The Pill Uniformity Act of 2016. Henceforth all pills must have identical appearance. That way it becomes easier and unmistakable to identify whether something is a pill or just a piece of 3D printed candy.
After you visit the doctor, but before you visit the pharmicist, you visit a pill fashion consultant that helps you select the right pill size, shape, taste and colors, even custom color designs that are just right for you.
3D printed pills could create a whole new pill fashion industry.
Yeah, I was coming here to say something very similar.
From TFA . ..
If patients needs to increase or decrease their dosage, the hospital can do so without changing the appearance of the pills, which could help those with memory impairments.
I can think of other applications for changing someone's dose without them being aware of it. In fact, you could slip them a custom printed pill that looks just like the rest of the pills in their bottle.
Extra Credit: consider the implications of custom 3D printing Drug A in Drug B's clothing. (Pill for Drug A looks like it is a pill for Drug B.)
We won't even talk about illegal pills that look like they are legal pills. Officer, that is just a bottle of tylenol.
Someone could also take placebos that look just like the real thing.
But don't stop there. Maybe you print a pill so that it looks like a piece of candy.
That is NOT the only option. It could get worse AND stick around for a very long time.
An observation about using the GPL for Libraries
on
On Being Pro-GPL
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· Score: 1
This is NOT a complaint about the GPL, or any other license. An author of a work is free to choose whatever license they want to offer their work under, including a closed source license. Merely an observation.
IMO . . . when someone offers a Library, that is, a black box of code with well defined API that offers some useful capability, and offers it under the GPL, the author is deliberately trying to RESTRICT what the users of that library can do with their own code. The author is effectively saying that I only want authors of other GPL applications to use my library. If the library author were only trying to protect the freedom of his library and nothing more, then he would have used the LGPL. The LGPL protects the freedom of the library, as well as protects the freedom of the user of a closed source application to be able to re-link the application against a newer version of the library without access to the source code of the application.
I'm not saying this is right, or wrong, or anything else. It is merely an observation.
A library author that offers a library under GPL license has an ulterior motive. Usually a commercial motive to ensure they can make money from users of applications that are not under the GPL. This seems to be exactly the opposite of what the GPL was intended to do in spirit. A library offered under the GPL typically offers a "Commercial License" for applications that are not under the GPL.
It spreads the risk. That's all. My house probably is not going to burn down this year. But SOMEBODY's house DEFINITELY will. Insurance spreads the risk among policy holders.
How many rocket launch policy holders are there to spread the risk among?
I suppose an insurance underwriter could spread the rocket launch risk (and cost) among their auto and home policy holders. That will make them uncompetitive in the auto and home insurance market. So they'll have to keep the risk amongst similar policy holders for rocket launches.
Ultimately, just like houses burning down, some rocket launches WILL fail.
If NASA is forced (maybe by ignorant Congress who must "do something!") to buy insurance, then the cost of failure is still passed to the policy holders (eg, mostly taxpayers). Plus now you've got another industry (insurance) getting their fingers in the pie and making a profit. If Congress or NASA forces SpaceX to get insurance, then SpaceX will pass the cost of insurance on to NASA and ultimately taxpayers in the form of higher launch prices.
No matter how you slice it, the customers of rocket launches WILL bear the costs of inevitable failure. There's not that many customers to spread the costs amongst like there are for homeowners.
This will cost the taxpayers no matter how you slice it. Either the taxpayer eats it, like now. Or NASA gets insurance, which costs the taxpayer. The insurer WILL make a profit and will pass the cost of failure to the policy holder through increased premiums. So NASA could make SpaceX get the insurance. All that does is mean that SpaceX will increase its prices to NASA to account for the cost of insurance (eg, the cost of inevitable failures).
By making either NASA or SpaceX get insurance, you add in another greedy industry (insurance) that get their fingers in the pie and make a profit. Great way to save the taxpayer money.
Yes, that is what I came to say. Not only does SpaceX pass the cost of insurance on to the taxpayers, but the insurance company passes the cost of failure through to SpaceX as high premiums. So ultimately the shipper (NASA, therefore taxpayer) pays for failed launches.
But making SpaceX get insurance means you're "doing something". (eg, Creating more paperwork, and adding the inefficiency of the insurance industry getting its fingers in the pie. Insurers also make a profit.) Ultimately this hurts the taxpayer, not helps.
