But I don't think that patents have any place in heathcare, ever. Aside from that, these observational patents are the most odious and absurd. These sorts of things are the realm of science, not commerce. Scientists have no need to patent discoveries, doing so undermines the very nature of science. When you apply that to medicine, you are causing some real human damage. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior and needs to be stopped ASAFP in my opinion.
Sorry but this comment is just a whole bunch of fail -- first of all, neither you nor I know how this process works. First off, you are complaining about the deficiencies of something we have never been able to do before? You do realize that the alternative is cutting open your skull and digging around in your brain, right? And then it never states in the article that the size is fixed at 10mm3 (although it very well might be) and even if it is, I am fairly certain that they would have figured out a way around this deficiency, like, you know, overlapping treatment regions or something?
All of this is absolutely, 100% irrelevant. I don't think anybody here on/. will argue that this guy is not worthy of condemnation, I am sure he is human pond scum, but that is NOT a good reason to put someone in prison! In America you have the right to be an a-hole -- you don't have anything to worry about until you A) violate the law and B) a jury of your peers decides that there is sufficient evidence of said infraction as to punish you for it. That is not what happened, this judge put a man in jail on a whim, because he would not immediately cooperate, which is a grotesque abuse of judicial power. He should have been brought up on fraud/perjury charges in a criminal court. If he was found to be in violation of the law, then it would be legitimate to send him to prison. Short of this, keeping him in jail for such a long time is inexcusable.
Did they just randomly pick 10 things? They are seriously telling people not to drink soda and coffee while driving? I would think that the risk of driving sans-caffeine at 6 AM is a far greater risk than having a coffee or soda in the cupholder. They also missed a few key food items:
11. Bacardi 151 -- It gets you drunk!
12. Live Squid -- They are all tentacley -- which could be distracting while going down the road!
13. Human Flesh -- It is illegal in all 50 states and getting pulled over while eating human flesh will result in some serious penalties!
14. Psilocybin Mushrooms -- Often while eating these mushrooms and driving, you will find that various mythical creatures appear in the air around your vehicle, or that the road will suddenly become a black hole. It is highly not advised that you eat them while driving!
Ok, this is getting ridiculous, I'm done -- but damn, that is some really dumb shite...
In this case, Apple is distributing the application. It's possible the same would apply for Red Hat, if something made it into their Red Hat Network update channel that destroyed data, or caused a major loss of uptime for a large percentage of their customers.
I guess I should have made my point a bit more clear in the last post, but I see no reason why Apple has to be the sole distributor of apps for the iPhone. They don't do this with their PCs because that would be a suicidal business practice, but for some reason that is the best business model for the iPhone? I just don't buy it. We need to start treating phones like the little PCs they are, and maybe we can start moving the technology forward. Until then I think the iPhone will be nothing more than a trendy little gizmo and a fun distraction for the ADD generation.
"How many iPhone app reviewers are there? How long does it take to fully test an application so you don't get sued for allowing something that:
1) Bricks the phone
2) Has child porn shoved inside it
3) Is free, barely does what the description says it will do, and yet you need to waste your time deciding if it's just not broken enough to put up there"
How would Apple be liable to be sued for any of these things? Any of these are possible when using a PC, but you don't see Microsoft, Apple, Canonical, Red Hat, etc. being sued for bad apps. User reviews can take care of this very well -- and if that is not good enough, why not have an Apple Recommended section, where all of the apps have to go through a rigorous testing phase? Or allow third party apps to be used, but require Apple approval for sale through the iTunes app store? There are many good ways around this that would make everyone happy. Setting up a toll plaza on the road to app development the way Apple has is a hugely anti-dev, anti-consumer, bone-headed move. I would have an iPhone by now if they would just fsck off, calm down a little bit, and be a little more open about things.
"Despite the fact that she had provoked him, that everyone in the class had attested to this and stated it was clear he was being sarcastic, he was still arrested for making threats and expelled from the county school district."
