People are willing to pay for convenient, spendable stores of value, and if they trust that store of value, they're often willing to pay far more than what that item would be worth if it wasn't used as money.
Take gold, for example. Economists talk about "monetization" and "demonetization" of gold, referring to how gold prices shoot up when people start buying it as a hedge against inflation, then fall back down again when inflation fears diminish or an inflationary episode dies down. Historical gold prices: note how despite inflation, the dollar price of gold in 2001 was less than half the dollar price of gold in 1980.
It's true that federal reserve notes have next to no non-currency value (they're a perfect size for bookmarks, and I hear they burn pretty well), while gold is useful for jewelry, for electronics, and as a catalyst. But gold's practical price is probably somewhere in the low 200s; the rest of the price of gold comes from the same place the value of federal reserve notes came from: it's a convenient way to store value. Any other commodity used as money would likewise see its price inflated.
The true advantage of gold (or silver, or salt, or unobtanium, or leaves, or whatever) as a store of value is that the supply of gold is limited by the real costs of finding it, digging it out of the ground, and purifying it, while any sufficiently irresponsible government may decide to finance itself by simply printing more money. Even with a fractional reserve system, the payout requirement keeps the issuer moderate in his dishonesty.
Countering this, using a commodity as money partially denies us the practical use of that commodity by inflating its price and tying up much of the supply in stockpiles, as well as inducing people to put far more effort producing that commodity than would otherwise make economic sense. In addition, inflation of a commodity money can result from a large find of new reserves, or by a technological breakthrough that allows a lot more of the commodity to be produced for a lot less money. Theoretically, it's best for the economy (consistant prices, minimal liquidity problems, etc) if the money supply grows in lockstep with the real size of the economy, and you can (not necessarily will, but can) come a lot closer to that with federal reserve notes than with commodity money.
If you not only RTFA, but also click through to the wiki of the editorials, they actually have two articles to edit: the original editoral and a counterpoint. They request that users respect the defined point of view of each article when editing.
If they can get a community that will respect this, I think it can work.
In fact, it reminds me of the way wikipedia often ends up implementing NPOV on contrivercial issues by saying "side A argues foo, but side B argues bar".
Is there a law saying you can't do all your calculations using a decimal number of feet, gallons, and pounds? Because if there is, I know a lot of people who are going to get in trouble when the Bureau of Weights and Measures catches up with them.
I had always assumed that we were taught fractions because most of the techniques are necessary for algebra.
Apple has four major advantages over the position Be held:
1. A much larger base of loyal customers.
2. A much stronger reputation. (Over a year before Be sold its assets to Palm, I had prospective employers look at my resume, see my internship at Be, and say "Be, I remember hearing about them. They went out of business, didn't they?")
3. A much larger and more visible community of software companies which support them.
4. A much deeper pocketbook ($7 billion in the bank, $11 billion/year revenue, $1.2 billion/year free cash flow)
If Apple doesn't wait too long to embrace an identity as a software company, OEM is not the only route. There are a lot of people, myself for example, who prefer MacOS to Windows but use Windows exclusively because we need Windows-only software and can't justify buying twice as many computers. If Apple offered a boxed software OS X for vanilla Intel PCs, I would gladly spend a couple hundred dollars to be able to dual boot. This didn't work for Be, but it might work for Apple, because as I argued above Apple is not Be.
Another route Apple could take would be to make an implementation of the Cocoa API which can be compiled into a Windows app, and sell it to software developers as a way to make a more stable, more reliable app that will with just recompilation run on 1) Windows PCs, 2) Apple/Intel PCs, and 3) Legacy Apple/PPC computers.
Strategically, the second route is Apple's best counter to the possibility of Microsoft breaking Office for OS X (short of Microsoft's reluctance to abandon 16+% of their upgrade market), since whatever Office substitute arises on Macs (AppleWorks, WordPerfect Office, Lotus Smartsuite, OpenOffice, something new, whatever) would instantly become a credible substitute for Office on Windows PCs.
Yes, this is a risky route for Apple to take. Yes, Be failed when they tried a similar route with less resources and community support. But I think they have a good chance of succeeding, at least enough to stay viable.
