There are some things I don't get in the interaction between social security and private pharma. I live in France with what americans call 'socialized medicine'. It works well but of course it means that the cost of most drugs is eventually paid by Social Security though taxes. So it's in the advantage of Social Security to have this price as low as possible and since they are the ONLY customer (it's not like you can pay for drugs out of your own pocket even if you wanted to) they should be able to bargain it way down, but big pharma complains "It costs billions to get a drug to market". OK, let's see if I get this straight:
Most new molecules are discovered by public research in (public) labs and universities, and then 'given' to big pharma for testing and development
Testing indeed costs a large amount of money but needs the help of (public) doctors
Manufacturing is often cheap but sometimes priced absurdly high (like the recent example of an appetite booster that went from 1$/dose to $1000/dose when exclusivity was given to some big pharma)
To me the solution seems that Social Security should spin off a (large) drug testing division that does all the testing of all potential drugs with the (already) collaboration of public doctors but without the bribes that are currently used (all-paid WEs in high-end ski resorts for doc and family, etc). Even if the costs don't go down all that much, results will be public and social security will know what it pays for. No more botched testing like the current Mediator scandal.
And fabrication should be simply given to the lowest bidding pharma co... Which would save an additional bundle.
Now of course if you start screaming 'socialized medecine is evil', there's no need to reply.
At the coastal antarctic station where I worked we had a complex water pipe system between the dessalination plant and the station built as such: drinking water pipe inside a sea-water pipe going one way inside a sea-water pipe going the other way inside a thick layer of insulation.
The reason for the two-way seawater was to continuously recirculate it to avoid freezing. And since sea-water is less prone to freezing than clear water, it was also a bonus. It wasn't actually sea-water but the even saltier (and warmer) remains from the dessalination process. And it was used for flushing.
The alleged idiocy of the hunters is not really made apparent by your remarks
Well, maybe so, but it doesn't deter that most hunters are drunken idiots. I bike through remote woods to get to work and regularly encounter them and they scare me shitless: between the times they block or yell at me "for scaring the game", or when they are so drunk at 8am as to hardly be able to walk (but still able to point a gun though), to the fact that there are 10 people shot in 'hunting accidents' alone in my county yearly (with quite a few dead and disabled for good)... I think I have reasons to be scared and loathe them. At least they've improved a bit in the last decade, some of them do say hello now.
Now, have you considered building up brand loyalty instead? Reward your paying customers with support, treat them well, maybe give them access to beta or updates if they want.
That. I use linux at work, home and all the friend/family computers I support (it's that or they go somewhere else), so there's very little software I _need_ to pay. but there are a bunch of graphic applications I bought a license for (no, not Adobe). And it pisses me off when every 6 months you have to pay for the 'upgrade' which is hardly more than a change in background color. I've seriously considered using an inferior product, not because of price, but because it pisses me off.
Spread through the cloud over a couple of centuries [...] This is the only realistic kind of space combat there's going to be.
Well, there can be many different objectives. If you are in more of a hurry, you could land discreetly with a recon team, grab a couple of locals, anal-probe them to learn their biochemistry, design and release a killer plague. Genocide on the cheap and the biosphere may not be too much fucked depending on how wide your bioweapon was targetted.
It was an impressively successful crash too. IIRC, the DC/X had 3 engines and one of them blew up. It also had an impressive stabilisation algorithm which managed to keep the rocket up and under control even after one of its engine blew up, which was quite impressive. In the end it was more like a hard landing than a crash.
Yeah. That quotes reeks. Who does this guy think built the www ? The people who started Yahoo, Google and most other startups were in their 20s. May not be as impressive as a big cylinder full of explosive, but in the long term the Internet will matter a lot more.
Dell – then the world’s biggest PC maker – received billions of dollars to “remain monogamous” with Intel. At their peak in the first quarter of 2007, payments from Intel made up 76% of Dell’s quarterly operating income: $723 million against a total of $949 million.
And I really wonder why Intel hasn't been gutted and salted for monopoly abuse, with its CEO and main backers arrested. How can it not be MORE clear than that ?!?
What I don't understand, is why aren't juges fighting back this kind of thing to force to police to go through them first. They never say a word on the matter !
