No, it isn't. Running a webserver is a far more complex thing than driving a car. Driving a car may at most be likened to reading a web page in a browser. Car analogies suck, because cars do so few things.
Cars kill people every day.
Driving a car implies responsibility. End users ARE literlly responsible for life-and-death decisions all the time, and yet they cope.
End users ARE putting web servers on the net. And ftp servers. And game servers. And chat servers. Its not that big a deal. Heck, most linux distros have apache up and running by default. Just get a dyndns or other redirector (or a static web page somewhere with a redirect to your machine's IP - and port, if you're forced to run on a non-standard port because of your ISP blocking port 80) and you've got your public web server.
Setting up a web server is much simpler than learning how to drive a car. And the worst-case scenario is a lot less severe in the case of a screwed-up server, as opposed to a screwed-up driver.
The industry isn't about "developing solutions with as few resources as possible". Its about milking existing drugs for as much $$$ as possible, about developing "me-too" drugs rather than innovation, about getting YOUR brand to be prescribed instead of the other guys, and about getting government money for any real research http://www.fda.gov/orphan/
The ODA has been very successful - more than 200 drugs and biological products for rare diseases have been brought to market since 1983. In contrast, the decade prior to 1983 saw fewer than ten such products come to market. In addition, the OOPD administers the Orphan Products Grants Program which provides funding for clinical research in rare diseases.
If you don't believe it, ask any doctor or pharmacist the "incentives" they're given to push brand a over brand b. Drug companies spend 4x the money on marketing than they do on research - and most of that "research" is wasted solving problems that have already been solved (the me-to drugs, or patenting a new use for a drug that the current patent is expiring on, so as to create a monopoly in another area for another 20 years without having to actually "cerate" anything new).
Google for "Orphan Drugs" and you'll see that its government money (in other words, taxpayers) that creates the incentives to do actual research. This is the FDA's http://www.fda.gov/orphan/ site, but there are others:
The ODA has been very successful - more than 200 drugs and biological products for rare diseases have been brought to market since 1983. In contrast, the decade prior to 1983 saw fewer than ten such products come to market. In addition, the OOPD administers the Orphan Products Grants Program which provides funding for clinical research in rare diseases.
Almost all real innovations (as opposed to "me-too drugs") end up being publicly funded. So why shouldn't the public have a right to their "pound of flesh" in times of emergency, especially in instances when the drug company simply hasn't got the capacity to respond to a crisis? If they haven't got the production capacity, then they certainly can't claim they're losing money from lost drug sales. They wouldn't be able to make those sales anyways.
just underlines the fundamental capitalist fact that very little motivates the individual better than good wages.
I think you're in the wrong forum to be arguing that point:-) After all, the motivation for F/LOSS isn't money.
Think about it - which would you rather have - more money or more sex? More money or a better quality of life? More money or more time with the kids? More money or more time with your significant other? More money or more time to do the things you want to do?
Money is a poor motivator long-term, especially since we all know people who have chosen the money route, and they're not fun to hang around with.
Get a picture of the goat.cx guy, blow it up nice and big, and duct-tape it to your butt. That will scare ANYBODY.
Find something about the size and shape of a burito and wrap it in the tin foil. When people ask what it is (after seeing Mr. Goat), glance significantly to your rear, and say "its take-out - want some?"
Ask yourself why graduate students and post-docs work so hard in school on their research. Or you could go ask them. Some (very) small percentage of them will go on to university positions, but the bulk of them will go work in private industry.
And do you know where a lot of them end up? Marketing and Sales, or Management. That's right. There aren't enough research positions at DrugCo, so they end up calling on doctors and pharmacists, handing out free samples, etc.
Not exactly the sort of career path they were planning for.
I just did a search looking for pharmaceutical sales jobs - the first one I found was "Cardiology/Medical Science Liason - requirements: MD, PhD, Pharm.D" - a marketing job. Pays $100,00+/year plus benefits, but its still marketing, not research.
