I think the easy answer is to focus on intent. Phrase the law in such a way that it gauges whether or not a reasonable person in that situation could perform said action with non-malicious intent. You can also use generic language in terms of resource usage. Something like: "If a person performs an action that is designed to consume vast amounts of computing resources (and humand resources necessary to make repairs) and no reasonable person could see said action as non-malicious...."
It can also be phrased that way in terms of acquiring access to resources that you're not authorized to have access to. There is no need for specific technological phrasing.
You just implement them, you don't design them. That makes you a code monkey. Those algorithms you designed weren't for your employer, they were done on your free time, so they hardly qualify as 'professional.' Plus, I SERIOUSLY doubt a company would hire a completely undistinguished cryptographer to design new algorithms for a commercial product. As a self-proclaimed expert in cryptographer, you should know that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially with all the very good, already existing algorithms.
Your work with FPGAs is entirely indirect. You don't actually know any *HDLs, you aren't actually programming the FPGAs, so it's a bit disingenuous to say that you've worked with FPGAs when really you're just testing the output produced by them. Just so we're absolutely clear here: you can't legitimately claim that you "work with FPGAs" until you at least know a hardware design language.
I looked at your CV, it specifically just says you're doing regression testing, which means you take the output from FPGAs (work done by OTHER PEOPLE) and you test it with SOFTWARE you wrote. In other words, you are not doing hardware/FPGA development. And you keep saying your software is used all over the place, but you fail to mention where it's used, which can only lead me to believe it's used practically nowhere.
By the way! Even if you were being totally honest about the above, it still wouldn't qualify as you as an expert about ASIC and FPGA production and R&D costs. Hell, you didn't even know what ASICs were until I pointed them out to you, except instead of just admitting you were wrong, you excused yourself as having "misspoke." That's actually something an EE or a microE would know, or especially a manager directly in charge of the business aspect of that would know, since we're dealing with the specific numbers. You don't even provide a source for your numbers, all we have is a vague reference to some friends you have who MIGHT know actual numbers.
Now, I actually used the many real world examples of ASICs in production, including crypography ASICs used with servers for SSL purposes, which aren't produced in anywhere near the quantity of gameboys. You have yet to address the production of those crypto cards. Instead you keep launching on irrelevent tangents to try to distract away from the point. You can't actually defend yourself from my obvious real world examples (again--CRYPTO CARDS CURRENTLY BEING USED WHICH USE ASICs), so you just change the subject to your personal credentials.
Look, it's obvious you have very shoddy debate skills. Every time I challenge one of your strongly held numerical assertions by bringing up real world examples of actually produced hardware, you try to change subject by bringing up your credentials. I'm sorry, but if I say "but 2 + 2 DOESN'T actually equal 5 tom", it's simply no proper to counter with your credentials, no matter how great they are. Oh and your credentials aren't great, believe me, mr. code monkey.
P.S. Why are you racist against trolls? I bet you make pro-life exceptions for trolls. Sicko.
Just because I'm a troll doesn't mean I'm wrong. Don't be such a racist. Our people have had to overcome so many hardships and you're just turning back the clock, it's rude and unfair.
You shot down everything I said without offering an ounce of your credentials.
Indeed. I don't rely on ad hominem, appeals to authority, nor non-sequiturs. It amuses me greatly that you can manage to implicitly admit to using ad hominem, while being so oblivious that you're doing it. I'll explain it to you in simple terms.
An egostistical and insecure fool responds to an argument first by presenting his totally irrelevent credentials (non-sequitur). Now, this is the point where I mention I'm right because I sang in the state honors choir in the 5th grade.
That said, the clever debater uses a well reasoned argument and facts instead, and has no need to rely on their personal status for an argument. Nonetheless, I did mention SOME of my credentials as an aside, because I know you're the type who prefer emotional and logically fallacious arguments.
To someone familiar with formal logic, you would know that credentials are only relevent if they represent expertise in the relevent subject area. You were attempting to cite yourself as an EE expert of some kind, but clearly that is not your area of expertise, so instead of being an appeal to expert testimony, it is an appeal to a false authority.
I guess in your important and busy life you felt it so important to stop what you're doing to try and rip on other people. I guess this is part of your "professional life" eh?
Yes, I am a private contractor for a certain fortune 500 company who goes onto online forums and makes inflammatory comments in order to boost product sales. I'm a professional troll.
First off... I DO develop algorithms and perform research.
The issue was professional research. No one cares about your non-notable amateur research.
There is more to a secure cryptosystem than just "coding". Cryptographers are responsible to glue the entire system together.
Yeah, they do that using things called standards, standards which you took no part in developing.
By your logic a bridge engineer must develop new design concepts before he's an engineer. Otherwise he's a lowly construction grunt.
No, that's nothing like what I said. With regard to the ASIC comments, you've already demonstrated that you have trouble following what people are saying. What you're doing is akin to reimplementing the same bridge design in a slightly different location, if you must use that horrid analogy. You're implementing pre-existing existing standards which have been implemented a million times over.
And no, I'm not just referring to the lowest level algorithms, I am well aware of the design of higher level cryptographic standards and protocols. You might as well suggest that you're a web protocol designer because you implemented a standards compliant http/1.1 server. Let me guess, you implemented some PKCS crap and now you want some pats on the back for being a "professional cryptographer"?
. You have to know what algorithms to use and when/why. You have to be able to work with them with the utmost flexibility [e.g. you don't always get ideal situations, etc].
It sounds to me like you were TOLD what algorithms to implement, and you didn't really have any control over when they were used. Designing regression tests doesn't involve much of knowing when to use them and why.
I may have mispoken
Good to see that you can admit when you're wrong, sort of.
but I know of designs that use FPGAs in fielded products, for example this is one.
Congratulations, you found one really obscure product which will more than likely flop. It's not even an end-user product really, it's just a geek toy designed to be appealing because you can reprogram it, not because it's PRAGMATIC. I will defer back to the non-obscure cryptography hardware and tons of other ASIC hardware that's been in use for years.
In short runs it's actually cheaper to plug in a small FPGA then get real ASICs made. If you think otherwise it's because you're a fucking moron and you have no clue whatsoever.
Now now, what happened to all your numbers and math? Before you had all these specific calculations regarding where that cut-off point was. Now instead you've resorted to vague language "short run" which could mean anything really. Or are you still standing by that arbitrary millions number? Because I'd like to see you back that wild generalization up, because I'm pretty sure the custom cryptography hardware used in servers for SSL hasn't sold millions of units. It's also cute that you think the bigger difference in cost is going to be R&D for no apparent reason.
I'm the author of some widely deploy cryptographic software...and that would be? Furthermore, how is that even relevent to the point? It's interesting, in your response you realized that you were completely wrong, so now you're going off on a tangent about irrelevent work experience. Just so you know, writing software that uses cryptography doesn't make you a cryptographer. A cryptographer designs cryptography, the implementation side is something PROGRAMMERS or CE/EEs do. So even if you were working for a fortune 100 company, if you were just implementing well known cryptographic protocols/algorithms (read:ones you didn't design), it really wouldn't make you a "professional cryptographer" in any reasonable sense of the term.
If you're making less than a million devices or so it's cheaper to just use an FPGA because the tapeout alone will cost you millions.
Less than a million devices of WHAT? That what is pretty important. One would think you'd take into account what they were creating as part of the R&D costs, but since we're using retard-math here, I guess not. One might also take into account R&D costs on previous versions, because you don't just start from scratch each time either, but I guess not. Now this is all ignoring the fact that everything down to gate level design is going to be the same, so those costs are going to be the same.
You know, there already are cryptography ASICs in use (and have been in use for many years), strangely FPGAs haven't and won't ever replace them. Obviously your retard-math is off, because the real world sales of the products don't reflect what you're saying. If the FPGAs are so great for cryptography, why are their sales ABYSMAL by comparison? THere are plenty of "open cores" for cryptography, so that can't be it. Obviously, it's hardware costs.
The last design I know of where the CPU controlled the peripherals was the Atari 2600. Even the gameboy had dedicated LCD controllers.
WTF? Do you STILL not know what ASIC means? I already explained it to you. As the other poster explained, I was never referring to a general purpose CPU. "CPU controled" would be the opposite. Do you understand OPPOSITE?! Jesus. It's like speaking to a brick wall here. A general purpose cpu is designed to be a general purpose CPU, not to control an LCD, therefore it is not "application specific" to LCDs. Duh, dumbfuck.
