The only thing Wakefield was promising was profit from his own alt-vaccine endeavors. His research has been as thoroughly examined--and as throughly debunked--as just about anything in medicine. There's no global cabal behind this. The science is in, and the "big red flag" is not a conspiracy theorist's recitation. It's the numerous independent determinations by medical professionals around the world that Wakefield's results were the result of scientific fraud, and not a reflection of medical truth.
However, you probably already know this, because you seem to be interested in the subject. So I'm left with the conclusion that you're either a) willfully ignorant, b) a very subtle troll who thinks the return of vaccine-preventable diseases would be funny, or c) a shill.
I hate it when people toss the word "shill" around on/., but you don't strike me as a troll. And I dont think there's enough cotton in the world to stuff in your ears that you could still honestly believe Wakefield anything other than a criminally negligent huckster. So... enjoy your checks?
You can always tell who's a paid shill here once you see AC lamenting the slashdot "echo chamber" that forced them to go anon with their awful prepackaged ideas.
Yo dawg, I heard you like Facebook at Work, so we put a Facebook at Work in your Facebook at work so you can Facebook at Work while you Facebook at work.
Each and every falsely approved patent is a sure sign of corruption, each and every single one, that was not novel or unique or new. That it the job of any patent office and they are failing at it and that is corruption of office.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Constitutional requirements" - there are no Constitutional requirements for patents. That is in the law.
I like the points you're making above, but this statement is incorrect. There *are* constitutional requirements on patents (and copyrights, which come from the same clause). Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, empowers the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Nearly every word in that clause circumscribes -- and has thus been enshrined in -- patent law.
"Useful arts" - What we now think of as science and engineering; the requirement to "promote" the "useful arts" by securing "discoveries" gives us utility and novelty requirements. Congress does not have the power to pass a law allowing you to patent something with no known use (like a random chemical formula) or that is nonfunctional by its very nature (trying to patent a perpetual motion machine).
By this language, Congress also does not have the power to pass a law taking knowledge back from the public domain, i.e. abrogating novelty. Stuff we already know is not a discovery, nor is it promoting the useful arts to grant a monopoly on such.
"Limited times" - Congress does not have the power to pass a law that gives patents unlimited duration (or copyrights, for that matter, but that perpetual +20yr end-run around the Constitution is a clusterfuck for a different day).
"Inventors" - Gives us the inventorship requirements, including the mandate that each of (and only) the actual inventors be listed. The standard used to be first to invent, now it's first inventor to file, but in every era you still had to be the inventor (with some new allowances for employers of inventors). Congress cannot pass a law giving rando non-inventors the right to seek patent protection. That's what assignments are for.
-1 Baseless Namecalling. There are many problems with the patent system, and IP laws in general. Corruption at the USPTO isn't one of them. If you have evidence of actual corruption -- you know, bribery, graft, extortion, embezzlement, favoritism based on political patronage -- please provide. Or are we all just going to become little Donald Trumps and say mean words instead of making reasoned arguments?
"Cool clock, I hear it's accurate for a billion years!"
"Yeah. But I keep it in this chaotic field of hypervelocity space debris where millions of tiny bits of junk are whizzing around, constantly threatening to punch a big hole in my clock."
"So... you don't think it's going to last a billion years?"
"I'm not optimistic."
Sure, coming right up!
"In Soviet Verizon, data uses you!"
Or how about
"I just flew in from Chicago and boy are my arms tired from beating the crap out of these Verizon accountants who tried to defraud me out of ten thousand bucks!"
That last one's more observational humor.
So... just for my own understanding, the Slashdot Hierarchy of Evil goes, in order from Most Evil to Most Good:
systemd - First Post AC trolls - Voldemort - "GOTO" statements - Satan, the Great Deceiver Himself - SCO - Uber - Hitler - RCA (wtf did cash registers ever do to you?) - North Korea - Flash - Apple - Sony - Microsoft - JavaScript - parking tickets - Google - not getting a raise, but not getting fired - Ruby on $whatever - Linus - "free as in speech" - Python - Stallman - "free as in beer" - xkcd - (extremely) Hot Grits - C and its variants - rolling a natural 20 - meeting a girl outside of Mom's basement who is not Mom
Is our society so alcohol obsessed that we consider the pinnacle of father-son bonding to be the consumption of alcohol in each other's presence? What is wrong with us?
