According to NPR, Kalydeco, "works by helping to fix one defect in the protein that causes the disease." Unfortunately the way the drug works is also very specific, and won't work for all sufferers NPR also reports that it will "only work for about 1,200 patients in the U.S.". Now, being that a cursory Internet search says that there are about 30,000 sufferers in the USA, it's pretty clear that Kalydeco is just a step in the right direction, at least from a medical and research perspective.
This is a short-sighted comment. Most employees happen to be shareholders, even if it is an infinitesimal amount. Furthermore, most employees want the company to succeed because they either 1) would like to continue gainful employment (which is a distinct possibility in this market) or 2) do not want the stigma of working for a company that failed. The gentleman that posed the question believes that there is value in commercial support for a product, I happen to agree to a certain point. The reason is pretty simple: commercial support is an insurance plan. If you are going to build a product that makes use of code that may be unstable, then it's not a bad idea to have an expert on call "just in case".
For example a while back I worked at a company that routed wireless E-911 calls to the appropriate public safety answering point. In this case, we decided that commercial support was A Good Thing. A little while later I worked at a company that provided Short Messaging services and those with the purse-strings thought that the risk of running without support was worth it. The former company is still in business, the latter... not so much.
The only way you'll possibly sway the CIO is to change his mind about "not wanting" support via probabilistic risk assessment that shows that the "Red Hat Tax" is good insurance. If it really isn't then I wouldn't bother.
While it is true that monopolies can be brought into existence through a governmental apparatus, it is also equally true that a single company (and/or individual) that somehow is capable controlling and securing influence on a particular good or service.
However, in the case of telecommunications, the AT&T / Bell System was "a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly". Thus, in this case, of AT&T it is not Conservative nonsense to say that "AT&T had a monopoly only because the government assisted them"; rather it is a simple matter of fact. Thus, I hope not to inconvenience you too terribly if I repeat it as oft as I wish.
No offense, but you've clearly never worked in the telecommunications industry. It's been heavily regulated since before I was even born. Even when AT&T had a monopoly it only did so because the US Government let it.
"Competition is dead in the ISP Market?" Says who? At my house I can get service from a bunch of different carriers, let alone Internet service providers that use these carriers, for example:
Qwest DSL / Fiber to Neighborhood Comcast Cable / Fiber to Neighborhood Frontier Fiber to Home Clearwire WiMAX Covad DSL Cortland Wireless
Now, the argument may is often made "yes, but these carriers are ex-definitionae a monopoly", and I agree. However it must be noted that these monopolies are, in no small part, a product of regulation by the FCC and far less a product of the free market. Thus, to my way of thinking, the best way to actually implement the principles of Net Neutrality is to remove barriers of entry to the market and make the market more free rather than less.
I wonder if the film about Confucius will have any mention of his teaching on The Mandate of Heaven. Perhaps I'm just a Westerner, but it seems toe like Chinese government failed to fulfill this mandate long ago.
And therein lies the rub. Dawkins is not making a case of mere ideas, opinions, or the evidence of hypothesis and testing. On the contrary, he states that unless you agree with his narrow understanding of reality and truth itself your must be both a deluded and unintelligent individual.
In other words, we're not talking about science vs. religion, but two competing religions.
I am not surprised at this turn of events because Dawkins' comments in the God delusion are widely considered to be hateful in nature. Consider that, in the United states, some 93-96 percent of people believe in God and some 40% of people believe in evolution. The intersection of these two is still significant, but the symmetric difference of these axioms is not. Dawkins holds that to be an intelligent scientific thinker you must hold to both strict naturalism and evolution apriori, which is not so subtly implying that all of the other 53-ish percent of humans living in the United states are basically drooling morons.
First the facts insofar as I am able to find, then my opinion.
Although 36 of 50 states have bans on late-term abortions they are still performed routinely. We must concede that any such attempt to put a number on this is fraught with statistical peril due to the fact that abortions are covered under privacy laws. However, just to get a general feel - Wikipedia cites that the CDC believes that some 1.4% of all abortions are performed late term or after 20 weeks. If this is accurate then the best estimates would indicate that some 700,000 late-term abortions have been performed in the US since roe v. wade.
