Skepticism should be the default position of everyone who studies science, even skepticism of those things that are very strongly established.
IANA Sicentist, but, Skepticism means doubting until one sees the evidence. When, after seeing evidence (or worse yet, refusing to see the evidence), one still clings to the null hypothesis, that is called "dogma".
Amicus curiae (plural amici curiae) is a legal Latin phrase, literally translated as "friend of the court", that refers to someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information on a point of law or some other aspect of the case to assist the court in deciding a matter before it. The information may be a legal opinion in the form of a brief - testimony that has not been solicited by any of the parties - or a learned treatise on a matter that bears on the case. The decision whether to admit the information lies with the discretion of the court.
In case anyone else was wondering what amicus curiae meant.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior.
I think you are just perpetuating the myth that Darwin was racist. I'm pretty sure that the Discovery Institute will be quoting your post in the following way:
I have found that, in general, the brown and red... are tougher, and... are genetically inferior.
I'm not a mathematician, and don't fully understand the significance of squaring the circle, but it seems to me that they had a, (to most non-mathematicians), irrelevant problem, which they couldn't solve. So they responded by passing an unnecessary bill, redefining good math.
Why should I believe that he won't be warped and corrupted by the power of the President's office?
It is very easy to dismiss someone on the assumption that every politician is corrupt. The problem is that they are not all equally corrupt or equally incompetent. One has to be better. So do you have any reason to believe Obama would be any better or worse than anybody else?
With this line of reasoning, why is there laws permitting forcible buying of physical property ? The very same problems arise.
No. The difference is that one cannot reasonably predict which properties the government will take in the future. There may be a few exceptions, but, normally, one cannot have any idea if a property will be a likely target for eminent domain in the future. With medication, we can reasonably assume that a toe fungus medication would be an unlikely target, and that a disease medication is much more likely to be taken.
This is also statistically different, as the amount of land in America is relatively high, and the amount of land purchased via eminent domain is relatively low. Because there are far fewer medication patents in America than there are plots of land, one could reasonably expect that the odds of a particular medication being a target of ED are much higher than the odds of a plot of land being taken.
(for the rest of this discussion, I am going to assume that the value of a property is equal to the maximum amount of money that can be extracted from it. One can ethically argue otherwise, but for this discussion it makes for fewer qualifiers).
First, freeing a patent is NOT even close to the same as buying X doses of patented medicine. Not even a little bit close. Not even if the two end up costing the same.
You're right. We're asking for something more valuable than the medication itself. A fair price would be much higher than it would, had we simply provided universal healthcare for the entire world.
When a patent is free, this also means that companies are free to make -improvements- to the patented medicine, to make -variants- to find ways to produce the medicine -cheaper-, none of these things are possible if all you bougth is X doses of the medicine.
You are 100% correct in this point. That is something that I hadn't thought of. Also, I will have to think about how this could be holding up innovation, today, since a company can hold onto a patent for twenty years, and then patent one of the variations you discussed (whereas independent researchers wouldn't have an incentive to wait twenty years to release a variation on an "open source" medication).
Your 3) is also wrong. Even if the government pays LESS than the company could make today by charging essentially whatever the hell they want to charge, it is still profitable to research these medicines aslong as the government payment is significantly higher than the development-cost.
But the question is, is that the most profitable way to spend their time and money? If they can only make 10 times their investment throught one avenue, but can make 100 times their investment buy channeling the same money toward a different drug, then the majority of the money is going to follow the majority of the profit.
That isn't to say that nobody will be researching these things, but there will be less competition, should the economic incentive be reduced.
One other problem is that "significantly higher" is not an entirely appropriate criteria. Because every investment has inherent risks (what if it doesn't work? What if it has harmful side-effects? What if we get sued over it?), the profits on those that are successful need to be enough higher so that they can make up for the failures. I don't know enough about the industry to know how much money gets spent researching drugs that eventually get rejected, but the "10 times investment" figure must be much lower, once it is averaged in with the "0 times investment" figure for previous projects.
In principal, I can agree with you, but eminent domain may do one of three things:
1). If the government estimates the value of the drug in about the same value that the drug companies place on the drug (ie, they give the companies the same amount that the companies would make had they sold the drug normally), then this is not that much different than having worldwide prescription drug coverage. The only difference is that, instead of buying the drug, the government is paying approximately the same price for the patent.
2). If the government overestimates the value of the drug, then this is corporate welfare.