If this is true, I am absolutely appalled. I would like to think that there would be some sort of legal recourse for your friend -- did he try contacting the ACLU or any similar organizations? His civil liberties were unquestionably violated and he absolutely deserves restitution for the harm done to him. From the details provided I am not sure if his case would stand up in court, but if the teacher slandered him like that in front of the class, I think he could potentially have a case (if the issue were framed properly).
"It's all security theater to make the ignorant, distracted parents feel like their kids are safe."
Amen to that. Unfortunately, I think that this most likely has the opposite effect more often. It seems to me that a lot of these crimes are a result of a certain breed of sociopathy that is fostered by the increasing dehumanization in today's society. Things like "zero tolerance" policies only further remove the human element from the equation, which could potentially increase the likelihood of such events.*
*This is not, however, to exempt anyone from any crime. If you willfully harm another human being without just cause, you are personally responsible for it, regardless of any extenuating circumstances.
Yes, but how many of those apps are good? I don't personally have an iPhone but from what I have seen it seems like most iPhone apps are half-baked juvenile distractions, rather than anything seriously useful. It seems logical to me that the overall quality of iPhone apps could be improved tremendously if devs could actually devote time and resources to apps without fear of arbitrary rejection.
I don't know what they are trying to prove with this crap here but I am not at all impressed by that video -- I mean the building is completely empty and naked! Wouldn't the siding, roofing, walls, doors, windows, people, and furnishings make the building more heavy (and more likely to collapse)? Wouldn't the plumbing make the building more rigid and again, more likely to collapse? If I am incorrect please let me know, but it seems to me that this experiment proves precisely nothing.
Well, to be fair, attacking those who disagree is a fairly central tenet of most religions. The claims made by religion are extremely flimsy and based on literally no evidence, and as such will fall apart under any sort of meaningful debate. I will come to your side, though, JeanPaulBob and admit that there are certainly SOME religious people who are willing to discuss their faith with atheists, but I have to say I have never seen such a discussion end up being anything but disgraceful on the behalf of the religious person, as religion and rational thought are simply two separate enterprises.
This has provided me non-stop anger ever since I was old enough to understand the world around me -- religion demands respect, but by respect they mean total silence. It should say something about your worldview when you cannot tolerate any sort of challenge to it, maybe you ought to consider that your worldview just might not stand up to criticism, eh? We are expected to sit back in "respectful" silence while the religious trample all over our rights -- they accuse us of having no morals, and they refuse to vote for us. We are called less than human. They claim to be under attack by us, though they still control the government, the courts, and have made in-roads into the schools. god (that word does not deserve capitalization, even at the beginning of a sentence) is on our money and in our pledge (which I have other objections to, but that's another issue). They have corrupted countless young minds with their psychologically abusive brainwashing and horror stories. Many aspects of science are decades behind where they ought to be, lest we upset jeebus. Religion is outdated and provably does not work. We need to abandon these imaginary friends and throw off our psychological crutches now, before its too late.
It is not quite as simple as that. These dogs are not just out there to find the little bag-o-mary in your inside coat pocket, they are there to pick up on a variety of stronger drugs that are massively addictive and cause the country various troubles such as the extra crime created by the badly addicted running out of money but still needing their next fix, needing to run treatment programs for the addicted, needing to fund medical care for the health complications that result from certain drug use and persist even long after the addiction is dealt with, and so on.
I don't think the fact that some drugs are bad for you and can be detrimental to society is really is question -- the only question is whether or not prohibition helps the situation. In nearly every regard, prohibition fails to improve the situation and only serves to exacerbate it. Users get lower quality product with no dosage control, making accidental overdose far more likely. People are much less likely to come forward with drug addiction problems when they can be thrown in prison. Prohibition greatly increases the price of drugs, making addicts far more likely to turn to crime to fund their addiction. Prohibition puts the distribution in the hands of hardened criminals, rather than say, a licensed professional. Prohibition makes no financial sense -- the government spends money fighting the drugs rather than raking in tax dollars from the purchase of the drugs. Finally, and possibly most importantly, making drugs illegal does absolutely nothing to stop people from using them. In fact, there is much evidence to suggest that prohibition increases drug use. I could go on and on, but I think I make my point fairly clear, drug prohibition is entirely infantile and serves no purpose other than to be a huge burden on our society.
