1. Drug companies exist to make profit for the shareholders.
2. Drug companies seek to maximize their profit by extending patents.
3. Presumably, money cannot be spent on both legal matters and research.
So it is the extensibility of patents, and not patents themselves that is "choking off" research. This is a very different thing to say than "the patents are choking off research". To fix this problem, if it is a problem, we need to tighten the laws regarding patent extensibility. Agreed?
This whole golden goose B.S. bugs me. Can someone explain to me why someone would shell out 50 million dollars to develop a drug if, after the research is complete, my competitors can benefit equally from it?
I think the general idea is to socialize drug research. That would be great, because then results wouldn't matter. Not only that, but we would have a value judgment forced on everyone as to the value of drug research (I don't care if you think that paying your credit card bill this month is more important, we're still taking your tax dollars for drug research).
The real problem here is that people just cannot deal with the fact that there's only so much money and time and resources to go around. We wish that everything could be a priority. But it can't, so we have to use some system to ration those scarce resources. A free-market system says that resources will be rationed according to private agreement and negotiation, but there's always a few "never studied history much" folks who think that concentrating power and information is the way to Utopia. The road to hell, etc.
What you fail to note is that as the information increases from 2d to 3d, it increases information, thus decreasing heat (by 50%). When it goes from 3d back to 2d, it only decreases information by 33%, so actually this story ties to the "little ice age" story from a few days back.
Sheesh...only on Slashdot would we have thermodynamics humour.
You're missing the point. What I'm saying is that maybe the life evolved, and did not successfully establish an equilibrium with the environment, and caused the runaway greenhouse effect.
Actually, I guess the current state would be the equilibrium.
Life evolved on Venus's current surface environment.
This would seem to indicate that conditions were more conducive to life in the past. I wonder if it was the life that led to the current surface conditions...
Can anyone comment on whether this would reduce or increase the number of moving parts? It seems like this could possible increase reliability as well as the other manifest benefits.
This show's premise sounds like Blake's 7, a fantastic 70's Brit sci-fi show. Not quite as much under the gun as those characters were, but pretty similar.
Not that this is a bad thing; you can only churn out so many episodes with shiny happy future people like Trek has.
This whole "sanctity of librarians" thing is just ridiculous! There are several recognized principles of confidentiality, such as doctor / patient, legal representation, confessional, etc. It seems to me (IANAL) that the rationale for these confidentialities is as follows:
The person has a reasonable expectation of privacy,
There is a public good that would be abgrogated by violating the confidence, e.g., folks won't talk to their doctors and die more often, folks won't talk to their lawyers and the search for the truth is impeded.
I don't see that either principle holds here. Would I like for my borrowing records to be private? I suppose so, but I don't have any expectation of it. How exactly is it that if this were B&N we were talking about it would be public, but because it's a library, it's not?
Don't you feel that you're called to accomplish something more than trading porn?
George Will has an appropos phrase: "well-educated moral cretins". Don't you feel that with your substantial ability you have an obligation to use it to create something, rather than just jerk off in front of a computer monitor?
You were at M.I. frickin T, man! Do you know how many people don't have the tickets to make it there? And you blew it. All that potential...how pathetic.
I strongly recommend Feynman's lectures on physics. I think that in the event of nuclear war devastating all of the world, these books would be at the top of the list for the recovery manuals...hmmm, sounds like an interesting Ask Slashdot.
An astronomy prof described astronomy as that in a frosh astro course. In particular, we were discussing methods of determining stellar distance. For stars fairly close we use an ultra reliable method called paralactic displacement. For methods beyond that, we start using methods that basically say "as long as our theories about how such and such behaves turn out to be true, this method of determining stellar distance should hold true."
This article just goes to show how fragile human knowledge is. But this is a good thing, and part of the natural progression of science.
I have a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, and I specialize in Internet startups. I simply plan to have 3-4 jobs in one year, and suffer on the average of 6 weeks out of work.
Having done that, I've made a near 6 figure income in doing that, and this year looks good for a 6+ figure year.
I think people tend to look at security as a "free" benefit, but in reality, it is a factor in negotiating salary just as much as is any other benefit. I've been able to make a lot of money without a degree in the field by assuming a lot of risky opportunities. The key is to stock the larder when the harvest comes in, keep your credit card debt low (because that can act as a buffer as well), and keep those skills sharp.
Having said all of this, I've just accepted a perm position with a 25% salary cut;). It is a private sector position, anyhow.
Would be to flood an area with high intensity light. The re-emitters will be strongly limited in how much light they can throw out, and what you would see would be a moving dark spot (still looking like the ground beneath him) against a light background.
I think in the intermediately distant future we'll reach a point with nanomedicine where doctors can have such a fine degree of control over red blood cell-sized machines that it will effectively wipe out all disease.
If they could be made even smaller, they could be used to extend telomeres (sp?) on chromosomes, so that aging could effectively be halted.
Put enough of these in one's bloodstream, load them up with a few communal behaviors (CLOT@DISMEMBERMENT), and a human being could be made pretty damn near immortal.
The only real problems then would be disorders we truly didn't understand, and thus a fine degree of control would be irrelevant.
Proviso: I'm a geek, not a doctor. Commence the hole-punching in these ideas...
This is a phenomenon documented in economics. Means pretty much what you think it means. Particularly in fields where value is difficult to measure objectively, the maxim "you get what you pay for" wins out over "caveat emptor."
