Totally bogus: a study of 11 males and 11 females is not nearly adequate to make any generalizations about the population. Five bucks say they were students in the researcher's class.
this is a good point. I've watched in horror as a colleague brought his laptop in from his car in teh middle of a Burlington VT winter (comparable to Upstate NY) and fired it right up. The hard-drive did not survive. In your case the hard drive would never have shut down, and the CPU might help keep it warm. Maybe putting a blanket over it in October and taking it off in May....
Also, I'd be more concerned about moisture. You probably will have very high humidity levels in the unheated garage when there is dew forming outside.
But again, if you cover the machine, the heat from the CPU might be enough to keep the humidty down. I think a nice wool-polyester blend from L.L.Bean would be just right.
Re:That is Disingenuous Spin, His answer IS politi
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Rob Pike Responds
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· Score: 1
well, no, drugs like that aren't big money makers if patent protection doesn't prevent competitors from making the drug and selling them cheaply. The entire reason patents exist is so that someone can do some research, or invent something, and have a period of time in which they have a monopoly on that product. During that time they can charge a higher price and recoup their investment and have some incentive to due the original research. In the absence of a patent, that period when the company can make an extra profit doesn't exist, so any company that spent the millions of dollars to research the drug would quickly go out of business. To your point, you are right innovation doesn't disappear in the absence of patents. But certainly innovation that requires ENORMOUS financial investment would dissappear. You make one assertion that is simply wrong: that even with out a patent an aides drug would still be a money maker. Well, yes, it would be money maker, but not for the company that did the research. Instead it would be a money maker for the companies that produce the generic copies of it.
Re:That is Disingenuous Spin, His answer IS politi
on
Rob Pike Responds
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· Score: 1
I respectfully disagree with your conclusion, even while accepting your premise. The company needs to recoup its investment (thats how it continues to do research). The patent allows it to make money to pay for research. With out the patent the drug would simply not exist. So the only thing the patent is to blame for is the existence of the drug. If the company makes a choice to not discount it for poor patients/countries, that is a completely different question (and a morally indefensible one, in my opinion). My preferred solution, the company is able to distribute the drug cheaply where needed because it can charge a higher price for those better able to pay. But this would only be possible if the company has a patent on the drug.
Re:Patents as the solution for Arms Control
on
Rob Pike Responds
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· Score: 1
Outstanding point! I hadn't thought of that!
Re:That is Disingenuous Spin, His answer IS politi
on
Rob Pike Responds
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Maybe he considers Arms control an issue more significant by many orders of magnitude than patents. I reasonable person might think that even discussing nuclear weapons and IP in the same sentence trivializes the significance that the arms race played in our lives for decades. Are software patents important? Yes. Do they threaten the very survival of our species? No.
Yeah, the court pretty much said the same thing in its judgement, even though it ruled that this is what the law required. The Rodney King tape, for instance, would be illegal in Massachusetts.
I'm not so sure this is entirely accurate. Massachusetts' wiretap law resulted in the conviction of a guy who secretly videataped police harrasing him, but ended up convicted of invading their privacy! According to the story in the Boston Globe, July 2001, The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the conviction:
"We conclude that the Legislature intended (the law) strictly to prohibit all secret recordings by members of the public, including recordings of police officers or other public officials interacting with members of the public, when made without their permission or knowledge," Justice John M. Greaney wrote in the majority opinion.
Note that the court also said that this out come is a Bad Thing (TM).
I have a realated question: I want to start introducing my kids (7 and 9; those are ages, not names:) and potentially classmates to programming. I'm looking for thoughts on how to proceed.
This has got to be the least relevant Ask Slashdot I have ever seen!! I know people ask geeks legal questions here all the time, but is this crowd really any more authoritative than random people on a street corner? The answer, by the way, is that if you use a non-legal name in an official cpapacity you could be suspected of fraud. Your friends may call you Tim, but that is not your name, man.
at the end of my original post I almost added that, as you figured out, I hadn't even taken the time for a quick google. Thanks for taking the time (all 2 seconds:) to back me up!
