you have the DVD (Bob) the DVD reader (Alice) and you are NEO...
Actually, no. The DVD is merely a messenger, a bearer of the message, just like the Sattellite TV broadcast signal is. Bob in our case is the dumbass who attempted to encrypt the message in the first place, i.e. some movie studio drone. DVD player cannot be thought of as Alice, as I explained in some other reply above, because for it to be so, it would have to be the final destination of the message. But instead the viewer is, who is both Alice and Neo.
Those must be insane by neccessity because they go against the whole idea of cryptography as I described. All sane ideas are too obviously inneffective. Insane ones are ineffective too, but they are convoluted enough to fool drooling morons, otherwise known as investors. The entire thing is typical of cocaine-induced, wet pipe dreams of movie studio executives, people who have absolutely no understanding of technology and who think of those who do as "lowly, dirty servant gnomes". And why should they think otherwise? After all it is them who are worshipped, grant themselves bonuses equalling 1/3 of yearly incomes of their companies and are able to pervert the laws of nations.
and Alice refuses to tell you her key and she refuses to let you use the content or do anything else except as specifically directed by Bob or by Alice's maker Satan.
Ah, but there is the rub. If it were true in cryptographic terms, the chip would be the final destinatuon. This is akin to having a Roman emperor sending a courier with a cryptogram to his troops, which usually resulted in the enemy sooner or later feeling the tips of their spears. So then you are saying that we would be in a position of those Germanic tribes, not aware of the message but aware of the sharp pointy things. Well if this is so, the message and the effect would have to be only loosely related. But in our case, virtually the entire contents of the message is being blabbed out by the crypto chip, every time, in higherst fidelity possible (say HDTV). This, right there, makes the viewer the final destination of the message and thus both the recipient and the attacker. The convoluted manouvers you described, although clearly what the studios want, are utterly futile by definition. Remember, at one point or another, the message must be decrypted and become organized into photons of light that hit our retinas. And that means they have to be recordable in the same fashion our eyes see them or else gradma will have a hell of a time watching her undecrypted soap opera: "Orville! The aliens ate our television... again!"
I only was commenting on the fact that it is very difficult, to the point of infeasibility, to recreate a modern ASIC design with its roots in an HDL
This is the only thing I was referring to, based on the original post.
If you are looking at ways of cracking other then design break, yours can result in five millenia of computing if the keys are strong enough, in essence you would play the game by the rules of the system designers who wish to make their thing computationally intensive. First rule of cracking: never play by your enemy's rules.
Far better approaches include:
Bypassing the whole silly thing alltogether. Remember in cryptographic terms you are both an attacker and a receiver, which makes the whole attempt at encryption an idiotic cocaine-induced delusion of some movie studio executives. Simply tap in at the CRT or LCD or Plasma or whatever the final physical display device is. At some point the decrypted signal will have to hit the gun/coils/matrix of the display which is normally logically organised. Unless the chip is embedded in it - in which case use another recording device that picks up light emissions from the display... err.. camcorder. At some point in time the decrypted signal will have to become ordered photons or else our retinas will be unable to decode it. So its Game Over for the studios no matter how you slice it.
If you wish to really have the key, you could try running the exposed chip (we are talking electron microscopes here) at lower clock speeds and simply probe signals at what looks like critical junctions and then use computer-aided tools to try to put it back together
This all means that it is -very- difficult to reverse engineer the design, especially if you don't just want to copy it "as is" but want to understand how it works.
You assumed that a cracker would not use an equally automated, specialized tool to reverse the automated process you described. This is akin to making really smart dis-assemblers/de-compilers that can de-obfuscate code, something crackers have been doing for years. You are then simply pitting your VLSI design generator against the cracker's VLSI "design distiller" or some such.
...but people don't believe me when I say that we currently have the technology to create a total lockdown of digital content.
That is because we dont and we never will. The basic premise of cryptography is that a sender (Bob) sends an encrypted message to receiver (Alice) so that an attacker (Neo) wont be able to read it no matter how hard he tries. Forgetting for the moment the discussion of our ability to encrypt hard enough for a really, really clever Neo, in this case (TV and DVD's), Neo and Alice are the same person. This "only" breaks the whole foundation of cryptography. Not to mention it also presents a gender-bender conundrum.