NASA was a great, even fantastic thing back when there was no commercial motivation to do research on space and powerful rockets. Back when there was little to no commercial launch market.
Now NASA is full of pork.. You cannot kill it because . . . pork. In every congressional district.
NASA is not and never has been efficient. At one time that was irrelevant because of the nature of what they did. Now is is more about letting bureaucrats CYA when something blows up. And to make sure money flows freely to as many congressional districts as possible. The traditional contractors are not designed to be efficient either, except at maximizing how much they can suck from the government teat.
One way NASA might end is that with lower and lower budgets NASA simply cannot do anything. Alternately, they might end because they get budgets big enough to actually do something, making the real inefficiency clear for all to see.
NASA must be held to the same safety standards that commercial providers are held to. Otherwise, a culture of evading or ignoring those safety standards will creep in.
The only role that NASA might have left is projects that require large investment to overcome a lack of commercial motives. For example, going to Mars. Maybe for operating a space station. Probably not for mining asteroids.
It seems unlikely that there are any gay nerds. Nerds are a fraction of the general population. Gay people are an even smaller fraction of the general population. This would make the existence gay nerds seem highly unlikely.
Similarly, the odds that in the vastness of space, an asteroid could just happen to strike our moon seems so incredibly remote that one could safely conclude that there are no craters on the moon.
SourceForge could start it again, but make it much less obvious. Simply pre-infect all of the downloads with malware. If caught, claim it was a hack, or that it 'somehow' got uploaded that way from the author. Then offer to fix it. The first few times everyone would believe it.
However, at this point, SourceForge has burned whatever trust it ever had. Soon the only people left are those gullible enough to believe SourceForge.
Something this face palm worthy can only be accomplished by a manager or someone higher up* in the organization.
*Note that everyone except the engineers perceive the value hierarchy to be inverted.
But instead of a system-wide setting, as you suggest, I would propose an Organization-Wide setting so that by gope policy, all computers in the organization could bet set such that div by zero results in zero! Bravo! (Or maybe a country-wide setting dictated by congress? Or a world wide global setting dictated by congress?)
In addition, I am tired of checking for File Not Found errors. When the file can't be found, why not just reformat the drive and create the file for me automatically!
I gave up on Cable TV. It is now less than 1/2 content and more than 1/2 ads. And then the ads intrude into the program you are trying to watch with stupid bugs and animated people walking on the bottom 1/4 of your screen. Sometimes they obscure something important in the content of the program. At the same time the content has deteriorated to the point that it is not even worth watching. And content not worth watching definitely means the ads are not worth watching.
Now that was off topic, but then there is the web. Will it turn out the same way? Maybe not because there are no central 'broadcasters'. There can be good sites with good ads and good advertisers who can behave decently and sell products through the ad views they get.
I think advertisers SHOULD NOT BE RUNNING CODE on my computer.
If you must show me an ad, that's one thing. To ask to run code on my computer is quite something else. Malware has been spread through ad networks, and I promise you it will be again. And again.
Advertisers have only themselves to blame that people block ads. At first web ads were more than tolerable. I was happy to see them, knowing they paid the bills. Then it got worse. And worse. Sites started having tiny bits of content surrounded by ads and you had to click the Next button twenty times to read a ten paragraph article that turns out to be devoid of real information. And other things I could go on about.
Online publishers ought to be careful of the ad networks they get into bed with. Those ad networks should be careful about the actual advertisers. Some of these ads are outright deceptive -- trying to imitate the look of a dialog box on a certain widely used OS. That kind of clever behavior turns out to be bad for ALL advertisers in the long run.
I did say I actually liked the idea that ads paid the bill in the early days. Now I view ads as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Many of the advertisers have absolutely no sense of shame or restraint. They would tattoo advertisements to the insides of our eyelids if they could. Yes, really.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would anyone be complaining about this?
Isn't the FBI supposed to be trying to track down the person responsible for causing Katrina?
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
This does not solve ALL problems.
For that you need Congress.
The Pill Uniformity Act of 2016. Henceforth all pills must have identical appearance. That way it becomes easier and unmistakable to identify whether something is a pill or just a piece of 3D printed candy.
After you visit the doctor, but before you visit the pharmicist, you visit a pill fashion consultant that helps you select the right pill size, shape, taste and colors, even custom color designs that are just right for you.
3D printed pills could create a whole new pill fashion industry.