Is our society so family obsessed that we'd force father and son to spend their drinking time with each other? What is wrong with us?
I know you were trying for a catchy, meme-worthy portmanteau, but all I can see is a half hour Home Shopping Network cooking demo where they're carving turkey with Hitler's cutlery. Replica war hawks on the pommels and everything!
It takes faith to believe that 2 + 2 is 4. The word "because" isn't a good answer.
No. There are plenty of examples of the requirement of "belief" in science, this isn't one of them.
You cannot be an expert in every field of study, and perform all your own experiments verifying the entirety of accumulated human knowledge. That means, to some extent, you must trust (i.e. have faith in) the processes that produced all that knowledge. It's the kind of faith that can be replaced with a degree of certainty, if you care to prove these things to yourself and replicate the experiments, but it's a kind of faith nonetheless.
Two plus two equals four not because you believe the results of an experiment you did not yourself verify, but because you were taught a mathematical system in which the result of performing the arithmetic operation of addition on the numbers 2 and 2 results in 4. No faith necessary.
If you're using math to describe real world objects, then you can grab two oranges and two plums and put them together and count them. You don't have to call the result "four," you can call it "quattro" or "loS" or "harfshump." Whatever you decide to call that collection of four objects is your description of a group of things that has a cardinality of 4. You need only have faith in your ability to put a descriptor on a fact that is independently true. If you just got hit over the head, and you see four pieces of fruit but there's really only two, 2 + 2 still equals 4. You were just wrong about starting with 2 and 2.
If you'd prefer that two plus two equals something other than four, you are free to use a different system (e.g. one where 2 + 2 = 0 and 2 * 2 = 3) or cook up your own. Go nuts, toss the integers out the window, devise a system where [nothing] plus <purple> equals {%%%}. However, 2 plus 2 will still equal 4, axiomatically, in the system everybody else uses.
In other news, a burglar the authorities are calling the "Basil Bandit" has made off with dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of spice containers stolen from the offices of the Recording Industry Association of America. Security footage shows a hooded figure carrying armloads of cumin, paprika, onion powder, and thyme.
A facilities manager was seen staring blankly at a long row of empty cupboards, lamenting, "They... they took it all! Every last spice!"
No word yet on the thief's identity or motive, but a psychological profiler working with law enforcement paints a stark picture. "Adult male, 25-40, anger issues, filled with bitterness and salty rage. Possibly a former employee who left on bad terms. Poorly educated; certainly no sage or scholar. I'd treat this suspect gingerly -- someone who'd attempt this kind of caper likely has a criminal history peppered with major thefts and violent assaults."
The Basil Bandit also left a chilling message that has authorities scrambling to prevent his next heist. That message, written in what appears to be chili powder, reads: "I despice RIAA/Rightscorp etc"
We'll keep you updated as the investigation unfolds.
Slashdot Mirror
"Nearly 9 Out of 10 Smartphones Shipped Run On Android"
And only 3 out of 10 of them experience unwanted explosions!
See that's trolling for a funny.
The only foreign political leader Trump ever praises is Putin.
Oh ho ho! If only Trump's admiration for oppressive leaders and regimes were limited to Putin.
the brilliant and promising Dr. Andrew Wakefield
The only thing Wakefield was promising was profit from his own alt-vaccine endeavors. His research has been as thoroughly examined--and as throughly debunked--as just about anything in medicine. There's no global cabal behind this. The science is in, and the "big red flag" is not a conspiracy theorist's recitation. It's the numerous independent determinations by medical professionals around the world that Wakefield's results were the result of scientific fraud, and not a reflection of medical truth.
