The Government does not grant rights! The government is granted rights by the people, and if the people believe that the government is not being a good steward, they can revoke those rights. That appears to be what is happening in Iran right now. The Iranian people no longer believe that the government is acting in good faith, and many have decided that they want to take back their freedom of speech.
The government can, will, and possibly even should act to retain the powers granted to it by the people. But ultimately the decision lies with the people. Either they want it enough to force the issue no matter what the government does, or they don't. I agree that the world is watching to see how this unfolds, but you and I have a major difference of opinion as to who is granting the rights and who is receiving them.
Basically, the newspapers took what the paper said, and extrapolated to an obscene extent. The author of the actual research disavows almost the entire news article outside of having a theory, and it involving oceans and magnetism.
The founding fathers in the US believed that humans had the right to do ANYTHING, but that other humans also had the right to do ANYTHING in response. As a result, humans gave up some of their rights to the government. Different countries have given over more or less of their innate rights to the government, some by choice, others by force.
Freedom of speach (Communication) was one of the rights reserved for the people by the bill of rights here in the US. In Iran, the government believes that the right of Free Speach was given over to the government. At least some of the people of Iran disagree. Since we in the west tend to believe that free speech is a right that cannot/shouldn't every be given away, many are willing to help the Iranians that are not willing to accept Iranian control over speech.
The woman was guilty, that's obvious to anyone that understands the law. The problem is not that the system is beyond repair, it's not even that it's broken. The problem is that the Fines are disproportionate to the actual damages.
The law in question was designed with For-Profit piracy in mind. People duplicating CD's to sell on the street in massive quantities. It was not intended for use against individuals who are sharing music for free. All that really needs to happen is to have the relevant clauses revised to accept lower fines in cases where the defendant didn't profit materially from the copywrite violations.
In this case specifically, there is also the problem where the plantif allowed an ideologue to represent her. IMHO, this Camara guy just couldn't fathom the possibility that he would loose. Ars has had a running commentary of the case as it's gone on, and I've gotten the impression that he chose a riskier strategy and declined to dispute much of the evidence. He seemed to expect the same measure of 'reasonable doubt' that is required for a criminal case. In civil cases the burden of proof for the prosecution is much lower.
What you probably have is an inability to smell through your nose. My brother has this. volatile chemicals necessary for smell that come in through his mouth (ie off of food or drink) he can process, but he cannot smell through his nose.
I'm curious as to whether there is some sort of obstruction in his sinuses, or just an odd distribution of the smell receptors in his sinuses that favor smelling things in his mouth to the exclusion of smell through nasally inhaled breath.
He frequently argues with me as to the biology of tasting vs smelling because he admits to being able to taste more than the 4 basic tasts, but refuses to admit that any other component of taste is due to an at least partially functioning sense of smell. He could just be obstinant becuase he knows it annoys me, he is my brother. Although, he is a fighter pilot, and I'm not sure exactly how much biology is required before they let you start shooting things out of the sky;)
IIRC, there was an article on either Slashdot or Arstechnica where evidence was presented that at least one real role of fingerprints is to increase tactile sensitivity.
You may want to read the response by IdahoEv to my criticism of his post. He agrees that he gave bad examples and that the tone of his post made him appear to be a little off his rocker:
Alright, let me come back and defend myself here. Being a scientist myself, I do in fact understand the issues at stake, though parts of my post were poorly worded - and I used bad examples - which led to the wrong impression. The problem of posting at 3am.
,
My apologies for using a stereotypical "cured cancer" sounding headline, which made me sound like a conspiracy theorist.
and
Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and as a result has anti-inflamatory properties.
Okay - that particular one was probably a poor example; I read a mention of it just a couple of days ago and didn't bother to follow it up with further research. Thank you for correcting me.
After he clarified, we got down to an actual discussion of the issue at hand. You on the other hand had even less to contribute to the discussion than my response to his admittedly poor choice of phrasing. If you want to call me down for not sticking to the topic at hand, even though I did make at least one comment that was relevant, then maybe you might want to include at least one more on-topic comment than I did.
You are not my mother (I hope), so I'd appreciate it if you didn't try and act like her.
This leaves additional room for government to step in with a different set of goals.
I totally agree. IIRC, there is a program where the first group to get a viable treatment to market for diseases that effect > 5% of the population (the exact percentage probably isn't accurate, but more for illustration) get longer monopoly protection (indefinite?) in order to sweeten the deal for pharmaceutical companies. That way, if it will take 3x as long for the ROI to get into the black, it's at least possible for the companies to make a profit.
I may have gotten some part of the details wrong, but the plan was designed to address at least some of this problem. However, I do agree that some portion of the grants need to go toward some of the problems you outlined (New uses for old drugs, efficacy of off-label use, treatments for afflictions of the poor, etc.)
I agree, we are probably both on the same page. I think that it is a common misnomer that the federal government is granting this money to businesses, though.