Canada (which is in America, by the way) is a -spit- monarchy.
Parlimentary monarchy. A wee difference between the Queen being an all-powerful tyrant and a mere figurehead. For your information, we happen to have 4 major political parties and a few small ones. Minority governments are possible (we have one presently). Although people always complain, I take this system any night and day over the "one two-headed horse race" you got going over there since... well... basically day one. Which seemed to bother noone, only until recently, when it is became apparent that both of these entrenched choices are getting desperately lame. USA was extremely fortunate for most of its history that this Democrat/Republican farce did not go bad much earlier.
Slaves are pesecuted and therefore are able to seek asylumn in other countries. So if IP laws are akin to slave-trade laws then you should go off and seek asylumn.
So we do. Since this, unlike physical slavery, deals with information and not blood and bones of our bodies, we seek asylum by setting up servers in foreign countries, hoping for reprieve from our persecutors. In turn, those who aspire to own our minds, try to coerce and intimidate those countries, with varying success. But to say that we should be meek and obedient, is insulting.
You have to realise that to some of us, "Intellectual Property" laws are akin to the slave-trade laws, of which the US was so fond before the civil war. Your suggestion can then be read as "...and you slaves do not try to run away, there is no excuse to break the law. Petition your masters humbly to free you". This analogy rings even more true if you realise the extent of corruption and influence the media companies have over law makers, be it via lobbying, bribes or self-serving news coverage, when contrasted with our pitifuly muffled voices.
There is very little advantage in doing the research. If somebody else copies my exam in class, I have the great advantage of doing the research, though I'm stuck with the same grade. Will it help me on the next exam? Yes, but the kid next to me is still getting the same grades I am.
Here is where it shows you didnt think it through. Bringing this "example" which is as far from business reality as possible. Unlike your homework, a company cannot just snap fingers and start manufacturing something unless the "product" is as trivial and unimportant as your homework. More compex the product, longer it takes to bring it into production even when you have a complete, well documented bluerprint. Never you mind a reverse-engineered, "we think its how they did it", stuff that needs lots of trial and error to make work. You need retooling of machinery, procurement of materials, marketing strategies designed, advertising campaigns perpared, plants reallocated, employees trained, etc etc. Its months if not years for any non-trivial product.
So who is going to fund their next $500 million dollar project?
Those who wish to earn even 5% profit. As it should be.
Who will invest in a company where the rate of return is lower? Are you going to put your retirement money to a company earning 5% or one earning 50% rate of return? Once you dry up the investment dollars you dry up industries that rely heavily on IP.
The reason the 50% (and higher) profits exist is due to lack of competition. Pure and simple. In an efficient market, there is a constant preassure from competition that erodes profits. Its a constant battle between clever greed and competition. If clever greed prevails, profits rise, if competition prevails profits decline. So if there is someone raking in 50% for more then a few moments, its a sure sign of corporate socialism and barriers to competition. Barring that, you still have a choice of companies returning 5% vs more efficient, better managed companies who can do, say, 7%.
You are also assuming nobody else comes up with an alternate method for gene therapy
Which according to you should be patented for 20 years at least, which does not alter the situation in the slightest. Besides I object to this callous "it would affect a small population" nonsense. Right. Is OK to have a few slaves, as long as the thing does not get out of hand and affect anyone you know. This is precisely the sort of attitude that brought us slavery in the first place (after all noone "who counts" was related to those "negro apes from Africa" and they were being given a "priviledge" to be touched by the illustrious Western Culture)
Most likely not, unless you know what you are looking for (which you wont since people wont publish the information), it will take a long time to reverse engineer a gene treatment. It would require a large sample of treated people to determine what sequence(s) were affected.
You are assuming that: a) the research was made perfectly secret (something CIA, KGB nor Mossad managed) and b) it was done in total vacuum, independently of all other research (something totally impossible as all progress is made of small increments based on prior research). In absence of these two miracles, there would be either people who know at least a good part of what went on, and on top of that there would be good understanding in the scientific community as to where the succesful change was made. If you couple it with an investment and effort by greedy competitors of course. What makes me laugh is that you are desperately trying to have it both ways and claim that reverse-engineering is as "easy" as stealing your homework and then turn around and claim that it is "impossible" to do when it suits you.