Pop psychology aside, not all addictions are net harmful. As you (jokingly?) point out, personal hygene is a psychological addiction, but very few people would argue that it is harmful (except in extreme cases like OCD handwashing). Food, water, and air meet my carelessly worded explanation of the definition of addiction. A caffeine addiction can have a net positive effect (allowing one to function reliably despite an irregular sleep schedule), as can a carefully managed opiate addiction in someone who suffers from chronic pain. For that matter, several studies have suggested that romantic love is very similar to addiction (the brain becomes addicted to large doses of a neurotransmitter whose release is triggered by thinking of or interacting with the loved one).
It's addictions which are also problem habits that one has to watch out for.
Sunlight's energy content is about 1 kilowatt per square meter.
Assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, and assuming the tube has an average cross section to the sunlight of 3 m^2, that gives us a theoretical maximum of:
12 hrs * 3 m^2 * 1 kw/m^2 = 36 kw hr per tube per day.
Or just under one gallon per tube. And that's assuming 100% efficiency. Biological processes usually have very high energy efficiencies (>80% IIRC), but some of that energy will be needed to maintain the algae's internal life functions (growth, repair, etc), so I'll use 50% as a rough estimate.
At 50%, you'll need two tubes per gallon. Standard tanker trucks carry 5000 gallons, so you'll need 10000 tubes to fill a truck per day. Assume a 2.25 m^2 footprint (to make the math easy), that's a 22500 m^2 tube farm, or an area 150 m on a side. A little more than five and a half acres, or exactly 2.25 hectares.
They can in elections, because federal election law says that state election law cannot be changed retroactively. This gives them federal courts the authority to review state court rulings on state election law to ensure they have an appropriate basis in state law as understood at the time the election took place.
Now, you try to say that the recount violated federal election laws and equal protection. It is your right to have that opinion.
Mine and seven of the nine justices sitting on the United States Supreme Court, including one (Breyer) of the two justices appointed by Clinton. If you are arguing that a liberal judge Clinton appointed to the Supreme Court was a party to a conspiracy to ignore the law and the constitution in order to hand the presidency to Bush, your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newletter.
If Fox News hadn't called the election when they KNEW Bush was nowhere NEAR the needed numbers to call it
They called it because the pre-recount margin with 99% of precints reporting was large enough that the remaining 1% was vanishingly unlikely to flip the election. Fox correctly predicted that Bush had more votes than Gore before the recount.
The recount would have gone as manded by state law and constitution and Al Gore would have been declared the winner.
Had the recount proceeded as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, Bush would still have won by over a hundred votes. It is only if you also recount "overvotes", where more than one candidate's chad was punched, that any of the unofficial recounts found in favor of Gore.
The only reason Bush even had the ability to go to the US Supreme court is because of the previous weeks media frenzy.
Bush had the ability to go to the Supreme Court because as a US Citizen he has the right to petition them to review constitutional issues and lower court decisions, and because a quorum of justices found enough merit in his petition for it to be worth hearing oral arguments.
Instead, he appealed the the supreme court and forced the end to a recount mandated by florida state law.
Not exactly. The recount was mandated by the Flordia Supreme Court, not any Florida statute. SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that the SCOFLA ruling violated federal election law, the constitutional right to equal protection (in the form of a uniform, objective counting standard), and/or Florida law. The 5-4 ruling was to require that any binding recount had to be completed by the federal "safe harbor" deadline (the day after the ruling).
There were several unofficial recounts performed, using a wide variety of standards. Bush won most of them, but Gore won a few.
Incendentally, Federal election law specifically allows state legislatures to step in and appoint electors directly if election results are inconclusive. The Florida state legislature (which had a Republican majority) had voted to hold a special session to do so if the final results were not certified by the safe harbor deadline.
I came across this quote a while back, supposedly from a Russian military document:
"One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine."
There are other amphetemines that are less addictive and have fewer harmful side-effects. Ritalin was originally developed as a diet pill, and at the doseages prescribed it is nonaddictive and has relatively minor side effects (mainly making you very, very attentive).