That said, low-mid end LCDs are often bundled with controllers. Some are made using microcontrollers and others using ASICs, NONE using FPGAs. I have yet to see a single one made using an FPGA. And as I said, you can get cheapo usb ASICs and microcontrolers with built-in USB support for ultra-cheap now, a FPGA would be a waste of money. How do I know this? Because I've worked with this stuff. You haven't. Stop being an idiot and talking about things you haven't worked with.
Though what I speak of is from my experience working alongside these folk [as well as I have quite a few friends who design FPGAs for a living].
So is everything here quoting from them? Because if it isn't, then you are speaking out of an area of expertise you don't have. I've programmed LCD displays, I've programmed FPGAs, what have YOU done? I actually am an electrical engineer. Maybe it's time you admit that you're wrong.
In otherwords you're trying to look all cutsie by trying to make me look stupid but really you haven't the first foggiest clue what you are talking about.
This coming from a guy who didn't know what an ASIC was?! Even in your reply you still didn't know what it was, you thought an atari general purpose cpu would qualify as an ASIC. It's the OPPOSITE. You even thought FPGAs are suitable LCD controllers, when all of them use either micotronollers and/or ASICs (btw--there are standard LCD interfaces--which equates to fairly standard LCD controllers). Cryptography boards, as used by servers, have been in used for many years--guess what they use--ASICs! PCI FPGA boards have been around years too, but they're never used for that purpose, why do you think that is? The reality of the situation doesn't reflect what you say in thes slightest.
You can probably clock it around 30-40Mhz if your interface isn't too stupid. AES on a PPC probably takes the same time as a MIPs which is about 1000-1200 cycles.
I was considering just modding this down, but other ignorant people would probably waste mod points modding it back up, so I thought I'd reply instead. It's fine that you're an amateur cryptographer, but that is a completely different field than computer engineering and doesn't qualify you to make statements about it. I have no doubt your figures were pulled out of your ass and come from complete ignorance of computer architecture.
That said, you actually demonstrated your ignorance right away by showing that a) you don't know what FPGAs actually are and b) you don't know what ASICs are. Apparently, according to you, FPGAs aren't made from silicon, they're made from fluffy bunny pixie dust (or some other substance, you never specified). Also, you apparently don't realize that ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit, meaning a chip designed for a specific purpose.
A PPC is very much the antithesis of an ASIC. Now, I suppose it's understandable that an expert in the field might get confused about an ASIC and classify something which is the exact opposite of it as one, so I guess I can excuse that.
E.g. want something to drive your USB, LCD and other periphs without paying to go to ASIC? Drop an FPGA in the thing. I assure you controlling a USB or LCD device is much more efficient in an FPGA than in software on a PPC.
Ignoring the fact that a PPC is not an ASIC, there are plenty of microcontrollers and various ASICs with built in features that make this easy which are cheaper than FPGAs. Now, if you were familiar with computer engineering (which you aren't--you're talking out of your ass), you'd know that. Hell, if you had even bothered looking at the development hardware for FPGAs you'd know that. FPGAs have their purposes, but your broad sweeping generalizations about them simply aren't accurate, especially when you're suggesting paying up the ass when there are much cheaper alternatives, in ASIC and other forms.
It doesn't give out more than it takes in in order to acrue interest on the donation money. That way the interest can be doled out to charitable causes over time. If they just blew the money all at once, they'd be all out, but by investing it and spending it slowly, they end up helping charity a lot more.
He still deliberately avoided the word average. Implicitly acknowledging a bell curve is not the same. He could have been very clear and just used the word average from the beginning, but he didn't. The comment in parantheses isn't the same as coming out and saying "below the average", as I'm betting most would likely not pick up on that. After all, if someone doesn't know about IQs/normalized curves to begin with, why would they pick up on a statement about curves?
The only insult I levied was towards American education.
Yeah, aside from the "seeing eye dog" remark. Ooops.
I talked about American education because I am an American who deals with hiring of technical Americans
So in other words, you have done no research into the American education system, you are just speaking out of your ass.
They segment the population effectively by intelligence of the specific type that we find in scientists. You've not provided any rebuttal to that, other than mischaracterizing what I said.
They do the same in ALL populations, American and otherwise, so it's a moot point. How about this: you have provided zero evidence that there's any correlation between IQ and a belief in evolution. You need to establish that for your point to be valid. So far, all we is your WORD that we have to take as a matter of FAITH as being true.
I maintain that 100 is approximately where we stop doing science; I gleaned that impression because I know from experience that 100 is where we stop doing other types of technical work.
From this I can gather that you're not a scientific thinker, because you just made a classic logical fallacy, relying on personal anecdotes to prove a point. I want to see some SCIENTIFIC research. You know, science, that thing we were talking about, as opposed to PERSONAL ANECDOTES. Relying on personal anecdotes is EXACTLY what leads to faith-based beliefs like evolution, that kind of uncritical thought is completely out of line here. After all, what about people who have personal anecdotes with people who were miraculously healed of a dreadful illness after prayer? Those anecdotal cases must be proof of god's healing, right?!
Or would you attempt to argue than someone with an IQ of 40 would make an effective microbiologist... because the tests are normalized?
See now, you've had to resort to such an extreme to prove your point? That's sad. In order for your point to work, you have to establish a correlation between IQ and belief in evolution. Now, the rational thinker would realize that hey, revolution is a RELIGIOUS belief and not one delegated to areas of intelligence, but for no apparent reason you've assumed otherwise.
Here is another thing you overlooked in your faith-based, uncritical analysis: one does not need to understand the details (especially those which are particularly complicated) of evolution to believe in it. There are, in fact, even kids books written on evolution, made easy for little kids to understand. It's a over simplified version, but the kids would still get the point.
Even someone mentally retarded could believe in evolution, there's nothing precluding them from believing in it.
And again, all you have is a wildly speculative hypothesis, with NOTHING TO GO ON OTHER THAN PERSONAL ANECDOTES. Here's what will happen, eventually someone will conduct a suvery of IQs as correlated with belief in evolution, they'll find some weak or non-existant correlation,t hen you'll go crying home because your little hypothesis was not only WRONG, but COMPLETELY WRONG and based on FAITH.
Aside from being sorry, we can also observe that 80% of the population won't fit in the 100-and-under region because of the way IQ is determined.
This doesn't help your point, it hinders it. The fact that so many people are religous and yet manage to remain ABOVE AVERAGE seems to go against your idea that religion and especially the religion based belief of creationism is mainly just for below average people. Thanks for citing a statistic that helps me prove my point.
It's late and maybe I just missed where fyngyrz "tried to insult Americans."
In the sentence right after he brought up IQs: 50% (more, actually, because there are many at the center of the curve) of Americans have an IQ of 100 or under. They wouldn't know science from sophist nonsense if you gave them a roadmap, a GPS, and a seeing-eye dog.
Please try to stay with the program. That second sentence is clearly derogatory and the comment about IQs is meant to be supporting evidence for it. Wait, are you now going to argue that their proximity is just COINCIDENCE now and ignore the American bashing Slashdot norm?
As far as I can tell, he is simply pointing out a fact that roughly 50% of the population will score below average
Nope. He doesn't actually state that 100 is average until after someone points out that IQs are normally distributed. In other words, he was clearly trying to mislead people.
It seems to me that you've taken an emotional reaction to the term "below average."
Nope, that's not possible, because he didn't actually say below average initially. He deliberately said they score below 100 IQ instead of saying "below average" because he knew the latter form would be more honest and would harm his point more than help it.
So again, I just don't see where he is insulting Americans or where he puts forth that 50% of the population scoring below average as a criticism of the country.
I don't know, how about the huge rant I replied to where he asserts that people who are below 100 IQ can't possibly understand science? Perhaps the derogatory remark that they wouldn't know sophistry from science even if you gave them "GPS and a seeing eye dog"? Are you being deliberately obtuse here? He was obviously insulting them.
All he was saying is that at least 50% of Americans will have a harder time with science than those that are above average.