No, even though the information isn't property, the act of sharing information, would damage the company and they could sue
If you are thinking that would be any worse that it is now, you should check out a standard NDA agreeme
No a system that has no protections is unworkable and counterproductive. Unless you provide incentive there is no purpose to risk taking. We saw this with the failure of large scale socialism.
You have things totally backwards. I understand that it is fashionable amongst proponents of corporatism to label everything pro-consumer as "socialist" and claim that Soviets tried to implement it. You should know, however, this absolutely basic fact: Socialism as it was practiced in the Eastern Europe meant nothing but protections. Noone was allowed to compete with government owned enterprises to protect them, they were not allowed to compete with each other, imports were totally restricted in effort to protect small and large businesses, etc etc. One gigiantic morass of protections. You could not possibly pick a worse example for your claim.
Why would a company spend $500 million to come up with something new when it gives them no competitive advantage?
If the were no protection on infomation sharing, a company still has a great advantage of doing the research. Simply it cannot bank on making vast profits from being a government protected, Soviet-like, monopoly. The competitors will catch up very quickly and vicious competition will insue, as it should be in a free market economy. One of the fundamental cornerstones of capitalism is free, unrestricted, unprotected competition. This is the part that people, including you it seems, have difficulty comprehending. Also, it is urestricted competition between businesses but not people, ideas, countries etc. That is why it is quite possible to have a government with taxpayer funds provide a skeleton of a society, social fabric so to speak, including schools, medicare, welfare for the disabled, roads, electric grid, defense, etc. and academic research while leaving everything else to dog-eat-dog-no-holds-barred capitalism. Unfortunately, businessmen, being only selfish, do what they can to prevent competition via import/export barriers, patents, copyrights, various weird laws that protect business and restrict free markets. They only pay lip service to the idea of capitalism and when they say "capitalism" they really mean "socialism for corporations". So they will complain and whine how they would never invest $500 million if the payoff was "only" $600 million. It is just too "beneath" them, since with "Intelectual Property" laws they can get 20 times that for 20 years and do not suffer any of that "disguisting", competition. Thats for the peasants in that "small business crowd".
The parents purchased with the understanding of the consequences
You are a fine upstanding defender of individual freedoms, arent you? What about the frigging child? Had he/she any say in this? Yet she will soon find out that she is someone's property. The term is "slavery". Look it up sometime. And no, nothing wich will ever be invented by any corporation will be worth that price. AIDS cure included. If it were to guardians of humanity like yourself, there would be a "Human Property" market somewhere next to New York Stock Exchange, USA having two classes of people in it: corporate citizens and slaves.
The status quo is companies "playing things my way" I didn't realize my video card and mice and hard drives, and monitor are all incompatible.
You clearly didnt try to use your computer in any way that was not approved by those vendors when they colluded to agree on their restricted view of how things should be, even though, when you purchased your PC, you purchased a "general computing" device and not a DRM-infected "enterntainment center". I know you do not care, and as long as you are being dazzled with mind-numbing enterntainment you are willing to let those who propose further restrictions and controls do as they will. Besides, wherever their cooperation happens to be actually successful, inevietably at the core of that success you will find open
everything on your corporate LAN is low-latency anyway, right?
It is impossible to make any distinction between low-latency or low-priority traffic as soon as one Windows box is around other then to manually mess with the QoS on the routers on a per IP-address basis. Which is a major pain in a large organisation. This impacts things like terminal servers the most, where user interactivity suffers as soon as someone else tries to send mail over the same router.
Nothing of the sort. I am annoyed though at people who take Capitalism and try to apply it where it does not belong (thoughts, data, information) and cause all sorts of grief, chickanery and damage for the sole purpose of ripping me and countless other millions off.
Ah, yes, now we are getting somewhere. It is a matter of who is the authority, and in public discussion, who counts. A few academics in their ivory towers or fiery "historians" with multi-million book copies staying for months on the top 10 bestseller lists. This is probably the whole core of our argument. I, just like vast majority of people, cannot distinguish between "legitimate" historians, who do probably try to do all those things you defend (with varying levels of success), and bogus ones. And the latter probably outnumber the former 10 to 1. And unfortunately that is what makes history so unreliable for most of us. Unlike other sciences, the noise to signal ratio is tremendous and sometimes only increases with the passage of time (say Israel/Palestine conflict, where history 2000 years old is contested).
