The costs of production (in which this fine will be a factor) only set a lower bound on prices. No company just takes costs+10% or something. They try to maximize profits by finding the sweet spot on the demand curve.
And before the anti-EU argument comes up again, I'd like to point out that Infineon is European. The US does the same btw, i. e. when they fined Daimler $500 million for corruption.
I've noticed that previously visited sites still flash up as suggestions immediately after purging the history. These seems to go away after a page refresh. There's probably some caching going on that isn't deleted correctly.
Real costs are usually just a lower bound for the price. The price gets set by what the market will accept. Europeans are probably just less price-sensitive.
Quote at the bottom: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." Since stupidity has no limits, and genius has, P(idiot) is inf/(not inf).
I haven't read the paper, so your criticism might be right. However, 30 can easily be enough to show significance. Say all of the Japanese are shown to have these bacteria, and all of the americans are shown not to have it. Let's say the true distribution is completely random with half of each population having each type of microbe. What are the odds of getting the result? it's 0.5^30. That's a very low number, almost certainly disproving a completely random and uniform distribution of these bacteria.
So Microsoft says they believe it helps them to understand the competition, but the submitter simply says "nobody believes this" and then faults microsoft for not "trying to understand the competition"? Did people actually stop reading their own submissions?
I find it interesting that after many years of stories about the impossibility of cellphone radiation having any damaging effect due to its low power, we suddenly hear this story about the positive effects it has. One of the two can't be true. I don't share the paranoids' obsession with radiowaves, but I'd like to know what if anything was wrong with the earlier assessments.
But why? They don't have much to gain from it. The companies producing these scanners aren't the giants like Lockheed Martin that could actually influence the decision. Their motivation must be less sinister than you think: they're afraid of their jobs. If something happens, it'll be blamed on them, especially if there was an option and other countries were using it. It's still msguided, but it's understandable. Responsibility makes it hard to resist the "safe" choice.
There's a lot that's useful and fun in biochemistry, like fold.it, an interactive and actually useful (for learning and as part of a research effort) protein folding game. Also in regard to proteins, pyMOL (GPL version available but hidden on their website) and the pdb library make for some nice visualization. A little more advanced are molecular dynamics simulations.
Small correction: No mutation is needed for misfolding. It's just a single AA chain that can fold in the normal way, or a pathological way. The pathological form is actually able to tranform healthy ones to the path. form
"I still dont understand why the FDA does not allow drugs that have not been certified to be administered to terminal patients. There is no additional risk from doing it."
Because then there's no reason for companies to do trials, and you'll only have "we don't know if they work, but we sell them anyway" drugs. You'll also have all kinds of snake oil salesmen, which you don't want in a life-or-death situation. Rationality tends to break down in extreme situations.
Ah, it's the green energy companies conspiring against Siemens, Westinghouse, GE and Shell day on slashdot. I love those days. Full of wit and imagination!
Open source licenses rely on the same system and are just as taxpayer-funded as "all rights reserved". There's a lot to criticize in his statements, but misleading data (as in the summary) or extremism like yours doesn't serve the cause. We-have-a-right-to-everything-for-free is not going to convince the general public, politicians and courts that copyright reform is necessary. The focus should be limited copyright terms (12 years is what I've read maximizes the public benefit) and strong fair use rules. If we want to get there, defending piracy and ridiculing artists isn't helpful.
Cash for Clunkers? Yes, that was a total failure. It's like when the government promises to create 2 million jobs in 3 years, and then those jobs are CREATED IN TWO MONTHS!! Oh my god, they can't get anything right!
Note that I don't really like the CfC idea, but it's ridiculous to say it failed because it worked too well.
agggh! Read this: The study controls for teachers' reports of aggression and impulsivity at age 10, the child's gender, and parenting style.
Do you think scientists with >10 years training know less about statistics than you? They actively try to exclude other causes, which is what "controls for" means. Any other ideas for root causes that do not include those controlled for? Or were you just trying to be smart with a nice one-liner because it worked so well for others?
It takes even more to visit other planets. Should Mars become the patented intellectual property of the people running the Mars rover program?
That's basically how the American West was explored: you take the risk of going there, if you survive, you own a piece of land. And ownership last forever, unlike patents that expire after 20 years.
How is that exclusive? Nobel himself patented dynamite, and only with that money could afford the prize, which certainly is a benefit to society. Anything a company legally sells is a benefit to society. If that cancer drug is not a benefit for the patient, would he (or his insurance) not buy it? If that tomato weren't a benefit for you, would you buy it? In any transaction that's not illegal (i. e. both sides are free to refuse to make it), both sides increase their utility. Of course there are exceptions (weapons), but the principle is the fundamental idea of capitalism. And while there are problems when capitalism is taken to the extreme, it's pretty obvious by now that well-regulated companies acting in their self-interest ultimately further mankind's goals.