I have been prescribe Ritalin for ADD, and I do have a noticably reduced appetite when I'm taking it. I very rarely take it, for the most part preferring to self-medicate with caffeine. Incidentely, after a couple times I have made a point to not drive while I have ritalin in my system, since I feel I am too keyed-up to be a safe driver.
their economic system doesn't always impose the costs of raising children onto the parents. That alone would stop population growth--people don't have children if they can't afford them.
This is worth emphasizing.
One of the main reasons why first-world countries tend to have much lower birth rates than third world countries is that children cost money in the former but make money in the latter.
Almost all first world countries heavily subsidize health care and education, but 20+ years of food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention college education and all the little luxuries that are commonplace in our socities, adds up to a heck of a lot of money before our kids are ready to pull their own weight.
In third world countries, especially the ones with the worst population problems, there's not much in the way of college or luxuries for anyone. And in a society where most people are subsistance farmers, it's not very long before the little ones are old enough to help with the weeding, or to go to town and work in the Nike factory.
The ABM treaty contains a clause allowing either party to withdraw after six month's notice. Back in 2001, Bush gave notice to Putin that the US was withdrawing, and in exchange for a few concessions on other issues Putin announced that he had no objection.
From 1961 to 1965, only 1800 were killed, 7300 wounded.
True perhaps (I'm too lazy to check your numbers), but misleading. When people think about the casualty rate in Vietnam, they think about the period of peak US involvement (1965-1973), not the period you cite when total US involvement was fewer than 20,000 "military advisors".
All posts marked "Funny" will be mod'ed or metamod'ed down.
You can go into your preferences and assign a -1 or lower modifier to "Funny" mods so they won't appear modded up to you. According to the FAQ, "Funny" mods don't give karma, if that's what you're worried about.
Re:Welcome to capitalism
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 1
Every "me too" drug developed is made with resources that could have been used to develop completely new types of drugs, including drugs for conditions as-of-yet untreated. It is, however, a less profitable business model.
The pharmas make more money than they spend on the "me too" drugs. This means that the profits from "me too" drugs more than pay for the R&D on "me too" drugs. I would be astonished if none of the remainder was spent on research into completely new types of drugs.
Money spent on "me too" drugs reduces spending on new research the same way money I spend on gas to drive to work reduces my spending on continuing my education.
Do you realize how many choices there would be with *2.5 Times As Much Money Spent On Research* if it wasn't for these insane advertising budgets?
You talk as if the pharmas have a fixed quantity of money. In the short term, they do. But in the long term, their operating profit is their potential R&D budget. If the advertising doesn't bring in more cash from new sales than it costs up front, the pharmas are being stupid.
I'll assume they know what they're doing (more or less), which means that their advertising increases their profits, which increases the money available for R&D.
Re:Welcome to capitalism
on
HIV Vaccine
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
on average drug companies spend 2.5 times as much on advertising as they do on R&D
Part of the advertising spending is dead weight, but not all of it. Advertising does have the effect of making potential customers aware that there are drugs that treat their conditions. How much benefit does a drug do if nobody knows about it? Before you say the doctors will tell their patients, remember that drug companies telling doctors about their drugs is still advertising, and remember that not everyone goes to a doctor over every ailment, especially if they mistakenly think there is no treatment.
1/3 of the drugs being marketted by the major manufacturers were discovered by universities or small biotech firms
Then I take it 2/3 of drugs being marketed by the major manufacturers were developed internally. And how did the manufacturers get the IP rights from the small biotech firms? If they bought the rights or pay royalties, then they are paying for the research that went into the drug plus the firm's profit. I doubt all small biotech firms are as dumb as the NIH was with Taxol.
Most drugs that the drug industry itself develops are what she calls "me-too" drugs
"Me-too" drugs limit the ability to abuse the limited monopoly by acting as competitors. That's a Good Thing. Or should everyone still be using Mosaic because all other browsers developed are "me-too" software?
They need not be more effective than current formulations in order to be able to be sold - just more effective than a placebo.
If a drug doesn't provide benefits in effeciveness, side effects, interactions, or price, most doctors won't prescribe it. Doctors do have easy access to reference material on all these factors, and part of what they're paid for is to know how to evaluate which drug is best for which patients.
The top 10 pharmaceutical companies make more money than the rest of the Fortune 500 combined.