No, that's not what he was saying at all. He was saying that roughly 50% have a below 100 IQ and therefore couldn't possibly understand science, not that simply had a harder time understanding science. Go reread his comment I replied to, he made it VERY CLEAR that they don't understand science the slightest bit, not that they are simply having a "harder time." He even decided to throw in unfounded statements about the American education system.
IQ tests are primarily a measure of the kind of intelligence related to scientific thinking (fyngyrz once again graciously offers this information to you)
He says that, but offers absolutely no evidence to back it up. I don't think he's actually studied what IQ tests actually measure. I like to call that wild, rampant speculation. So, how good are you are solving visual puzzles and anagrams? Just curious, because hinges on your ability to understand the basics of evolution. After all, you need like a 150 IQ to understand it and all.
Nevermind that belief in evolution is motivated almost entirely by RELIGION, not IQ and that there is no data correlating IQ to belief in evolution. If we were to believe him, that would mean that like 99% of very religious people have IQ tests are primarily a measure of the kind of intelligence related to scientific thinking (fyngyrz once again graciously offers this information to you)
So this would put you in the 'below average' group then? Because you haven't exercised any sort of scientific thinking skills that I've seen so far.
You completely missed the point and went off on a side tangent to defend your own sophistry. The fact still remains that you tried to insult Americans on the basis that roughly half are below averge (100) IQ, but that's true of any population. IQ tests are designed such that roughly half will be below 100, it's SUPPOSED to be that way. That "insult" applies to any other country you can think of, so IT IS NOT A VALID CRITICISM of the country.
So why aren't you using this as a basis to criticize other countries? Oh yeah, I know, because you were hoping to get away with a little sophistry and hoping that no one would notice. Bash America on Slashdot = +5 Insightful, even if it's backed with fallacious logic. What's sad is that the grandparent was modded down as FLAMEBAIT for pointing out that IQ scores are normalized, wtf? How is it flamebait to point out that IQ scores are designed the way you're using them as an "insult"? I expect my comment to get modded down as flamebait too, despite the fact that it points out the obvious flaw in your reasoning.
By the way, I found actual studies, you know, those sciency-like things researched by those science guys that showed that Americans are more scientifically literate than Europeans. I guess your HYPOTHESIS is completely unfounded. See what happened there? I actually did research, found scientific research to back up my view, just like the grandparent who pasted a link to an explanation of IQ scores, but all you have is wild speculation about the education system (not "educational system" as you moronically miswrote) not being helpful to roughly 50% of the population, DESPITE PRESENTING NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE.
So I guess, according to your hypothesis, this would put you in the below average category, since you obviously don't understand science well enough to a) actually do any research and to b) give credence to fact that your IQ based arguments apply to all other countries as well.
United States Scientifically Literate: 12% Partial: 25% Not: 63%
European Union Scientifically Literate: 5% Partial: 22% Not: 73%
"In previous estimates of civic scientific literacy, Miller has used a threshold level of 67 or more, reflecting the ability of a respondent to get two-thirds of the possible points on the construct vocabulary index. When this standard is applied to the 1995 U.S. data, 27.2 percent of Americans score at or above the 67 point level, compared to 20.2 percent of Europeans. This result suggests that approximately three of four adults in Europe and the United States would be unable to read and understand news or other information that utilized basic scientific constructs such as DNA, molecule, or radiation."
Source: Miller, Jon D. 1998. The measurement of civic scientific literacy. Public Understanding of Science 7 (3):203-223. See here.
When it comes to Scientific literacy, the United States is actually in the lead.
Isn't it fun to see how people can manipulate selective statistics to prove a point? The fact is, for the past decade or so, evolution has had roughly 45% support (give or take depending on the study--also please learn about margins of error before chiming in). There haven't been any studies showing any significant increase, so to conclude that it's becoming MORE hostile is ludicrous. In fact, if you had polls from 50 years ago, I'd be you'd reveal that support back then for evolution would probably be a very small minority. Republicans/conservatives have always been pro-life, so how is that an "increase"? The fact that we have Roe v. Wade now, compared to abortion being illegal the hundred of years before only shows an increase in udnerstand of science. The congressional measures for Terri Schiavo had VERY LITTLE public support, why is that even used as an arguing point? They're just pulling random examples out of their ass that refute their own point.
Sure, the current administration tries to limit it, but that is a temporary slump. So, where are the polls on stem cell research? Did the author even bother looking those up? Of course not, because then they'd realize that the majority (60%) of Americans support stem cell research and that their sensationalist peice of claptrap is completely bogus!
Sensationalism aside, to those who exercise critical thought and do research, this conclusion is completely UNSCIENTIFIC and wrong. CONCLUSION: The journalist who wrote this article is an anti-scientific thinker and all who agree with him aren't capable of critical thought and are thusly hypocrites that should be lumped in with the anti-scientific thinkers they criticize.
It's not a proposal, it's a trial run, that's a very different thing. A proposal is when you say "hey guys, maybe we should try this, what are your thoughts?" Instead they did "hey we're going to do this for a couple of months and see what happens."
Oddly, I never mentioned voting. Oddly, I did mention consensus, which Wikipedia IS based on, it says that ALL OVER WIKIPEDIA POLICY PAGES. You were trying to be smart by repeating an oft-quoted phrases ("Wikipedia is not a democracy"), but it appears you didn't actually read what I said. There was no consensus ever reached for this decision.
And even more oddly, vote totals have been the determining factors in things, namely votes for adminship, arbitration, AfD and other pages (with exceptions). Oh and incidentally, being based on consensus does make it a democracy. Ironically, Wikipedia even has an article on consensus democracies.
This is Tim Starling's comment on the Wikimedia foundation: "The Wikimedia Foundation is undemocratic. Its bylaws were determined by one man. Its statement of principles is arbitrary, and does not agree with my own. Elections just give the appearance of democracy, the board will remain stacked regardless of the outcome. This is fake democracy, it is democracy executed without commitment to democratic principles. I don't believe this is a problem which can be fixed in small steps."
And we're supposed to be surprised that they make unilateral moves like this? They didn't get any kind of consensus before doing this, in spite of that being the basic Wikipedia principle. Of course, Wikimedia principle's are to act unilaterally. I wonder if they'd really honor a trial run at all.
Yeah, sure, it's "not an advertisement" because they aren't contractually obligated to put an ad for the software on WP:TOOLS. However, they would have never added it without the deal, and, in fact, if the Wikipedians kept the link removed from the tools page the company would withdrawal its funding to Wikimedia. So in other words, Wikipedia is (or will be) hosting a link to a commercial product, w hich when removed, will remove a source of revenue for it. Sounds like an advertisement to me.
Also, it appears they don't need these profits to even run the servers. THat's right, they're mostly being funneled into random, unrelated charities. While some might consider this noble, the many Wikipedians who contributed their work don't consider it ethical to use their freely contributed work as a means to act as a cash cow for Wikimedia's personal pet charities without any consenus at all.
Well the new HPV vaccine targets two common strains believed to cause 70% of cervical cancer cases, would that be sufficient? HPV does have other strains (just like with any virus), but it isn't seasonal, so you don't need to be continually re-vaccinated. Read this article in new scientist about it. It's not mentioned as much, probably because it's less common, but HPV also causes penile cancer.
There's more recent ones, like for Hepatitis (various) and Chickenpox.
Get the full text of the first three from Dean and read them - or not, but they contain the information relevant to point a, and references relevant to point b, I'll let you judge his conclusions for yourself.
Even if I did that, why would I want conclusions for irrelevent articles? I've looked over the text of 4 out of 6, none of them cover the amount of public research that went into use with private drug research.
You said you wanted an example for blood pressure, and there it is.
Of a drug that wasn't in the top 200 list, which I specifically requested.
You never actually asked for an example for neurotensin (you asked the other guy), you just asserted that it was developed without any academic help, and since I don't know anything about chronic pain (I do know about blood pressure),
Neurontin, not neurotensin. Yes, I asked for evidence regarding Valium, but you provided none. Valium was a result of many failed experiments in completely new compounds with completely unknown effects. In fact, Leo Sternbach is credited with inventing benzodiazapines, the class of drugs it's in, meaning that there WAS NO prior research on those types of drugs.
I can't cite anything for Neurontin, I'm going based on what a pain specialist (MD) has said regarding Neurontin (gabapentin) and Lyrica (pregabalin), its succesor.