Most NIH grants go to universities or other research institutions. The Universities then sell the patents to the big Biomedical companies, because the University is ill equipped to spend the large amounts necessary for product development, marketing, manufacture, etc. I think that if the University uses NIH money to develop the technology/treatment, then the results of the research, including any relevant patents, belong to NIH and by extension the public.
No, it's not the problem. The problem is the Government not having the balls to stand up to interested parties and require that all research funded with federal dollars be released into the public domain.
It's not my fault that both of his suggestions were based on his complete lack of understanding of the current state of biomedical research. I didn't miss the point at all.
My point was that his point was not actually a point at all. It was a regurgitation of uninformed press releases, and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.
Now, the fact that many educated people can't tell the difference between press releases, marketing, and conspiracy theories and Real Science is something that deserves a lot of discussion. My favorite site for this is BadScience.net, where Ben Goldacre picks apart all three on a regular basis. Since I don't have the time, or a popular blog in which to do the same thing, I resort to correcting misinterpretations and misinformation where I see them.
Making uninformed assumptions about my mental acuity/development and calling me names doesn't alter the reality that, He was misinformed and I was educating him to that fact.
Besides my last sentence was addressing the premise upon which both of his points were based. That being that the government wasn't funding enough biomedical research. the NIH is the single largest sponsor of biomedical research in the country, and I would bet it's one of the top ten in the world, and that's only one of the federal agencies that sponsor the kind of research he was proposing.
This effect is why you see so many exciting scientific reports, like "Scientists cure 10 kinds of cancer in mice with white blood cell treatment!" or whatever, that never even go into human studies or trials, much less make it to the drugstore.
you could not be more wrong. The reason that you have these kinds of reports is that the scientists doing the research are not the ones writing the press releases, never mind the actual articles that get published. Most employees in the press and in corporate/university press offices are not scientists. They are Humanities majors, and don't know shit about how science actually works. Terms like Goodness of Fit, Extrapolation, and the difference between conclusions and implications are lost on these people. Their job is to make headlines, not report the facts accurately.
2) Potential medicines or treatments that may be extremely useful but cannot be patented and so never get funding for research, because the company who spent 15 million to do the research would immediately get outcompeted by other companies who wouldn't have to recoup the research investment. Hundreds of these exist. For example, scientists discovered decades ago that the hormone progesterone dramatically increases the speed of wound healing (first noticed when it was observed that pregnant mice heal faster than other mice). It has never been studied as a potential treatment for wounds, however, because progesterone can't be patented.
Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and as a result has anti-inflamatory properties. The reason that it aids in wound healing is that it suppresses certain components of the immune system. Fine if there is no contamination of the wound because it prevents inflamation from causing the wound to get worse before it gets better. However, if there is bacteria already present then this is a bad idea, becase the infection will do even more damage that the attenuated immune response will take longer to control. There is no need to look at progesterone within the scope you describe because we already understand how it does this, why, and why we shouldn't use it in most cases. In cases where we do want to suppress an overactive immune response, there are other drugs (many not under patent) that physicians prefer to use.
I'm not knocking the idea of government funded health research, but I can assure you that they already do that. Most biomedical research in this country is funded directly by federal agencies to the tune of several hundred billion (if it's not now up into the trillions collectively) dollars a year.
The reason why I don't use LaTeX is that I can't find any sort of "Idiot's Guide to LaTeX" from which to learn how to use it. Every resource I've found assumes you already know everything you need to know about LaTeX. Not really helpful for the uninitiated.
Your not. Cow's don't bite. They will try and mount you if you get too close while they are in heat, though. They will also knock you over if you get in their way, but they don't bite
I have to agree. The oozing sores, and flop sweat that is MS office for mac becomes painfully obvious once you start trying to add charts and tables to any document (word, excel and powerpoint included).
Want to have columns that are a 0.4 inches wide? Forget about trying to just enter 0.4 into the column width cell, that doesn't actually work. You need to spend at least 10 min holding down the option key while grabbing the column with your mouse and moving it one pixel at a time.
Want to have a chart with identical formatting to a previous chart? Expect to create the 2nd chart no less than 3 times as the program decides to ignore half of what you do, and spontaniously change those settings that did take back to default on a whim.
Just this week I created a chart in powerpoint, using the default formatting of that template, and saved as a legacy PPT file (instead of PPTX). When I went to edit the chart the next day, PPT reformatted every possible aspect of the chart and I could not get it to go back to the templates formatting. I ended up having to create all 7 of my charts again from scratch (this time saving as PPTX). Unfortunately, I'm still going to need to save the final presentation as a PPT becuase the conference I'll be attending refuses to accept PPTX.
I'd swear that MS was intentionally trying to cripple the mac version of office, if it weren't so obvious that they are just incompetent.
I have no citations, but I believe you are wrong about Pixars original stance on sequels. The way I remember it, Pixar didn't want to do any sequels, but Disney is infatuated with them and forced the issue. Afterward, Disney claimed that Toy Story 2 didn't count toward their contracted number of movies, thus giving Disney the equivalent of a Freebie. My memory of events jives pretty well with what you've said otherwise.