Now my opinion: The 700,000 figure is based on nearly 50 million abortions performed since Roe v. Wade. Although this exact figure is disputed heavily by both left and right wing sides of the argument they both generally agree that some 25 - 33 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion. If you consider that 11 million people died in the Holocaust the math necessitates ought give even the coldest of individuals pause to consider at what point an embryo is a baby - i.e. a human being. Such inquiry is the same sort of foolishness that slave traders were guilty of, namely, marginalizing the humanity of a people group they don't understand.
So, my opinion, put bluntly. It's murder - it is always murder. Concerning the posters: be offended by the pictures, that's the point. It may seem tasteless but it is done for the reason that we remember the Holocaust. The difference in this case is that the conflict is not obscured by history or geography, but imminent.
Most of heroin's dangers are more a consequence of its prohibition than the drug's distinctive properties.
The data on this subject does a whole lot more than suggest that if people take certain drugs then they become addicted. In this manner, whatever addiction is is irrelevant, the results are damaging and very real. I watched drugs coupled with the stupidity it brings result in a number of poor judgments in my own life as well as several dozen of my friends. Far away from that part of my life now, I am glad that someone somewhere had enough of a moral compass in Government to make certain drugs illegal.
Second if you haven't signed a contract that gives your intellectual property / inventions / authorship / works to the University then you own it, plain and simple. You as an individual have to willingly and explicitly relinquish your rights, they can't just take them.
Meanwhile just release whatever you want to the public under whatever license you want. If they complain, do what everyone else does and sarcastically feign ignorance and say "well, we never agreed to that".
Sad to say it, but welcome to the real world. Software engineers who contribute to open source have to deal with this sort of stuff very frequently because corporations typically have a blanket "inventions" contract that one must sign to work there - even the good ones - and yes it does suck.
I recall reading an article a while back that Microsoft wasn't able to pursue unless Jerry Yang was ousted.
Well, from now to then:
* Ichann was elected to the board * Yang received severe criticism from the FUD machine * The project management of Yahoo services just went plain crazy (like deleting all of your user information in an 'upgrade') * <<insert more stupid crap here>> * Yang "stepped down" * And now report are that the 44.6 billion dollar deal is a mere 20 billion.
Say what you will, but this isn't mere chance. Yahoo was one of the companies that helped to make the internet what it is today, and I am very suspicious about most nearly everything on the list above.
Think what you will, but the only sane one in this deal was Jerry Yang from the start. Microsoft is ruthless - and this shows just how ruthless they are.
Isn't correlation related to causation by first-order inductive logic. If you rob a theory of supporting evidence by reducing it to a single inference (as you have done above) then you merely weaken the argument, you do not however, invalidate it altogether.
It is important to allow inference from a specific case to a general case because to do so negates induction, causality, uniformity of nature, and science.
Then again, you may agree with Hume, or skeptical realism, and in either case I would love to debate.
You are correct, although I started working in the late 90's and started doing 'real work' during the dot-com haydays (although I was in telecom). Then when the bubble burst basically it became very apparent that unless I worked my butt off that I would need to be dipping into savings and unemployment.
Things got better around 03', and they've been on the upswing since then, however I wonder if the economic downturn will create similar conditions?
Yeah, I've almost completed my degree and just like you, it's been a mixed blessing. I too have a wife and kids, and yeah it's been difficult - but the alternative (i.e. staying in SE work) would have been unconscionable, and in the end it is time well spent.
Slashdot Mirror
According to NPR, Kalydeco, "works by helping to fix one defect in the protein that causes the disease." Unfortunately the way the drug works is also very specific, and won't work for all sufferers NPR also reports that it will "only work for about 1,200 patients in the U.S.". Now, being that a cursory Internet search says that there are about 30,000 sufferers in the USA, it's pretty clear that Kalydeco is just a step in the right direction, at least from a medical and research perspective.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/02/01/146166743/cystic-fibrosis-drug-wins-fda-approval?ps=sh_sthdl
This is a short-sighted comment. Most employees happen to be shareholders, even if it is an infinitesimal amount. Furthermore, most employees want the company to succeed because they either 1) would like to continue gainful employment (which is a distinct possibility in this market) or 2) do not want the stigma of working for a company that failed. The gentleman that posed the question believes that there is value in commercial support for a product, I happen to agree to a certain point. The reason is pretty simple: commercial support is an insurance plan. If you are going to build a product that makes use of code that may be unstable, then it's not a bad idea to have an expert on call "just in case".