And did you know that it is not know for certain that "The Black Death" even was bubonic plague? Scientisits and historians now assume that the epidemic that swept through Europe was that disease, but since European medicine at the time was, shall we say, non-scientific, it is impossible to know with certainty what the diease really was. I believe (no, I can't cite any sources) that there are problems in the hisotical record with the bubonic plague theory, and even some other contenders for the actual cause of the epidemic.
Dude, relax. Just because your experience doesn't jibe with his doesn't mean it is a lie!
I think the general observation that a programming job at a non-software company is a good idea. I work for a financial company with hundreds (at least) of programmers. We mostly work 40-hour weeks. I don't even have a pager (though most do, for production support calls). It is pretty family-friendly. As an earlier poster said, this company is not dependent on getting the next software release out yesterday; they ARE dependednt on a qualified staff of programmers familier with the business and their products, so they are pretty respectful of our lives.
I never suggested that there was anything the least bit illegal about the merger. And your MBS classes are right, just like in my CFA training. The dot com boom and bust clearly demonstrate that PUBLIC perception diverged wildly from actual underlying value. I'm sure some dot com entreprenuers didn't really get this, but many must have, including Steve Case. My analogy does not depend on AOLs stock value being illegal; it depends on Steve Case knowing that AOL stock was of limited value: eventually it would sink like a stone. So he needed to convert it (launder it) into something of more substance. It is of course, rational for him to do this. Just as it is rational for a drug king pin to use his tainted cash to buy a legitimate business because his drug money is simply less valuable.
I had a similar reaction. I view the AOL/TW merger as akin to money laundering. During the dot com boom, the smart business people HAD to know that those companies were wildly over valued (PriceLine.com was worth more than the entire airline industry!). Steve Case prudently turned some of his play money into real money buy buying an actual, productive, fairly valued company. And thats what money laundering is: turning dirty money into clean money.
my understanding, and I'm no expert (but slashdot-qualified none the less!) is that the "black box" is a diagnostic tool to allow airbag "them" to determine how/why the airbag triggered, and the circumstances underwhich it deployed. With that info it would be possible to determine the effectiveness of the air bag. So the aribag isn't dependant on the "blackbox".
Slashdot Mirror
Totally bogus: a study of 11 males and 11 females is not nearly adequate to make any generalizations about the population.
Five bucks say they were students in the researcher's class.
on your cell phone? this is Verizon WIRELESS, right?
Don't be stupid. He obviously MEANT to say "infinity-1".
Anthony's Pier Four
Inflation is also not caused by printing money. That is an archaic oversimplification.
LOL!
Thanks; I great way to start the day...
this is a good point. I've watched in horror as a colleague brought his laptop in from his car in teh middle of a Burlington VT winter (comparable to Upstate NY) and fired it right up. The hard-drive did not survive.
In your case the hard drive would never have shut down, and the CPU might help keep it warm. Maybe putting a blanket over it in October and taking it off in May....
Also, I'd be more concerned about moisture. You probably will have very high humidity levels in the unheated garage when there is dew forming outside.
But again, if you cover the machine, the heat from the CPU might be enough to keep the humidty down.
I think a nice wool-polyester blend from L.L.Bean would be just right.
good work!
well, no, drugs like that aren't big money makers if patent protection doesn't prevent competitors from making the drug and selling them cheaply. The entire reason patents exist is so that someone can do some research, or invent something, and have a period of time in which they have a monopoly on that product. During that time they can charge a higher price and recoup their investment and have some incentive to due the original research.
In the absence of a patent, that period when the company can make an extra profit doesn't exist, so any company that spent the millions of dollars to research the drug would quickly go out of business.
To your point, you are right innovation doesn't disappear in the absence of patents. But certainly innovation that requires ENORMOUS financial investment would dissappear. You make one assertion that is simply wrong: that even with out a patent an aides drug would still be a money maker. Well, yes, it would be money maker, but not for the company that did the research. Instead it would be a money maker for the companies that produce the generic copies of it.