We're talking about state government here, not federal. Washington State, as far as I can tell, is not propping up industries that are not self-sufficient.
C64 made mention of handouts to the basket weavers guild. That may have been hyperbole, in which case your correct that states don't often get into the business of propping up industries, but the Federal government sure does, and the Auto/Banking industries are by no means the first.
Will it? Cutting programs in a recession is the opposite of economic stimulus, and many experts believe it makes the problem worse, not better.
I'm not talking about the whole sale axing of entire programs. I'm talking about doing financial triage. Deciding which programs the government can't afford to cut, which can have the budget reduced or frozen for a limited period of time, which large public works projects can be put on hold, and which struggling programs need to be killed and restarted when they've got more money. If I can decide between getting my truck fixed, a new suit for interviews, or having cable TV, I don't see why the government shouldn't start making the same kinds of decisions.
OK, so, which programs? It's easy to make vague general statements about trimming the fat. It's much harder to identify specific programs to slash.
how about the programs that save irresponsible people from losing homes they never should have bought in the first place. What do I care if property values go down. If I'm in the market for a new home, good for me. If not, why should I care? If I'm moving, and can still afford to make my payments, then I can rent the property out instead of selling and build equity that much faster once the market rebounds. There's no reason those that were responsible should pay for the mistakes of the irresponsible. Besides, I'm not an economist but I do know that the best way to revive the housing industry is to increase demand. By making homes cheaper that'll encourage those that haven't made bad investments more willing to buy now since there's a very good chance the market will rebound within a decade (the home market being a long term market under normal circumstances)
Ultimately, I don't know all the best programs to cut, but then again I didn't pursue the job.
The US fought for independence from Britain because we weren't represented in Parliament, not because 10% taxation was too high. Remember "no taxation without representation"? The key part was the last two words, not the first two.
What we have here is the difference between Rhetoric and Reality. The Rhetoric of the day was "No taxation without representation" with the emphasis on the last half, but representation wouldn't actually have mattered. The Reality was that any representation would have been token and the part that mattered to most people was the first half. Representatives from the colonies would have been so vastly outnumbered that their impact would have been negligible. Colonial citizens didn't want representation, they wanted to not pay taxes. Also, I said less than 10% because I couldn't remember the exact figure (I was thinking around 5% at the time), but I checked my old US History notes and the actual tax was less than 1% of annual income.
First, if you're going to simply cut pieces out of what I said and ignore context then I'm not going to bother talking to you. The rest of the paragraph following the end of the quote is:
I'm not talking only about direct benefits either. If a program has direct benefit to only a few, but indirectly benefits a lot, then that should be taken into consideration.
FYI, Cancer research falls into the previously unlisted category of "Direct benefit to many and indirect benefit to all."
Second, you have to be completely ignorant of biology in general and cancer in particular to believe that cancer "doesn't affect very many people (in the grand scheme)." The longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer. Regardless in changes in environmental toxins/mutagenic factors, ultimately if something else doesn't kill you, cancer will!
Third, stop putting words in my mouth (or should I say in my post?) In the last post I disavowed the notion of mob rule, which you once again argue as though I support (strawman anyone?).
Ultimately the governments job boils down to various services (that's why they are called 'public servants'). Whether they want to admit it or not, they have a finite amount of money with which to pay for those services (Econ 101). In the current financial situation, there is less money available than they predicted there would be and they can't balance the budget without either
A. increasing available funds through taxation,
B. increasing available funds by taking out loans,
C. decreasing the amount of money they are spending to match the amount of money on hand, or
D. Some combination of A. B. & C.
Unfortunately, the government has tried, unsuccessfully, to utilize option B almost exclusively, with a smattering of option A in the form of 'Sin Taxes'. If that doesn't work they'll be forced to use option C, or just go bankrupt. However, I'm of the opinion that they should have started by using C first, and then moved to B and finally A.
You can feel free to disagree, but none of this boils down to your strawman argument of "Majority Rule trampling on the rights of the minority". If you want to respond to what I actually wrote, instead of what you expected/wanted me to write, we can continue this discussion. If you are going to resort to demagoguery, rhetoric, and strawman arguments, please don't waste your time or mine by responding.
I wasn't implying that "Majority Rules" what I was saying is that in times of financial hardship the government should tighten it's belt like the rest of the country, and that it should do so by focusing on either cutting or reducing the budgets of programs that benefit the least people. It's financial triage that I'm advocating, not mob rule.
The government is beholden to all the people, not just those in the majority. However, it is important to note that it is beholden to all the people equally. If a program only benefits a small portion of the population, but costs everyone, then it should be higher up on the list of endangered programs than a program that benefits a larger proportion of the population. I'm not talking only about direct benefits either. If a program has direct benefit to only a few, but indirectly benefits a lot, then that should be taken into consideration.