Slashdot Mirror
1. Drug companies exist to make profit for the shareholders.
2. Drug companies seek to maximize their profit by extending patents.
3. Presumably, money cannot be spent on both legal matters and research.
So it is the extensibility of patents, and not patents themselves that is "choking off" research. This is a very different thing to say than "the patents are choking off research". To fix this problem, if it is a problem, we need to tighten the laws regarding patent extensibility. Agreed?
This whole golden goose B.S. bugs me. Can someone explain to me why someone would shell out 50 million dollars to develop a drug if, after the research is complete, my competitors can benefit equally from it?
I think the general idea is to socialize drug research. That would be great, because then results wouldn't matter. Not only that, but we would have a value judgment forced on everyone as to the value of drug research (I don't care if you think that paying your credit card bill this month is more important, we're still taking your tax dollars for drug research).
The real problem here is that people just cannot deal with the fact that there's only so much money and time and resources to go around. We wish that everything could be a priority. But it can't, so we have to use some system to ration those scarce resources. A free-market system says that resources will be rationed according to private agreement and negotiation, but there's always a few "never studied history much" folks who think that concentrating power and information is the way to Utopia. The road to hell, etc.
What you fail to note is that as the information increases from 2d to 3d, it increases information, thus decreasing heat (by 50%). When it goes from 3d back to 2d, it only decreases information by 33%, so actually this story ties to the "little ice age" story from a few days back.
Sheesh...only on Slashdot would we have thermodynamics humour.
Armadillo Aerospace
---new Technology
|
|
---------Porn
|
|
---------Obsolescence joke
You're missing the point. What I'm saying is that maybe the life evolved, and did not successfully establish an equilibrium with the environment, and caused the runaway greenhouse effect.
Actually, I guess the current state would be the equilibrium.
This would seem to indicate that conditions were more conducive to life in the past. I wonder if it was the life that led to the current surface conditions...
Can anyone comment on whether this would reduce or increase the number of moving parts? It seems like this could possible increase reliability as well as the other manifest benefits.
This show's premise sounds like Blake's 7, a fantastic 70's Brit sci-fi show. Not quite as much under the gun as those characters were, but pretty similar.
Not that this is a bad thing; you can only churn out so many episodes with shiny happy future people like Trek has.
I don't see that either principle holds here. Would I like for my borrowing records to be private? I suppose so, but I don't have any expectation of it. How exactly is it that if this were B&N we were talking about it would be public, but because it's a library, it's not?
It would really suck when Pa had to shoot your windows, too.
And donate your car instead...please...
Hmmm...drink a Pepsi, go into space. I'm just not sure it's worth it.
Quoth Homer: Ewwwww! I'll take the clam juice.
Don't you feel that you're called to accomplish something more than trading porn?
George Will has an appropos phrase: "well-educated moral cretins". Don't you feel that with your substantial ability you have an obligation to use it to create something, rather than just jerk off in front of a computer monitor?
You were at M.I. frickin T, man! Do you know how many people don't have the tickets to make it there? And you blew it. All that potential...how pathetic.
The opening of Al Capone's vault!
Goodbye (thank God) data cables of all sorts.
I strongly recommend Feynman's lectures on physics. I think that in the event of nuclear war devastating all of the world, these books would be at the top of the list for the recovery manuals...hmmm, sounds like an interesting Ask Slashdot.
Slashdot posts a story I don't understand from a source I don't know on a technology I've never heard of...
An astronomy prof described astronomy as that in a frosh astro course. In particular, we were discussing methods of determining stellar distance. For stars fairly close we use an ultra reliable method called paralactic displacement. For methods beyond that, we start using methods that basically say "as long as our theories about how such and such behaves turn out to be true, this method of determining stellar distance should hold true."
This article just goes to show how fragile human knowledge is. But this is a good thing, and part of the natural progression of science.
I have a wife, two kids, and a mortgage, and I specialize in Internet startups. I simply plan to have 3-4 jobs in one year, and suffer on the average of 6 weeks out of work.
;). It is a private sector position, anyhow.
Having done that, I've made a near 6 figure income in doing that, and this year looks good for a 6+ figure year.
I think people tend to look at security as a "free" benefit, but in reality, it is a factor in negotiating salary just as much as is any other benefit. I've been able to make a lot of money without a degree in the field by assuming a lot of risky opportunities. The key is to stock the larder when the harvest comes in, keep your credit card debt low (because that can act as a buffer as well), and keep those skills sharp.
Having said all of this, I've just accepted a perm position with a 25% salary cut
Would be to flood an area with high intensity light. The re-emitters will be strongly limited in how much light they can throw out, and what you would see would be a moving dark spot (still looking like the ground beneath him) against a light background.
I think in the intermediately distant future we'll reach a point with nanomedicine where doctors can have such a fine degree of control over red blood cell-sized machines that it will effectively wipe out all disease.
If they could be made even smaller, they could be used to extend telomeres (sp?) on chromosomes, so that aging could effectively be halted.
Put enough of these in one's bloodstream, load them up with a few communal behaviors (CLOT@DISMEMBERMENT), and a human being could be made pretty damn near immortal.
The only real problems then would be disorders we truly didn't understand, and thus a fine degree of control would be irrelevant.
Proviso: I'm a geek, not a doctor. Commence the hole-punching in these ideas...
and of our continuing infantilism that our political views are expressed through games?
May be closer than he thinks.
It's not the religion for which you're being fined, it's the fraud of the claim.
This is a phenomenon documented in economics. Means pretty much what you think it means. Particularly in fields where value is difficult to measure objectively, the maxim "you get what you pay for" wins out over "caveat emptor."