3). If the government underestimates the value of the drug (or pays the company less than they would have made selling the drug themselves), then this encourages the drug companies to spend more of their time and money researching less relevant, but more profitable, issues, such as restless leg syndrome, and toe fungus. After all, why spend all of this money creating a drug that _may_ have some effectiveness against AIDS (until a resistant strain evolves), and that _may_ have safety issues that _may_ result in a lawsuit, only to have the prize taken away at the end?
So you're complaining that they gave you comp time, but not enough. And they got you a raise but not one large enough. Yeah. who needs any of that shit!
IANA Scientist, but the article seems to portray it as if they are simply trying to make a catalog of what normal variations exist.
But, there is one part that still does confuse me. From TFA:
These people will be anonymous and will not have any medical information collected on them, because the project is developing a basic resource to provide information on genetic variation.
Wouldn't it make much more sense to have a detailed listing of their medical history? For example, if one of those people has Alzheimer's disease (or any disease with a possible genetic connection), then that would be an interesting little footnote to have in the documentation.
Oh great, Pirate Bay is going to be slashdotted now...Their sys admins will report that Manilow, spears, and sucky music in general have become a cultural phenomena. The word "manilowed" will become a verb meaning "was crappy for fifty years, and, for no apparent reason, became incredibly popular".
The "Encyclopedia of Crap that Never happened" (not to be confused with the O'Reilly factor) will attribute it to Sony's "It's cool to be old and curly-haired" campaign, but we'll both know the real reason.
SETI is important not just because it could find aliens. There is the distinct possibility that we are alone in the universe (not that likely in my opinion). A positive result would be more interesting than this constant negative we have been getting but it is important that we find out what is going on. Just because we may never see a positive doesn't mean we should stop. Having the evidence that we are indeed alone is just important as having evidence that life exists out there.
IANA Scientist, but the search we have performed so far is by-no-means exhaustive. From the SETI Faq:
while there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, less than a thousand have been scrutinized with high sensitivity.
Although SETI has been searching for nearly fifty years, with no solid evidence, we have currently studied less than 1/10,000th of a percent of the galaxy with "high sensitivity". It is still too early to make any conclusions.
The research is a little deeper than you imply, it seems to be showing the biochemical mechanism which causes this phenomenon. knowing that repetition helps learning is simple, knowing exactly why it does so is useful if we ever want to do anything interesting with our brains from a technological standpoint.
Yeah, I figured that part out halfway through a Danzig song
Which are still quite a bit less than what people here view as an absolute right to backup media and then do what you want with the backups.
I don't know if you are the same guy I had been arguing with previously, but, if so, I would like to apologize for any rudeness in my responses.
I, and, (more importantly), the legal system, would disagree with anyone who suggests that fair-use legalizes file-sharing, or space-shifting. (Due to the "de minimus" ruling on space-shifting, during the Napster case, I'm curious how a case would play out if effective protections were in place, making a "space-shifting" service that effectively prevented file-sharing...but that's a different matter). My original post was that Fair Use would protect the encoding of audio CDs into MP3 form. I'm not sure if I specified that it was for personal use, and involved transferring the contents from a legally obtained CD, but I was not arguing about the distribution of the files. As for the conversion itself, it looks like that would be analogous to the first two points.
As for the bit about the owner having the right to use "protection technology", I am a little confused about what "straight dope" is trying to say. Does that mean that the content provider can't be sued for having the technology, or does that mean that we do not have the right to circumvent the technology? The first interpretation sounds like the view of the law prior to the DMCA, while the second interpretation sounds like the post-DMCA view.
if Google comes up with some social networking tool that is really well-designed, fun and cool, and it isn't too obnoxious in the way it uses advertising and corporate boosterism...
Well, that is definitely something that spacebook and myspace haven't tried yet.
To say that fair abridgment is the same as current fair use is, at best, facetious.
Possibly. I don't know if "fair abridgment" has a formal definition, or if it would permit such things as space-shifting or home-recording. Personally, I don't care. There may have, at one time, been a law that enforced the same concept, but by a different name. We can split hairs all day bickering over whether they are synonyms, or if one is a predecessor. To say that they are unrelated, is, "at best facetious".
As for timeshifting, the copyright act defines a set of criteria that can be used to determine fair use, with one of them being "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." Timeshifting was determined to cause no harm upon the marketability of the product, and therefore, be part of fair use. So, the word "fair use" has been a legal term for over thirty years, and timeshifting has been recognized as in compliance with that for over 25 years.
