Your statement that early pioneers often fail before the idea catches on, but that doesn't really apply to Transmeta. The two cases aren't really the same.
Tivo is a new idea, something you couldn't do before. Before Tivo, the best you could do was stick an EP cassete in your VCR and program it to record things.
Crusoe is just a clever implementation of the old idea of "low power processor". It doesn't actually let you do anything that you couldn't before, it only provides a different set of engineering tradeoffs (how big a battery you need, what kind of software you can run). From that sense, they aren't really the "early pioneers" of which you speak. Granted, their implementation is quite clever.
I thought it was pretty obvious, but here it is in detail. The definition of weight on an asteroid orbiting the Earth that would give a small value is this:
You read the number on the scale and you're done.
"The number on a scale" is not a definition of weight, that is a measurement of weight. Just like velocity isn't defined as "the number that appears on your speedometer". Velocity is defined as the derivative of position with respect to time. Just because your speedometer says "0" doesn't mean you have no velocity -- if you drive off a cliff, you will have quite a bit of velocity, no? Similarly, you weigh something even though you're in free-fall and thus the scale reads "0". The limitations of your measurement device should not be folded into your definition.
You've confused defining a thing with measuring it -- perhaps that is the problem.
Out of curiosity, is there a way to measure the sum of all gravitational forces acting on a body "locally", meaning that you don't know how far the asteroid is from Earth, your laboratory is windowless, and you can't communicate with the outside?
Of course! Stand on a scale. Or better yet, drop an object and measure the time it takes to fall and from that derive the acceleration it experienced (one of the limitations of a scale is that it can measure force in only one direction, that perpendicular to it's surface). What is it that makes you think that a scale wouldn't also be measuring the effects of other bodies such as earth on you?
One definition gives 0.01g*m for the weight of an object on a hypothetical asteroid orbiting Earth. The other definition gives 0.9g*m.
Out of curiosity, how do you figure that?
If you sum all gravitational forces acting on a body, you get a single force vector. Divide that by the mass, and you get the acceleration. Multiply the acceleration by the mass, and you get the gravitational force. They are the same.
So how would you call the perceived downward acceleration time mass on such a body, if not by "weight"?
I wouldn't call it by anything but "weight". That's what weight means. Err, except the "perceived" part, depending on what you meant by that...
but then why are you wasting the term "weight" for a useless technicality that deserves a technical term "the total gravitational force felt assuming a pre-general-relativity model of physics".
Those two statements are the same. Your downward acceleration depends on the total gravitational force.
If Bill Clinton had done his job as President, the attacks on the US would not have happened (at least not in 2001). Bill Clinton drastically cut the US military budget. It will take years for the military to recover from that. Thus, it is outrageous for you to blame Bush's 2003 budget for the 2001 attack.
While it is true that $270 billion is drastically less than $380 billion, it does not necessarily follow that $270 billion is insufficient.
Unless it can be demonstrated that another $100 billion would have prevented the destruction of the towers, the point stands.
George's current buget is simply the most recent figure in a long line of military bugets that can best be summarized by the word "large". I think you read too much into the fact that the quoted value was for the current budget.
With your definition of weight you would have to add the influence of the Moon and the Sun to the number you see on your scale before you can call it your "weight". That's idiotic, therefore your definition of weight is wrong.
That's an interesting form of logic you have there. The "this doesn't follow from my pre-conceived notion of how things work, and therefore must be wrong". Curious.
And yes, you do have to account for the moon, sun, and every other mass in the universe to calculate your weight with complete precision. It's normally safe not to bother, though. Which I guess is why you thought it would be idiotic, and thus somehow wrong, to do so.
What's you're weight on the Moon? 1/6th of what you weigh on Earth. You don't add up the far-away Earth's contribution.
You would if you wanted to be accurate. Just because something is small doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? And for the ISS, the earth -is- the most significant source of gravity (and thus weight), so you would count it.
Copyrights are just a way for writers, etc. to do the same thing. It has nothing to do with "community".
Wrong. The reason copyright exists is for the betterment of the community through artistic works. This is stated explicitly in the Constitution. Copyright is there to provide an incentive for artists to create works that then better the community. The legal protection of their works is the method used to attain the purpose, not the purpose in and of itself. It was not an attempt to make physical property and "intellectual property" equal before the law. The founders understood quite well the difference between physical property and ideas.
The irony is that people also complain about DVD region-izing, which is supposed to, at least in theory, enable greater price discrimination. Maybe not to allow chinese farmers to watch "eight legged freaks", but at least in some less extreme situations.