Inventors: Butler; Donald E. (Holland, MI); Greenman; Barbara J. (Door, MI) Assignee: Warner-Lambert Company (Morris Plains, NJ) Appl. No.: 188819 Filed: May 2, 1988
Since it's old, you might want to try its succesor, pregabalin, instead.
Otherwise, it's too much work.
How ironic.
On valium, I can't answer the question definitively because I can't read German or Polish - and I would need to search physical archives anyway, any relevant research articles would be too old to appear on the web.
You don't need it, the history is documented on websites like the ones I pasted. He invented an entire class of drugs. Websites have the history of the drug development on them.
In any case, you've ignored the primary thrust of my response and concentrated on something secondary. This example is too old to be relevant to the modern period.
Huh? How is it "too old"? That's a totally arbitrary decision made to exclude examples that don't suit you. It's not seocndary either, this was and still is an extremely popular drug developed independently. You were asserting that most (or all?) drugs were developed because of public research, but if major drugs aren't like that, it seems to be dobutful.
From which I conclude with certainty that you do not know that medline only returns modern research - and are not up to speed in the field generally, because angiotensin was discovered fairly recently.
That's not the logical conclusion, because at that point you were only making vague references to general workings of blood pressure, the basics of which we had learned long ago. And you didn't listen, that drug you cited isn't on the list I gave. If you're going to make corporations out to be these big greedy monoliths leeching off public research, then you should at least use an example of a popular drug that they profitted a lot from.
You can't seem to find anytihng on that list. If you can't disprove my examples at least pick something from the list (NOT a narcotic) that's fairly new.
From the standpoint of your argument, vaccines and cures are equivalent. In both cases they prevent any further treatment from being necessary for the condition in question. So in other words, theere is equally less motivation to develop a vaccine as there is for a cure. Plus, curing a disease after it's already onset (especially in later stages) is a lot harder than developing preventative measures that greatly reduce the chances if taken preemptively. The idea of a single pill to cure cancer, HIV or whatever is far ahead of our current capabilities and hardly something that can be blamed on drug companies.
There is the new very effective HPV vaccine though (more than one I think), and since HPV causes cervical and penile cancer, you are preventing a specific type of cancer. Is that revolutionary?
But if you want a cure, fine. Antibiotics cure infections, they develop new ones all the time. Some ulcer medications allow stomach damage to heal in many cases (they can actually discontinue the medication after a period of treatment).
As for revolutionary drugs, that's subjective. Even Viagra only worked for so many men. Most people aren't aware of the new drugs being developed for chronic illnesses. Neurontin and it's succesor Lyrica have been shown to be pretty effecive for epilepsy and neuropathic pain.
They proved that it was caused by bacteria, not that it could be cured with antibiotics. The damaage caused by the bacteria persists even after you kill off the bacteria, so antibiotics are only really helpful if you happen to catch it at early onset. Otherwise, you're stuck with the standard treatment.
In an anonymous forum I have no way to use other common metrics for truthfulness (no body language, no socializing). Credentials at least help.
The truthfulness of WHAT? If you want to know of a figure I cite is truthful, you can ask for a source. Do you doubt my information about Leo Sternbach? I can give you websites with information on Leo Sternbach and the development of Valium if you like. There's no reason to need to know my credentials, as I can cite sources.
If I take you at face value, your argument is meaningless (the "because I said so" argument)
That's exactly what you and your friend are doing. So far he has only presented a bunch of opinion pieces which don't even quote statistics that are relevent to the argument. So far, I just have to *take his word* that what he says is true.
I'm not talking about argument from authority, I'm talking about how do I know that you know jack shit about what pharma companies do or don't.
You cited him as an expert (a grad student--what a joke), that makes it an appeal to authority. If you are going to cite someone's credentials as a basis for them being right, then that means you are using their authority. That said, this is outside of his area of expertise, even if he were the greatest chemist in the world, just like the greatest heart surgeon doesn't necessarily know much about orthopedics.
He would need to be an expert specficially in public and private sector research, the funding and history of it. So he'd be some combination of a historian, biochemist, and possibly something in business management. Clearly, this is not part of any standard [bio]chemistry curriculum, it's something you have to specialize in.
People who dodge questions, or only selectively engage in debate seem disingenuous.
So do people who make hypocritical accusations of ad hominem and support a guy whose only cited sources includ off-topic opinion pieces written by the same guy.
Anyway, how's this for irony -- your whole argument is "I don't like your evidence" and yet, you won't supply any yourself.
Nice straw man, but it won't work. As I've said many times now and you've deliberately ignored, he pasted *irrelevent* opinion pieces wrriten by a single guy. I'm not even saying the articles are wrong necessarily, they're just irrelevent to the argument, they cover things like high prescription costs, but don't actually address the issue of public sector research vs. private sector. They just flat out aren't mentioned in the articles. Evidence which doesn't even bring up the issue is bad evidence.
That said, I did present evidence, and you disingenously ignored it because you didn't liek it. I offered Valium as the perfect example of a popular (VERY widely used) drug that was developed independent of the public sector. Your friend and you have yet to refute that assertion. His entire attempt (which he gave up on) was that "well, he needed basic knowledge of organic synthetic chemistry as it was taught as part of the standard universtiy curriculums, therefore that counts as public sector research." In other words, because researchers over the past century made the basic building blocks for basically all kinds of chemistry, that counts. Give me a break.
I also offered neurontin as example. He states this is obvious and that he can easily find information, right? Well, he seems to have refused much challenge and only stuck with his blood pressure example, because he only likes examples when they work for him. He's the one making the bold claim that virtually all drugs are like this, so he better damn well be able to prove it for at least one of the examples I provide.
Don't bother replying though unless you mention your background or bias.
Why would I? It's ad hominem. It seems you're incapable of defending yourself, so now you have to resort to personal attacks:-)
more importantly, you already complained about the bibliography being too long, and the Challenge article contains a great many citations which you can follow, if you really care about the question and aren't just arguing for the sake of it.
You're missing the point. It's not my job to do your research for you. You are asking me to read through 50 billion articles to find the dozen which might actually be relevent. It is *your job* to find articles relevent to *your argument*, not mine.
How exactly are you concluding that if you cannot read them?
I told you I did read one in full and I can read the summaries for the other two, they are clearly opinion pieces. They aren't actual studies.
If you actually knew anything about medline you'd know that it only returned recently published articles - no 19th century cadavers.
WHEN DID I EVER ASSERT THAT YOU COULD FIND THAT INFORMATION ON MEDLINE?! Seriously, I never came close to making that claim, now you're just grasping at straws. The point was that if you're going to give credit to people, you'd have to go back centuries to all past research.
If you know anything at all about biology and chemistry, you'd know why I find your whole line completely baffling - drug companies do hardly *any* fundamental research at all, they just develop drugs. This is simply common knowledge among all researchers,
Yeah, it's so common, and yet you have so much trouble finding information on it. All you have is a bunch of irrelevent opinion pieces written by one guy which don't even delve into the public research that lead directly to private drugs being developed.
f you type angiotensin into medline (as I just did) you will find many examples of ongoing fundamental research on angiotensin, certainly useful to drug companies - of the ones I checked, all done by academic scientists
Oddly, this doesn't cover Neurontin nor does it cover Valium. Those two are both popular drugs, so it's not like I'm picking obscure/contrived examples here.
Yet again I ask for the public research that led to Neurontin. Ditto for Valium. Keep in mind, I'm not asking about basic information that any university would teach you on drug synthesis, I'm talking about actual research around that time that helped.
As I said, your only counter to Valium was that *gasp* over the century before Sternbach became a doctor, people developed basic foundations of knowledge for organic chemistry and drug synthesis. Which again leads to us needing to attribute EVERYTHING current scientists do to everything scientists have done centuries before, completely disregarding whether or not it's currently *standard knowledge* taught in university programs.
So was there some kind of breakthrough in research at public university's when Sternbach was researching that helped him complete his research? Or was he just using standard knowledge acquired from his university?
Slashdot Mirror
I think the easy answer is to focus on intent. Phrase the law in such a way that it gauges whether or not a reasonable person in that situation could perform said action with non-malicious intent. You can also use generic language in terms of resource usage. Something like: "If a person performs an action that is designed to consume vast amounts of computing resources (and humand resources necessary to make repairs) and no reasonable person could see said action as non-malicious...."