For example a while back I worked at a company that routed wireless E-911 calls to the appropriate public safety answering point. In this case, we decided that commercial support was A Good Thing. A little while later I worked at a company that provided Short Messaging services and those with the purse-strings thought that the risk of running without support was worth it. The former company is still in business, the latter... not so much.
The only way you'll possibly sway the CIO is to change his mind about "not wanting" support via probabilistic risk assessment that shows that the "Red Hat Tax" is good insurance. If it really isn't then I wouldn't bother.
-b
Huh? What? Did I wake up someplace with a very different history?
No, AT&T is a HEAVILY regulated company, it always has been and probably always will be.
Uh, that's not what I said..
While it is true that monopolies can be brought into existence through a governmental apparatus, it is also equally true that a single company (and/or individual) that somehow is capable controlling and securing influence on a particular good or service.
However, in the case of telecommunications, the AT&T / Bell System was "a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly". Thus, in this case, of AT&T it is not Conservative nonsense to say that "AT&T had a monopoly only because the government assisted them"; rather it is a simple matter of fact. Thus, I hope not to inconvenience you too terribly if I repeat it as oft as I wish.
No offense, but you've clearly never worked in the telecommunications industry. It's been heavily regulated since before I was even born. Even when AT&T had a monopoly it only did so because the US Government let it.
From: http://www.corp.att.com/history/history3.html
For much of its history, AT&T and its Bell System functioned as a legally sanctioned, regulated monopoly.
in other words, telecommunications has never been a free market.
"Competition is dead in the ISP Market?" Says who? At my house I can get service from a bunch of different carriers, let alone Internet service providers that use these carriers, for example:
Qwest DSL / Fiber to Neighborhood
Comcast Cable / Fiber to Neighborhood
Frontier Fiber to Home
Clearwire WiMAX
Covad DSL
Cortland Wireless
Now, the argument may is often made "yes, but these carriers are ex-definitionae a monopoly", and I agree. However it must be noted that these monopolies are, in no small part, a product of regulation by the FCC and far less a product of the free market. Thus, to my way of thinking, the best way to actually implement the principles of Net Neutrality is to remove barriers of entry to the market and make the market more free rather than less.
I wonder if the film about Confucius will have any mention of his teaching on The Mandate of Heaven. Perhaps I'm just a Westerner, but it seems toe like Chinese government failed to fulfill this mandate long ago.
There are apparently more videos on youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DoWdHOtlrk&feature=player_embedded#
Seems like a pretty shaky foundation to draw up public policy on (i.e. H.R. 2454)
I guess you don't read/watch/listen to much news do you :)
Why not set up 802.11 in east Iraq?
Agreed.
And therein lies the rub. Dawkins is not making a case of mere ideas, opinions, or the evidence of hypothesis and testing. On the contrary, he states that unless you agree with his narrow understanding of reality and truth itself your must be both a deluded and unintelligent individual.
In other words, we're not talking about science vs. religion, but two competing religions.
I am not surprised at this turn of events because Dawkins' comments in the God delusion are widely considered to be hateful in nature. Consider that, in the United states, some 93-96 percent of people believe in God and some 40% of people believe in evolution. The intersection of these two is still significant, but the symmetric difference of these axioms is not. Dawkins holds that to be an intelligent scientific thinker you must hold to both strict naturalism and evolution apriori, which is not so subtly implying that all of the other 53-ish percent of humans living in the United states are basically drooling morons.
First the facts insofar as I am able to find, then my opinion.
Although 36 of 50 states have bans on late-term abortions they are still performed routinely. We must concede that any such attempt to put a number on this is fraught with statistical peril due to the fact that abortions are covered under privacy laws. However, just to get a general feel - Wikipedia cites that the CDC believes that some 1.4% of all abortions are performed late term or after 20 weeks. If this is accurate then the best estimates would indicate that some 700,000 late-term abortions have been performed in the US since roe v. wade.