Price discrimination is not there so that people who can't afford the DVDs can buy it. The reason it is there is so that those who can afford to pay even more can be forced to do so. This is exactly what Nintendo was trying to do, and they got bitch-slapped for it. They were certainly making a profit off of their sales in the U.K. What they wanted to do was protect their even greater profits in Germany et al. It's not about being able to sell products for cheaper, it's about maximizing profit in each region -- and enforcing artificial barriers to trade to enforce this.
Show me the region in which the MPAA/RIAA are selling their products for a loss, and I'll believe you have a point.
Except they aren't stealing anything. If they came into your store showing you something they got somewhere else cheaper, saying "I never would have bought this at your prices", do you break their legs?
Aw man... Shades of "Why is it wrong to be a monopoly?"
Look, there was nothing wrong with them having different prices in different countries. It was when they colluded with distributors in order to prevent others from selling the games into the higher-priced areas. The price differential created a market opportunity for resellers, which Nintendo illegally squashed. Not so Adam Smith-friendly anymore.
I agree that it sucks sometimes. It's the worst system out there... except for all the others.
You shouldn't be dismissive about problems in a system because other systems also have problems. All you do is lose an opportunity for improvement.
Those "unreasonable" proposals are reasonable to someone, or they wouldn't propose them.
"Give me more of what I want" doesn't seem unreasonable at all for many people for arbitrarily large definitions of "more". Remember also that there have been many who think fascism is perfectly reasonable.
If they're unreasonable to enough people, they won't get passed.
That this is not true was entirely what my point was; things can get passed -despite- being unreasonable to many people through the magic of politics. There are other considerations involved, and you just have to know how to manipulate them.
If they get passed today, they may get reversed later as people see just how unreasonable they were.
The precedents for such are few and far between. It's easier to pass a law than repeal one. And "may get reversed" is sore consolation.
The problem is that one side of the debate isn't trying to get something completely unreasonable passed alongside the other unreasonable thing. What happens in reality is that one side asks for something unreasonable, and the other side says no. They then try something slightly-less unreasonable, and that works, because it's "good politics" to compromise (even if it isn't a compromise at all). Just because your first crazy offer wasn't accepted doesn't mean the result is a "creative win-win solution" or "watered down".
You do realize that the DMCA is a watered-down version of what the media and technology companies really wanted, right? That the PATRIOT act is a watered-down version of what the Executive branch actually wanted, right? Are these your "watered down compromises"? This is the results of this "feature"?
It is in fact a standard practice to ask for more than you want. Each time you come back with a slightly modified proposal, the more pressure you put on your opponent to accept it. It doesn't matter if each revision does nothing to make it more palatable -- eventually the politics mandate capitulation.
And yes, that's life. But that doesn't mean it's good.
Actually, no, he doesn't have the right to try to do something that violates my rights. Ask any of the people in prison for attempted robbery, rape, murder, etc.
Actually, they do as well. Any of them were welcome to attempt to convince congress that the actions needed for their "business model" of robbery/murder shouldn't be illegal. You can probably guess how well that would work, but hey, they can sure try, right?;)
Beware! Giving you methods to blow off your righteous steam (such as the "internet chat room") is how the Man keeps you from becoming so angry you revolt against him!;)
Hehe. Thanks for catching that! For a second, my deep-seeded cynicism was in danger of becoming slightly less hardened, and my heart slightly less jaded. It was a close call.
Now, in response to what you found...
I know I say this a lot, but...
"We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in." ... who gives a fuck?
Yeah, and the laws against prostitution are really hurting the members of the Direct Whoring Association.
I'm sorry, but I just can't stand the "but our business model needs this" legal argument. I'm serious! What university is putting out the MBAs who think whatever dumb-ass business model they think up is going to be okay, and they have the right to see it succeed.
Of course, they have the right to try, and the sad thing is if their stupid argument actually works, then they just managed to succeed anyway.:)
Although it would appear that the original paper is not online, so we can't be sure.
Yeah, but I think you're right anyway, as that is the only reasonable thing the article could be talking about. None of the applications require steg, but it's very clear that the invention involves altering the image itself in some way. So based on that, can you think of what you would possibly use this for?
Well, you can blame the editor, but it's really the article's fault. What they're really talking about is lossless steganography, which is a neater trick. The idea is to hide data in a standard (eg. GIF) image, and be able to extract that data while at the same time preserving the entire image. For the applications they talk about (watermarking), the hidden information is encrpyted, which may be why that word showed up.