This also raises big problems as far as disease resistance goes -- if all the dogs are genetically identical they will all have identical immune systems, making it far easier for a single strain of disease to wipe out a large chunk of them.
On a totally unrelated note -- why are we so concerned with drug sniffing dogs? OMG!! Someone wants to get high!!! Quick -- clone some dogs so that we can put them in jail!!! This whole drug prohibition thing is beyond infantile, but I digress. Why not use the time and effort to create better service dogs, or bomb-sniffing dogs?
I can't see that this argument really follows... are you arguing that the cessation of the space program brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse either way until Gorbachev (wisely) decided to try to make the collapse as painless as possible. It is perfectly feasible that would could have continued going to the moon through all of this, and I would argue that our society would be a better place if we had maintained the same zeal for space exploration that we had during the 60's. Certainly the "space race" pissing contest was a very large part of it, but you seem to be falsely assuming that correlation implies causation, space exploration would certainly not have continued the Cold War.
And this is just another example of why our 21st century society needs to let all of these moronic superstitions go. There are real world consequences -- just like the religious nutbars in America who refuse to do anything about global warming because they think that jeebus is coming back within their lifetimes. Its time to let it go, we all have imaginary friends when we are children but it is not healthy to hold on to them through adulthood!
Actually I think it is a fair comparison -- it is definitely worth mentioning that the last usable version of Windows was released in 2002 and does not even include native support for SATA drivers in the installation, whereas new versions of the various Linux distros come out all the time. It is DEFINITELY fair to compare XP with Ubuntu 9.04 -- we are simply talking the latest stable version. It is not our fault that you are forced to used a 7 year old OS because the vendor has not released a usable new version since then.
...Spending billions of dollars on ID cards when a huge percentage of your population is starving to death in the streets -- nice to see that your priorities are in order
I would agree that Source is a bit behind the times, I am confused by your connection between game engine and aesthetic design choices. You could use the Unreal engine to design a drab, grey world or you could design a rich and colorful world with Source. Again, this is not to say that Source is the most powerful engine out there (although it has held up amazingly well, considering its age).
This is definitely a valid argument -- but I think if we extrapolate this a bit into the future this announcement will encourage many more webmasters to stop supporting IE6 as well. Eventually, a site that many of these people use will go down and we will see the demise of IE6.
With the way they master music nowadays pretty much any modern record is white noise -- they use multi-band limiting to keep the whole audible spectrum near the peak for the duration of the album. One of the many reasons I can't listen to the crap they are putting out anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
But I don't think that patents have any place in heathcare, ever. Aside from that, these observational patents are the most odious and absurd. These sorts of things are the realm of science, not commerce. Scientists have no need to patent discoveries, doing so undermines the very nature of science. When you apply that to medicine, you are causing some real human damage. This is absolutely unacceptable behavior and needs to be stopped ASAFP in my opinion.
Sorry but this comment is just a whole bunch of fail -- first of all, neither you nor I know how this process works. First off, you are complaining about the deficiencies of something we have never been able to do before? You do realize that the alternative is cutting open your skull and digging around in your brain, right? And then it never states in the article that the size is fixed at 10mm3 (although it very well might be) and even if it is, I am fairly certain that they would have figured out a way around this deficiency, like, you know, overlapping treatment regions or something?
All of this is absolutely, 100% irrelevant. I don't think anybody here on /. will argue that this guy is not worthy of condemnation, I am sure he is human pond scum, but that is NOT a good reason to put someone in prison! In America you have the right to be an a-hole -- you don't have anything to worry about until you A) violate the law and B) a jury of your peers decides that there is sufficient evidence of said infraction as to punish you for it. That is not what happened, this judge put a man in jail on a whim, because he would not immediately cooperate, which is a grotesque abuse of judicial power. He should have been brought up on fraud/perjury charges in a criminal court. If he was found to be in violation of the law, then it would be legitimate to send him to prison. Short of this, keeping him in jail for such a long time is inexcusable.
Humbug!