Noob question: Will this affect the way people look at punctuated equilibrium? I don't know if it was widely accepted before, but this seems to add quite a bit of weight to the theory.
And no, "fair use" is unique to the United States. Similar things exist elsewhere, but "fair use" originated here, not AT (not in) English (not British) common law.
The legal concept of "copyright" was first ratified by the United Kingdom's Statute of Anne of 1709. As room was not made for the authorized reproduction of copyrighted content within this newly formulated statutory right, the courts gradually created a doctrine of "fair abridgment," which later became "fair use," that recognized the utility of such actions. The doctrine only existed in the U.S. as common law until it was incorporated into the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. 107...
(Anonymous_coward also said)
Go to law school. Then come back.
Two possible responses:
I have not been to law school. I have had one college level course in law, as it pertains to intellectual properties issues (which is where I got my information about Fair Use), and everything else, I learned from having a casual interest in the subject. I am assuming that nobody uses the slashdot forum for legal research, and one does not have to be an expert to post. Your previous two posts seem to affirm that.
You go to law school. And stay there!
I will be taking votes on which one becomes the official canonical response.
Slashdot Mirror
So, is the accounting the only creative thing coming out of Hollywood these days?
IANA Sicentist, but, Skepticism means doubting until one sees the evidence. When, after seeing evidence (or worse yet, refusing to see the evidence), one still clings to the null hypothesis, that is called "dogma".
From Wikipedia
In case anyone else was wondering what amicus curiae meant.
I think you are just perpetuating the myth that Darwin was racist. I'm pretty sure that the Discovery Institute will be quoting your post in the following way:
I'm not a mathematician, and don't fully understand the significance of squaring the circle, but it seems to me that they had a, (to most non-mathematicians), irrelevant problem, which they couldn't solve. So they responded by passing an unnecessary bill, redefining good math.
Sometimes it's best to just say "I don't know"
It is very easy to dismiss someone on the assumption that every politician is corrupt. The problem is that they are not all equally corrupt or equally incompetent. One has to be better. So do you have any reason to believe Obama would be any better or worse than anybody else?
No. The difference is that one cannot reasonably predict which properties the government will take in the future. There may be a few exceptions, but, normally, one cannot have any idea if a property will be a likely target for eminent domain in the future. With medication, we can reasonably assume that a toe fungus medication would be an unlikely target, and that a disease medication is much more likely to be taken.
This is also statistically different, as the amount of land in America is relatively high, and the amount of land purchased via eminent domain is relatively low. Because there are far fewer medication patents in America than there are plots of land, one could reasonably expect that the odds of a particular medication being a target of ED are much higher than the odds of a plot of land being taken.
(for the rest of this discussion, I am going to assume that the value of a property is equal to the maximum amount of money that can be extracted from it. One can ethically argue otherwise, but for this discussion it makes for fewer qualifiers).
You're right. We're asking for something more valuable than the medication itself. A fair price would be much higher than it would, had we simply provided universal healthcare for the entire world.
You are 100% correct in this point. That is something that I hadn't thought of. Also, I will have to think about how this could be holding up innovation, today, since a company can hold onto a patent for twenty years, and then patent one of the variations you discussed (whereas independent researchers wouldn't have an incentive to wait twenty years to release a variation on an "open source" medication).
But the question is, is that the most profitable way to spend their time and money? If they can only make 10 times their investment throught one avenue, but can make 100 times their investment buy channeling the same money toward a different drug, then the majority of the money is going to follow the majority of the profit.
That isn't to say that nobody will be researching these things, but there will be less competition, should the economic incentive be reduced.
One other problem is that "significantly higher" is not an entirely appropriate criteria. Because every investment has inherent risks (what if it doesn't work? What if it has harmful side-effects? What if we get sued over it?), the profits on those that are successful need to be enough higher so that they can make up for the failures. I don't know enough about the industry to know how much money gets spent researching drugs that eventually get rejected, but the "10 times investment" figure must be much lower, once it is averaged in with the "0 times investment" figure for previous projects.
In principal, I can agree with you, but eminent domain may do one of three things:
1). If the government estimates the value of the drug in about the same value that the drug companies place on the drug (ie, they give the companies the same amount that the companies would make had they sold the drug normally), then this is not that much different than having worldwide prescription drug coverage. The only difference is that, instead of buying the drug, the government is paying approximately the same price for the patent.