I'm curious about their claims. Do they claim to be able to hide the data in an existing image format without image loss? For formats like GIF, it'd be tough, because compressed data (by design) lacks the redundant bits Information Theory demands before you can start cramming extra bits of data into the same space. They certainly wouldn't be able to guarantee that the image was without quality loss before removing and correcting for the watermark.;)
So I guess I'm not sure what they're claiming.
Though I think for the applications they are stating, actual hiding of the data isn't the point. You don't care if people know that there is some data hidden in the image, you only care that they can't read it or forge it. It'd be much easier then, because you could make a new file format. Shit, all you'd have to do is take a.PNG, stick an encrpyted md5 sum at the back, and call it (S)ecurePNG.
Which isn't a bad idea, actually... You could do some of the things they talked about.
For digitizing contracts, both parties would put an md5 sum encrpyted with their private keys in the image of the contract. Anyone (e.g. the Court) can read the md5 sums and verify that a copy of the contract is legitimate.
For verifying forensics photos, the camera they used would have to encrypt all the photos it takes with a private key (the Courts, again?) not known to the police officers who do the work. I think this is unworkable.
The only problem with both of these ideas is that they are only worth as much as you can trust that the private keys have not been compromised. If you're going to be convicting people on the basis of signed police photos, you'd better be damn sure that the police couldn't have possibly discovered the private key hidden in the camera's hardware.
But like I said, this doesn't involve hiding data in a photograph. I'm just wondering what the -purpose- of the steganography was actually supposed to be. Why is it important that the information be -concealed-?
An analogy is a form of explanation, I was saying. It illustrates a point through comparison. So, I was treating them the same. But an explanation is different than an argument. With an explanation you're getting someone to understand something, with an argument you're trying to get them to believe it.
The post by jamie gave a logical argument for why it would be impossible for two objects of different masses to fall at different speeds. Your explanation only shows what happens if it is true that they fall at the same speed.
Of course, I did make a stupid mistake, because it was the post by Myco that changed from proof to illustration. You just followed that pattern. Or something.:)
Well, it may not actually be the best time to launch at that time. The article didn't say how far away it ever gets (which could tell us how fast it moved). But my argument is that if it gets really far away, that means it's traveling very fast when it passes earth, and so you may want to wait until it has a lower relative velocity near the farthest point. Or it isn't traveling that fast when it passes earth, and you can afford to wait.:)
That's only an explanation, not an argument. You're just -illustrating- that two objects would move at the same velocity, not -proving- it. So the other analogies were better.:)
But AIDS isn't the only problem out there, and there is a good chance that without the ability to recoup R&D costs drug research will grind to a halt.
Don't you mean recoup marketing costs? That is the thing they have to worry about first, because they spend more than twice as much on marketing as they do on R&D.
Why did 5 Central African nations with horrible HIV/AIDS infection rates just fight a long war in the Congo? Why wasn't that money put towards buying drugs or treatments?
Why are we spending hundreds of billions, many times these nations' combined GDP, on our military instead of on solving our own social problems? The answers to these questions are the same.
I think the governments of some of those nations will use cheaper drugs as a way to fatten thier Swiss and Grand Cayman bank accounts.
As opposed to our pharmaceuticals, which... ? But regardless, I can't see that happening. The drugs going there now because they're too expensive. There's no way to get rich overcharging for something that's barely affordable at cost.
Or to put it another way: The only possible effect lowering the price can have on the number of people who get drugs in these countries is to raise it.
You know, control the drug, get some money, or what if Zim gets some free patents and the Congo doesn't and the Congo can't afford them from anyone else and Zim hands over some drugs for 60% of a diamond mine?
It sounds to me like the Congo gets some medications it couldn't have otherwise. And if you trace that scenario back to root cause, what happens?
There are bad policies in play that need to be corrected, which will help many people, before everyone just starts chucking drugs out for free.
Yes, and some of those bad policies are ours. The badness of someone else's policies are no reason to tolerate the badness of your own. Using the badness of others' policies (as opposed to how the bad policies affect you; rather the mere presence of badness itself) to decide your own policy is bad policy.
Slashdot Mirror
Your statement that early pioneers often fail before the idea catches on, but that doesn't really apply to Transmeta. The two cases aren't really the same.
Tivo is a new idea, something you couldn't do before. Before Tivo, the best you could do was stick an EP cassete in your VCR and program it to record things.
Crusoe is just a clever implementation of the old idea of "low power processor". It doesn't actually let you do anything that you couldn't before, it only provides a different set of engineering tradeoffs (how big a battery you need, what kind of software you can run). From that sense, they aren't really the "early pioneers" of which you speak. Granted, their implementation is quite clever.
That's a law, and it's for safety reasons.
And the point stands -- If they owned the modems (like I do) then they didn't modify something that doesn't belong to them.
I thought it was pretty obvious, but here it is in detail. The definition of weight on an asteroid orbiting the Earth that would give a small value is this:
You read the number on the scale and you're done.
"The number on a scale" is not a definition of weight, that is a measurement of weight. Just like velocity isn't defined as "the number that appears on your speedometer". Velocity is defined as the derivative of position with respect to time. Just because your speedometer says "0" doesn't mean you have no velocity -- if you drive off a cliff, you will have quite a bit of velocity, no? Similarly, you weigh something even though you're in free-fall and thus the scale reads "0". The limitations of your measurement device should not be folded into your definition.
You've confused defining a thing with measuring it -- perhaps that is the problem.
Out of curiosity, is there a way to measure the sum of all gravitational forces acting on a body "locally", meaning that you don't know how far the asteroid is from Earth, your laboratory is windowless, and you can't communicate with the outside?
Of course! Stand on a scale. Or better yet, drop an object and measure the time it takes to fall and from that derive the acceleration it experienced (one of the limitations of a scale is that it can measure force in only one direction, that perpendicular to it's surface). What is it that makes you think that a scale wouldn't also be measuring the effects of other bodies such as earth on you?
One definition gives 0.01g*m for the weight of an object on a hypothetical asteroid orbiting Earth.
The other definition gives 0.9g*m.
Out of curiosity, how do you figure that?
If you sum all gravitational forces acting on a body, you get a single force vector. Divide that by the mass, and you get the acceleration. Multiply the acceleration by the mass, and you get the gravitational force. They are the same.
So how would you call the perceived downward acceleration time mass on such a body, if not by "weight"?
I wouldn't call it by anything but "weight". That's what weight means. Err, except the "perceived" part, depending on what you meant by that...
but then why are you wasting the term "weight" for a useless technicality that deserves a technical term "the total gravitational force felt assuming a pre-general-relativity model of physics".
Those two statements are the same. Your downward acceleration depends on the total gravitational force.
I guess I can't see what is confusing you.
If Bill Clinton had done his job as President, the attacks on the US would not have happened (at least not in 2001). Bill Clinton drastically cut the US military budget. It will take years for the military to recover from that. Thus, it is outrageous for you to blame Bush's 2003 budget for the 2001 attack.
While it is true that $270 billion is drastically less than $380 billion, it does not necessarily follow that $270 billion is insufficient.
Unless it can be demonstrated that another $100 billion would have prevented the destruction of the towers, the point stands.
George's current buget is simply the most recent figure in a long line of military bugets that can best be summarized by the word "large". I think you read too much into the fact that the quoted value was for the current budget.
With your definition of weight you would have to add the influence of the Moon and the Sun to the number you see on your scale before you can call it your "weight". That's idiotic, therefore your definition of weight is wrong.
That's an interesting form of logic you have there. The "this doesn't follow from my pre-conceived notion of how things work, and therefore must be wrong". Curious.
And yes, you do have to account for the moon, sun, and every other mass in the universe to calculate your weight with complete precision. It's normally safe not to bother, though. Which I guess is why you thought it would be idiotic, and thus somehow wrong, to do so.
What's you're weight on the Moon? 1/6th of what you weigh on Earth. You don't add up the far-away Earth's contribution.
You would if you wanted to be accurate. Just because something is small doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? And for the ISS, the earth -is- the most significant source of gravity (and thus weight), so you would count it.
Copyrights are just a way for writers, etc. to do the same thing. It has nothing to do with "community".
Wrong. The reason copyright exists is for the betterment of the community through artistic works. This is stated explicitly in the Constitution. Copyright is there to provide an incentive for artists to create works that then better the community. The legal protection of their works is the method used to attain the purpose, not the purpose in and of itself. It was not an attempt to make physical property and "intellectual property" equal before the law. The founders understood quite well the difference between physical property and ideas.
The irony is that people also complain about DVD region-izing, which is supposed to, at least in theory, enable greater price discrimination. Maybe not to allow chinese farmers to watch "eight legged freaks", but at least in some less extreme situations.
Price discrimination is not there so that people who can't afford the DVDs can buy it. The reason it is there is so that those who can afford to pay even more can be forced to do so. This is exactly what Nintendo was trying to do, and they got bitch-slapped for it. They were certainly making a profit off of their sales in the U.K. What they wanted to do was protect their even greater profits in Germany et al. It's not about being able to sell products for cheaper, it's about maximizing profit in each region -- and enforcing artificial barriers to trade to enforce this.
Show me the region in which the MPAA/RIAA are selling their products for a loss, and I'll believe you have a point.
Except they aren't stealing anything. If they came into your store showing you something they got somewhere else cheaper, saying "I never would have bought this at your prices", do you break their legs?
Aw man... Shades of "Why is it wrong to be a monopoly?"
Look, there was nothing wrong with them having different prices in different countries. It was when they colluded with distributors in order to prevent others from selling the games into the higher-priced areas. The price differential created a market opportunity for resellers, which Nintendo illegally squashed. Not so Adam Smith-friendly anymore.
Hope that explains that.
I agree that it sucks sometimes. It's the worst system out there... except for all the others.
You shouldn't be dismissive about problems in a system because other systems also have problems. All you do is lose an opportunity for improvement.
Those "unreasonable" proposals are reasonable to someone, or they wouldn't propose them.
"Give me more of what I want" doesn't seem unreasonable at all for many people for arbitrarily large definitions of "more". Remember also that there have been many who think fascism is perfectly reasonable.
If they're unreasonable to enough people, they won't get passed.
That this is not true was entirely what my point was; things can get passed -despite- being unreasonable to many people through the magic of politics. There are other considerations involved, and you just have to know how to manipulate them.
If they get passed today, they may get reversed later as people see just how unreasonable they were.
The precedents for such are few and far between. It's easier to pass a law than repeal one. And "may get reversed" is sore consolation.
The problem is that one side of the debate isn't trying to get something completely unreasonable passed alongside the other unreasonable thing. What happens in reality is that one side asks for something unreasonable, and the other side says no. They then try something slightly-less unreasonable, and that works, because it's "good politics" to compromise (even if it isn't a compromise at all). Just because your first crazy offer wasn't accepted doesn't mean the result is a "creative win-win solution" or "watered down".
You do realize that the DMCA is a watered-down version of what the media and technology companies really wanted, right? That the PATRIOT act is a watered-down version of what the Executive branch actually wanted, right? Are these your "watered down compromises"? This is the results of this "feature"?
It is in fact a standard practice to ask for more than you want. Each time you come back with a slightly modified proposal, the more pressure you put on your opponent to accept it. It doesn't matter if each revision does nothing to make it more palatable -- eventually the politics mandate capitulation.
And yes, that's life. But that doesn't mean it's good.
Actually, no, he doesn't have the right to try to do something that violates my rights. Ask any of the people in prison for attempted robbery, rape, murder, etc.
;)
Actually, they do as well. Any of them were welcome to attempt to convince congress that the actions needed for their "business model" of robbery/murder shouldn't be illegal. You can probably guess how well that would work, but hey, they can sure try, right?
Except if you care about quality enough to worry about 1-bit errors, then you wouldn't have been using a lossy format in the first place.
:)
JPEG would never cut it for forensics photos.
Not that this also isn't a good idea. I'm just saying it doesn't match what the article suggests.
*Sigh* I feel better now.
;)
Beware! Giving you methods to blow off your righteous steam (such as the "internet chat room") is how the Man keeps you from becoming so angry you revolt against him!
Hehe. Thanks for catching that! For a second, my deep-seeded cynicism was in danger of becoming slightly less hardened, and my heart slightly less jaded. It was a close call.
... who gives a fuck?
:)
Now, in response to what you found...
I know I say this a lot, but...
"We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
Yeah, and the laws against prostitution are really hurting the members of the Direct Whoring Association.
I'm sorry, but I just can't stand the "but our business model needs this" legal argument. I'm serious! What university is putting out the MBAs who think whatever dumb-ass business model they think up is going to be okay, and they have the right to see it succeed.
Of course, they have the right to try, and the sad thing is if their stupid argument actually works, then they just managed to succeed anyway.
Although it would appear that the original paper is not online, so we can't be sure.
Yeah, but I think you're right anyway, as that is the only reasonable thing the article could be talking about. None of the applications require steg, but it's very clear that the invention involves altering the image itself in some way. So based on that, can you think of what you would possibly use this for?