Well, you can always be the hit of the party with the chicks:
Shave head
Wear turtle neck rolled up to just under the eyes and a sign that says "SIZE MATTERS"
When they ask what you are, roll the turtleneck down and say "I am the biggest prick in the world, and can you tell I'm happy to see you?"
With any luck, they'll say "Oh yeah? Prove it!"
Of course, this being Hallowe'en and all, be careful not to hit on the woman dressed as a hooker - that might be me (you know how crazy we denizens of Kanuckistan can be:-)
At the same time, this will kill off the bogus stuff that drug cos do - like finding a new use for the drug just as the current patent runs out, and patenting it under the new use, or changing the makeup just enough so that it qualifies as a "new" drug, even though the part that is actually active hasn't changed, then marketing the shit out of it
People still believe that if you charge more, it MUST be better.
Private funds (look at all the money raised by fund-raising for AIDS, breast cancer, MS, etc)
Charities, philanthropy, etc.
The drug companies have a much lower efficiency in terms of money spent per researcher in their labs vis. the people doing research at universities for their post-docs, so when you factor that in, the inbalance is even greater towards the public sector.
Early in 1922 Eli Lilly & Company began manufacture and sale of insulin. Banting and Best refused to profit directly from their discovery. Only after repeated requests did they apply for patents on insulin, with the understanding that these would be accepted and administered by the University of Toronto.
Money isn't everything, and insulin wasn't discovered because of huge research grants, but because 2 guys decided to devote their time to it, even though they had almost zero funding.
And that other great discovery - penecillin? Again, not motivated by patents or money, but by curiosity.
Would any more private sector research money (by far the most research money spent)
BULLSHIT!
Most of the money spent on research is NOT by the drug industry. And the money that drug industry DOES spend on R and D is outweighted 4 to 1 by marketing.
If Roche doesn't want to play fair, nationalize them. Its been done with other industries. Or expropriate their patent under eminent domain.
Why would I want to find a costume to dress up the night before halloween?
Because the penalty for showing up at a Hallowe'en party w/o a costume varies:
No admittance
You're admitted, but you have to wear one of the "spare" costumes that we keep around expressly for dorks who don't know how to get in the swing of things
You're admitted, but you're relegated to "slave" status for the first hour as punishment - fetch the food, etc
No costume, no booze.
No costume, no chance of winning one of the prizes.
No costume, you've marked yourself as a self-conscious, insecure dork.
I'm sure others can add more reasons to go to a Hallowe'en party, and to be in costume.
As a guy, you should have something better to do than dress up like a god damned pirate and get drunk at a party full of fugly chicks dressed as a belly dancer or princess.
... with your attitude, you won't have to worry about the "chicks." My guess? You use your personality as your primary method of birth control.
Hallowe'en is now the second-largest holiday cash generator for businesses, right behind Christmas.
People spend hundreds of bucks each on parties for ADULTS. Or go to any bar on Hallowe'en and try to say there isn't some serious coin being raked in.
It's #2 in terms of revenue, but its #1 in terms of profitability, because you don't see the wild discounting like you do weeks before Christmas.
You can always find something to buy on Christmas Eve - just TRY to find a costume the day before Hallowe'en - you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
I don't think personal web servers is a solution. Just like you cannot expect majority of car owners to be their own mechanics
Most people aren't mechanics, but they can still drive cars, and when they have a problem, they hire a mechanic to service their car. This would be the same thing.
I like having access to my computer from wherever I am. But now I'm seeing people who know squat about computers who are still capable of running a file server or a game server from their home box. If they can do that (and they can barely figure out how to find a file they've just written and saved)...
The only things stopping most people from running a home server are:
They don't see a need to yet
Their ISP blocks ports
When they DO see a need or a desire, they do it. They get around the port blocking by going to port 8000, or 8080. The first time that they see a coworker who doesn't have to go back home to retrieve a file sitting on their home box will sell them on it.
So what? MySQL has always had commercial versions. Big deal?
Its not like you're going to use their commercial version that's been ported to run on OpenSewer and try to run it on Linux or *BSD - for that you'll use the appropriate version - either the GPL or commercial version.
That you'd depend on a SCO press release to be 100% of the story is frightening - according to their press releases, they own unix (at least in some parallel universe).