It can also be phrased that way in terms of acquiring access to resources that you're not authorized to have access to. There is no need for specific technological phrasing.
You just implement them, you don't design them. That makes you a code monkey. Those algorithms you designed weren't for your employer, they were done on your free time, so they hardly qualify as 'professional.' Plus, I SERIOUSLY doubt a company would hire a completely undistinguished cryptographer to design new algorithms for a commercial product. As a self-proclaimed expert in cryptographer, you should know that would be an incredibly stupid thing to do, especially with all the very good, already existing algorithms.
Your work with FPGAs is entirely indirect. You don't actually know any *HDLs, you aren't actually programming the FPGAs, so it's a bit disingenuous to say that you've worked with FPGAs when really you're just testing the output produced by them. Just so we're absolutely clear here: you can't legitimately claim that you "work with FPGAs" until you at least know a hardware design language.
I looked at your CV, it specifically just says you're doing regression testing, which means you take the output from FPGAs (work done by OTHER PEOPLE) and you test it with SOFTWARE you wrote. In other words, you are not doing hardware/FPGA development. And you keep saying your software is used all over the place, but you fail to mention where it's used, which can only lead me to believe it's used practically nowhere.
By the way! Even if you were being totally honest about the above, it still wouldn't qualify as you as an expert about ASIC and FPGA production and R&D costs. Hell, you didn't even know what ASICs were until I pointed them out to you, except instead of just admitting you were wrong, you excused yourself as having "misspoke." That's actually something an EE or a microE would know, or especially a manager directly in charge of the business aspect of that would know, since we're dealing with the specific numbers. You don't even provide a source for your numbers, all we have is a vague reference to some friends you have who MIGHT know actual numbers.
Now, I actually used the many real world examples of ASICs in production, including crypography ASICs used with servers for SSL purposes, which aren't produced in anywhere near the quantity of gameboys. You have yet to address the production of those crypto cards. Instead you keep launching on irrelevent tangents to try to distract away from the point. You can't actually defend yourself from my obvious real world examples (again--CRYPTO CARDS CURRENTLY BEING USED WHICH USE ASICs), so you just change the subject to your personal credentials.
Look, it's obvious you have very shoddy debate skills. Every time I challenge one of your strongly held numerical assertions by bringing up real world examples of actually produced hardware, you try to change subject by bringing up your credentials. I'm sorry, but if I say "but 2 + 2 DOESN'T actually equal 5 tom", it's simply no proper to counter with your credentials, no matter how great they are. Oh and your credentials aren't great, believe me, mr. code monkey.
P.S. Why are you racist against trolls? I bet you make pro-life exceptions for trolls. Sicko.
Just because I'm a troll doesn't mean I'm wrong. Don't be such a racist. Our people have had to overcome so many hardships and you're just turning back the clock, it's rude and unfair.
You shot down everything I said without offering an ounce of your credentials.
Indeed. I don't rely on ad hominem, appeals to authority, nor non-sequiturs. It amuses me greatly that you can manage to implicitly admit to using ad hominem, while being so oblivious that you're doing it. I'll explain it to you in simple terms.
An egostistical and insecure fool responds to an argument first by presenting his totally irrelevent credentials (non-sequitur). Now, this is the point where I mention I'm right because I sang in the state honors choir in the 5th grade.
That said, the clever debater uses a well reasoned argument and facts instead, and has no need to rely on their personal status for an argument. Nonetheless, I did mention SOME of my credentials as an aside, because I know you're the type who prefer emotional and logically fallacious arguments.
To someone familiar with formal logic, you would know that credentials are only relevent if they represent expertise in the relevent subject area. You were attempting to cite yourself as an EE expert of some kind, but clearly that is not your area of expertise, so instead of being an appeal to expert testimony, it is an appeal to a false authority.
I guess in your important and busy life you felt it so important to stop what you're doing to try and rip on other people. I guess this is part of your "professional life" eh?
Yes, I am a private contractor for a certain fortune 500 company who goes onto online forums and makes inflammatory comments in order to boost product sales. I'm a professional troll.
First off ... I DO develop algorithms and perform research.
The issue was professional research. No one cares about your non-notable amateur research.
There is more to a secure cryptosystem than just "coding". Cryptographers are responsible to glue the entire system together.
Yeah, they do that using things called standards, standards which you took no part in developing.
By your logic a bridge engineer must develop new design concepts before he's an engineer. Otherwise he's a lowly construction grunt.
No, that's nothing like what I said. With regard to the ASIC comments, you've already demonstrated that you have trouble following what people are saying. What you're doing is akin to reimplementing the same bridge design in a slightly different location, if you must use that horrid analogy. You're implementing pre-existing existing standards which have been implemented a million times over.
And no, I'm not just referring to the lowest level algorithms, I am well aware of the design of higher level cryptographic standards and protocols. You might as well suggest that you're a web protocol designer because you implemented a standards compliant http/1.1 server. Let me guess, you implemented some PKCS crap and now you want some pats on the back for being a "professional cryptographer"?
. You have to know what algorithms to use and when/why. You have to be able to work with them with the utmost flexibility [e.g. you don't always get ideal situations, etc].
It sounds to me like you were TOLD what algorithms to implement, and you didn't really have any control over when they were used. Designing regression tests doesn't involve much of knowing when to use them and why.
I may have mispoken
Good to see that you can admit when you're wrong, sort of.
but I know of designs that use FPGAs in fielded products, for example this is one.
Congratulations, you found one really obscure product which will more than likely flop. It's not even an end-user product really, it's just a geek toy designed to be appealing because you can reprogram it, not because it's PRAGMATIC. I will defer back to the non-obscure cryptography hardware and tons of other ASIC hardware that's been in use for years.
In short runs it's actually cheaper to plug in a small FPGA then get real ASICs made. If you think otherwise it's because you're a fucking moron and you have no clue whatsoever.
Now now, what happened to all your numbers and math? Before you had all these specific calculations regarding where that cut-off point was. Now instead you've resorted to vague language "short run" which could mean anything really. Or are you still standing by that arbitrary millions number? Because I'd like to see you back that wild generalization up, because I'm pretty sure the custom cryptography hardware used in servers for SSL hasn't sold millions of units. It's also cute that you think the bigger difference in cost is going to be R&D for no apparent reason.
I'm the author of some widely deploy cryptographic software ...and that would be? Furthermore, how is that even relevent to the point? It's interesting, in your response you realized that you were completely wrong, so now you're going off on a tangent about irrelevent work experience. Just so you know, writing software that uses cryptography doesn't make you a cryptographer. A cryptographer designs cryptography, the implementation side is something PROGRAMMERS or CE/EEs do. So even if you were working for a fortune 100 company, if you were just implementing well known cryptographic protocols/algorithms (read:ones you didn't design), it really wouldn't make you a "professional cryptographer" in any reasonable sense of the term.
If you're making less than a million devices or so it's cheaper to just use an FPGA because the tapeout alone will cost you millions.
Less than a million devices of WHAT? That what is pretty important. One would think you'd take into account what they were creating as part of the R&D costs, but since we're using retard-math here, I guess not. One might also take into account R&D costs on previous versions, because you don't just start from scratch each time either, but I guess not. Now this is all ignoring the fact that everything down to gate level design is going to be the same, so those costs are going to be the same.
You know, there already are cryptography ASICs in use (and have been in use for many years), strangely FPGAs haven't and won't ever replace them. Obviously your retard-math is off, because the real world sales of the products don't reflect what you're saying. If the FPGAs are so great for cryptography, why are their sales ABYSMAL by comparison? THere are plenty of "open cores" for cryptography, so that can't be it. Obviously, it's hardware costs.
The last design I know of where the CPU controlled the peripherals was the Atari 2600. Even the gameboy had dedicated LCD controllers.
WTF? Do you STILL not know what ASIC means? I already explained it to you. As the other poster explained, I was never referring to a general purpose CPU. "CPU controled" would be the opposite. Do you understand OPPOSITE?! Jesus. It's like speaking to a brick wall here. A general purpose cpu is designed to be a general purpose CPU, not to control an LCD, therefore it is not "application specific" to LCDs. Duh, dumbfuck.