I respectfully disagree with your conclusion, even while accepting your premise. The company needs to recoup its investment (thats how it continues to do research). The patent allows it to make money to pay for research. With out the patent the drug would simply not exist. So the only thing the patent is to blame for is the existence of the drug. If the company makes a choice to not discount it for poor patients/countries, that is a completely different question (and a morally indefensible one, in my opinion).
My preferred solution, the company is able to distribute the drug cheaply where needed because it can charge a higher price for those better able to pay. But this would only be possible if the company has a patent on the drug.
Outstanding point! I hadn't thought of that!
Maybe he considers Arms control an issue more significant by many orders of magnitude than patents. I reasonable person might think that even discussing nuclear weapons and IP in the same sentence trivializes the significance that the arms race played in our lives for decades.
Are software patents important? Yes. Do they threaten the very survival of our species? No.
Yeah, the court pretty much said the same thing in its judgement, even though it ruled that this is what the law required. The Rodney King tape, for instance, would be illegal in Massachusetts.
Boston Globe, July 2001, The Supreme Judicial Court upheld the conviction:
Note that the court also said that this out come is a Bad Thing (TM).
Yikes!!! maybe this isn't such a good idea!
I have a realated question: I want to start introducing my kids (7 and 9; those are ages, not names:) and potentially classmates to programming. I'm looking for thoughts on how to proceed.
this is why I LOVE /. !!
This has got to be the least relevant Ask Slashdot I have ever seen!! I know people ask geeks legal questions here all the time, but is this crowd really any more authoritative than random people on a street corner?
The answer, by the way, is that if you use a non-legal name in an official cpapacity you could be suspected of fraud. Your friends may call you Tim, but that is not your name, man.
at the end of my original post I almost added that, as you figured out, I hadn't even taken the time for a quick google. Thanks for taking the time (all 2 seconds:) to back me up!
And did you know that it is not know for certain that "The Black Death" even was bubonic plague? Scientisits and historians now assume that the epidemic that swept through Europe was that disease, but since European medicine at the time was, shall we say, non-scientific, it is impossible to know with certainty what the diease really was. I believe (no, I can't cite any sources) that there are problems in the hisotical record with the bubonic plague theory, and even some other contenders for the actual cause of the epidemic.
Dude, relax. Just because your experience doesn't jibe with his doesn't mean it is a lie!
I think the general observation that a programming job at a non-software company is a good idea. I work for a financial company with hundreds (at least) of programmers. We mostly work 40-hour weeks. I don't even have a pager (though most do, for production support calls). It is pretty family-friendly. As an earlier poster said, this company is not dependent on getting the next software release out yesterday; they ARE dependednt on a qualified staff of programmers familier with the business and their products, so they are pretty respectful of our lives.
If only this had been in the post, then the post might not have been so Atkins-friendly.
I never suggested that there was anything the least bit illegal about the merger. And your MBS classes are right, just like in my CFA training. The dot com boom and bust clearly demonstrate that PUBLIC perception diverged wildly from actual underlying value. I'm sure some dot com entreprenuers didn't really get this, but many must have, including Steve Case.
My analogy does not depend on AOLs stock value being illegal; it depends on Steve Case knowing that AOL stock was of limited value: eventually it would sink like a stone. So he needed to convert it (launder it) into something of more substance.
It is of course, rational for him to do this. Just as it is rational for a drug king pin to use his tainted cash to buy a legitimate business because his drug money is simply less valuable.
I had a similar reaction. I view the AOL/TW merger as akin to money laundering.
During the dot com boom, the smart business people HAD to know that those companies were wildly over valued (PriceLine.com was worth more than the entire airline industry!). Steve Case prudently turned some of his play money into real money buy buying an actual, productive, fairly valued company.
And thats what money laundering is: turning dirty money into clean money.
my understanding, and I'm no expert (but slashdot-qualified none the less!) is that the "black box" is a diagnostic tool to allow airbag "them" to determine how/why the airbag triggered, and the circumstances underwhich it deployed. With that info it would be possible to determine the effectiveness of the air bag.
So the aribag isn't dependant on the "blackbox".