I don't deny that there are other uses for history, it does teach progress of human civilization and that alone is worthwile. But I focused on one aspect of it, which is most relevant to this discussion. It was prompted by claims of "victimhood" by one ethnic group based on "historical" data. That is the only (albait narrow) context I am interested in for the purpose of this discussion.
But that's not where history falls apart. It's where politics falls apart
The two are irrevocably intertwined.
It's the bigger picture that historians will be more interested in, and that will become clearer in time, as more details previously unknown come to light, the full impact becomes clearer, and people can consider the events a bit more calmly and rationally. Surely that is more important to your stated desire to resolve nationalist agendas?
I fail to see how more details can come to light. I see more confusion coming to light. From which biased historians will pick elements that fit their pre-conceived view of events, and print millions of copies of books, with aid from their national governments, dwarfing and ridiculing information produced by anyone of contrary oppinion. That is the way it works. History, just like any other human endavour, is a land of egos, petty bickering amongst historians and mob mentality. When it comes to precision, I have far lass faith in it then any other "science" (barring economics and psychology which should be combined under the name of "voodoo").
However, abolishing intellectual property would simply end the incentive for drug development,
That is one of most often repeated falsities. If it were true, vast majority of science and art would not have occured as most of it was motivated by things other then greed. Using greed as an all-mighty incentive and claiming that it was so forever is one of the dirtiest tricks of the present corporatist scumbaggery.
To replace that with a publicly funded nationalized drug development industry would require massive additional investment, because there would no longer be a reason for private firms to pick up the enormous bill for safety and efficacy testing.
You keep forgetting that lion share of that money already comes from taxpayers via various medicare and insurance programs.
Giving the government control over both the creation and the evaluation of all drugs would create a massive conflict of interest, and would politicize the drug development process--i.e. there would be a strong motivation to approve drugs whether they were safe and effective or not, to make it look tax money was being well spent.
That is a valid concern, however if the approval agency was separated from the academia and made responsible for the outcome (as in being allowed to be sued by consumers) this could be mitigated. Furthermore I fail to see how this could possibly get worse when compared to the current FDA crew being in the back pocket of the drug industry.
gave us the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster, the bad Hubble mirror, and the Mars probe that crashed because there was nobody competent enough to check the conversion between feet and meters.
These are all examples of government doing research and implementing that research. As anyone competent will tell you, the research was good, execution abysmal. I already addressed that part. You simply do not let government get involved in production and delivery. This also allows for the private industry to act as a watchdog and simply reject some of the stranger outcomes of the academic research or implementing them carefully on small scale first, in effect veryfing the government claim. Keep in mind that in this scenario, the manufacturing/distribution/marketing are the only costs involved and the company might simply run a small scale trial of its own before commiting vast resources in a mega-1000billion-pill-a-minute plant.
Oh! Sorry, I didn't realise that the main purpose of history was to reinforce (or negate) somebody's nationalist agenda
That is not the purpose of history. But just like the purpose of mathematics is not to improve your ability to count change, that is its practical effect. History as an abstract collection of curious but useless data is certainly one approach. However most political movements will attempt to use history to justify their views, and thats where it falls apart.
severely exaggerating..
Yes that was the idea. I was being funny.
Like I said, this is too recent to be considered "history". Come back to me in 30 years.
How is this going to improve things? The point I am making is that even with events that occur in our time, we have little ability to determine the facts, other then those verified by technology, since eyewitnesses and, subequently, the partizan "commisions" who study it are totally unreliable. Future historians will only have a pile of goo produced by both of these to "analyse". Their findings are by definition only as good as the input data. Were it not for camera footage and other technological data, this would be utterly impossible. So on "macroscopic" scale, they can tell that 9/11 happened and have some vague idea about the sequence of events. Any fine detail on the other hand is a lost cause even now. Fast forward 30 years and the data will get only fuzzier.
So very often it is not "profit is profit"; instead it is extensive investment with no profit at all, typically followed by bankruptcy or hostile acquisition.