That said, low-mid end LCDs are often bundled with controllers. Some are made using microcontrollers and others using ASICs, NONE using FPGAs. I have yet to see a single one made using an FPGA. And as I said, you can get cheapo usb ASICs and microcontrolers with built-in USB support for ultra-cheap now, a FPGA would be a waste of money. How do I know this? Because I've worked with this stuff. You haven't. Stop being an idiot and talking about things you haven't worked with.
Though what I speak of is from my experience working alongside these folk [as well as I have quite a few friends who design FPGAs for a living].
So is everything here quoting from them? Because if it isn't, then you are speaking out of an area of expertise you don't have. I've programmed LCD displays, I've programmed FPGAs, what have YOU done? I actually am an electrical engineer. Maybe it's time you admit that you're wrong.
In otherwords you're trying to look all cutsie by trying to make me look stupid but really you haven't the first foggiest clue what you are talking about.
This coming from a guy who didn't know what an ASIC was?! Even in your reply you still didn't know what it was, you thought an atari general purpose cpu would qualify as an ASIC. It's the OPPOSITE. You even thought FPGAs are suitable LCD controllers, when all of them use either micotronollers and/or ASICs (btw--there are standard LCD interfaces--which equates to fairly standard LCD controllers). Cryptography boards, as used by servers, have been in used for many years--guess what they use--ASICs! PCI FPGA boards have been around years too, but they're never used for that purpose, why do you think that is? The reality of the situation doesn't reflect what you say in thes slightest.
You can probably clock it around 30-40Mhz if your interface isn't too stupid. AES on a PPC probably takes the same time as a MIPs which is about 1000-1200 cycles.
I was considering just modding this down, but other ignorant people would probably waste mod points modding it back up, so I thought I'd reply instead. It's fine that you're an amateur cryptographer, but that is a completely different field than computer engineering and doesn't qualify you to make statements about it. I have no doubt your figures were pulled out of your ass and come from complete ignorance of computer architecture.
That said, you actually demonstrated your ignorance right away by showing that a) you don't know what FPGAs actually are and b) you don't know what ASICs are. Apparently, according to you, FPGAs aren't made from silicon, they're made from fluffy bunny pixie dust (or some other substance, you never specified). Also, you apparently don't realize that ASIC stands for Application Specific Integrated Circuit, meaning a chip designed for a specific purpose.
A PPC is very much the antithesis of an ASIC. Now, I suppose it's understandable that an expert in the field might get confused about an ASIC and classify something which is the exact opposite of it as one, so I guess I can excuse that.
E.g. want something to drive your USB, LCD and other periphs without paying to go to ASIC? Drop an FPGA in the thing. I assure you controlling a USB or LCD device is much more efficient in an FPGA than in software on a PPC.
Ignoring the fact that a PPC is not an ASIC, there are plenty of microcontrollers and various ASICs with built in features that make this easy which are cheaper than FPGAs. Now, if you were familiar with computer engineering (which you aren't--you're talking out of your ass), you'd know that. Hell, if you had even bothered looking at the development hardware for FPGAs you'd know that. FPGAs have their purposes, but your broad sweeping generalizations about them simply aren't accurate, especially when you're suggesting paying up the ass when there are much cheaper alternatives, in ASIC and other forms.
It doesn't give out more than it takes in in order to acrue interest on the donation money. That way the interest can be doled out to charitable causes over time. If they just blew the money all at once, they'd be all out, but by investing it and spending it slowly, they end up helping charity a lot more.
He still deliberately avoided the word average. Implicitly acknowledging a bell curve is not the same. He could have been very clear and just used the word average from the beginning, but he didn't. The comment in parantheses isn't the same as coming out and saying "below the average", as I'm betting most would likely not pick up on that. After all, if someone doesn't know about IQs/normalized curves to begin with, why would they pick up on a statement about curves?
CORRECTION.
" faith-based beliefs like evolution" should read "like creationism"
Also, did you read the evidence I linked to in my reply where I showed that Europeans were even less scientifically literate than Americans?
The only insult I levied was towards American education.
Yeah, aside from the "seeing eye dog" remark. Ooops.
I talked about American education because I am an American who deals with hiring of technical Americans
So in other words, you have done no research into the American education system, you are just speaking out of your ass.
They segment the population effectively by intelligence of the specific type that we find in scientists. You've not provided any rebuttal to that, other than mischaracterizing what I said.
They do the same in ALL populations, American and otherwise, so it's a moot point. How about this: you have provided zero evidence that there's any correlation between IQ and a belief in evolution. You need to establish that for your point to be valid. So far, all we is your WORD that we have to take as a matter of FAITH as being true.
I maintain that 100 is approximately where we stop doing science; I gleaned that impression because I know from experience that 100 is where we stop doing other types of technical work.
From this I can gather that you're not a scientific thinker, because you just made a classic logical fallacy, relying on personal anecdotes to prove a point. I want to see some SCIENTIFIC research. You know, science, that thing we were talking about, as opposed to PERSONAL ANECDOTES. Relying on personal anecdotes is EXACTLY what leads to faith-based beliefs like evolution, that kind of uncritical thought is completely out of line here. After all, what about people who have personal anecdotes with people who were miraculously healed of a dreadful illness after prayer? Those anecdotal cases must be proof of god's healing, right?!
Or would you attempt to argue than someone with an IQ of 40 would make an effective microbiologist... because the tests are normalized?
See now, you've had to resort to such an extreme to prove your point? That's sad. In order for your point to work, you have to establish a correlation between IQ and belief in evolution. Now, the rational thinker would realize that hey, revolution is a RELIGIOUS belief and not one delegated to areas of intelligence, but for no apparent reason you've assumed otherwise.
Here is another thing you overlooked in your faith-based, uncritical analysis: one does not need to understand the details (especially those which are particularly complicated) of evolution to believe in it. There are, in fact, even kids books written on evolution, made easy for little kids to understand. It's a over simplified version, but the kids would still get the point.
Even someone mentally retarded could believe in evolution, there's nothing precluding them from believing in it.
And again, all you have is a wildly speculative hypothesis, with NOTHING TO GO ON OTHER THAN PERSONAL ANECDOTES. Here's what will happen, eventually someone will conduct a suvery of IQs as correlated with belief in evolution, they'll find some weak or non-existant correlation,t hen you'll go crying home because your little hypothesis was not only WRONG, but COMPLETELY WRONG and based on FAITH.
Aside from being sorry, we can also observe that 80% of the population won't fit in the 100-and-under region because of the way IQ is determined.
This doesn't help your point, it hinders it. The fact that so many people are religous and yet manage to remain ABOVE AVERAGE seems to go against your idea that religion and especially the religion based belief of creationism is mainly just for below average people. Thanks for citing a statistic that helps me prove my point.
It's late and maybe I just missed where fyngyrz "tried to insult Americans."
In the sentence right after he brought up IQs: 50% (more, actually, because there are many at the center of the curve) of Americans have an IQ of 100 or under. They wouldn't know science from sophist nonsense if you gave them a roadmap, a GPS, and a seeing-eye dog.
Please try to stay with the program. That second sentence is clearly derogatory and the comment about IQs is meant to be supporting evidence for it. Wait, are you now going to argue that their proximity is just COINCIDENCE now and ignore the American bashing Slashdot norm?
As far as I can tell, he is simply pointing out a fact that roughly 50% of the population will score below average
Nope. He doesn't actually state that 100 is average until after someone points out that IQs are normally distributed. In other words, he was clearly trying to mislead people.
It seems to me that you've taken an emotional reaction to the term "below average."
Nope, that's not possible, because he didn't actually say below average initially. He deliberately said they score below 100 IQ instead of saying "below average" because he knew the latter form would be more honest and would harm his point more than help it.
So again, I just don't see where he is insulting Americans or where he puts forth that 50% of the population scoring below average as a criticism of the country.
I don't know, how about the huge rant I replied to where he asserts that people who are below 100 IQ can't possibly understand science? Perhaps the derogatory remark that they wouldn't know sophistry from science even if you gave them "GPS and a seeing eye dog"? Are you being deliberately obtuse here? He was obviously insulting them.
All he was saying is that at least 50% of Americans will have a harder time with science than those that are above average.
No, that's not what he was saying at all. He was saying that roughly 50% have a below 100 IQ and therefore couldn't possibly understand science, not that simply had a harder time understanding science. Go reread his comment I replied to, he made it VERY CLEAR that they don't understand science the slightest bit, not that they are simply having a "harder time." He even decided to throw in unfounded statements about the American education system.