Yeah, that. I used to have a cheap 1920x1200 monitor but it broke and I could not find a replacement at that or higher resolution 3 years later. Everybody told me that now monitors and TVs are manufactured as the same devices and TVs want 1024 vertical resolution, so 1920x1024 is all there is on the cheap. Or you need to shell 2000$ for a 'multimedia creator' or 'medical viewing' monitor.
I agree that jogging or lifting weight is dead boring. Then do something exciting: climbing (even indoors), or just about any other mountain activity. Also because being scared cleans all the shit out of your head. But of course it helps if you are near some mountains...
As the saying goes:
"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." -- Edward Stanley, the Earl of Derby, 1873.
It's most likely the same people who don't 'believe' in evolution anyway. They'll soon get a practical lesson into what 'natural selection' means when 8 out of their 10 offsprings don't make it to adulthood. Like in the old days when god(s) ruled.
That's what I'm wondering: the delta-V to go from one target to the next must be huge, even if you optimize your orbit changes. You probably need to take a huge amount of fuel to catch only a few tens of targets. And this fuel turns into gas, also following the same orbit. I wonder if it has any influence on active satellites or if it diffuses away too quickly.
Another thing that's getting to me is the wild mouse movements required to navigate around. Go to one corner to change to the window changing mode, then go to the opposite corner to do something with the windows like move it to another virtual display or something.
This reminds me why I couldn't stand OSX when it came out a decade ago (maybe they fixed it since then, but I'd bet on not). When you want(ed) to enlarge a window on the left you had to grab the left side of the window and pull to the left. And then notice that it didn't work. Go and grab the top of the window and move the entire window to the left. Then move to the bottom right corner, grab and drag it back to its original position. It drove me insane each time.
Yeah, I've noticed that the science fiction stories of the golden age (40s~50s) had noticed the improvement in prodictivity of workers over time. So they naturally assumed that by year 2000 we would all be working 4 hours a week. Wrong: some people work 70h/week and make a butload of money while the others are unemployed (or work lousy jobs for hardly more benefits than being on welfare). That's what you get when you don't have strong labor laws and/or central control.
Slashdot Mirror
I want the same question asked worldwide, otherwise the Pirate Bay stays the only option for many.
It costs billions to get a drug to market
There are some things I don't get in the interaction between social security and private pharma. I live in France with what americans call 'socialized medicine'. It works well but of course it means that the cost of most drugs is eventually paid by Social Security though taxes. So it's in the advantage of Social Security to have this price as low as possible and since they are the ONLY customer (it's not like you can pay for drugs out of your own pocket even if you wanted to) they should be able to bargain it way down, but big pharma complains "It costs billions to get a drug to market". OK, let's see if I get this straight:
To me the solution seems that Social Security should spin off a (large) drug testing division that does all the testing of all potential drugs with the (already) collaboration of public doctors but without the bribes that are currently used (all-paid WEs in high-end ski resorts for doc and family, etc). Even if the costs don't go down all that much, results will be public and social security will know what it pays for. No more botched testing like the current Mediator scandal.
And fabrication should be simply given to the lowest bidding pharma co... Which would save an additional bundle.
Now of course if you start screaming 'socialized medecine is evil', there's no need to reply.
Yeah, if you want to make oscar categories there are some that deserve their own even more: Best comedy. Best 'bad guy'. Best kid/family movie, etc...
Sounds witty. Is it available somewhere to read ?
Oh modpoints when you need them. Thanks for the best laugh of the day.
The reason for the two-way seawater was to continuously recirculate it to avoid freezing. And since sea-water is less prone to freezing than clear water, it was also a bonus. It wasn't actually sea-water but the even saltier (and warmer) remains from the dessalination process. And it was used for flushing.
The alleged idiocy of the hunters is not really made apparent by your remarks
Well, maybe so, but it doesn't deter that most hunters are drunken idiots. I bike through remote woods to get to work and regularly encounter them and they scare me shitless: between the times they block or yell at me "for scaring the game", or when they are so drunk at 8am as to hardly be able to walk (but still able to point a gun though), to the fact that there are 10 people shot in 'hunting accidents' alone in my county yearly (with quite a few dead and disabled for good)... I think I have reasons to be scared and loathe them. At least they've improved a bit in the last decade, some of them do say hello now.
Now, have you considered building up brand loyalty instead? Reward your paying customers with support, treat them well, maybe give them access to beta or updates if they want.
