store equivalent model when they punch it into Google Shopping or some other search engine.
I already am wary of going with the Walmart equivalent models, since they often cost-optimize their versions to be a bit cheaper (in both cost and quality).
I also am still using Windows Mobile 6, on the HTC Touch (thanks to being on a legacy Sprint SERO plan).
Breaking legacy compatibility has allowed MS to ditch a lot of baggage, but the big problem is that I need to have access to specific applications. I could get more WP7 games and social-widgets than I care for, but important software I actually need (such as Epocrates medical reference) just never made the migration from WM6 to WP7. It's ironic, given that so much of the dominance of Windows on PCs comes from its backwards compatibility and the huge library of applications available.
Maybe they just expected developers would line up just because they were Microsoft -- but without backwards compatibility, WP7 had no more advantage than other latecomers in overcoming the Customer/App chicken-and-egg problem.
They have vast numbers of them on every subject from how to choose what type of cat to have as a pet to FPGA programming. In fact there is probably one about teaching your cat to program FPGAs.
Charlie Stross totally needs to write a short story about this concept.
"O HAI. IM IN UR SILICON RECONFIGURING UR GATES."
"Uranium in nuclear fuel rods is in a chemical form that is “pretty insoluble” in water, Navrotsky said, unless the uranium is oxidized to uranium-VI — a process that can be facilitated when radiation converts water into peroxide, a powerful oxidizing agent"
Hmm... is there any way that the peroxide (or related free-radical products) could react with the chloride in sea-water to yield hypochlorites?
No Kidding.
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/aug1975.htm
A hydrologist named Chen Xing objected to this policy on the basis that it would lead to water logging and alkinization of farm land due to a high water table produced by the dams. Not only were the warnings of Chen Xing ignored but political officials changed his design for the largest reservoir on the plains. Chen Xing, on the basis of his expertise as a hydrologist, recommended twelve sluice gates but this was reduced to five by critics who said Chen was being too conservative. There were other projects where the number of sluice gates was arbitrarily reduced significantly. Chen Xing was sent to Xinyang.
Read "sent to Xinyang" as "exiled", a punishment used since the time of the emperors.
It would indeed be wonderful if the ancient Saharan monsoons returned. But from the last page of your link:
Max Planck's Claussen said North Africa is the area of greatest disagreement among climate change modelers.
Forecasting how global warming will affect the region is complicated by its vast size and the unpredictable influence of high-altitude winds that disperse monsoon rains, Claussen added.
"Half the models follow a wetter trend, and half a drier trend."
This research must be purged. [/current state of intelligence debate]
A guy named Dr. Thomas Bouchard did something similar studying fraternal vs. identical twins, and found a genetic contribution of about 75% (for intelligence, not age-related decline in intelligence).
His work is considered one of the landmark studies on the heritability of intelligence. And yes, various groups attempted to suppress his research and get him fired.
How dare people drink their tap water! After all, how are bottled water companies expected to turn a profit when people can just turn a knob on their faucet and get water on their own?
Acutally, this is pretty much what is happening with the Research Works Act working its way through Congress.
Currently, publications resulting from Federally funded research must be available to the public, but the journal industry is trying to end free access -- despite the fact that publicly funded research isn't paid for by the journals, written by the journals, or peer reviewed by them.
Do the mechanisms which originally created life still occur? Or is "The Genesis Event" so rare that it was a one-time occurrence billions of years ago?
Any modern-day "genesis events" would face some serious barriers. One is the presence of oxygen in the great majority of environments on earth -- the primordial atmosphere was almost certainly reducing prior to the development of photosynthesis. Another is the presence of already-evolved life-forms, who would be glad to munch on any piles of organic molecules with pretensions of self-replication.
While we're on the general topic, I'd like to remind folks about another bill being considered, the Research Works Act. Previously covered on Slashdot here, the act is being pushed by the journal industry, and would reverse the current requirement that papers resulting from federally funded research be freely available to the public.