/., but you don't strike me as a troll. And I dont think there's enough cotton in the world to stuff in your ears that you could still honestly believe Wakefield anything other than a criminally negligent huckster. So... enjoy your checks?
However, you probably already know this, because you seem to be interested in the subject. So I'm left with the conclusion that you're either a) willfully ignorant, b) a very subtle troll who thinks the return of vaccine-preventable diseases would be funny, or c) a shill.
I hate it when people toss the word "shill" around on
This +1,000,000
Oblig xkcd.
Also, it turns out "Randall Munroe" is just the name the Matrix gave to its future-predicting algorithm.
You can always tell who's a paid shill here once you see AC lamenting the slashdot "echo chamber" that forced them to go anon with their awful prepackaged ideas.
Kettle, is that you?
Yo dawg, I heard you like Facebook at Work, so we put a Facebook at Work in your Facebook at work so you can Facebook at Work while you Facebook at work.
... you mean Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).
I know you're trying to be pedantic, AC, but TFS is referring to the actual University of Georgia Tech, in South Carolina.
Each and every falsely approved patent is a sure sign of corruption, each and every single one, that was not novel or unique or new. That it the job of any patent office and they are failing at it and that is corruption of office.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Constitutional requirements" - there are no Constitutional requirements for patents. That is in the law.
I like the points you're making above, but this statement is incorrect. There *are* constitutional requirements on patents (and copyrights, which come from the same clause). Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution, empowers the United States Congress:
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
Nearly every word in that clause circumscribes -- and has thus been enshrined in -- patent law.
"Useful arts" - What we now think of as science and engineering; the requirement to "promote" the "useful arts" by securing "discoveries" gives us utility and novelty requirements. Congress does not have the power to pass a law allowing you to patent something with no known use (like a random chemical formula) or that is nonfunctional by its very nature (trying to patent a perpetual motion machine).
By this language, Congress also does not have the power to pass a law taking knowledge back from the public domain, i.e. abrogating novelty. Stuff we already know is not a discovery, nor is it promoting the useful arts to grant a monopoly on such.
"Limited times" - Congress does not have the power to pass a law that gives patents unlimited duration (or copyrights, for that matter, but that perpetual +20yr end-run around the Constitution is a clusterfuck for a different day).
"Inventors" - Gives us the inventorship requirements, including the mandate that each of (and only) the actual inventors be listed. The standard used to be first to invent, now it's first inventor to file, but in every era you still had to be the inventor (with some new allowances for employers of inventors). Congress cannot pass a law giving rando non-inventors the right to seek patent protection. That's what assignments are for.
-1 Baseless Namecalling. There are many problems with the patent system, and IP laws in general. Corruption at the USPTO isn't one of them. If you have evidence of actual corruption -- you know, bribery, graft, extortion, embezzlement, favoritism based on political patronage -- please provide. Or are we all just going to become little Donald Trumps and say mean words instead of making reasoned arguments?
"Cool clock, I hear it's accurate for a billion years!"
"Yeah. But I keep it in this chaotic field of hypervelocity space debris where millions of tiny bits of junk are whizzing around, constantly threatening to punch a big hole in my clock."
"So... you don't think it's going to last a billion years?"
"I'm not optimistic."
A joke
Sure, coming right up!
"In Soviet Verizon, data uses you!"
Or how about
"I just flew in from Chicago and boy are my arms tired from beating the crap out of these Verizon accountants who tried to defraud me out of ten thousand bucks!"
That last one's more observational humor.
Well, no one would go to the forbes links.
+1 Best Internet Trend of the Year
So... just for my own understanding, the Slashdot Hierarchy of Evil goes, in order from Most Evil to Most Good:
systemd - First Post AC trolls - Voldemort - "GOTO" statements - Satan, the Great Deceiver Himself - SCO - Uber - Hitler - RCA (wtf did cash registers ever do to you?) - North Korea - Flash - Apple - Sony - Microsoft - JavaScript - parking tickets - Google - not getting a raise, but not getting fired - Ruby on $whatever - Linus - "free as in speech" - Python - Stallman - "free as in beer" - xkcd - (extremely) Hot Grits - C and its variants - rolling a natural 20 - meeting a girl outside of Mom's basement who is not Mom
Is that about right?