That. I use linux at work, home and all the friend/family computers I support (it's that or they go somewhere else), so there's very little software I _need_ to pay. but there are a bunch of graphic applications I bought a license for (no, not Adobe). And it pisses me off when every 6 months you have to pay for the 'upgrade' which is hardly more than a change in background color. I've seriously considered using an inferior product, not because of price, but because it pisses me off.
Spread through the cloud over a couple of centuries [...] This is the only realistic kind of space combat there's going to be.
Well, there can be many different objectives. If you are in more of a hurry, you could land discreetly with a recon team, grab a couple of locals, anal-probe them to learn their biochemistry, design and release a killer plague. Genocide on the cheap and the biosphere may not be too much fucked depending on how wide your bioweapon was targetted.
the DC/X crashed at its first NASA landing
It was an impressively successful crash too. IIRC, the DC/X had 3 engines and one of them blew up. It also had an impressive stabilisation algorithm which managed to keep the rocket up and under control even after one of its engine blew up, which was quite impressive. In the end it was more like a hard landing than a crash.
Whoosh...
'I don't know if I'd trust a 20-year-old today.'
Yeah. That quotes reeks. Who does this guy think built the www ? The people who started Yahoo, Google and most other startups were in their 20s. May not be as impressive as a big cylinder full of explosive, but in the long term the Internet will matter a lot more.
Man, you are depressing...
Dell – then the world’s biggest PC maker – received billions of dollars to “remain monogamous” with Intel. At their peak in the first quarter of 2007, payments from Intel made up 76% of Dell’s quarterly operating income: $723 million against a total of $949 million.
And I really wonder why Intel hasn't been gutted and salted for monopoly abuse, with its CEO and main backers arrested. How can it not be MORE clear than that ?!?
What I don't understand, is why aren't juges fighting back this kind of thing to force to police to go through them first. They never say a word on the matter !
One that says: "I bought an iPhone without a working antenna and now I'm eagerly waiting for the next model" ?
Yeah, that. I used to have a cheap 1920x1200 monitor but it broke and I could not find a replacement at that or higher resolution 3 years later. Everybody told me that now monitors and TVs are manufactured as the same devices and TVs want 1024 vertical resolution, so 1920x1024 is all there is on the cheap. Or you need to shell 2000$ for a 'multimedia creator' or 'medical viewing' monitor.
Because I think it's boring.
I agree that jogging or lifting weight is dead boring. Then do something exciting: climbing (even indoors), or just about any other mountain activity. Also because being scared cleans all the shit out of your head. But of course it helps if you are near some mountains...
As the saying goes:
"Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." -- Edward Stanley, the Earl of Derby, 1873.
It's most likely the same people who don't 'believe' in evolution anyway. They'll soon get a practical lesson into what 'natural selection' means when 8 out of their 10 offsprings don't make it to adulthood. Like in the old days when god(s) ruled.
That's what I'm wondering: the delta-V to go from one target to the next must be huge, even if you optimize your orbit changes. You probably need to take a huge amount of fuel to catch only a few tens of targets. And this fuel turns into gas, also following the same orbit. I wonder if it has any influence on active satellites or if it diffuses away too quickly.
Another thing that's getting to me is the wild mouse movements required to navigate around. Go to one corner to change to the window changing mode, then go to the opposite corner to do something with the windows like move it to another virtual display or something.
This reminds me why I couldn't stand OSX when it came out a decade ago (maybe they fixed it since then, but I'd bet on not). When you want(ed) to enlarge a window on the left you had to grab the left side of the window and pull to the left. And then notice that it didn't work. Go and grab the top of the window and move the entire window to the left. Then move to the bottom right corner, grab and drag it back to its original position. It drove me insane each time.
...I can no longer have the same size fonts on my 146 DPI display as on my 90 DPI display....
I never thought this was possible. How do you do it on KDE ?
Sorry, I didn't know they prayed to their prophet (which I have no doubt did exist), I simply assumed it refered to their god.
...he insulted the Islamic religion...
I read the tweets and I don't have a clue why they are considered an insult, much less to an imaginary entity. Can someone elaborate on that ?!?
Yeah, I've noticed that the science fiction stories of the golden age (40s~50s) had noticed the improvement in prodictivity of workers over time. So they naturally assumed that by year 2000 we would all be working 4 hours a week. Wrong: some people work 70h/week and make a butload of money while the others are unemployed (or work lousy jobs for hardly more benefits than being on welfare). That's what you get when you don't have strong labor laws and/or central control.