Good. How much is a few more years of life worth to you? Or not being impotent? Or relief from chronic pain? And if it's not worth to you what people are paying, switch to an insurance plan that doesn't cover prescription drugs and opt out of the whole affair.
And not only are they granted a limited monopoly, but they often cheat.
This part is genuinely lame. IP law need fixing to limit these kinds of abuses.
At the maximum safe dose (or what was until recently thought to be the maximum safe dose), Vioxx is a lot more effective than Advil even if the mechanism is similar.
I speak from experience; I am allergic to Vicodin, so I was prescribed Vioxx while I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. When my prescription ran out and I switched to OTC painkillers (a combo of Advil and Tylenol, at what the surgeon told me was the maximum safe dose), it hurt a lot worse than it had under Vioxx
When it's closed, you don't really know if they got some guy in Moscow to write it, do you?
You can put it in the contract that everyone who touches the code has to have a security clearance. Not that they do that in this case, but they could. The often do at the application level.
I imagine they will create tons of bugs by trying to make a non free interface layer that will be difficult to write and maintain.
True, but I think the "security risk" alleged was not simply buggy code, but rather well-understood exploitable bugs. Back doors and the like.
Proprietary software doesn't eliminate the risk. It does make it possible to screen everyone who touches the code (although they don't do formal security clearances at Green Hills, I expect they do a lot more in the way of background checks on potential employees than an open source project does on potential contributors), and it does drasticly limit the pool of people who can edit the code. But as you pointed out, open source has the counterveiling advantage that there are many more eyeballs that might spot any malicious code. I don't know which is safer, but I'm not prepared to call the Green Hills guy a liar.
Slashdot Mirror
"Intrinsic value" is a slippery concept.
People are willing to pay for convenient, spendable stores of value, and if they trust that store of value, they're often willing to pay far more than what that item would be worth if it wasn't used as money.
Take gold, for example. Economists talk about "monetization" and "demonetization" of gold, referring to how gold prices shoot up when people start buying it as a hedge against inflation, then fall back down again when inflation fears diminish or an inflationary episode dies down. Historical gold prices: note how despite inflation, the dollar price of gold in 2001 was less than half the dollar price of gold in 1980.
It's true that federal reserve notes have next to no non-currency value (they're a perfect size for bookmarks, and I hear they burn pretty well), while gold is useful for jewelry, for electronics, and as a catalyst. But gold's practical price is probably somewhere in the low 200s; the rest of the price of gold comes from the same place the value of federal reserve notes came from: it's a convenient way to store value. Any other commodity used as money would likewise see its price inflated.
The true advantage of gold (or silver, or salt, or unobtanium, or leaves, or whatever) as a store of value is that the supply of gold is limited by the real costs of finding it, digging it out of the ground, and purifying it, while any sufficiently irresponsible government may decide to finance itself by simply printing more money. Even with a fractional reserve system, the payout requirement keeps the issuer moderate in his dishonesty.
Countering this, using a commodity as money partially denies us the practical use of that commodity by inflating its price and tying up much of the supply in stockpiles, as well as inducing people to put far more effort producing that commodity than would otherwise make economic sense. In addition, inflation of a commodity money can result from a large find of new reserves, or by a technological breakthrough that allows a lot more of the commodity to be produced for a lot less money. Theoretically, it's best for the economy (consistant prices, minimal liquidity problems, etc) if the money supply grows in lockstep with the real size of the economy, and you can (not necessarily will, but can) come a lot closer to that with federal reserve notes than with commodity money.
If you not only RTFA, but also click through to the wiki of the editorials, they actually have two articles to edit: the original editoral and a counterpoint. They request that users respect the defined point of view of each article when editing.
If they can get a community that will respect this, I think it can work.
In fact, it reminds me of the way wikipedia often ends up implementing NPOV on contrivercial issues by saying "side A argues foo, but side B argues bar".
Isn't Ratzenberger the head of some chuch in Italy now?
Is there a law saying you can't do all your calculations using a decimal number of feet, gallons, and pounds? Because if there is, I know a lot of people who are going to get in trouble when the Bureau of Weights and Measures catches up with them.
I had always assumed that we were taught fractions because most of the techniques are necessary for algebra.