Did they just randomly pick 10 things? They are seriously telling people not to drink soda and coffee while driving? I would think that the risk of driving sans-caffeine at 6 AM is a far greater risk than having a coffee or soda in the cupholder. They also missed a few key food items:
11. Bacardi 151 -- It gets you drunk!
12. Live Squid -- They are all tentacley -- which could be distracting while going down the road!
13. Human Flesh -- It is illegal in all 50 states and getting pulled over while eating human flesh will result in some serious penalties!
14. Psilocybin Mushrooms -- Often while eating these mushrooms and driving, you will find that various mythical creatures appear in the air around your vehicle, or that the road will suddenly become a black hole. It is highly not advised that you eat them while driving!
Ok, this is getting ridiculous, I'm done -- but damn, that is some really dumb shite...
I guess I should have made my point a bit more clear in the last post, but I see no reason why Apple has to be the sole distributor of apps for the iPhone. They don't do this with their PCs because that would be a suicidal business practice, but for some reason that is the best business model for the iPhone? I just don't buy it. We need to start treating phones like the little PCs they are, and maybe we can start moving the technology forward. Until then I think the iPhone will be nothing more than a trendy little gizmo and a fun distraction for the ADD generation.
How would Apple be liable to be sued for any of these things? Any of these are possible when using a PC, but you don't see Microsoft, Apple, Canonical, Red Hat, etc. being sued for bad apps. User reviews can take care of this very well -- and if that is not good enough, why not have an Apple Recommended section, where all of the apps have to go through a rigorous testing phase? Or allow third party apps to be used, but require Apple approval for sale through the iTunes app store? There are many good ways around this that would make everyone happy. Setting up a toll plaza on the road to app development the way Apple has is a hugely anti-dev, anti-consumer, bone-headed move. I would have an iPhone by now if they would just fsck off, calm down a little bit, and be a little more open about things.
If this is true, I am absolutely appalled. I would like to think that there would be some sort of legal recourse for your friend -- did he try contacting the ACLU or any similar organizations? His civil liberties were unquestionably violated and he absolutely deserves restitution for the harm done to him. From the details provided I am not sure if his case would stand up in court, but if the teacher slandered him like that in front of the class, I think he could potentially have a case (if the issue were framed properly).
Amen to that. Unfortunately, I think that this most likely has the opposite effect more often. It seems to me that a lot of these crimes are a result of a certain breed of sociopathy that is fostered by the increasing dehumanization in today's society. Things like "zero tolerance" policies only further remove the human element from the equation, which could potentially increase the likelihood of such events.*
*This is not, however, to exempt anyone from any crime. If you willfully harm another human being without just cause, you are personally responsible for it, regardless of any extenuating circumstances.
Yes, but how many of those apps are good? I don't personally have an iPhone but from what I have seen it seems like most iPhone apps are half-baked juvenile distractions, rather than anything seriously useful. It seems logical to me that the overall quality of iPhone apps could be improved tremendously if devs could actually devote time and resources to apps without fear of arbitrary rejection.
I don't know what they are trying to prove with this crap here but I am not at all impressed by that video -- I mean the building is completely empty and naked! Wouldn't the siding, roofing, walls, doors, windows, people, and furnishings make the building more heavy (and more likely to collapse)? Wouldn't the plumbing make the building more rigid and again, more likely to collapse? If I am incorrect please let me know, but it seems to me that this experiment proves precisely nothing.
Well, to be fair, attacking those who disagree is a fairly central tenet of most religions. The claims made by religion are extremely flimsy and based on literally no evidence, and as such will fall apart under any sort of meaningful debate. I will come to your side, though, JeanPaulBob and admit that there are certainly SOME religious people who are willing to discuss their faith with atheists, but I have to say I have never seen such a discussion end up being anything but disgraceful on the behalf of the religious person, as religion and rational thought are simply two separate enterprises.
Yes... they will eat you if you fail to comply.
This has provided me non-stop anger ever since I was old enough to understand the world around me -- religion demands respect, but by respect they mean total silence. It should say something about your worldview when you cannot tolerate any sort of challenge to it, maybe you ought to consider that your worldview just might not stand up to criticism, eh? We are expected to sit back in "respectful" silence while the religious trample all over our rights -- they accuse us of having no morals, and they refuse to vote for us. We are called less than human. They claim to be under attack by us, though they still control the government, the courts, and have made in-roads into the schools. god (that word does not deserve capitalization, even at the beginning of a sentence) is on our money and in our pledge (which I have other objections to, but that's another issue). They have corrupted countless young minds with their psychologically abusive brainwashing and horror stories. Many aspects of science are decades behind where they ought to be, lest we upset jeebus. Religion is outdated and provably does not work. We need to abandon these imaginary friends and throw off our psychological crutches now, before its too late.
I don't think the fact that some drugs are bad for you and can be detrimental to society is really is question -- the only question is whether or not prohibition helps the situation. In nearly every regard, prohibition fails to improve the situation and only serves to exacerbate it. Users get lower quality product with no dosage control, making accidental overdose far more likely. People are much less likely to come forward with drug addiction problems when they can be thrown in prison. Prohibition greatly increases the price of drugs, making addicts far more likely to turn to crime to fund their addiction. Prohibition puts the distribution in the hands of hardened criminals, rather than say, a licensed professional. Prohibition makes no financial sense -- the government spends money fighting the drugs rather than raking in tax dollars from the purchase of the drugs. Finally, and possibly most importantly, making drugs illegal does absolutely nothing to stop people from using them. In fact, there is much evidence to suggest that prohibition increases drug use. I could go on and on, but I think I make my point fairly clear, drug prohibition is entirely infantile and serves no purpose other than to be a huge burden on our society.
Am I the only one who could not help but hear that quote in Carl Sagan's voice?
This also raises big problems as far as disease resistance goes -- if all the dogs are genetically identical they will all have identical immune systems, making it far easier for a single strain of disease to wipe out a large chunk of them.
On a totally unrelated note -- why are we so concerned with drug sniffing dogs? OMG!! Someone wants to get high!!! Quick -- clone some dogs so that we can put them in jail!!! This whole drug prohibition thing is beyond infantile, but I digress. Why not use the time and effort to create better service dogs, or bomb-sniffing dogs?
I can't see that this argument really follows... are you arguing that the cessation of the space program brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union? The Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse either way until Gorbachev (wisely) decided to try to make the collapse as painless as possible. It is perfectly feasible that would could have continued going to the moon through all of this, and I would argue that our society would be a better place if we had maintained the same zeal for space exploration that we had during the 60's. Certainly the "space race" pissing contest was a very large part of it, but you seem to be falsely assuming that correlation implies causation, space exploration would certainly not have continued the Cold War.
And this is just another example of why our 21st century society needs to let all of these moronic superstitions go. There are real world consequences -- just like the religious nutbars in America who refuse to do anything about global warming because they think that jeebus is coming back within their lifetimes. Its time to let it go, we all have imaginary friends when we are children but it is not healthy to hold on to them through adulthood!
Actually I think it is a fair comparison -- it is definitely worth mentioning that the last usable version of Windows was released in 2002 and does not even include native support for SATA drivers in the installation, whereas new versions of the various Linux distros come out all the time. It is DEFINITELY fair to compare XP with Ubuntu 9.04 -- we are simply talking the latest stable version. It is not our fault that you are forced to used a 7 year old OS because the vendor has not released a usable new version since then.
Please stop. Thanks, The Internet
...Spending billions of dollars on ID cards when a huge percentage of your population is starving to death in the streets -- nice to see that your priorities are in order
I would agree that Source is a bit behind the times, I am confused by your connection between game engine and aesthetic design choices. You could use the Unreal engine to design a drab, grey world or you could design a rich and colorful world with Source. Again, this is not to say that Source is the most powerful engine out there (although it has held up amazingly well, considering its age).
This is definitely a valid argument -- but I think if we extrapolate this a bit into the future this announcement will encourage many more webmasters to stop supporting IE6 as well. Eventually, a site that many of these people use will go down and we will see the demise of IE6.
With the way they master music nowadays pretty much any modern record is white noise -- they use multi-band limiting to keep the whole audible spectrum near the peak for the duration of the album. One of the many reasons I can't listen to the crap they are putting out anymore.