My big problem with governmental budgeting right now is that no consideration of the costs appears to be done. Many states appear to be spending money like it's the DotCom bubble and they've got more money than they know what to do with. They decide what they want to spend, regardless of who or how many benefit, or whether or not they can afford it. They are spending on credit now and they'll end up raising taxes further in the future in order to cover the interest on the credit, and that is not sustainable.
Don't be intentionally obtuse. I don't believe that only programs I approve of should be funded. I'm not that egotistical, but I'd bet that there are a good number of programs that we all pay for, yet most of us don't approve of or see any (in)direct benefit from.
I'd bet that the majority of Americans see no benefit from the US Government purchasing wool from US producers to keep alive an industry that is not now, nor is likely to ever again be self sufficient. Especially since the wool is not being converted into goods that are then sold or even given away to to those that cannot afford warm clothing, but instead is simply being left to rot.
Spending money on proping up industries that are not, and will never again be self sufficient is a total waste of money regardless of the economy. It can be justified when we've got a surplus, if you believe the BS about the "inherent cultural value" of certain professions and/or skills (as you can probably tell, I do not). No one (reasonable) is claiming that the government shouldn't uses taxes to raise revenue, nor are they denying that commerce is how tax revenue is generated. However, that doesn't mean that they should take upto 50% of your annual income and spend it on programs you don't value or benefit from.
My wife lost her job (reduced household income) so we cancelled cable TV, Dropped to a lower bandwidth plan for internet access, shopped around for lower cost auto insurance, go out to eat less, and try to refrain from using the AC & Heat to save on utility costs. There is no reason why State and Federal governments can't recognize that they just don't have the money coming in (and that increasing taxes won't help) to pay for everything they want to buy, and cut expenditures to reflect this. Some programs should have their budgets decreased, and other programs either put on hold or eliminated. It may suck for some in the short term, but it will help a greater proportion of the tax paying population in the long run if they learn to live within their means.
What I believe C64 is getting at is that the government is spending money to support some industries and programs that have limited if any real payback. They probably require more government money to stay in business than is created directly or indirectly by taxing the related commerce. Cutting those funding programs can have a net benefit of saving money. The problem is that governments (state and federal) are not looking to cut spending intelligently. They are cutting the Education budgets, and other services that are IMO more important than subsidizing wool production in the US since it is cheaper to import wool from New Zealand than it is to grow it here (most of the domesting wool crop ends up being purchased by the government and composted per the farm bill).
I'm of the opinion that the government (state and federal) attempts to be all things to all people all of the time as far as services go. It trys to do too much, and the burdensom tax rate is the result.
Taxes, over the long run, ALWAYS go up! The US fought for indepedance from Britain over taxation of less than 10% annually. Now the US governments combined (state+federal) takes up to 50% of someones annual income. I wouldn't be surprized to see my grandchildren (I'm 30) paying upto 70% by the time I die.
I don't know why you brought up price. "Page's Law" makes no mention as to the price of hardware or software, nor did I, so your bringing up of the tangential "Macs cost more" meme seems superfluous.
IMO, the measure of new softwares speed is best measured on older (6-12mo old) hardware since the older version was not written with the newer hardware in mind and the newer software was written with the old and new hardware in mind (or at least should have been).
I grant that early versions of OS X were not ready for prime time. That's why OS 9 was still shipping alongside OS X. BUt I have to disagree as to your claim that the improvements in OS X were related primarily to increased Hardware performance. My 800MHZ PBG4 shipped with OS 9 and X (10.1 IIRC). It got faster with every OS update it was capable of using (Leopard requires 867MHZ or better). The Hardware didn't change at all, only the OS.
OTOH, I tried installing Vista on a machine that already was running XP and it was slower for just about everything. Once again, only the OS changed, not the hardware. That's why I brought up Vista. It's an example of newer software running slower on the same hardware thus supporting this "Page's Law"
It would have been more impressive if they'd somehow managed to make it slower with each release.
Then MS and Vista must have knocked your sox off!
I do have to agree about the 10.0->.1 & 10.1->.2 transitions being unsurprising. OS 9 was faster than either of the first two iterations of OS 10. However, the increases from 10.2 to 10.3, and 10.3 to 10.4 were impressive in their own right because 10.2 was where the new OS X reached speed parity with OS 9, IMO. OS preferences asside, Mac OS development has managed to break this law (that I'd never heard of before today).
I was kind of bummed that 10.5 wasn't faster overall than 10.4 on my MBP, but it wasn't any slower either. I'm hoping that 10.6 will be the speed boost I was expecting since they are claiming to have focused on 'under the hood' improvements (whatever that really means).
My father-in-law is a good example of someone that would fit this diagnosis. He's perpetually bitter over everything, but cannot/willnot do anything about it. He sees his life as litterally one long list of grevences agains the world for what it's done to him. If they actually had a therapy (drug, or otherwise) that could help, I'd drag him there myself.
I believe that a lot of the bad things that have happened in his life that makes him feel bitter only happened because he let it happen. He cannot seem to help himself and it has definitely resulted in him having a painful debilitated life.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether or not that right is granted
The Government does not grant rights! The government is granted rights by the people, and if the people believe that the government is not being a good steward, they can revoke those rights. That appears to be what is happening in Iran right now. The Iranian people no longer believe that the government is acting in good faith, and many have decided that they want to take back their freedom of speech.
The government can, will, and possibly even should act to retain the powers granted to it by the people. But ultimately the decision lies with the people. Either they want it enough to force the issue no matter what the government does, or they don't. I agree that the world is watching to see how this unfolds, but you and I have a major difference of opinion as to who is granting the rights and who is receiving them.
Basically, the newspapers took what the paper said, and extrapolated to an obscene extent. The author of the actual research disavows almost the entire news article outside of having a theory, and it involving oceans and magnetism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/20/bad-science-magnetism-ocean-core
Complete BS
The founding fathers in the US believed that humans had the right to do ANYTHING, but that other humans also had the right to do ANYTHING in response. As a result, humans gave up some of their rights to the government. Different countries have given over more or less of their innate rights to the government, some by choice, others by force.
Freedom of speach (Communication) was one of the rights reserved for the people by the bill of rights here in the US. In Iran, the government believes that the right of Free Speach was given over to the government. At least some of the people of Iran disagree. Since we in the west tend to believe that free speech is a right that cannot/shouldn't every be given away, many are willing to help the Iranians that are not willing to accept Iranian control over speech.
Here, Here!
The woman was guilty, that's obvious to anyone that understands the law. The problem is not that the system is beyond repair, it's not even that it's broken. The problem is that the Fines are disproportionate to the actual damages.
The law in question was designed with For-Profit piracy in mind. People duplicating CD's to sell on the street in massive quantities. It was not intended for use against individuals who are sharing music for free. All that really needs to happen is to have the relevant clauses revised to accept lower fines in cases where the defendant didn't profit materially from the copywrite violations.
In this case specifically, there is also the problem where the plantif allowed an ideologue to represent her. IMHO, this Camara guy just couldn't fathom the possibility that he would loose. Ars has had a running commentary of the case as it's gone on, and I've gotten the impression that he chose a riskier strategy and declined to dispute much of the evidence. He seemed to expect the same measure of 'reasonable doubt' that is required for a criminal case. In civil cases the burden of proof for the prosecution is much lower.
What you probably have is an inability to smell through your nose. My brother has this. volatile chemicals necessary for smell that come in through his mouth (ie off of food or drink) he can process, but he cannot smell through his nose.
;)
I'm curious as to whether there is some sort of obstruction in his sinuses, or just an odd distribution of the smell receptors in his sinuses that favor smelling things in his mouth to the exclusion of smell through nasally inhaled breath.
He frequently argues with me as to the biology of tasting vs smelling because he admits to being able to taste more than the 4 basic tasts, but refuses to admit that any other component of taste is due to an at least partially functioning sense of smell. He could just be obstinant becuase he knows it annoys me, he is my brother. Although, he is a fighter pilot, and I'm not sure exactly how much biology is required before they let you start shooting things out of the sky
IIRC, there was an article on either Slashdot or Arstechnica where evidence was presented that at least one real role of fingerprints is to increase tactile sensitivity.
Alright, let me come back and defend myself here. Being a scientist myself, I do in fact understand the issues at stake, though parts of my post were poorly worded - and I used bad examples - which led to the wrong impression. The problem of posting at 3am.
,
My apologies for using a stereotypical "cured cancer" sounding headline, which made me sound like a conspiracy theorist.
and
Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and as a result has anti-inflamatory properties.
Okay - that particular one was probably a poor example; I read a mention of it just a couple of days ago and didn't bother to follow it up with further research. Thank you for correcting me.
After he clarified, we got down to an actual discussion of the issue at hand. You on the other hand had even less to contribute to the discussion than my response to his admittedly poor choice of phrasing. If you want to call me down for not sticking to the topic at hand, even though I did make at least one comment that was relevant, then maybe you might want to include at least one more on-topic comment than I did.
You are not my mother (I hope), so I'd appreciate it if you didn't try and act like her.
This leaves additional room for government to step in with a different set of goals.
I totally agree. IIRC, there is a program where the first group to get a viable treatment to market for diseases that effect > 5% of the population (the exact percentage probably isn't accurate, but more for illustration) get longer monopoly protection (indefinite?) in order to sweeten the deal for pharmaceutical companies. That way, if it will take 3x as long for the ROI to get into the black, it's at least possible for the companies to make a profit.
I may have gotten some part of the details wrong, but the plan was designed to address at least some of this problem. However, I do agree that some portion of the grants need to go toward some of the problems you outlined (New uses for old drugs, efficacy of off-label use, treatments for afflictions of the poor, etc.)
I agree, we are probably both on the same page. I think that it is a common misnomer that the federal government is granting this money to businesses, though.