This is the sort of "kne-jerk reaction" that the folks at MySQL AB were commenting about. Makes us look as stupid as the people who believed the press releases about that "patent on XML" as being anything but stock pump-n-dump hype.
In 20-30 years, when early idealists within Google are long gone and beancounters have taken over, your data is still there. Near its sunset, Google has the potential of being 100x more evil than Microsoft could ever hope to be.
A lot of those advantages are only possible because of shift of control from end user to the service provider. Like any new technology, this is a double-edged sword.
A valid point, and maybe a good lobbying point to force ISPs to stop blocking ports 80 and 443 so we can all run our own web servers and store all our data on our home boxes, no matter where we ultimately access it from.
"'I have never, honestly, thrown a chair in my life,'
How about dishonestly throwing a chair?
Or maybe "That wasn't a chair - that was an Aeron, you ignorant clod!"
Or "I don't do that. I have minions... uh... microserfs...I mean... employees, that's it - employees - who handle manual labour! I'm the fucking boss, you idiot!"
Agred - Toppling eBay is NOT a technological issue.
So here's why the telcos can kill off eBay.
Advantages for the local telco:
The telco already has the customer penetration - easily +90% in most markets. eBay can't match that in ANY market.
The telco already has a billing process in place - they won't need a "pay it with paypal"
Local customers means that a lot of times people won't have to worry about shipping. They'll pick it up, or the vendor can drop it off. Other times, a local courrier company can do it within a couple of hours on the cheap.
Lots of people don't trust eBay. They may not trust their telco either, but they ARE doing business with their telco. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't, etc.
eBay is losing its "unregulated" status as an online auction; various jurisdictions are imposing requirements for listers to obtain auctioneer licenses. If local telcos offer a simple "sell it" w/o auctions, they get around this. Just allow people to make offers and haggle down from the list price. That's not an auction - its normal bargaining.
Local brick and mortar businesses would be a logical client for the telcos, whereas they're a terrible fit for ebay, because of the dispersed geographical area. You don't need to compete with the world when you're serving a local market.
"In a few short years, users can expect to auction stuff online for free, with no listing or selling charges, as part of a package of services through which carriers make money on phone calls. eBay's chief executive called it unfair competition."
Seems to me the carriers already have the customer base, the billing infrastructure, etc. They could kill ebay in a month.
Slashdot Mirror
Driving a car implies responsibility. End users ARE literlly responsible for life-and-death decisions all the time, and yet they cope.
End users ARE putting web servers on the net. And ftp servers. And game servers. And chat servers. Its not that big a deal. Heck, most linux distros have apache up and running by default. Just get a dyndns or other redirector (or a static web page somewhere with a redirect to your machine's IP - and port, if you're forced to run on a non-standard port because of your ISP blocking port 80) and you've got your public web server.
Setting up a web server is much simpler than learning how to drive a car. And the worst-case scenario is a lot less severe in the case of a screwed-up server, as opposed to a screwed-up driver.
Think about it - which would you rather have - more money or more sex? More money or a better quality of life? More money or more time with the kids? More money or more time with your significant other? More money or more time to do the things you want to do?
Money is a poor motivator long-term, especially since we all know people who have chosen the money route, and they're not fun to hang around with.
Get a picture of the goat.cx guy, blow it up nice and big, and duct-tape it to your butt. That will scare ANYBODY.
Find something about the size and shape of a burito and wrap it in the tin foil. When people ask what it is (after seeing Mr. Goat), glance significantly to your rear, and say "its take-out - want some?"
And do you know where a lot of them end up? Marketing and Sales, or Management. That's right. There aren't enough research positions at DrugCo, so they end up calling on doctors and pharmacists, handing out free samples, etc.
Not exactly the sort of career path they were planning for.
I just did a search looking for pharmaceutical sales jobs - the first one I found was "Cardiology/Medical Science Liason - requirements: MD, PhD, Pharm.D" - a marketing job. Pays $100,00+/year plus benefits, but its still marketing, not research.
