And then charge us for how many miles we drive because gas consumption decreases. As discussed yesterday. Move us to clean energy and then tax the wind.
Or not, for those with a clue. But sure, if those conspiracy theories are what give meaning to your life, keep believing them.
So we assume by "phone" you mean "cell phone" which presumably connects to "cell towers". Since when is this information not already logged and gathered by the telcos running the towers? If you're worried about "location privacy", how about not carrying around a device which broadcasts a unique ID that's collected by third parties?
Yes, this is already a matter of a either a phone or complete privacy.
Open specification is giving the requirements, but not necessarily a detailed plan, for a pole. (And then probably charging licensing fees when someone makes a pole using the spec; "open" is not "free".)
"Open Source" is giving someone the plans for a pole in detail, and allowing them to do whatever they want with the plans, including modification or redistribution (perhaps we could better label this "Free Hardware").
Remember, just because you get can get binaries and happen to have a compiler doesn't mean that "open source" software is anything but "detailed plans" that have to be built in order to actually do anything.
Is this the reason API docs are horrific now?
on
GNOME 3 Released
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· Score: 1
Is the new page for GTK2 docs a horrible textvomit for anyone else? Did they break this specifically for this release?
Ideas are easy, implementation is hard. MS allegedly has some pieces of paper that say "we thought of this first! you can't use my idea!" Google has an actual piece of software that works pretty well. If patents worked at all like they should, MS could only patent their actual implementation of something, not the mere concept itself.
4.5 hours is what I'd call sad... note that the metric is just a useful one based on time-to-die from a full charge while playing under certain settings. Realistic use is going to be play for an hour or few, suspend, play some more, suspend, etc. This eats up that juice with a lot of non-play-time. Unless you're diligent about plugging it in every time you turn it off (unreasonable for what should be a portable unit), every time you turn this on it'll be dead or dying.
This is essentially the insult on top of the "barely upgraded graphics" and "3D gives you a headache and only works if the device and your head are absolutely stationary" injury. (If you don't believe these are true, go try one... Best Buy has demo units. 3D is definitely cool and I'd rather they just used polarized glasses.) My guess is they assume you're actually going to play with the thing on its charging base screwed to a table, so battery life wouldn't be an issue anyway.
Anyhow this unit is definitely the "original GBA" of its generation. I'm sure it'll be cited along with the "no backlight" design of the original GBA as "bad decisions that made a desirable device nearly unplayable". I'll stick with my DS Lite until they have the 3DSi Lite SP Turbo Plus Platinum XL or whatever the second revision is called.
But that's boring and informative (and correct) and certainly doesn't get you to go "wtf?" and click the story. Or comment on it and generate more traffic. It certainly doesn't lead immediately to insightful discussion by developers on release schedules, development cycles, and that sort of thing. You know, news for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Google is strong because their search engine is strong. Take that away and they're not the Google we know today.
This may be true, but the original approach doesn't really take advantage of this strength. You're a search engine. You're the most popular search engine. Don't delist. Simply make some "Movie execs eat your children" site the #1 hit for any MPAA-related search. (That's any MPAA-backed movie, studio, etc.)
Yeah it's never going to happen either, but you know it'd be awesome if it did.
This response is the usual BS handwaving from MS. There's a single paragraph which says essentially "er... they do click fraud!" without any real technical details or explanation. This is quite different from Google's posts, which are all very detailed about what they're doing and the results they're seeing. The rest of MS's article is marketing history... not once is there real explanation of how they happen to have extremely obscure words pulling results for exactly what Google does. Just spin.
Thanks for trying, MS. You can't even come up with a technical response, and you want us to believe you can come up with a search engine?
The reality is that companies want regulation passed that benefits that company - that is the point of lobbying after all.
So that is why the only position you can possibly support if you are "anti-corperate" is no regulation at all.
False dichotomy; companies want regulation passed that benefits them, but this is not the only possible regulation. Therefore the only "anti-corporate" choice is not "no regulation." This is especially true since "no regulation" highly benefits another subset of companies (namely certain large ISPs like Comcast) who hold local monopolies, and already want anti-individual/customer/citizen measures which will raise prices and reduce quality.
Indeed, regulation that benefits individuals is "anti-corporate," or at least corporation-neutral and anti-monopoly-abuse, which is the real purpose here. Knee-jerk reactions to anything labeled "corporate" (or "regulation") aren't the answer. Preventing the abuse of individual customers is.