IQ tests are primarily a measure of the kind of intelligence related to scientific thinking (fyngyrz once again graciously offers this information to you)
He says that, but offers absolutely no evidence to back it up. I don't think he's actually studied what IQ tests actually measure. I like to call that wild, rampant speculation. So, how good are you are solving visual puzzles and anagrams? Just curious, because hinges on your ability to understand the basics of evolution. After all, you need like a 150 IQ to understand it and all.
Nevermind that belief in evolution is motivated almost entirely by RELIGION, not IQ and that there is no data correlating IQ to belief in evolution. If we were to believe him, that would mean that like 99% of very religious people have IQ tests are primarily a measure of the kind of intelligence related to scientific thinking (fyngyrz once again graciously offers this information to you)
So this would put you in the 'below average' group then? Because you haven't exercised any sort of scientific thinking skills that I've seen so far.
You completely missed the point and went off on a side tangent to defend your own sophistry. The fact still remains that you tried to insult Americans on the basis that roughly half are below averge (100) IQ, but that's true of any population. IQ tests are designed such that roughly half will be below 100, it's SUPPOSED to be that way. That "insult" applies to any other country you can think of, so IT IS NOT A VALID CRITICISM of the country.
So why aren't you using this as a basis to criticize other countries? Oh yeah, I know, because you were hoping to get away with a little sophistry and hoping that no one would notice. Bash America on Slashdot = +5 Insightful, even if it's backed with fallacious logic. What's sad is that the grandparent was modded down as FLAMEBAIT for pointing out that IQ scores are normalized, wtf? How is it flamebait to point out that IQ scores are designed the way you're using them as an "insult"? I expect my comment to get modded down as flamebait too, despite the fact that it points out the obvious flaw in your reasoning.
By the way, I found actual studies, you know, those sciency-like things researched by those science guys that showed that Americans are more scientifically literate than Europeans. I guess your HYPOTHESIS is completely unfounded. See what happened there? I actually did research, found scientific research to back up my view, just like the grandparent who pasted a link to an explanation of IQ scores, but all you have is wild speculation about the education system (not "educational system" as you moronically miswrote) not being helpful to roughly 50% of the population, DESPITE PRESENTING NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE.
So I guess, according to your hypothesis, this would put you in the below average category, since you obviously don't understand science well enough to a) actually do any research and to b) give credence to fact that your IQ based arguments apply to all other countries as well.
A quarter of Americans didn't know the Earth revolves around the Sun, but apparently one third of Europeans didn't know that either.
Source: American's Love Science, but Don't Know Much About It [PDF]
United States
Scientifically Literate: 12%
Partial: 25%
Not: 63%
European Union
Scientifically Literate: 5%
Partial: 22%
Not: 73%
"In previous estimates of civic scientific literacy, Miller has used a threshold level of 67 or more, reflecting the ability of a respondent to get two-thirds of the possible points on the construct vocabulary index. When this standard is applied to the 1995 U.S. data, 27.2 percent of Americans score at or above the 67 point level, compared to 20.2 percent of Europeans. This result suggests that approximately three of four adults in Europe and the United States would be unable to read and understand news or other information that utilized basic scientific constructs such as DNA, molecule, or radiation."
Source: Miller, Jon D. 1998. The measurement of civic scientific literacy. Public Understanding of Science 7 (3):203-223. See here.
When it comes to Scientific literacy, the United States is actually in the lead.
Isn't it fun to see how people can manipulate selective statistics to prove a point? The fact is, for the past decade or so, evolution has had roughly 45% support (give or take depending on the study--also please learn about margins of error before chiming in). There haven't been any studies showing any significant increase, so to conclude that it's becoming MORE hostile is ludicrous. In fact, if you had polls from 50 years ago, I'd be you'd reveal that support back then for evolution would probably be a very small minority. Republicans/conservatives have always been pro-life, so how is that an "increase"? The fact that we have Roe v. Wade now, compared to abortion being illegal the hundred of years before only shows an increase in udnerstand of science. The congressional measures for Terri Schiavo had VERY LITTLE public support, why is that even used as an arguing point? They're just pulling random examples out of their ass that refute their own point.
Sure, the current administration tries to limit it, but that is a temporary slump. So, where are the polls on stem cell research? Did the author even bother looking those up? Of course not, because then they'd realize that the majority (60%) of Americans support stem cell research and that their sensationalist peice of claptrap is completely bogus!
Sensationalism aside, to those who exercise critical thought and do research, this conclusion is completely UNSCIENTIFIC and wrong. CONCLUSION: The journalist who wrote this article is an anti-scientific thinker and all who agree with him aren't capable of critical thought and are thusly hypocrites that should be lumped in with the anti-scientific thinkers they criticize.
It's not a proposal, it's a trial run, that's a very different thing. A proposal is when you say "hey guys, maybe we should try this, what are your thoughts?" Instead they did "hey we're going to do this for a couple of months and see what happens."
Oddly, I never mentioned voting. Oddly, I did mention consensus, which Wikipedia IS based on, it says that ALL OVER WIKIPEDIA POLICY PAGES. You were trying to be smart by repeating an oft-quoted phrases ("Wikipedia is not a democracy"), but it appears you didn't actually read what I said. There was no consensus ever reached for this decision.
And even more oddly, vote totals have been the determining factors in things, namely votes for adminship, arbitration, AfD and other pages (with exceptions). Oh and incidentally, being based on consensus does make it a democracy. Ironically, Wikipedia even has an article on consensus democracies.
This is Tim Starling's comment on the Wikimedia foundation: "The Wikimedia Foundation is undemocratic. Its bylaws were determined by one man. Its statement of principles is arbitrary, and does not agree with my own. Elections just give the appearance of democracy, the board will remain stacked regardless of the outcome. This is fake democracy, it is democracy executed without commitment to democratic principles. I don't believe this is a problem which can be fixed in small steps."
And we're supposed to be surprised that they make unilateral moves like this? They didn't get any kind of consensus before doing this, in spite of that being the basic Wikipedia principle. Of course, Wikimedia principle's are to act unilaterally. I wonder if they'd really honor a trial run at all.
Yeah, sure, it's "not an advertisement" because they aren't contractually obligated to put an ad for the software on WP:TOOLS. However, they would have never added it without the deal, and, in fact, if the Wikipedians kept the link removed from the tools page the company would withdrawal its funding to Wikimedia. So in other words, Wikipedia is (or will be) hosting a link to a commercial product, w hich when removed, will remove a source of revenue for it. Sounds like an advertisement to me.
Also, it appears they don't need these profits to even run the servers. THat's right, they're mostly being funneled into random, unrelated charities. While some might consider this noble, the many Wikipedians who contributed their work don't consider it ethical to use their freely contributed work as a means to act as a cash cow for Wikimedia's personal pet charities without any consenus at all.
Well the new HPV vaccine targets two common strains believed to cause 70% of cervical cancer cases, would that be sufficient? HPV does have other strains (just like with any virus), but it isn't seasonal, so you don't need to be continually re-vaccinated. Read this article in new scientist about it. It's not mentioned as much, probably because it's less common, but HPV also causes penile cancer.
There's more recent ones, like for Hepatitis (various) and Chickenpox.
There are also Malaria vaccines under development by big pharmaceutical companies. You can read about the history of vaccines here.
Get the full text of the first three from Dean and read them - or not, but they contain the information relevant to point a, and references relevant to point b, I'll let you judge his conclusions for yourself.
Even if I did that, why would I want conclusions for irrelevent articles? I've looked over the text of 4 out of 6, none of them cover the amount of public research that went into use with private drug research.
You said you wanted an example for blood pressure, and there it is.
Of a drug that wasn't in the top 200 list, which I specifically requested.
You never actually asked for an example for neurotensin (you asked the other guy), you just asserted that it was developed without any academic help, and since I don't know anything about chronic pain (I do know about blood pressure),
Neurontin, not neurotensin. Yes, I asked for evidence regarding Valium, but you provided none. Valium was a result of many failed experiments in completely new compounds with completely unknown effects. In fact, Leo Sternbach is credited with inventing benzodiazapines, the class of drugs it's in, meaning that there WAS NO prior research on those types of drugs.