Most NIH grants go to universities or other research institutions. The Universities then sell the patents to the big Biomedical companies, because the University is ill equipped to spend the large amounts necessary for product development, marketing, manufacture, etc. I think that if the University uses NIH money to develop the technology/treatment, then the results of the research, including any relevant patents, belong to NIH and by extension the public.
I've never seen in explained more succinctly.
No, it's not the problem. The problem is the Government not having the balls to stand up to interested parties and require that all research funded with federal dollars be released into the public domain.
It's not my fault that both of his suggestions were based on his complete lack of understanding of the current state of biomedical research. I didn't miss the point at all.
My point was that his point was not actually a point at all. It was a regurgitation of uninformed press releases, and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.
Now, the fact that many educated people can't tell the difference between press releases, marketing, and conspiracy theories and Real Science is something that deserves a lot of discussion. My favorite site for this is BadScience.net, where Ben Goldacre picks apart all three on a regular basis. Since I don't have the time, or a popular blog in which to do the same thing, I resort to correcting misinterpretations and misinformation where I see them.
Making uninformed assumptions about my mental acuity/development and calling me names doesn't alter the reality that, He was misinformed and I was educating him to that fact.
Besides my last sentence was addressing the premise upon which both of his points were based. That being that the government wasn't funding enough biomedical research. the NIH is the single largest sponsor of biomedical research in the country, and I would bet it's one of the top ten in the world, and that's only one of the federal agencies that sponsor the kind of research he was proposing.
This effect is why you see so many exciting scientific reports, like "Scientists cure 10 kinds of cancer in mice with white blood cell treatment!" or whatever, that never even go into human studies or trials, much less make it to the drugstore.
you could not be more wrong. The reason that you have these kinds of reports is that the scientists doing the research are not the ones writing the press releases, never mind the actual articles that get published. Most employees in the press and in corporate/university press offices are not scientists. They are Humanities majors, and don't know shit about how science actually works. Terms like Goodness of Fit, Extrapolation, and the difference between conclusions and implications are lost on these people. Their job is to make headlines, not report the facts accurately.
2) Potential medicines or treatments that may be extremely useful but cannot be patented and so never get funding for research, because the company who spent 15 million to do the research would immediately get outcompeted by other companies who wouldn't have to recoup the research investment. Hundreds of these exist. For example, scientists discovered decades ago that the hormone progesterone dramatically increases the speed of wound healing (first noticed when it was observed that pregnant mice heal faster than other mice). It has never been studied as a potential treatment for wounds, however, because progesterone can't be patented.
Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and as a result has anti-inflamatory properties. The reason that it aids in wound healing is that it suppresses certain components of the immune system. Fine if there is no contamination of the wound because it prevents inflamation from causing the wound to get worse before it gets better. However, if there is bacteria already present then this is a bad idea, becase the infection will do even more damage that the attenuated immune response will take longer to control. There is no need to look at progesterone within the scope you describe because we already understand how it does this, why, and why we shouldn't use it in most cases. In cases where we do want to suppress an overactive immune response, there are other drugs (many not under patent) that physicians prefer to use.
I'm not knocking the idea of government funded health research, but I can assure you that they already do that. Most biomedical research in this country is funded directly by federal agencies to the tune of several hundred billion (if it's not now up into the trillions collectively) dollars a year.
The reason why I don't use LaTeX is that I can't find any sort of "Idiot's Guide to LaTeX" from which to learn how to use it. Every resource I've found assumes you already know everything you need to know about LaTeX. Not really helpful for the uninitiated.
Your not. Cow's don't bite. They will try and mount you if you get too close while they are in heat, though. They will also knock you over if you get in their way, but they don't bite
I have to agree. The oozing sores, and flop sweat that is MS office for mac becomes painfully obvious once you start trying to add charts and tables to any document (word, excel and powerpoint included).
Want to have columns that are a 0.4 inches wide? Forget about trying to just enter 0.4 into the column width cell, that doesn't actually work. You need to spend at least 10 min holding down the option key while grabbing the column with your mouse and moving it one pixel at a time.
Want to have a chart with identical formatting to a previous chart? Expect to create the 2nd chart no less than 3 times as the program decides to ignore half of what you do, and spontaniously change those settings that did take back to default on a whim.
Just this week I created a chart in powerpoint, using the default formatting of that template, and saved as a legacy PPT file (instead of PPTX). When I went to edit the chart the next day, PPT reformatted every possible aspect of the chart and I could not get it to go back to the templates formatting. I ended up having to create all 7 of my charts again from scratch (this time saving as PPTX). Unfortunately, I'm still going to need to save the final presentation as a PPT becuase the conference I'll be attending refuses to accept PPTX.
I'd swear that MS was intentionally trying to cripple the mac version of office, if it weren't so obvious that they are just incompetent.
I have no citations, but I believe you are wrong about Pixars original stance on sequels. The way I remember it, Pixar didn't want to do any sequels, but Disney is infatuated with them and forced the issue. Afterward, Disney claimed that Toy Story 2 didn't count toward their contracted number of movies, thus giving Disney the equivalent of a Freebie. My memory of events jives pretty well with what you've said otherwise.
We're talking about state government here, not federal. Washington State, as far as I can tell, is not propping up industries that are not self-sufficient.
C64 made mention of handouts to the basket weavers guild. That may have been hyperbole, in which case your correct that states don't often get into the business of propping up industries, but the Federal government sure does, and the Auto/Banking industries are by no means the first.
Will it? Cutting programs in a recession is the opposite of economic stimulus, and many experts believe it makes the problem worse, not better.
I'm not talking about the whole sale axing of entire programs. I'm talking about doing financial triage. Deciding which programs the government can't afford to cut, which can have the budget reduced or frozen for a limited period of time, which large public works projects can be put on hold, and which struggling programs need to be killed and restarted when they've got more money. If I can decide between getting my truck fixed, a new suit for interviews, or having cable TV, I don't see why the government shouldn't start making the same kinds of decisions.
OK, so, which programs? It's easy to make vague general statements about trimming the fat. It's much harder to identify specific programs to slash.
how about the programs that save irresponsible people from losing homes they never should have bought in the first place. What do I care if property values go down. If I'm in the market for a new home, good for me. If not, why should I care? If I'm moving, and can still afford to make my payments, then I can rent the property out instead of selling and build equity that much faster once the market rebounds. There's no reason those that were responsible should pay for the mistakes of the irresponsible. Besides, I'm not an economist but I do know that the best way to revive the housing industry is to increase demand. By making homes cheaper that'll encourage those that haven't made bad investments more willing to buy now since there's a very good chance the market will rebound within a decade (the home market being a long term market under normal circumstances)
Ultimately, I don't know all the best programs to cut, but then again I didn't pursue the job.
The US fought for independence from Britain because we weren't represented in Parliament, not because 10% taxation was too high. Remember "no taxation without representation"? The key part was the last two words, not the first two.
What we have here is the difference between Rhetoric and Reality. The Rhetoric of the day was "No taxation without representation" with the emphasis on the last half, but representation wouldn't actually have mattered. The Reality was that any representation would have been token and the part that mattered to most people was the first half. Representatives from the colonies would have been so vastly outnumbered that their impact would have been negligible. Colonial citizens didn't want representation, they wanted to not pay taxes. Also, I said less than 10% because I couldn't remember the exact figure (I was thinking around 5% at the time), but I checked my old US History notes and the actual tax was less than 1% of annual income.
I'm not talking only about direct benefits either. If a program has direct benefit to only a few, but indirectly benefits a lot, then that should be taken into consideration.
FYI, Cancer research falls into the previously unlisted category of "Direct benefit to many and indirect benefit to all."
Second, you have to be completely ignorant of biology in general and cancer in particular to believe that cancer "doesn't affect very many people (in the grand scheme)." The longer you live the more likely you are to get cancer. Regardless in changes in environmental toxins/mutagenic factors, ultimately if something else doesn't kill you, cancer will!
Third, stop putting words in my mouth (or should I say in my post?) In the last post I disavowed the notion of mob rule, which you once again argue as though I support (strawman anyone?).
Ultimately the governments job boils down to various services (that's why they are called 'public servants'). Whether they want to admit it or not, they have a finite amount of money with which to pay for those services (Econ 101). In the current financial situation, there is less money available than they predicted there would be and they can't balance the budget without either
A. increasing available funds through taxation,
B. increasing available funds by taking out loans,
C. decreasing the amount of money they are spending to match the amount of money on hand, or
D. Some combination of A. B. & C.
Unfortunately, the government has tried, unsuccessfully, to utilize option B almost exclusively, with a smattering of option A in the form of 'Sin Taxes'. If that doesn't work they'll be forced to use option C, or just go bankrupt. However, I'm of the opinion that they should have started by using C first, and then moved to B and finally A.
You can feel free to disagree, but none of this boils down to your strawman argument of "Majority Rule trampling on the rights of the minority". If you want to respond to what I actually wrote, instead of what you expected/wanted me to write, we can continue this discussion. If you are going to resort to demagoguery, rhetoric, and strawman arguments, please don't waste your time or mine by responding.
I wasn't implying that "Majority Rules" what I was saying is that in times of financial hardship the government should tighten it's belt like the rest of the country, and that it should do so by focusing on either cutting or reducing the budgets of programs that benefit the least people. It's financial triage that I'm advocating, not mob rule.
The government is beholden to all the people, not just those in the majority. However, it is important to note that it is beholden to all the people equally. If a program only benefits a small portion of the population, but costs everyone, then it should be higher up on the list of endangered programs than a program that benefits a larger proportion of the population. I'm not talking only about direct benefits either. If a program has direct benefit to only a few, but indirectly benefits a lot, then that should be taken into consideration.