Seriously... we all know Google etc already pay for the uplink, power, servers, etc, and the "users" that are using bandwidth are the people requesting. Who are also paying ISPs already for what they use (the ISPs wrote the contracts!).
Logic and reason aren't going to work here or they already would have. It's unfortunate Google has sworn off evil; they're in a unique position here to do what a less philanthropic business would have long ago: start demanding payment from ISPs, especially the big ones. Hey Comcast, want your users to have fast access to Google? You should start paying Google then. Or maybe AT&T will sign and your customers will go there, because everyone uses Google.
Of course, this will cause politicians etc to start whining about fairness, antitrust, and how the net should be neutral to large players. Congratulations, we win. =P
This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD.
I'm assuming you started counting at 'zero'. Once again the halo effect of arrays haunts our daily lives.
It wouldn't matter, it still has 4 words. An array counted 0..3 still is said to have four elements, not three. If he'd said "word 3 is BAD", he could have gotten off with this excuse.;-)
His point is that whatever you type to the address is not being send to anywhere.
Anywhere like unencrypted to DNS servers, or the sites you're accessing, or... OK so I guess this protects you from Google seeing your typos. Wow. Hint: Your ISP (or whoever's endpoint your VPN tunnel comes out on) sees all this stuff anyway. Hint 2: You aren't important enough for anyone to care.
Ever since tablets were usable, they've had full operating systems, primarily Windows.
Windows is a "full operating system" in the sense a cheapass laundry machine is a "full cleaning solution". It's a cobbled-together appliance with rusty parts you're lucky doesn't burn down your house.
The reason people don't want a tablet, especially the iPad, is because it doesn't do anything special. It's pretty much the same "throw existing apps on something without a keyboard and call it a tablet" that everyone else has tried. That's not how the iPod and iPhone were successful. It's not how smartphones became successful in general, or even how netbooks became successful. If you want to make a real tablet, you've got to have a focused, tablet-oriented system, and a pervasive tablet UI. Unfortunately, the one possibly valid point in the article starts to hint at this and then veers back into clueless land.
So Ubisoft is going mandate ridiculous DRM measures. Ubisoft. This is the company/publisher who, as far as I can tell, has barely produced one game that didn't suck in a long time. And that's just because compared to Assassin's Creed 1, it'd be hard for 2 not to look good. Yeah. So long Ubisoft, I can't say it was fun.
Maybe this is a good thing, though. Someone like Blizzard doing this would have people grumbling and moaning and everyone would still put up with it because they need their WoW or Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 or whatever. If someone like Ubisoft does it, and it's just one more reason for people not to buy their crap, and they go under, maybe it will make other companies think twice before trying similar stupidity. Maybe.
Yeah, I would easily pay $100 if I could save things to a memory card and recall pages from thumbnails. Double that or more if it did some basic diagram aid (draw a rough rectangle, have it neatened). I've been searching for the ideal "electronic graph paper" and I have yet to find anything. It doesn't need to play movies or browse the web or send email... ok, it could have basic wifi and be able to email diagrams... but still. A few functions for drawing and writing and diagramming, some storage and searching, and that's all it needs.
That said this looks like this product probably can't even address pixels. It's probably lucky to just get enough current to the whole panel so that it clears. I doubt that requires even half the electronics of a 4-function calculator, but then I'm not an EE.
It's actually a pretty scary idea that google thinks it has enough power to change the governing policy of one of the biggest countries in the world.
This has not been shown to be the case. I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Does Google put their foot down, or don't they? Do they give into the local laws and help oppress, or don't they? I don't see Google invading China with corporate armies, or hacking Chinese government systems, or subverting Chinese government employees here.
A country cannot work if they have to change their laws according to the wishes of a company.
No, but a company is made up of people, and in a democracy, those people have a say in how the country is run, along with every other citizen. Perhaps you don't live in a country with a democratic form of government, or you don't value the freedom of each voice being heard. However, in the United States, we do value these things.
But in the end it still comes down to one question: should Google support China's repressive government, or not? If you condemn them either way, you are a hypocrite. And you'll have to make a really, really good case for "should support repression" as being "not evil".
I don't think WHO was the only one warning about this. And "warnings" are that; "this could happen" isn't "this is absolutely going to happen". And it's dangerous to not consider a threat a threat if there's not a 95%+ chance it'll be a threat.
I mean, sure, I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate for WHO, at least in this post. I personally think it's probably been overblown, at least by the media, but that's what the entertainment industry thrives on: attention. If it's not one circus, it's another.