Thanks. Don't forget to contribute to the next "private" Hallowe'en poll option list.
Well, you can always be the hit of the party with the chicks:
With any luck, they'll say "Oh yeah? Prove it!"
Of course, this being Hallowe'en and all, be careful not to hit on the woman dressed as a hooker - that might be me (you know how crazy we denizens of Kanuckistan can be :-)
Great! I need a new tin foil hat to protect me from the effects of watching "Star Wreck - In The Pirkining". What do you recommend, oh great one?
Maybe what we need is a GPL for drugs.
At the same time, this will kill off the bogus stuff that drug cos do - like finding a new use for the drug just as the current patent runs out, and patenting it under the new use, or changing the makeup just enough so that it qualifies as a "new" drug, even though the part that is actually active hasn't changed, then marketing the shit out of it
People still believe that if you charge more, it MUST be better.
-
Taxpayers through university research
-
Private funds (look at all the money raised by fund-raising for AIDS, breast cancer, MS, etc)
-
Charities, philanthropy, etc.
The drug companies have a much lower efficiency in terms of money spent per researcher in their labs vis. the people doing research at universities for their post-docs, so when you factor that in, the inbalance is even greater towards the public sector.And that other great discovery - penecillin? Again, not motivated by patents or money, but by curiosity.
Most of the money spent on research is NOT by the drug industry. And the money that drug industry DOES spend on R and D is outweighted 4 to 1 by marketing.
If Roche doesn't want to play fair, nationalize them. Its been done with other industries. Or expropriate their patent under eminent domain.
I'm sure others can add more reasons to go to a Hallowe'en party, and to be in costume.
... with your attitude, you won't have to worry about the "chicks." My guess? You use your personality as your primary method of birth control.Hallowe'en is now the second-largest holiday cash generator for businesses, right behind Christmas.
People spend hundreds of bucks each on parties for ADULTS. Or go to any bar on Hallowe'en and try to say there isn't some serious coin being raked in.
It's #2 in terms of revenue, but its #1 in terms of profitability, because you don't see the wild discounting like you do weeks before Christmas.
You can always find something to buy on Christmas Eve - just TRY to find a costume the day before Hallowe'en - you'll be stuck wearing a "costume" you made from a roll of aluminium foil you scrounged from the pantry and some duct tape.
Come on, where's your sense of tradition? This be hallowe'en, mon!
Now here's some costume ideas that will scare the shit out of everyone, not just your inner geek:
- Insurance salesman
- Jehovah's Witness
- Lawyer
- Tom Cruise
Feel free to add to the list here - we need more ideas.I like having access to my computer from wherever I am. But now I'm seeing people who know squat about computers who are still capable of running a file server or a game server from their home box. If they can do that (and they can barely figure out how to find a file they've just written and saved) ...
The only things stopping most people from running a home server are:
- They don't see a need to yet
- Their ISP blocks ports
When they DO see a need or a desire, they do it. They get around the port blocking by going to port 8000, or 8080. The first time that they see a coworker who doesn't have to go back home to retrieve a file sitting on their home box will sell them on it.Its not like you're going to use their commercial version that's been ported to run on OpenSewer and try to run it on Linux or *BSD - for that you'll use the appropriate version - either the GPL or commercial version.
That you'd depend on a SCO press release to be 100% of the story is frightening - according to their press releases, they own unix (at least in some parallel universe).
This is the sort of "kne-jerk reaction" that the folks at MySQL AB were commenting about. Makes us look as stupid as the people who believed the press releases about that "patent on XML" as being anything but stock pump-n-dump hype.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051011
you would have found out that SCO paid mySQL.
Money taken from SCO is less money for their FUD machine.
It also gives people stuck on SCO a chance to migrate their stuff slowly to other platforms.
So how is that a bad thing again?
Or maybe "That wasn't a chair - that was an Aeron, you ignorant clod!"
Or "I don't do that. I have minions ... uh ... microserfs ...I mean ... employees, that's it - employees - who handle manual labour! I'm the fucking boss, you idiot!"
So here's why the telcos can kill off eBay.
Advantages for the local telco: