Maybe you should have divulged the slightly relevant fact that the anti-WHO propaganda you linked to was compiled by a pro-tobacco organization funded by the tobacco industry. If big tobacco hates WHO, they must be doing something right.
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Why gene patents hamper medical research
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Squatting On Life
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· Score: 1
I understand that many gene patents are of the following type: "This here is obviously the sequence of a gene. While I don't know exactly what it does, I patent all future uses of that gene. Those future uses might include using the gene to create a (possibly modified) product protein of medical value."
In the presense of such a patent, no other pharmaceutical company will do research on the possible medical uses of the gene's product, since they would be doing their competitor's work.
Instead of many companies racing to create a drug, you now have only a single patent holder without competition sitting there and taking his time.
Of course, the oh so great US army always chickens out when it comes to putting soldiers' lives at risk. You have to give it to them: At least the Arabs are happy to die for what they believe in.
The difference between voting and littering is that voting is good and littering is bad. Voting is good because it is the right thing to do in a democracy, period. However, your voting doesn't make your candidate any more likely to succeed; voting out of strategic reasons is idiotic. You vote because it is the right thing to do, not because your vote is going to affect the outcome, which it won't.
The US is more like the European Union and less like the Netherlands. It's a bunch of states, not a bunch of people. Like in the EU, the states decide, not the people directly.
Face it: you could have stayed home and the results would have been exactly the same. Voting is an idealistic act, not a political strategic one.
Of course, one has to distinguish between actually voting and telling other people to vote. While the former is an irrational idealistic act, the latter is a rational strategic one.
Look at the number of states won by both major parties. Those states with fewer electorial votes become meaningless when compared to states like CA, NY, PA or FL.
Obviously, smaller states are favored by the current electoral college system because they get more electorial votes than they would deserve on a pure head count (just like smaller states are overrepresented in the Senate). Since smaller states tend to be Republican, the current system favors the GOP. Therefore, it won't be changed anytime soon.
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Re:this is a reply to a post further up the page..
on
Election Wrapping Up
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· Score: 1
A Nader voter will typically prefer Gore over Bush, so they should consider voting for Gore if their area looks to be close. Sure, Nader may be the better option, but you have to be realistic and accept that he's not going to win. Fuck, he's unlikely to get a single electoral vote.
WTF? If you were realistic, you would realize that the probability that your vote is going to affect the outcome of an election with a hundred million voters is as close to zero as anything you've ever seen. You are much more likely to be run over by a car on your way to the voting booth. Strategic voting is nonsense, just vote for whomever you think is best.
Oh, by the way, it will be so funny tomorrow morning, once Bush has won, and the "strategic" Gore voters realize that they wasted their votes for fucking nothing.
I would be very interested in the true voter apathy, defined as the percentage of people who could in principle have registered and voted but didn't. Usually, the media only report the percentage of registered voters who didn't vote, but that number is meaningless: why register in the first place if you are not going to vote anyway? Just to get your address on the junk mailer's lists?
Voting in such a large country as the US is a completely irrational act; the probability that your vote is going to affect the outcome of the election is virtually zero: you are much more likely to be hit by a car on your way to the voting place.
It makes only sense to vote if voting makes you feel good, for instance because you think it is "the right thing to do" or because some forefathers died for your right to vote. Voting is an utterly irrational and idealistic act.
I'm not arguing against voting of course: idealistic acts are good. But never vote for "the lesser evil", it doesn't make sense: your vote has not effect anyway. Vote idealistically, vote for whomever you think is the best candidate. Strategic voting works in the senate but it is idiotic in such a large country.
Obviously, Nader is the only candidate who credibly attacks corporate power, so he would get my vote. And there's absolutely no need to hold my nose and vote for Gush/Bore: the act of voting in itself is an idealistic act. Rationally, it doesn't make any sense to move your ass over to a voting booth, since the likelyhood that your vote will affect the election's outcome is exactly zero. I am not arguing against voting; idealistic acts are good. But I am arguing against voting while holding your nose, since performing a profoundly idealistic act out of profoundly pragmatic motives is plainly idiotic.