Now my opinion: The 700,000 figure is based on nearly 50 million abortions performed since Roe v. Wade. Although this exact figure is disputed heavily by both left and right wing sides of the argument they both generally agree that some 25 - 33 percent of all pregnancies end in abortion. If you consider that 11 million people died in the Holocaust the math necessitates ought give even the coldest of individuals pause to consider at what point an embryo is a baby - i.e. a human being. Such inquiry is the same sort of foolishness that slave traders were guilty of, namely, marginalizing the humanity of a people group they don't understand.
So, my opinion, put bluntly. It's murder - it is always murder. Concerning the posters: be offended by the pictures, that's the point. It may seem tasteless but it is done for the reason that we remember the Holocaust. The difference in this case is that the conflict is not obscured by history or geography, but imminent.
Most of heroin's dangers are more a consequence of its prohibition than the drug's distinctive properties.
The data on this subject does a whole lot more than suggest that if people take certain drugs then they become addicted. In this manner, whatever addiction is is irrelevant, the results are damaging and very real. I watched drugs coupled with the stupidity it brings result in a number of poor judgments in my own life as well as several dozen of my friends. Far away from that part of my life now, I am glad that someone somewhere had enough of a moral compass in Government to make certain drugs illegal.
I looked at the zzzphone site, and was inclined to agree with you but there are reviews of the product on Youtube and other sites:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-qnewSjATw
Apparently the old saying is true, "can't tell a whether or not a smartphone is a scam by its webpage".
-b
First off, I am not a lawyer.
Second if you haven't signed a contract that gives your intellectual property / inventions / authorship / works to the University then you own it, plain and simple. You as an individual have to willingly and explicitly relinquish your rights, they can't just take them.
Meanwhile just release whatever you want to the public under whatever license you want. If they complain, do what everyone else does and sarcastically feign ignorance and say "well, we never agreed to that".
Sad to say it, but welcome to the real world. Software engineers who contribute to open source have to deal with this sort of stuff very frequently because corporations typically have a blanket "inventions" contract that one must sign to work there - even the good ones - and yes it does suck.
Cheers
-b
I recall reading an article a while back that Microsoft wasn't able to pursue unless Jerry Yang was ousted.
Well, from now to then:
* Ichann was elected to the board
* Yang received severe criticism from the FUD machine
* The project management of Yahoo services just went plain crazy (like deleting all of your user information in an 'upgrade')
* <<insert more stupid crap here>>
* Yang "stepped down"
* And now report are that the 44.6 billion dollar deal is a mere 20 billion.
Say what you will, but this isn't mere chance. Yahoo was one of the companies that helped to make the internet what it is today, and I am very suspicious about most nearly everything on the list above.
Think what you will, but the only sane one in this deal was Jerry Yang from the start. Microsoft is ruthless - and this shows just how ruthless they are.
Well, I for one welcome our new progressive overlords.
Really?
Isn't correlation related to causation by first-order inductive logic. If you rob a theory of supporting evidence by reducing it to a single inference (as you have done above) then you merely weaken the argument, you do not however, invalidate it altogether.
It is important to allow inference from a specific case to a general case because to do so negates induction, causality, uniformity of nature, and science.
Then again, you may agree with Hume, or skeptical realism, and in either case I would love to debate.
Aah, Yeah, that makes sense. I guess that in my case CS was probably the right choice because I had the practical experience but not the theory.
Cheers
-b
I'm curious why you say that about MIS vs CS? I actually chose CS as my degree path.
You are correct, although I started working in the late 90's and started doing 'real work' during the dot-com haydays (although I was in telecom). Then when the bubble burst basically it became very apparent that unless I worked my butt off that I would need to be dipping into savings and unemployment.
Things got better around 03', and they've been on the upswing since then, however I wonder if the economic downturn will create similar conditions?
Cheers,
b
Yeah, I've almost completed my degree and just like you, it's been a mixed blessing. I too have a wife and kids, and yeah it's been difficult - but the alternative (i.e. staying in SE work) would have been unconscionable, and in the end it is time well spent.
Cheers
-Brian