But I thought that in soviet russia, order reversed you.
Apple has four major advantages over the position Be held:
1. A much larger base of loyal customers.
2. A much stronger reputation. (Over a year before Be sold its assets to Palm, I had prospective employers look at my resume, see my internship at Be, and say "Be, I remember hearing about them. They went out of business, didn't they?")
3. A much larger and more visible community of software companies which support them.
4. A much deeper pocketbook ($7 billion in the bank, $11 billion/year revenue, $1.2 billion/year free cash flow)
If Apple doesn't wait too long to embrace an identity as a software company, OEM is not the only route. There are a lot of people, myself for example, who prefer MacOS to Windows but use Windows exclusively because we need Windows-only software and can't justify buying twice as many computers. If Apple offered a boxed software OS X for vanilla Intel PCs, I would gladly spend a couple hundred dollars to be able to dual boot. This didn't work for Be, but it might work for Apple, because as I argued above Apple is not Be.
Another route Apple could take would be to make an implementation of the Cocoa API which can be compiled into a Windows app, and sell it to software developers as a way to make a more stable, more reliable app that will with just recompilation run on 1) Windows PCs, 2) Apple/Intel PCs, and 3) Legacy Apple/PPC computers.
Strategically, the second route is Apple's best counter to the possibility of Microsoft breaking Office for OS X (short of Microsoft's reluctance to abandon 16+% of their upgrade market), since whatever Office substitute arises on Macs (AppleWorks, WordPerfect Office, Lotus Smartsuite, OpenOffice, something new, whatever) would instantly become a credible substitute for Office on Windows PCs.
Yes, this is a risky route for Apple to take. Yes, Be failed when they tried a similar route with less resources and community support. But I think they have a good chance of succeeding, at least enough to stay viable.
Pop psychology aside, not all addictions are net harmful. As you (jokingly?) point out, personal hygene is a psychological addiction, but very few people would argue that it is harmful (except in extreme cases like OCD handwashing). Food, water, and air meet my carelessly worded explanation of the definition of addiction. A caffeine addiction can have a net positive effect (allowing one to function reliably despite an irregular sleep schedule), as can a carefully managed opiate addiction in someone who suffers from chronic pain. For that matter, several studies have suggested that romantic love is very similar to addiction (the brain becomes addicted to large doses of a neurotransmitter whose release is triggered by thinking of or interacting with the loved one).
It's addictions which are also problem habits that one has to watch out for.
If your routine action has a significant net negative effect on your quality of life or that of the people around you, it is a "problem habit".
If your brain chemistry has altered itself so you need your routine action to approximate homeostasis, it is an "addition".
If neither of the above conditions apply, it's just a harmless part of your daily routine.
1 gallon of diesel = 128,000 BTU = 37.5 kilowatt hours.
Sunlight's energy content is about 1 kilowatt per square meter.
Assuming 12 hours of sunlight per day, and assuming the tube has an average cross section to the sunlight of 3 m^2, that gives us a theoretical maximum of:
12 hrs * 3 m^2 * 1 kw/m^2 = 36 kw hr per tube per day.
Or just under one gallon per tube. And that's assuming 100% efficiency. Biological processes usually have very high energy efficiencies (>80% IIRC), but some of that energy will be needed to maintain the algae's internal life functions (growth, repair, etc), so I'll use 50% as a rough estimate.
At 50%, you'll need two tubes per gallon. Standard tanker trucks carry 5000 gallons, so you'll need 10000 tubes to fill a truck per day. Assume a 2.25 m^2 footprint (to make the math easy), that's a 22500 m^2 tube farm, or an area 150 m on a side. A little more than five and a half acres, or exactly 2.25 hectares.
The SCOTUS cannot legally interpret Florida law.
They can in elections, because federal election law says that state election law cannot be changed retroactively. This gives them federal courts the authority to review state court rulings on state election law to ensure they have an appropriate basis in state law as understood at the time the election took place.
Now, you try to say that the recount violated federal election laws and equal protection. It is your right to have that opinion.
Mine and seven of the nine justices sitting on the United States Supreme Court, including one (Breyer) of the two justices appointed by Clinton. If you are arguing that a liberal judge Clinton appointed to the Supreme Court was a party to a conspiracy to ignore the law and the constitution in order to hand the presidency to Bush, your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newletter.