Well, you can blame the editor, but it's really the article's fault. What they're really talking about is lossless steganography, which is a neater trick. The idea is to hide data in a standard (eg. GIF) image, and be able to extract that data while at the same time preserving the entire image. For the applications they talk about (watermarking), the hidden information is encrpyted, which may be why that word showed up.
;)
.PNG, stick an encrpyted md5 sum at the back, and call it (S)ecurePNG.
I'm curious about their claims. Do they claim to be able to hide the data in an existing image format without image loss? For formats like GIF, it'd be tough, because compressed data (by design) lacks the redundant bits Information Theory demands before you can start cramming extra bits of data into the same space. They certainly wouldn't be able to guarantee that the image was without quality loss before removing and correcting for the watermark.
So I guess I'm not sure what they're claiming.
Though I think for the applications they are stating, actual hiding of the data isn't the point. You don't care if people know that there is some data hidden in the image, you only care that they can't read it or forge it. It'd be much easier then, because you could make a new file format. Shit, all you'd have to do is take a
Which isn't a bad idea, actually... You could do some of the things they talked about.
For digitizing contracts, both parties would put an md5 sum encrpyted with their private keys in the image of the contract. Anyone (e.g. the Court) can read the md5 sums and verify that a copy of the contract is legitimate.
For verifying forensics photos, the camera they used would have to encrypt all the photos it takes with a private key (the Courts, again?) not known to the police officers who do the work. I think this is unworkable.
The only problem with both of these ideas is that they are only worth as much as you can trust that the private keys have not been compromised. If you're going to be convicting people on the basis of signed police photos, you'd better be damn sure that the police couldn't have possibly discovered the private key hidden in the camera's hardware.
But like I said, this doesn't involve hiding data in a photograph. I'm just wondering what the -purpose- of the steganography was actually supposed to be. Why is it important that the information be -concealed-?
Uh, actually, I meant "argument". :)
:)
An analogy is a form of explanation, I was saying. It illustrates a point through comparison. So, I was treating them the same. But an explanation is different than an argument. With an explanation you're getting someone to understand something, with an argument you're trying to get them to believe it.
The post by jamie gave a logical argument for why it would be impossible for two objects of different masses to fall at different speeds. Your explanation only shows what happens if it is true that they fall at the same speed.
Of course, I did make a stupid mistake, because it was the post by Myco that changed from proof to illustration. You just followed that pattern. Or something.
Because moderators are idiots, of course. If it makes you feel better, I thought your post was funny. :)
Well, it may not actually be the best time to launch at that time. The article didn't say how far away it ever gets (which could tell us how fast it moved). But my argument is that if it gets really far away, that means it's traveling very fast when it passes earth, and so you may want to wait until it has a lower relative velocity near the farthest point. Or it isn't traveling that fast when it passes earth, and you can afford to wait. :)
That's only an explanation, not an argument. You're just -illustrating- that two objects would move at the same velocity, not -proving- it. So the other analogies were better. :)
Neither your sig nor this sentence contains a paradox.
But AIDS isn't the only problem out there, and there is a good chance that without the ability to recoup R&D costs drug research will grind to a halt.
Don't you mean recoup marketing costs? That is the thing they have to worry about first, because they spend more than twice as much on marketing as they do on R&D.
Why did 5 Central African nations with horrible HIV/AIDS infection rates just fight a long war in the Congo? Why wasn't that money put towards buying drugs or treatments?
Why are we spending hundreds of billions, many times these nations' combined GDP, on our military instead of on solving our own social problems? The answers to these questions are the same.
I think the governments of some of those nations will use cheaper drugs as a way to fatten thier Swiss and Grand Cayman bank accounts.
As opposed to our pharmaceuticals, which... ? But regardless, I can't see that happening. The drugs going there now because they're too expensive. There's no way to get rich overcharging for something that's barely affordable at cost.
Or to put it another way: The only possible effect lowering the price can have on the number of people who get drugs in these countries is to raise it.
You know, control the drug, get some money, or what if Zim gets some free patents and the Congo doesn't and the Congo can't afford them from anyone else and Zim hands over some drugs for 60% of a diamond mine?
It sounds to me like the Congo gets some medications it couldn't have otherwise. And if you trace that scenario back to root cause, what happens?
There are bad policies in play that need to be corrected, which will help many people, before everyone just starts chucking drugs out for free.
Yes, and some of those bad policies are ours. The badness of someone else's policies are no reason to tolerate the badness of your own. Using the badness of others' policies (as opposed to how the bad policies affect you; rather the mere presence of badness itself) to decide your own policy is bad policy.