> You could argue that this technology would let you make 1 super-pill tailored to the individual
All the drugs a person needs. Maybe a custom morning pill, and evening pill.
Next advance: custom print the pills at home using a device you pick up at your pharmacy. Your doctor remotely updates your prescription.
Next advance: hackers remotely update your prescription.
Congress should pass a law mandating that all pills must now look exactly the same. The Pill Uniformity Act of 2016.
From TFA . .
I can think of other applications for changing someone's dose without them being aware of it. In fact, you could slip them a custom printed pill that looks just like the rest of the pills in their bottle.
Extra Credit: consider the implications of custom 3D printing Drug A in Drug B's clothing. (Pill for Drug A looks like it is a pill for Drug B.)
We won't even talk about illegal pills that look like they are legal pills. Officer, that is just a bottle of tylenol.
Someone could also take placebos that look just like the real thing.
But don't stop there. Maybe you print a pill so that it looks like a piece of candy.
> Yay! It will either get better, or finally die.
That is NOT the only option. It could get worse AND stick around for a very long time.
This is NOT a complaint about the GPL, or any other license. An author of a work is free to choose whatever license they want to offer their work under, including a closed source license. Merely an observation.
IMO . . . when someone offers a Library, that is, a black box of code with well defined API that offers some useful capability, and offers it under the GPL, the author is deliberately trying to RESTRICT what the users of that library can do with their own code. The author is effectively saying that I only want authors of other GPL applications to use my library. If the library author were only trying to protect the freedom of his library and nothing more, then he would have used the LGPL. The LGPL protects the freedom of the library, as well as protects the freedom of the user of a closed source application to be able to re-link the application against a newer version of the library without access to the source code of the application.
I'm not saying this is right, or wrong, or anything else. It is merely an observation.
A library author that offers a library under GPL license has an ulterior motive. Usually a commercial motive to ensure they can make money from users of applications that are not under the GPL. This seems to be exactly the opposite of what the GPL was intended to do in spirit. A library offered under the GPL typically offers a "Commercial License" for applications that are not under the GPL.
Sell them faulty metal.
Or faulty parts made of metal.
It's just a thought, but would a competitor stoop to that? Even if not now, at some point in the future?
I think that NASA contracting for a fixed number of deliveries and certain amount of payload weight effectively does that.
It spreads the risk. That's all. My house probably is not going to burn down this year. But SOMEBODY's house DEFINITELY will. Insurance spreads the risk among policy holders.
How many rocket launch policy holders are there to spread the risk among?
I suppose an insurance underwriter could spread the rocket launch risk (and cost) among their auto and home policy holders. That will make them uncompetitive in the auto and home insurance market. So they'll have to keep the risk amongst similar policy holders for rocket launches.
Ultimately, just like houses burning down, some rocket launches WILL fail.
If NASA is forced (maybe by ignorant Congress who must "do something!") to buy insurance, then the cost of failure is still passed to the policy holders (eg, mostly taxpayers). Plus now you've got another industry (insurance) getting their fingers in the pie and making a profit. If Congress or NASA forces SpaceX to get insurance, then SpaceX will pass the cost of insurance on to NASA and ultimately taxpayers in the form of higher launch prices.
No matter how you slice it, the customers of rocket launches WILL bear the costs of inevitable failure. There's not that many customers to spread the costs amongst like there are for homeowners.
This will cost the taxpayers no matter how you slice it. Either the taxpayer eats it, like now. Or NASA gets insurance, which costs the taxpayer. The insurer WILL make a profit and will pass the cost of failure to the policy holder through increased premiums. So NASA could make SpaceX get the insurance. All that does is mean that SpaceX will increase its prices to NASA to account for the cost of insurance (eg, the cost of inevitable failures).
By making either NASA or SpaceX get insurance, you add in another greedy industry (insurance) that get their fingers in the pie and make a profit. Great way to save the taxpayer money.
Yes, that is what I came to say. Not only does SpaceX pass the cost of insurance on to the taxpayers, but the insurance company passes the cost of failure through to SpaceX as high premiums. So ultimately the shipper (NASA, therefore taxpayer) pays for failed launches.
But making SpaceX get insurance means you're "doing something". (eg, Creating more paperwork, and adding the inefficiency of the insurance industry getting its fingers in the pie. Insurers also make a profit.) Ultimately this hurts the taxpayer, not helps.
NASA was a great, even fantastic thing back when there was no commercial motivation to do research on space and powerful rockets. Back when there was little to no commercial launch market.