That said, my point above is that, as the person or group of people making this decision (made by more than one group in more than one country) they still did the right thing. It's probably even hard to show at this point that the vaccine won't still be used, or didn't have a critical effect. It's hard to say, but when you're dealing with the health and well-being of millions, it's better to err on the safe side.
Surely people are right to question whether there is a conflict of interest with regards to who is giving that information? In your scenario, the person making the decision is very, very susceptible to manipulation, because you're arguing that a decision must be made regardless of the quality or accuracy of the information.
I would disagree about "susceptible to manipulation". This is not a Hollywood movie; there are not global conspiracies by drug companies to push vaccines onto unsuspecting millions to.. do whatever.. by influencing at a ground level thousands of doctors and scientists examining the situation so their reports feed back up to the people making these decisions. Nor is this going to be a single person being handed a report by staff members who are conspiring to manipulate the person into.. what, committing a few hundred million, for some drugs. I mean, this sort of thing is what you see on crappy B made-for-TV scifi movies that are too boring to watch.
Maybe there was a conflict of interest, and if it's reasonable, sure. Maybe the person committing hundreds of millions had some stake in the company in question and profited from it somehow. If this is the case, justice should certainly be brought about.
On the other hand, drug companies have likely taken a huge risk just delivering this stuff in a short period of time. Biotech firms are also used to working in the tens of billions when it comes to investment, and generally for something that's going to be around longer than a season. I mean, think of this in terms of IT. You have reason to believe you've got an emergency situation requiring a massive upgrade to your server farm; you call Dell, say "I need 10000 highly configured servers yesterday, just make it happen." If they deliver, they're taking a massive risk; they're going to demand you commit, probably pay extra, and they're not going to take the servers back because they can't use them. Now maybe you own Dell stock, and this contract makes it go up a few bucks. Is that an issue? Could be, but it's utterly peripheral. No pun intended.;-)
So, want me to sell you a nuclear bunker? It's only 150,000 dollars. And as you can see, it's the ONLY logical choice.
No, because I said "credible threat," and war is not a credible threat on the US mainland at this point. Nor is this Wargames; global thermonuclear war is not a credible threat at this time either. (Hell, they just moved the doomsday clock back a minute; these are people who are more credible than a youtube video.) If nuclear war was imminent, and if building a bunker was a viable strategy for survival, then yes, building one would be a good choice. Those are a lot of "ifs" and none of them have any reasonable probability at this time.
You're acting as if those 4 options had equal probability. They don't.
The probability is indeterminate, even in hindsight, without a vast amount of study. However, the estimate of a "H1N1 Is A Big Deal" event based on, among other things, prior experience with H1N1, and the studied opinion of many experts in the field, lead us to believe that it is high-enough probability we should take it seriously. Also, we have a relatively low-cost solution that has a high guaranteed return. Not taking it is simply irresponsible.
Possibly you borrowed this fallacious line of reasoning from the recent global warming videos doing the rounds on youtube.
This is not a fallacious argument. There is not enough information to know with 100% certainty what is going on. This is simply being pragmatic and making the right choice; will spending a few hundred million reduce a 5% chance of mass sickness and death to 0.005%? Yes. Then we do it. It's as simple as that. This is not a video game; you don't get to reload when everyone dies.
Think about this a little. Assume you're the person in charge of handling this crisis. There are two main variables, each with two outcomes: "do something now?" and "is H1N1 a big deal?". For the purposes of this conversation, while there may be magnitudes of "is H1N1 a big deal?", any value other than "no, not at all" is about the same as "yes, very". But this leads us to four cases:
We Do Something Now; H1N1 Is a Big Deal: In this case, you ordered lots of vaccine; the pandemic still affected a lot of people, but everything that could be done, was done. You spent money. It probably saved a lot of lives.
We Don't Do Something Now; H1N1 Is a Big Deal: You decided to wait and see; the pandemic affected a lot of people. Millions sick. Significant fraction died. You screwed up, massive loss of life... but you didn't spend any money.
We Do Something Now; H1N1 Not a Big Deal: You ordered lots of vaccine; people might have been affected, but few died. You had lots of vaccine left over.
We Don't Do Something Now; H1N1 Not a Big Deal: You decided to wait and see; H1N1 never went anywhere, people might have been affected, but few died. You didn't spend any money.
Now look at these scenarios. First off, it should be obvious that not spending the money only "wins" in one out of four cases, and if you look at it politically, you were still gambling with peoples' lives. Second, and perhaps less obvious at first, is that it may actually be hard to tell the difference between 1 and 3. Without seeing both "do" and "do not" played out, can we tell if the vaccine was useful? Sure we may have lots left over, but... maybe even what was used played a significant role. Compare this to Y2K; lots of money was spent, lots of work was done, and lots of systems didn't break. Was it wasted effort? Was Y2K not a credible issue?
In the end, it comes down to this: do you value money or the lives of people? You're not a doctor, but lots of credible people tell you this might be a significant problem. Do you cheap out and possibly save a few bucks, risking the lives of millions? Or do you spend a few million bucks possibly unnecessarily, to possibly save millions in the face of a credible threat?
Slashdot Mirror
And then charge us for how many miles we drive because gas consumption decreases. As discussed yesterday. Move us to clean energy and then tax the wind.
Or not, for those with a clue. But sure, if those conspiracy theories are what give meaning to your life, keep believing them.
A company/government is not a person.
So we assume by "phone" you mean "cell phone" which presumably connects to "cell towers". Since when is this information not already logged and gathered by the telcos running the towers? If you're worried about "location privacy", how about not carrying around a device which broadcasts a unique ID that's collected by third parties?
Yes, this is already a matter of a either a phone or complete privacy.
Open specification is giving the requirements, but not necessarily a detailed plan, for a pole. (And then probably charging licensing fees when someone makes a pole using the spec; "open" is not "free".)
"Open Source" is giving someone the plans for a pole in detail, and allowing them to do whatever they want with the plans, including modification or redistribution (perhaps we could better label this "Free Hardware").
Remember, just because you get can get binaries and happen to have a compiler doesn't mean that "open source" software is anything but "detailed plans" that have to be built in order to actually do anything.
Is the new page for GTK2 docs a horrible textvomit for anyone else? Did they break this specifically for this release?
Ideas are easy, implementation is hard. MS allegedly has some pieces of paper that say "we thought of this first! you can't use my idea!" Google has an actual piece of software that works pretty well. If patents worked at all like they should, MS could only patent their actual implementation of something, not the mere concept itself.
4.5 hours is what I'd call sad ... note that the metric is just a useful one based on time-to-die from a full charge while playing under certain settings. Realistic use is going to be play for an hour or few, suspend, play some more, suspend, etc. This eats up that juice with a lot of non-play-time. Unless you're diligent about plugging it in every time you turn it off (unreasonable for what should be a portable unit), every time you turn this on it'll be dead or dying.
This is essentially the insult on top of the "barely upgraded graphics" and "3D gives you a headache and only works if the device and your head are absolutely stationary" injury. (If you don't believe these are true, go try one ... Best Buy has demo units. 3D is definitely cool and I'd rather they just used polarized glasses.) My guess is they assume you're actually going to play with the thing on its charging base screwed to a table, so battery life wouldn't be an issue anyway.
Anyhow this unit is definitely the "original GBA" of its generation. I'm sure it'll be cited along with the "no backlight" design of the original GBA as "bad decisions that made a desirable device nearly unplayable". I'll stick with my DS Lite until they have the 3DSi Lite SP Turbo Plus Platinum XL or whatever the second revision is called.
But that's boring and informative (and correct) and certainly doesn't get you to go "wtf?" and click the story. Or comment on it and generate more traffic. It certainly doesn't lead immediately to insightful discussion by developers on release schedules, development cycles, and that sort of thing. You know, news for nerds. Stuff that matters.
This may be true, but the original approach doesn't really take advantage of this strength. You're a search engine. You're the most popular search engine. Don't delist. Simply make some "Movie execs eat your children" site the #1 hit for any MPAA-related search. (That's any MPAA-backed movie, studio, etc.)
Yeah it's never going to happen either, but you know it'd be awesome if it did.
This response is the usual BS handwaving from MS. There's a single paragraph which says essentially "er... they do click fraud!" without any real technical details or explanation. This is quite different from Google's posts, which are all very detailed about what they're doing and the results they're seeing. The rest of MS's article is marketing history ... not once is there real explanation of how they happen to have extremely obscure words pulling results for exactly what Google does. Just spin.
Thanks for trying, MS. You can't even come up with a technical response, and you want us to believe you can come up with a search engine?
False dichotomy; companies want regulation passed that benefits them, but this is not the only possible regulation. Therefore the only "anti-corporate" choice is not "no regulation." This is especially true since "no regulation" highly benefits another subset of companies (namely certain large ISPs like Comcast) who hold local monopolies, and already want anti-individual/customer/citizen measures which will raise prices and reduce quality.
Indeed, regulation that benefits individuals is "anti-corporate," or at least corporation-neutral and anti-monopoly-abuse, which is the real purpose here. Knee-jerk reactions to anything labeled "corporate" (or "regulation") aren't the answer. Preventing the abuse of individual customers is.
Seriously... we all know Google etc already pay for the uplink, power, servers, etc, and the "users" that are using bandwidth are the people requesting. Who are also paying ISPs already for what they use (the ISPs wrote the contracts!).
Logic and reason aren't going to work here or they already would have. It's unfortunate Google has sworn off evil; they're in a unique position here to do what a less philanthropic business would have long ago: start demanding payment from ISPs, especially the big ones. Hey Comcast, want your users to have fast access to Google? You should start paying Google then. Or maybe AT&T will sign and your customers will go there, because everyone uses Google.
Of course, this will cause politicians etc to start whining about fairness, antitrust, and how the net should be neutral to large players. Congratulations, we win. =P
As I read this (obvious satire) post, I see that it's modded +5 insightful. And, deep down, a little piece of me dies...
Are you saying satire isn't insightful? That the humor through symbolism and hyperbole don't lend perspective to a situation?
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith:
This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD.
I'm assuming you started counting at 'zero'. Once again the halo effect of arrays haunts our daily lives.
It wouldn't matter, it still has 4 words. An array counted 0..3 still is said to have four elements, not three. If he'd said "word 3 is BAD", he could have gotten off with this excuse. ;-)
Anywhere like unencrypted to DNS servers, or the sites you're accessing, or... OK so I guess this protects you from Google seeing your typos. Wow. Hint: Your ISP (or whoever's endpoint your VPN tunnel comes out on) sees all this stuff anyway. Hint 2: You aren't important enough for anyone to care.
From the article:
Windows is a "full operating system" in the sense a cheapass laundry machine is a "full cleaning solution". It's a cobbled-together appliance with rusty parts you're lucky doesn't burn down your house.
The reason people don't want a tablet, especially the iPad, is because it doesn't do anything special. It's pretty much the same "throw existing apps on something without a keyboard and call it a tablet" that everyone else has tried. That's not how the iPod and iPhone were successful. It's not how smartphones became successful in general, or even how netbooks became successful. If you want to make a real tablet, you've got to have a focused, tablet-oriented system, and a pervasive tablet UI. Unfortunately, the one possibly valid point in the article starts to hint at this and then veers back into clueless land.
What's that law about spelling/grammar corrections inevitably having spelling or grammar mistakes in them?
So Ubisoft is going mandate ridiculous DRM measures. Ubisoft. This is the company/publisher who, as far as I can tell, has barely produced one game that didn't suck in a long time. And that's just because compared to Assassin's Creed 1, it'd be hard for 2 not to look good. Yeah. So long Ubisoft, I can't say it was fun.
Maybe this is a good thing, though. Someone like Blizzard doing this would have people grumbling and moaning and everyone would still put up with it because they need their WoW or Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 or whatever. If someone like Ubisoft does it, and it's just one more reason for people not to buy their crap, and they go under, maybe it will make other companies think twice before trying similar stupidity. Maybe.
So what you're saying is that this model is chaotic good instead of chaotic evil ...
Yeah, I would easily pay $100 if I could save things to a memory card and recall pages from thumbnails. Double that or more if it did some basic diagram aid (draw a rough rectangle, have it neatened). I've been searching for the ideal "electronic graph paper" and I have yet to find anything. It doesn't need to play movies or browse the web or send email... ok, it could have basic wifi and be able to email diagrams... but still. A few functions for drawing and writing and diagramming, some storage and searching, and that's all it needs.
That said this looks like this product probably can't even address pixels. It's probably lucky to just get enough current to the whole panel so that it clears. I doubt that requires even half the electronics of a 4-function calculator, but then I'm not an EE.
This has not been shown to be the case. I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Does Google put their foot down, or don't they? Do they give into the local laws and help oppress, or don't they? I don't see Google invading China with corporate armies, or hacking Chinese government systems, or subverting Chinese government employees here.
No, but a company is made up of people, and in a democracy, those people have a say in how the country is run, along with every other citizen. Perhaps you don't live in a country with a democratic form of government, or you don't value the freedom of each voice being heard. However, in the United States, we do value these things.
But in the end it still comes down to one question: should Google support China's repressive government, or not? If you condemn them either way, you are a hypocrite. And you'll have to make a really, really good case for "should support repression" as being "not evil".
I don't think WHO was the only one warning about this. And "warnings" are that; "this could happen" isn't "this is absolutely going to happen". And it's dangerous to not consider a threat a threat if there's not a 95%+ chance it'll be a threat.
I mean, sure, I'm playing a bit of devil's advocate for WHO, at least in this post. I personally think it's probably been overblown, at least by the media, but that's what the entertainment industry thrives on: attention. If it's not one circus, it's another.
That said, my point above is that, as the person or group of people making this decision (made by more than one group in more than one country) they still did the right thing. It's probably even hard to show at this point that the vaccine won't still be used, or didn't have a critical effect. It's hard to say, but when you're dealing with the health and well-being of millions, it's better to err on the safe side.
I would disagree about "susceptible to manipulation". This is not a Hollywood movie; there are not global conspiracies by drug companies to push vaccines onto unsuspecting millions to .. do whatever .. by influencing at a ground level thousands of doctors and scientists examining the situation so their reports feed back up to the people making these decisions. Nor is this going to be a single person being handed a report by staff members who are conspiring to manipulate the person into .. what, committing a few hundred million, for some drugs. I mean, this sort of thing is what you see on crappy B made-for-TV scifi movies that are too boring to watch.
Maybe there was a conflict of interest, and if it's reasonable, sure. Maybe the person committing hundreds of millions had some stake in the company in question and profited from it somehow. If this is the case, justice should certainly be brought about.
On the other hand, drug companies have likely taken a huge risk just delivering this stuff in a short period of time. Biotech firms are also used to working in the tens of billions when it comes to investment, and generally for something that's going to be around longer than a season. I mean, think of this in terms of IT. You have reason to believe you've got an emergency situation requiring a massive upgrade to your server farm; you call Dell, say "I need 10000 highly configured servers yesterday, just make it happen." If they deliver, they're taking a massive risk; they're going to demand you commit, probably pay extra, and they're not going to take the servers back because they can't use them. Now maybe you own Dell stock, and this contract makes it go up a few bucks. Is that an issue? Could be, but it's utterly peripheral. No pun intended. ;-)
No, because I said "credible threat," and war is not a credible threat on the US mainland at this point. Nor is this Wargames; global thermonuclear war is not a credible threat at this time either. (Hell, they just moved the doomsday clock back a minute; these are people who are more credible than a youtube video.) If nuclear war was imminent, and if building a bunker was a viable strategy for survival, then yes, building one would be a good choice. Those are a lot of "ifs" and none of them have any reasonable probability at this time.
The probability is indeterminate, even in hindsight, without a vast amount of study. However, the estimate of a "H1N1 Is A Big Deal" event based on, among other things, prior experience with H1N1, and the studied opinion of many experts in the field, lead us to believe that it is high-enough probability we should take it seriously. Also, we have a relatively low-cost solution that has a high guaranteed return. Not taking it is simply irresponsible.
This is not a fallacious argument. There is not enough information to know with 100% certainty what is going on. This is simply being pragmatic and making the right choice; will spending a few hundred million reduce a 5% chance of mass sickness and death to 0.005%? Yes. Then we do it. It's as simple as that. This is not a video game; you don't get to reload when everyone dies.
Think about this a little. Assume you're the person in charge of handling this crisis. There are two main variables, each with two outcomes: "do something now?" and "is H1N1 a big deal?". For the purposes of this conversation, while there may be magnitudes of "is H1N1 a big deal?", any value other than "no, not at all" is about the same as "yes, very". But this leads us to four cases:
Now look at these scenarios. First off, it should be obvious that not spending the money only "wins" in one out of four cases, and if you look at it politically, you were still gambling with peoples' lives. Second, and perhaps less obvious at first, is that it may actually be hard to tell the difference between 1 and 3. Without seeing both "do" and "do not" played out, can we tell if the vaccine was useful? Sure we may have lots left over, but ... maybe even what was used played a significant role. Compare this to Y2K; lots of money was spent, lots of work was done, and lots of systems didn't break. Was it wasted effort? Was Y2K not a credible issue?
In the end, it comes down to this: do you value money or the lives of people? You're not a doctor, but lots of credible people tell you this might be a significant problem. Do you cheap out and possibly save a few bucks, risking the lives of millions? Or do you spend a few million bucks possibly unnecessarily, to possibly save millions in the face of a credible threat?