If Fox News hadn't called the election when they KNEW Bush was nowhere NEAR the needed numbers to call it
They called it because the pre-recount margin with 99% of precints reporting was large enough that the remaining 1% was vanishingly unlikely to flip the election. Fox correctly predicted that Bush had more votes than Gore before the recount.
The recount would have gone as manded by state law and constitution and Al Gore would have been declared the winner.
Had the recount proceeded as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, Bush would still have won by over a hundred votes. It is only if you also recount "overvotes", where more than one candidate's chad was punched, that any of the unofficial recounts found in favor of Gore.
The only reason Bush even had the ability to go to the US Supreme court is because of the previous weeks media frenzy.
Bush had the ability to go to the Supreme Court because as a US Citizen he has the right to petition them to review constitutional issues and lower court decisions, and because a quorum of justices found enough merit in his petition for it to be worth hearing oral arguments.
Instead, he appealed the the supreme court and forced the end to a recount mandated by florida state law.
Not exactly. The recount was mandated by the Flordia Supreme Court, not any Florida statute. SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that the SCOFLA ruling violated federal election law, the constitutional right to equal protection (in the form of a uniform, objective counting standard), and/or Florida law. The 5-4 ruling was to require that any binding recount had to be completed by the federal "safe harbor" deadline (the day after the ruling).
There were several unofficial recounts performed, using a wide variety of standards. Bush won most of them, but Gore won a few.
Incendentally, Federal election law specifically allows state legislatures to step in and appoint electors directly if election results are inconclusive. The Florida state legislature (which had a Republican majority) had voted to hold a special session to do so if the final results were not certified by the safe harbor deadline.
"That is the kind of nonsense up with which I shall not put."
-- Winston Churchill
I came across this quote a while back, supposedly from a Russian military document:
"One of the serious problems in planning against American doctrine that the Americans do not read their manuals nor do they feel any obligations to follow their doctrine."
There are other amphetemines that are less addictive and have fewer harmful side-effects. Ritalin was originally developed as a diet pill, and at the doseages prescribed it is nonaddictive and has relatively minor side effects (mainly making you very, very attentive).
I have been prescribe Ritalin for ADD, and I do have a noticably reduced appetite when I'm taking it. I very rarely take it, for the most part preferring to self-medicate with caffeine. Incidentely, after a couple times I have made a point to not drive while I have ritalin in my system, since I feel I am too keyed-up to be a safe driver.
their economic system doesn't always impose the costs of raising children onto the parents. That alone would stop population growth--people don't have children if they can't afford them.
This is worth emphasizing.
One of the main reasons why first-world countries tend to have much lower birth rates than third world countries is that children cost money in the former but make money in the latter.
Almost all first world countries heavily subsidize health care and education, but 20+ years of food, clothing, and shelter, not to mention college education and all the little luxuries that are commonplace in our socities, adds up to a heck of a lot of money before our kids are ready to pull their own weight.
In third world countries, especially the ones with the worst population problems, there's not much in the way of college or luxuries for anyone. And in a society where most people are subsistance farmers, it's not very long before the little ones are old enough to help with the weeding, or to go to town and work in the Nike factory.
Social security benefits are reduced for retirees with high income from other sources (usually investment income from their retirement savings).
The ABM treaty contains a clause allowing either party to withdraw after six month's notice. Back in 2001, Bush gave notice to Putin that the US was withdrawing, and in exchange for a few concessions on other issues Putin announced that he had no objection.
source
From 1961 to 1965, only 1800 were killed, 7300 wounded.
True perhaps (I'm too lazy to check your numbers), but misleading. When people think about the casualty rate in Vietnam, they think about the period of peak US involvement (1965-1973), not the period you cite when total US involvement was fewer than 20,000 "military advisors".
source
All posts marked "Funny" will be mod'ed or metamod'ed down.
You can go into your preferences and assign a -1 or lower modifier to "Funny" mods so they won't appear modded up to you. According to the FAQ, "Funny" mods don't give karma, if that's what you're worried about.