Prospective developers tend to hang out on usenet. Figure out what newsgroup is the right one, and post announcements of new versions of your program there. You'll get more feedback that way.
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Video games bigger than Hollywood: so what?
on
Trigger Happy
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· Score: 2
So what if video games are bigger than Hollywood? Porn is bigger than Hollywood too. Hollywood is vastly overrated as a cultural force. The real stuff is happening elsewhere, and has been for quite a while.
A very respected proof theorist this summer submitted a proof in the major logic conference in Paris this summer. He claims that the P=NP problem is independent of the Peano axioms
Wow, that would certainly be the coolest outcome of the P=NP question. Do you have any details, name of the guy, proof technique, preprint to download etc.?
Thanks!
According to c't information [c't is a high-quality german computer mag, similar to Byte], SAP will announce tomorrow at the LinuxWorld conference in Frankfurt that they are going to release their database SAP DB under the GPL or LGPL license. This SQL database is currently mostly used in connection with the Walldorf company's
flagship product SAP R3, a system to automate business processes. R3 also includes interfaces to other databases such as Informix, Oracle or DB2.
SAP DB is the first major open source release of SAP.
Oh..sure..but I'm married. Ok... I will go with her too. Just what am I supposed to to with that Saab, 401K, Roth IRA, house, brokerage account, my daughter's education-she goes to the local school 10 miles down the road.
So? You don't think a one-year vacation in your native country would be good for your family? Your house and accounts are no problem, just keep them. Your daughter will benefit from learning her native language and getting to know her grandparents. Junk the car.
By the way, I believe everyone should take an extended vacation every once in a while. Too many people waste their lifes working. One day they die and that was it.
Buddy, honestly all the folks I know who did start the process started it almost immedietaly upon coming over here on thier own, and with their own money.
That's bull, you can't get a green card if your employer doesn't cooperate actively. It doesn't matter how expensive your lawyers are and how much money you spend; if your employer doesn't apply on your behalf, you have to change employers (which involves getting a new H1-B).
Honestly, a one-year sabbatical every six years is a lot cheaper and less hassle.
What's the big deal. Once the 6 years are up, you just take a one-year vacation abroad and then
you can get another six-year visa. I plan to do exactly that if I don't get a greencard.
After the DeCSS case (part 1) it seems obvious that encryption (however weak) may not be broken if only you can pay the lawyers
No, only "effective" copy protections of copyrighted material may not be broken under DMCA, but in this case, the barcode information is not copyrighted and therefore the cease and desist letter is completely bogus.
KDE seems determined to sit back and watch as they are pushed out of the market
You are using obsolete metaphors here. A free software hacker doesn't need a market. He likes to hack, and he likes attention from his peers, that's it. The end user market is utterly irrelevant. Linux was already alive and well when the end user market was still exactly at zero.
Does anybody know what the best deal is for a phone that can only be used to call 911? I don't want to call anyone else and I certainly don't want to be called.
You can take any money in your account right out again. Once you've given money from your PayPal account _TO_ someone, that's a different story
That was precisely his point: you pay someone with paypal, paypal takes the money from your credit card, you decide that the other party didn't deliver and issue a charge back with your credit card company, and Paypal will right away recharge your card for the same amount. You cannot ever get money back that you paid over paypal, unless you cancel your credit card at just the right time. (I remember having read that clause a couple of months ago, but now I can't find it anymore. Maybe they changed it?)
Furthermore, if you have been paid via paypal, you can never assume that the money is actually yours: X.com reserves the right to take back the money if the other side issues a successful chargeback.
Basically, both as buyer and as seller you assume a risk, but they never assume any risk.
Also, don't forget that when (not if) they go bankrupt, their database will be sold to the highest bidder by the bankruptcy court.
These are pure web players here, they don't produce anything except "free" content. How do you propose they pay for the service they give you, much less make a profit?
If a company has a broken business model, like all advertising-sponsored sites in the age of junkbuster and webwasher, it rightfully deserves to die, and will die. Content can be provided for free by enthusiastic volunteers: this worked quite beautifully for the first 25 years of the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
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In the presense of such a patent, no other pharmaceutical company will do research on the possible medical uses of the gene's product, since they would be doing their competitor's work. Instead of many companies racing to create a drug, you now have only a single patent holder without competition sitting there and taking his time.
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Of course, one has to distinguish between actually voting and telling other people to vote. While the former is an irrational idealistic act, the latter is a rational strategic one.
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Obviously, smaller states are favored by the current electoral college system because they get more electorial votes than they would deserve on a pure head count (just like smaller states are overrepresented in the Senate). Since smaller states tend to be Republican, the current system favors the GOP. Therefore, it won't be changed anytime soon.
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WTF? If you were realistic, you would realize that the probability that your vote is going to affect the outcome of an election with a hundred million voters is as close to zero as anything you've ever seen. You are much more likely to be run over by a car on your way to the voting booth. Strategic voting is nonsense, just vote for whomever you think is best.
Oh, by the way, it will be so funny tomorrow morning, once Bush has won, and the "strategic" Gore voters realize that they wasted their votes for fucking nothing.
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It makes only sense to vote if voting makes you feel good, for instance because you think it is "the right thing to do" or because some forefathers died for your right to vote. Voting is an utterly irrational and idealistic act.
I'm not arguing against voting of course: idealistic acts are good. But never vote for "the lesser evil", it doesn't make sense: your vote has not effect anyway. Vote idealistically, vote for whomever you think is the best candidate. Strategic voting works in the senate but it is idiotic in such a large country.
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Wow, that would certainly be the coolest outcome of the P=NP question. Do you have any details, name of the guy, proof technique, preprint to download etc.? Thanks!
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According to c't information [c't is a high-quality german computer mag, similar to Byte], SAP will announce tomorrow at the LinuxWorld conference in Frankfurt that they are going to release their database SAP DB under the GPL or LGPL license. This SQL database is currently mostly used in connection with the Walldorf company's flagship product SAP R3, a system to automate business processes. R3 also includes interfaces to other databases such as Informix, Oracle or DB2.
SAP DB is the first major open source release of SAP.
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So? You don't think a one-year vacation in your native country would be good for your family? Your house and accounts are no problem, just keep them. Your daughter will benefit from learning her native language and getting to know her grandparents. Junk the car.
By the way, I believe everyone should take an extended vacation every once in a while. Too many people waste their lifes working. One day they die and that was it.
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That's bull, you can't get a green card if your employer doesn't cooperate actively. It doesn't matter how expensive your lawyers are and how much money you spend; if your employer doesn't apply on your behalf, you have to change employers (which involves getting a new H1-B).
Honestly, a one-year sabbatical every six years is a lot cheaper and less hassle.
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No, only "effective" copy protections of copyrighted material may not be broken under DMCA, but in this case, the barcode information is not copyrighted and therefore the cease and desist letter is completely bogus.
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You are using obsolete metaphors here. A free software hacker doesn't need a market. He likes to hack, and he likes attention from his peers, that's it. The end user market is utterly irrelevant. Linux was already alive and well when the end user market was still exactly at zero.
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Thanks.
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That was precisely his point: you pay someone with paypal, paypal takes the money from your credit card, you decide that the other party didn't deliver and issue a charge back with your credit card company, and Paypal will right away recharge your card for the same amount. You cannot ever get money back that you paid over paypal, unless you cancel your credit card at just the right time. (I remember having read that clause a couple of months ago, but now I can't find it anymore. Maybe they changed it?)
Furthermore, if you have been paid via paypal, you can never assume that the money is actually yours: X.com reserves the right to take back the money if the other side issues a successful chargeback.
Basically, both as buyer and as seller you assume a risk, but they never assume any risk.
Also, don't forget that when (not if) they go bankrupt, their database will be sold to the highest bidder by the bankruptcy court.
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If a company has a broken business model, like all advertising-sponsored sites in the age of junkbuster and webwasher, it rightfully deserves to die, and will die. Content can be provided for free by enthusiastic volunteers: this worked quite beautifully for the first 25 years of the internet.
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