You can't patent, say, a person blowing air into glass for the purposes of shaping but you can patent a machine that performs the same operation.
I'm pretty sure if our patent system had been in place at the time glass was invented, it could have been patented. Many people make the mistake of thinking "oh it's so obvious. Just melt some silicon and form it into a bottle using air pressure". But it's not obvious. And in that case it was one of humanities most important inventions. Think how much work went into perfecting the process: the right tools, the perfect temperature etc. It took over 300 years until we had glass that was at least free of visible imperfections. And why would anybody ever spend years to do that kind of research? I'm sure at the time glass was invented, new traveled slowly and it was easy to keep the process somewhat secret for a few years. Today, we believe it's better to share all the details openly and then impose and artificial restriction to encourage invention.
A properly working patent system is about free, open disclosure and sharing of knowledge.
Think of the negative impact on medical advances if someone, years ago, were able to patent "physical modification of human organs using a blade."
No, it doesn't sound absurd. A patent expires after 20 years. Surgery was invented in the 18th century. Missing out on the first few years wouldn't matter anymore, since surgery is probably more limited by anatomy, biochemistry and pharmacological research than constantly inventing new techniques. Even better, a functioning patent system might have motivated someone to think of surgery earlier. Maybe more than 20 years earlier.
I'm not saying the system is perfect. I don't believe business patents or all the other seemingly obvious stuff are useful. But by misrepresenting the other side of the argument, you're not doing the cause a favor. People with too strong an opinion usually haven't thought the issue through.
Maybe by investing 20 years of your life and millions of dollars to find something that will lead to a process that allows you to create antibiotics that save millions of lives. You can then patent that process and those antibiotics. For 20 years. Oh, and the royalties go to your employer who financed your research and will invest it into more research.
Slashdot Mirror
The costs of production (in which this fine will be a factor) only set a lower bound on prices. No company just takes costs+10% or something. They try to maximize profits by finding the sweet spot on the demand curve.
And before the anti-EU argument comes up again, I'd like to point out that Infineon is European. The US does the same btw, i. e. when they fined Daimler $500 million for corruption.
I've noticed that previously visited sites still flash up as suggestions immediately after purging the history. These seems to go away after a page refresh. There's probably some caching going on that isn't deleted correctly.
Real costs are usually just a lower bound for the price. The price gets set by what the market will accept. Europeans are probably just less price-sensitive.
Quote at the bottom: "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." Since stupidity has no limits, and genius has, P(idiot) is inf/(not inf).
I haven't read the paper, so your criticism might be right. However, 30 can easily be enough to show significance. Say all of the Japanese are shown to have these bacteria, and all of the americans are shown not to have it. Let's say the true distribution is completely random with half of each population having each type of microbe. What are the odds of getting the result? it's 0.5^30. That's a very low number, almost certainly disproving a completely random and uniform distribution of these bacteria.
A witty saying proves nothing
-Voltair
Even founding fathers can be wrong
-me
Those who think less government is better should try out Somalia
-me
So Microsoft says they believe it helps them to understand the competition, but the submitter simply says "nobody believes this" and then faults microsoft for not "trying to understand the competition"? Did people actually stop reading their own submissions?
I find it interesting that after many years of stories about the impossibility of cellphone radiation having any damaging effect due to its low power, we suddenly hear this story about the positive effects it has. One of the two can't be true. I don't share the paranoids' obsession with radiowaves, but I'd like to know what if anything was wrong with the earlier assessments.
But why? They don't have much to gain from it. The companies producing these scanners aren't the giants like Lockheed Martin that could actually influence the decision. Their motivation must be less sinister than you think: they're afraid of their jobs. If something happens, it'll be blamed on them, especially if there was an option and other countries were using it. It's still msguided, but it's understandable. Responsibility makes it hard to resist the "safe" choice.
There's a lot that's useful and fun in biochemistry, like fold.it, an interactive and actually useful (for learning and as part of a research effort) protein folding game. Also in regard to proteins, pyMOL (GPL version available but hidden on their website) and the pdb library make for some nice visualization. A little more advanced are molecular dynamics simulations.
Small correction: No mutation is needed for misfolding. It's just a single AA chain that can fold in the normal way, or a pathological way. The pathological form is actually able to tranform healthy ones to the path. form
They were protecting dolphins in Nepal?
"I still dont understand why the FDA does not allow drugs that have not been certified to be administered to terminal patients. There is no additional risk from doing it." Because then there's no reason for companies to do trials, and you'll only have "we don't know if they work, but we sell them anyway" drugs. You'll also have all kinds of snake oil salesmen, which you don't want in a life-or-death situation. Rationality tends to break down in extreme situations.
Ah, it's the green energy companies conspiring against Siemens, Westinghouse, GE and Shell day on slashdot. I love those days. Full of wit and imagination!
Open source licenses rely on the same system and are just as taxpayer-funded as "all rights reserved". There's a lot to criticize in his statements, but misleading data (as in the summary) or extremism like yours doesn't serve the cause. We-have-a-right-to-everything-for-free is not going to convince the general public, politicians and courts that copyright reform is necessary. The focus should be limited copyright terms (12 years is what I've read maximizes the public benefit) and strong fair use rules. If we want to get there, defending piracy and ridiculing artists isn't helpful.
Cash for Clunkers? Yes, that was a total failure. It's like when the government promises to create 2 million jobs in 3 years, and then those jobs are CREATED IN TWO MONTHS!! Oh my god, they can't get anything right!
Note that I don't really like the CfC idea, but it's ridiculous to say it failed because it worked too well.
Wave is a protocol. It's just the first implementation that is google's. Build your own server and you own everything.
The threw in a box of suck. That should be enough.
correllation is not causation?
agggh! Read this: The study controls for teachers' reports of aggression and impulsivity at age 10, the child's gender, and parenting style.
Do you think scientists with >10 years training know less about statistics than you? They actively try to exclude other causes, which is what "controls for" means. Any other ideas for root causes that do not include those controlled for? Or were you just trying to be smart with a nice one-liner because it worked so well for others?
You guys are being ironic, right? Or sarcastic? Or something?
Actually, I didn't know. Thanks for letting us know. It is indeed quite funny. (and proves my point).
It takes even more to visit other planets. Should Mars become the patented intellectual property of the people running the Mars rover program?
That's basically how the American West was explored: you take the risk of going there, if you survive, you own a piece of land. And ownership last forever, unlike patents that expire after 20 years.
How is that exclusive? Nobel himself patented dynamite, and only with that money could afford the prize, which certainly is a benefit to society. Anything a company legally sells is a benefit to society. If that cancer drug is not a benefit for the patient, would he (or his insurance) not buy it? If that tomato weren't a benefit for you, would you buy it? In any transaction that's not illegal (i. e. both sides are free to refuse to make it), both sides increase their utility. Of course there are exceptions (weapons), but the principle is the fundamental idea of capitalism. And while there are problems when capitalism is taken to the extreme, it's pretty obvious by now that well-regulated companies acting in their self-interest ultimately further mankind's goals.
You can't patent, say, a person blowing air into glass for the purposes of shaping but you can patent a machine that performs the same operation.
I'm pretty sure if our patent system had been in place at the time glass was invented, it could have been patented. Many people make the mistake of thinking "oh it's so obvious. Just melt some silicon and form it into a bottle using air pressure". But it's not obvious. And in that case it was one of humanities most important inventions. Think how much work went into perfecting the process: the right tools, the perfect temperature etc. It took over 300 years until we had glass that was at least free of visible imperfections. And why would anybody ever spend years to do that kind of research? I'm sure at the time glass was invented, new traveled slowly and it was easy to keep the process somewhat secret for a few years. Today, we believe it's better to share all the details openly and then impose and artificial restriction to encourage invention.
A properly working patent system is about free, open disclosure and sharing of knowledge.
Think of the negative impact on medical advances if someone, years ago, were able to patent "physical modification of human organs using a blade."
No, it doesn't sound absurd. A patent expires after 20 years. Surgery was invented in the 18th century. Missing out on the first few years wouldn't matter anymore, since surgery is probably more limited by anatomy, biochemistry and pharmacological research than constantly inventing new techniques. Even better, a functioning patent system might have motivated someone to think of surgery earlier. Maybe more than 20 years earlier.
I'm not saying the system is perfect. I don't believe business patents or all the other seemingly obvious stuff are useful. But by misrepresenting the other side of the argument, you're not doing the cause a favor. People with too strong an opinion usually haven't thought the issue through.
Maybe by investing 20 years of your life and millions of dollars to find something that will lead to a process that allows you to create antibiotics that save millions of lives. You can then patent that process and those antibiotics. For 20 years. Oh, and the royalties go to your employer who financed your research and will invest it into more research.
Yes, it's an evil evil broken system.