Is our society so alcohol obsessed that we consider the pinnacle of father-son bonding to be the consumption of alcohol in each other's presence? What is wrong with us?
Is our society so family obsessed that we'd force father and son to spend their drinking time with each other? What is wrong with us?
Mobil phones
Sound like pretty crude devices to me. *ducks*
And war hawk Hitlery will see to it !
I know you were trying for a catchy, meme-worthy portmanteau, but all I can see is a half hour Home Shopping Network cooking demo where they're carving turkey with Hitler's cutlery. Replica war hawks on the pommels and everything!
What? Are you against unhilded profits!?
What in the hild are you talking about?
This is like taxing car owners to subsidize stage coaches.
Indeed. MA screwed the metaphorical pooch on a coupe other levels, too. For example from TFS:
requirements . . . such as regular vehicle inspection by the police
Which is like having your regular colonoscopy done by the fire department.
What could possibly go wrong?
Oblig. Morpheus.
Much love for the city. But Uber must be pretty confident in its fleet to trial it in a city of demanding geography and interesting driving practices that gets Real Northern Winters.
My guess is it's a belated apology for absconding with CMU's robotics talent.
Science is not a belief.
It takes faith to believe that 2 + 2 is 4. The word "because" isn't a good answer.
No. There are plenty of examples of the requirement of "belief" in science, this isn't one of them.
You cannot be an expert in every field of study, and perform all your own experiments verifying the entirety of accumulated human knowledge. That means, to some extent, you must trust (i.e. have faith in) the processes that produced all that knowledge. It's the kind of faith that can be replaced with a degree of certainty, if you care to prove these things to yourself and replicate the experiments, but it's a kind of faith nonetheless.
Two plus two equals four not because you believe the results of an experiment you did not yourself verify, but because you were taught a mathematical system in which the result of performing the arithmetic operation of addition on the numbers 2 and 2 results in 4. No faith necessary.
If you're using math to describe real world objects, then you can grab two oranges and two plums and put them together and count them. You don't have to call the result "four," you can call it "quattro" or "loS" or "harfshump." Whatever you decide to call that collection of four objects is your description of a group of things that has a cardinality of 4. You need only have faith in your ability to put a descriptor on a fact that is independently true. If you just got hit over the head, and you see four pieces of fruit but there's really only two, 2 + 2 still equals 4. You were just wrong about starting with 2 and 2.
If you'd prefer that two plus two equals something other than four, you are free to use a different system (e.g. one where 2 + 2 = 0 and 2 * 2 = 3) or cook up your own. Go nuts, toss the integers out the window, devise a system where [nothing] plus <purple> equals {%%%}. However, 2 plus 2 will still equal 4, axiomatically, in the system everybody else uses.
All bow before the Gap God!
Whoa, heathen. Don't go putting your weirdo deities on everyone else. Some of us pray to J. Crew Jesus or the Old Navy Oversoul.
In other news, a burglar the authorities are calling the "Basil Bandit" has made off with dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of spice containers stolen from the offices of the Recording Industry Association of America. Security footage shows a hooded figure carrying armloads of cumin, paprika, onion powder, and thyme.
A facilities manager was seen staring blankly at a long row of empty cupboards, lamenting, "They... they took it all! Every last spice!"
No word yet on the thief's identity or motive, but a psychological profiler working with law enforcement paints a stark picture. "Adult male, 25-40, anger issues, filled with bitterness and salty rage. Possibly a former employee who left on bad terms. Poorly educated; certainly no sage or scholar. I'd treat this suspect gingerly -- someone who'd attempt this kind of caper likely has a criminal history peppered with major thefts and violent assaults."
The Basil Bandit also left a chilling message that has authorities scrambling to prevent his next heist. That message, written in what appears to be chili powder, reads: "I despice RIAA/Rightscorp etc"
We'll keep you updated as the investigation unfolds.