Now NASA is full of pork.. You cannot kill it because . . . pork. In every congressional district.
NASA is not and never has been efficient. At one time that was irrelevant because of the nature of what they did. Now is is more about letting bureaucrats CYA when something blows up. And to make sure money flows freely to as many congressional districts as possible. The traditional contractors are not designed to be efficient either, except at maximizing how much they can suck from the government teat.
One way NASA might end is that with lower and lower budgets NASA simply cannot do anything. Alternately, they might end because they get budgets big enough to actually do something, making the real inefficiency clear for all to see.
NASA must be held to the same safety standards that commercial providers are held to. Otherwise, a culture of evading or ignoring those safety standards will creep in.
The only role that NASA might have left is projects that require large investment to overcome a lack of commercial motives. For example, going to Mars. Maybe for operating a space station. Probably not for mining asteroids.
You probably overlooked my nym before you clicked Reply. :-)
It seems unlikely that there are any gay nerds. Nerds are a fraction of the general population. Gay people are an even smaller fraction of the general population. This would make the existence gay nerds seem highly unlikely.
Similarly, the odds that in the vastness of space, an asteroid could just happen to strike our moon seems so incredibly remote that one could safely conclude that there are no craters on the moon.
Please do not wish for them to be rewarded for doing something this bad.
SourceForge could start it again, but make it much less obvious. Simply pre-infect all of the downloads with malware. If caught, claim it was a hack, or that it 'somehow' got uploaded that way from the author. Then offer to fix it. The first few times everyone would believe it.
However, at this point, SourceForge has burned whatever trust it ever had. Soon the only people left are those gullible enough to believe SourceForge.
Something this face palm worthy can only be accomplished by a manager or someone higher up* in the organization.
*Note that everyone except the engineers perceive the value hierarchy to be inverted.
But instead of a system-wide setting, as you suggest, I would propose an Organization-Wide setting so that by gope policy, all computers in the organization could bet set such that div by zero results in zero! Bravo! (Or maybe a country-wide setting dictated by congress? Or a world wide global setting dictated by congress?)
In addition, I am tired of checking for File Not Found errors. When the file can't be found, why not just reformat the drive and create the file for me automatically!
While I agree with your sentiment, the word you are looking for is 'bite'.
flash driven ads bite
For example those unwanted "Video Bytes" inserts on Slashdot which should be titled "Video Bites".
That is a real shame.
It would seem better to use ad-blocking at all the major internet backbones and interconnection points.
Advertisers eventually ruin everything.
I gave up on Cable TV. It is now less than 1/2 content and more than 1/2 ads. And then the ads intrude into the program you are trying to watch with stupid bugs and animated people walking on the bottom 1/4 of your screen. Sometimes they obscure something important in the content of the program. At the same time the content has deteriorated to the point that it is not even worth watching. And content not worth watching definitely means the ads are not worth watching.
Now that was off topic, but then there is the web. Will it turn out the same way? Maybe not because there are no central 'broadcasters'. There can be good sites with good ads and good advertisers who can behave decently and sell products through the ad views they get.
Yes that!
Deliver ads as a set of pixels, and then, and only then, I might begin to trust advertisers enough to let their pixels on to my screen.
I think advertisers SHOULD NOT BE RUNNING CODE on my computer.
If you must show me an ad, that's one thing. To ask to run code on my computer is quite something else. Malware has been spread through ad networks, and I promise you it will be again. And again.
Advertisers have only themselves to blame that people block ads. At first web ads were more than tolerable. I was happy to see them, knowing they paid the bills. Then it got worse. And worse. Sites started having tiny bits of content surrounded by ads and you had to click the Next button twenty times to read a ten paragraph article that turns out to be devoid of real information. And other things I could go on about.
Online publishers ought to be careful of the ad networks they get into bed with. Those ad networks should be careful about the actual advertisers. Some of these ads are outright deceptive -- trying to imitate the look of a dialog box on a certain widely used OS. That kind of clever behavior turns out to be bad for ALL advertisers in the long run.
I did say I actually liked the idea that ads paid the bill in the early days. Now I view ads as a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Many of the advertisers have absolutely no sense of shame or restraint. They would tattoo advertisements to the insides of our eyelids if they could. Yes, really.
It's not FUD. It's clickbait. It will make up for the revenue shortfall from SourceForge.