See: http://www.benzo.org.uk/librium.htm , http://www.benzo.org.uk/valium2.htm
I can't cite anything for Neurontin, I'm going based on what a pain specialist (MD) has said regarding Neurontin (gabapentin) and Lyrica (pregabalin), its succesor.
Inventors: Butler; Donald E. (Holland, MI); Greenman; Barbara J. (Door, MI)
Assignee: Warner-Lambert Company (Morris Plains, NJ)
Appl. No.: 188819
Filed: May 2, 1988
patent application
Since it's old, you might want to try its succesor, pregabalin, instead.
Otherwise, it's too much work.
How ironic.
On valium, I can't answer the question definitively because I can't read German or Polish - and I would need to search physical archives anyway, any relevant research articles would be too old to appear on the web.
You don't need it, the history is documented on websites like the ones I pasted. He invented an entire class of drugs. Websites have the history of the drug development on them.
In any case, you've ignored the primary thrust of my response and concentrated on something secondary. This example is too old to be relevant to the modern period.
Huh? How is it "too old"? That's a totally arbitrary decision made to exclude examples that don't suit you. It's not seocndary either, this was and still is an extremely popular drug developed independently. You were asserting that most (or all?) drugs were developed because of public research, but if major drugs aren't like that, it seems to be dobutful.
From which I conclude with certainty that you do not know that medline only returns modern research - and are not up to speed in the field generally, because angiotensin was discovered fairly recently.
That's not the logical conclusion, because at that point you were only making vague references to general workings of blood pressure, the basics of which we had learned long ago. And you didn't listen, that drug you cited isn't on the list I gave. If you're going to make corporations out to be these big greedy monoliths leeching off public research, then you should at least use an example of a popular drug that they profitted a lot from.
You can't seem to find anytihng on that list. If you can't disprove my examples at least pick something from the list (NOT a narcotic) that's fairly new.
From the standpoint of your argument, vaccines and cures are equivalent. In both cases they prevent any further treatment from being necessary for the condition in question. So in other words, theere is equally less motivation to develop a vaccine as there is for a cure. Plus, curing a disease after it's already onset (especially in later stages) is a lot harder than developing preventative measures that greatly reduce the chances if taken preemptively. The idea of a single pill to cure cancer, HIV or whatever is far ahead of our current capabilities and hardly something that can be blamed on drug companies.
There is the new very effective HPV vaccine though (more than one I think), and since HPV causes cervical and penile cancer, you are preventing a specific type of cancer. Is that revolutionary?
But if you want a cure, fine. Antibiotics cure infections, they develop new ones all the time. Some ulcer medications allow stomach damage to heal in many cases (they can actually discontinue the medication after a period of treatment).
As for revolutionary drugs, that's subjective. Even Viagra only worked for so many men. Most people aren't aware of the new drugs being developed for chronic illnesses. Neurontin and it's succesor Lyrica have been shown to be pretty effecive for epilepsy and neuropathic pain.
They proved that it was caused by bacteria, not that it could be cured with antibiotics. The damaage caused by the bacteria persists even after you kill off the bacteria, so antibiotics are only really helpful if you happen to catch it at early onset. Otherwise, you're stuck with the standard treatment.
Polio and small pox?
In an anonymous forum I have no way to use other common metrics for truthfulness (no body language, no socializing). Credentials at least help.
:-)
The truthfulness of WHAT? If you want to know of a figure I cite is truthful, you can ask for a source. Do you doubt my information about Leo Sternbach? I can give you websites with information on Leo Sternbach and the development of Valium if you like. There's no reason to need to know my credentials, as I can cite sources.
If I take you at face value, your argument is meaningless (the "because I said so" argument)
That's exactly what you and your friend are doing. So far he has only presented a bunch of opinion pieces which don't even quote statistics that are relevent to the argument. So far, I just have to *take his word* that what he says is true.
I'm not talking about argument from authority, I'm talking about how do I know that you know jack shit about what pharma companies do or don't.
You cited him as an expert (a grad student--what a joke), that makes it an appeal to authority. If you are going to cite someone's credentials as a basis for them being right, then that means you are using their authority. That said, this is outside of his area of expertise, even if he were the greatest chemist in the world, just like the greatest heart surgeon doesn't necessarily know much about orthopedics.
He would need to be an expert specficially in public and private sector research, the funding and history of it. So he'd be some combination of a historian, biochemist, and possibly something in business management. Clearly, this is not part of any standard [bio]chemistry curriculum, it's something you have to specialize in.
People who dodge questions, or only selectively engage in debate seem disingenuous.
So do people who make hypocritical accusations of ad hominem and support a guy whose only cited sources includ off-topic opinion pieces written by the same guy.
Anyway, how's this for irony -- your whole argument is "I don't like your evidence" and yet, you won't supply any yourself.
Nice straw man, but it won't work. As I've said many times now and you've deliberately ignored, he pasted *irrelevent* opinion pieces wrriten by a single guy. I'm not even saying the articles are wrong necessarily, they're just irrelevent to the argument, they cover things like high prescription costs, but don't actually address the issue of public sector research vs. private sector. They just flat out aren't mentioned in the articles. Evidence which doesn't even bring up the issue is bad evidence.
That said, I did present evidence, and you disingenously ignored it because you didn't liek it. I offered Valium as the perfect example of a popular (VERY widely used) drug that was developed independent of the public sector. Your friend and you have yet to refute that assertion. His entire attempt (which he gave up on) was that "well, he needed basic knowledge of organic synthetic chemistry as it was taught as part of the standard universtiy curriculums, therefore that counts as public sector research." In other words, because researchers over the past century made the basic building blocks for basically all kinds of chemistry, that counts. Give me a break.
I also offered neurontin as example. He states this is obvious and that he can easily find information, right? Well, he seems to have refused much challenge and only stuck with his blood pressure example, because he only likes examples when they work for him. He's the one making the bold claim that virtually all drugs are like this, so he better damn well be able to prove it for at least one of the examples I provide.
Don't bother replying though unless you mention your background or bias.
Why would I? It's ad hominem. It seems you're incapable of defending yourself, so now you have to resort to personal attacks
more importantly, you already complained about the bibliography being too long, and the Challenge article contains a great many citations which you can follow, if you really care about the question and aren't just arguing for the sake of it.
You're missing the point. It's not my job to do your research for you. You are asking me to read through 50 billion articles to find the dozen which might actually be relevent. It is *your job* to find articles relevent to *your argument*, not mine.
How exactly are you concluding that if you cannot read them?
I told you I did read one in full and I can read the summaries for the other two, they are clearly opinion pieces. They aren't actual studies.
If you actually knew anything about medline you'd know that it only returned recently published articles - no 19th century cadavers.
WHEN DID I EVER ASSERT THAT YOU COULD FIND THAT INFORMATION ON MEDLINE?! Seriously, I never came close to making that claim, now you're just grasping at straws. The point was that if you're going to give credit to people, you'd have to go back centuries to all past research.
If you know anything at all about biology and chemistry, you'd know why I find your whole line completely baffling - drug companies do hardly *any* fundamental research at all, they just develop drugs. This is simply common knowledge among all researchers,
Yeah, it's so common, and yet you have so much trouble finding information on it. All you have is a bunch of irrelevent opinion pieces written by one guy which don't even delve into the public research that lead directly to private drugs being developed.
f you type angiotensin into medline (as I just did) you will find many examples of ongoing fundamental research on angiotensin, certainly useful to drug companies - of the ones I checked, all done by academic scientists
Oddly, this doesn't cover Neurontin nor does it cover Valium. Those two are both popular drugs, so it's not like I'm picking obscure/contrived examples here.
Yet again I ask for the public research that led to Neurontin. Ditto for Valium. Keep in mind, I'm not asking about basic information that any university would teach you on drug synthesis, I'm talking about actual research around that time that helped.
As I said, your only counter to Valium was that *gasp* over the century before Sternbach became a doctor, people developed basic foundations of knowledge for organic chemistry and drug synthesis. Which again leads to us needing to attribute EVERYTHING current scientists do to everything scientists have done centuries before, completely disregarding whether or not it's currently *standard knowledge* taught in university programs.
So was there some kind of breakthrough in research at public university's when Sternbach was researching that helped him complete his research? Or was he just using standard knowledge acquired from his university?