While I'm sure there's a whole bunch of archives floating around, google will remove things you've posted from their archive if you ask them nicely.
That's a membership fee, not a debt payment.
Every "me too" drug developed is made with resources that could have been used to develop completely new types of drugs, including drugs for conditions as-of-yet untreated. It is, however, a less profitable business model.
The pharmas make more money than they spend on the "me too" drugs. This means that the profits from "me too" drugs more than pay for the R&D on "me too" drugs. I would be astonished if none of the remainder was spent on research into completely new types of drugs.
Money spent on "me too" drugs reduces spending on new research the same way money I spend on gas to drive to work reduces my spending on continuing my education.
Do you realize how many choices there would be with *2.5 Times As Much Money Spent On Research* if it wasn't for these insane advertising budgets?
You talk as if the pharmas have a fixed quantity of money. In the short term, they do. But in the long term, their operating profit is their potential R&D budget. If the advertising doesn't bring in more cash from new sales than it costs up front, the pharmas are being stupid.
I'll assume they know what they're doing (more or less), which means that their advertising increases their profits, which increases the money available for R&D.
on average drug companies spend 2.5 times as much on advertising as they do on R&D
Part of the advertising spending is dead weight, but not all of it. Advertising does have the effect of making potential customers aware that there are drugs that treat their conditions. How much benefit does a drug do if nobody knows about it? Before you say the doctors will tell their patients, remember that drug companies telling doctors about their drugs is still advertising, and remember that not everyone goes to a doctor over every ailment, especially if they mistakenly think there is no treatment.
1/3 of the drugs being marketted by the major manufacturers were discovered by universities or small biotech firms
Then I take it 2/3 of drugs being marketed by the major manufacturers were developed internally. And how did the manufacturers get the IP rights from the small biotech firms? If they bought the rights or pay royalties, then they are paying for the research that went into the drug plus the firm's profit. I doubt all small biotech firms are as dumb as the NIH was with Taxol.
Most drugs that the drug industry itself develops are what she calls "me-too" drugs
"Me-too" drugs limit the ability to abuse the limited monopoly by acting as competitors. That's a Good Thing. Or should everyone still be using Mosaic because all other browsers developed are "me-too" software?
They need not be more effective than current formulations in order to be able to be sold - just more effective than a placebo.
If a drug doesn't provide benefits in effeciveness, side effects, interactions, or price, most doctors won't prescribe it. Doctors do have easy access to reference material on all these factors, and part of what they're paid for is to know how to evaluate which drug is best for which patients.
The top 10 pharmaceutical companies make more money than the rest of the Fortune 500 combined.
Good. How much is a few more years of life worth to you? Or not being impotent? Or relief from chronic pain? And if it's not worth to you what people are paying, switch to an insurance plan that doesn't cover prescription drugs and opt out of the whole affair.
And not only are they granted a limited monopoly, but they often cheat.
This part is genuinely lame. IP law need fixing to limit these kinds of abuses.
At the maximum safe dose (or what was until recently thought to be the maximum safe dose), Vioxx is a lot more effective than Advil even if the mechanism is similar.
I speak from experience; I am allergic to Vicodin, so I was prescribed Vioxx while I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. When my prescription ran out and I switched to OTC painkillers (a combo of Advil and Tylenol, at what the surgeon told me was the maximum safe dose), it hurt a lot worse than it had under Vioxx
When it's closed, you don't really know if they got some guy in Moscow to write it, do you?
You can put it in the contract that everyone who touches the code has to have a security clearance. Not that they do that in this case, but they could. The often do at the application level.
I imagine they will create tons of bugs by trying to make a non free interface layer that will be difficult to write and maintain.
True, but I think the "security risk" alleged was not simply buggy code, but rather well-understood exploitable bugs. Back doors and the like.
Proprietary software doesn't eliminate the risk. It does make it possible to screen everyone who touches the code (although they don't do formal security clearances at Green Hills, I expect they do a lot more in the way of background checks on potential employees than an open source project does on potential contributors), and it does drasticly limit the pool of people who can edit the code. But as you pointed out, open source has the counterveiling advantage that there are many more eyeballs that might spot any malicious code. I don't know which is safer, but I'm not prepared to call the Green Hills guy a liar.