2). If the government overestimates the value of the drug, then this is corporate welfare.
3). If the government underestimates the value of the drug (or pays the company less than they would have made selling the drug themselves), then this encourages the drug companies to spend more of their time and money researching less relevant, but more profitable, issues, such as restless leg syndrome, and toe fungus. After all, why spend all of this money creating a drug that _may_ have some effectiveness against AIDS (until a resistant strain evolves), and that _may_ have safety issues that _may_ result in a lawsuit, only to have the prize taken away at the end?
So you're complaining that they gave you comp time, but not enough. And they got you a raise but not one large enough. Yeah. who needs any of that shit!
IANA Scientist, but the article seems to portray it as if they are simply trying to make a catalog of what normal variations exist.
But, there is one part that still does confuse me. From TFA:
Wouldn't it make much more sense to have a detailed listing of their medical history? For example, if one of those people has Alzheimer's disease (or any disease with a possible genetic connection), then that would be an interesting little footnote to have in the documentation.
So we're safe as long as we don't touch or have sex with any UW-Madison scientists, or their monkeys.
Since the person chosen for VP is usually the guy who lost the primaries, that means that the next in line is probably less competent than you.
Well, it's good to see a happy ending. She has a new friend to play with and is learning new things.
Oh great, Pirate Bay is going to be slashdotted now...Their sys admins will report that Manilow, spears, and sucky music in general have become a cultural phenomena. The word "manilowed" will become a verb meaning "was crappy for fifty years, and, for no apparent reason, became incredibly popular".
The "Encyclopedia of Crap that Never happened" (not to be confused with the O'Reilly factor) will attribute it to Sony's "It's cool to be old and curly-haired" campaign, but we'll both know the real reason.
I hate you more than you'll ever know.
Do they monitor the "advice volunteers" to see if they are really helping, or just giving bad advice to see how frustrated the newbies get?
I could see volunteering becoming a new time-waster in high-schools and workplaces.
IANA Scientist, but the search we have performed so far is by-no-means exhaustive. From the SETI Faq:
Although SETI has been searching for nearly fifty years, with no solid evidence, we have currently studied less than 1/10,000th of a percent of the galaxy with "high sensitivity". It is still too early to make any conclusions.
Yeah, I figured that part out halfway through a Danzig song
I don't know if you are the same guy I had been arguing with previously, but, if so, I would like to apologize for any rudeness in my responses.
I, and, (more importantly), the legal system, would disagree with anyone who suggests that fair-use legalizes file-sharing, or space-shifting. (Due to the "de minimus" ruling on space-shifting, during the Napster case, I'm curious how a case would play out if effective protections were in place, making a "space-shifting" service that effectively prevented file-sharing...but that's a different matter). My original post was that Fair Use would protect the encoding of audio CDs into MP3 form. I'm not sure if I specified that it was for personal use, and involved transferring the contents from a legally obtained CD, but I was not arguing about the distribution of the files. As for the conversion itself, it looks like that would be analogous to the first two points.
As for the bit about the owner having the right to use "protection technology", I am a little confused about what "straight dope" is trying to say. Does that mean that the content provider can't be sued for having the technology, or does that mean that we do not have the right to circumvent the technology? The first interpretation sounds like the view of the law prior to the DMCA, while the second interpretation sounds like the post-DMCA view.
Possibly. I don't know if "fair abridgment" has a formal definition, or if it would permit such things as space-shifting or home-recording. Personally, I don't care. There may have, at one time, been a law that enforced the same concept, but by a different name. We can split hairs all day bickering over whether they are synonyms, or if one is a predecessor. To say that they are unrelated, is, "at best facetious".
As for timeshifting, the copyright act defines a set of criteria that can be used to determine fair use, with one of them being "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." Timeshifting was determined to cause no harm upon the marketability of the product, and therefore, be part of fair use. So, the word "fair use" has been a legal term for over thirty years, and timeshifting has been recognized as in compliance with that for over 25 years.
No, but it did make the top Ten Man-Made Disast...Oh never mind. Too easy
Yes. That's why we have to try so hard to protect privacy.
Noob question: Will this affect the way people look at punctuated equilibrium? I don't know if it was widely accepted before, but this seems to add quite a bit of weight to the theory.
From wikipedia:
(Anonymous_coward also said)Two possible responses:
I will be taking votes on which one becomes the official canonical response.