My big problem with governmental budgeting right now is that no consideration of the costs appears to be done. Many states appear to be spending money like it's the DotCom bubble and they've got more money than they know what to do with. They decide what they want to spend, regardless of who or how many benefit, or whether or not they can afford it. They are spending on credit now and they'll end up raising taxes further in the future in order to cover the interest on the credit, and that is not sustainable.
Don't be intentionally obtuse. I don't believe that only programs I approve of should be funded. I'm not that egotistical, but I'd bet that there are a good number of programs that we all pay for, yet most of us don't approve of or see any (in)direct benefit from.
I'd bet that the majority of Americans see no benefit from the US Government purchasing wool from US producers to keep alive an industry that is not now, nor is likely to ever again be self sufficient. Especially since the wool is not being converted into goods that are then sold or even given away to to those that cannot afford warm clothing, but instead is simply being left to rot.
Spending money on proping up industries that are not, and will never again be self sufficient is a total waste of money regardless of the economy. It can be justified when we've got a surplus, if you believe the BS about the "inherent cultural value" of certain professions and/or skills (as you can probably tell, I do not). No one (reasonable) is claiming that the government shouldn't uses taxes to raise revenue, nor are they denying that commerce is how tax revenue is generated. However, that doesn't mean that they should take upto 50% of your annual income and spend it on programs you don't value or benefit from.
My wife lost her job (reduced household income) so we cancelled cable TV, Dropped to a lower bandwidth plan for internet access, shopped around for lower cost auto insurance, go out to eat less, and try to refrain from using the AC & Heat to save on utility costs. There is no reason why State and Federal governments can't recognize that they just don't have the money coming in (and that increasing taxes won't help) to pay for everything they want to buy, and cut expenditures to reflect this. Some programs should have their budgets decreased, and other programs either put on hold or eliminated. It may suck for some in the short term, but it will help a greater proportion of the tax paying population in the long run if they learn to live within their means.
What I believe C64 is getting at is that the government is spending money to support some industries and programs that have limited if any real payback. They probably require more government money to stay in business than is created directly or indirectly by taxing the related commerce. Cutting those funding programs can have a net benefit of saving money. The problem is that governments (state and federal) are not looking to cut spending intelligently. They are cutting the Education budgets, and other services that are IMO more important than subsidizing wool production in the US since it is cheaper to import wool from New Zealand than it is to grow it here (most of the domesting wool crop ends up being purchased by the government and composted per the farm bill).
I'm of the opinion that the government (state and federal) attempts to be all things to all people all of the time as far as services go. It trys to do too much, and the burdensom tax rate is the result.
Taxes, over the long run, ALWAYS go up! The US fought for indepedance from Britain over taxation of less than 10% annually. Now the US governments combined (state+federal) takes up to 50% of someones annual income. I wouldn't be surprized to see my grandchildren (I'm 30) paying upto 70% by the time I die.
I don't know why you brought up price. "Page's Law" makes no mention as to the price of hardware or software, nor did I, so your bringing up of the tangential "Macs cost more" meme seems superfluous.
IMO, the measure of new softwares speed is best measured on older (6-12mo old) hardware since the older version was not written with the newer hardware in mind and the newer software was written with the old and new hardware in mind (or at least should have been).
I grant that early versions of OS X were not ready for prime time. That's why OS 9 was still shipping alongside OS X. BUt I have to disagree as to your claim that the improvements in OS X were related primarily to increased Hardware performance. My 800MHZ PBG4 shipped with OS 9 and X (10.1 IIRC). It got faster with every OS update it was capable of using (Leopard requires 867MHZ or better). The Hardware didn't change at all, only the OS.
OTOH, I tried installing Vista on a machine that already was running XP and it was slower for just about everything. Once again, only the OS changed, not the hardware. That's why I brought up Vista. It's an example of newer software running slower on the same hardware thus supporting this "Page's Law"
It would have been more impressive if they'd somehow managed to make it slower with each release.
Then MS and Vista must have knocked your sox off!
I do have to agree about the 10.0->.1 & 10.1->.2 transitions being unsurprising. OS 9 was faster than either of the first two iterations of OS 10. However, the increases from 10.2 to 10.3, and 10.3 to 10.4 were impressive in their own right because 10.2 was where the new OS X reached speed parity with OS 9, IMO. OS preferences asside, Mac OS development has managed to break this law (that I'd never heard of before today).
I was kind of bummed that 10.5 wasn't faster overall than 10.4 on my MBP, but it wasn't any slower either. I'm hoping that 10.6 will be the speed boost I was expecting since they are claiming to have focused on 'under the hood' improvements (whatever that really means).
I agree totally.
My father-in-law is a good example of someone that would fit this diagnosis. He's perpetually bitter over everything, but cannot/willnot do anything about it. He sees his life as litterally one long list of grevences agains the world for what it's done to him. If they actually had a therapy (drug, or otherwise) that could help, I'd drag him there myself.
I believe that a lot of the bad things that have happened in his life that makes him feel bitter only happened because he let it happen. He cannot seem to help himself and it has definitely resulted in him having a painful debilitated life.