Oh cry me a river. This is different from any other industry on the planet how exactly? Yet you rarely hear about multi-billion profits in the risky real-estate industry for example. It happens to 1 or 2 firms once in a decade. Not on a regular basis. If it did it means that the capitalist system failed in that area: something prevented free competition from arising and driving the profits/prices down. In a true, free market capitalism, profits are rare because the competition is ruthless and unhampered by artificial barriers like someone blocking a path to discovery with a roadblock marked "Come back in 20 years".
... of failed businesses and acquisitions
Acquisitions happen regardless of success or failure and are primarilly driven by Wall Steet mad CEOs who attempt to create "value" for shareholders. It has absolutely nothing to do with the subject.
People are rightfully skeptical of drug makers for two reasons: prolonged multi-billion dollar profits are a sign of a failure of the capitalist system in the area, as they are indicative of absence of effective competition, and secondly, the entire industry operates on suffering of people. If it were truly the humanist entity it purports itself to be, there would be a strong and effective effort to minimize the cost of drugs. Instead as I attemted to show you, exact opposite is happening: mad rush to ever increasing profits, using perverted laws to prevent competition, attempts at ownership of research results, inflated "cost" analysis, corruption, collusion with governmental bodies, raping of taxpayers, etc etc.
Unlike all the other industries, medical industry, and drug companies specifically are not dealing with some "disposable income" trivia products. They meddle in things that mean life or death. That gives them extraordinary powers and thus demands extraordinary scrutiny. That is why resarch should not be ever allowed to be in any way controlled by these people. If they had their way, no cures would ever be produced, only "treatments" which mask the effects of a desease so that an infinite revenue stream is possible. All companies want to do this. It is the nature of business: greed. Microsoft locks people to their standards and wants perpetual royalties. Bristol-Myers, Pfizer and the rest of the gang are no different. Profit is the only god they answer to.
That is why having public research and private manufacturing is the best combination: greed combined with fair and ruthless competition on a free and unrestricted playing field will motivate the manufacturers to make drugs efficiently and at lowest possible price. While free exchange of ideas in academia will produce a stream of discoveries as it always had before being taken over by the corporate greed. People who are now mercenaries, would simply go back to the labs sponsored by public and various foundations. And the market for inflated bogus "research" expenditures will simply disappear. All one has to do, to achive this, is to abolish the abysmal "Intellectual Property" law which is creating this and many other quagmires all over the landscape.
Uh huh, cause downloading a chinese-language version of the matrix is REALLY closely related to industry and education!
This is just really a meaningless side effect. If someone is dumb enough to bother with some imbecillic drivel translated to chinese, thats their time to waste.
Why is windows so popular in China?
Why is windows so popular in the West? I have no clue. Marketing? Monopoly status abuse? Sure as hell it is not product quality. They just copy what is popular. If Microsoft disappeared from the face of the planet, they would be using whatever, Linux or some home-grown thing. Sure as hell they wont pay $250 a copy to Microsoft no matter what happens. As it should be. Information is not "private property" and thus software "industry" in the West is a mere flight of opportunistic fancy based on perverted laws. If it is to continue, something will have to give: the "Intelectual Property" will be exposed for the fraud it is or the scientific/industrial progress and subsequently the economy of the West will be crippled beyond repair.
We need those tax dollars for the perpetual war on terror
The excesses of war on terror notwithstanding, massive sums are being given to bolster "brand" drug companies bottom lines via various "medicare" programs where taxpayers are made to pay for hideously overpriced products in form of aid to seniors, etc. Make drugs cheap and that massive pile of money can go to research.
More likely, nobody would be making it at all. The generic drug makers wouldn't be able to afford the safety and efficacy testing
You know, you choose to be really blind about how things work. A company will do something if it brings 1% profit. Profit is proftit. As to "being able to afford safety testing", you are kidding, right? What does that mean? 100 sick people, 50 on placebo and 50 on drug? Paperwork to fill? Where does the money go? I know: artificial beaurocracy and massive profits of the companies conducting the "trial". Fuck, most of these poeple would pay to be in a trial for a potentially life-saving drug.
I am beginning to fear that this conversation is futile, you seem to believe that profit is far more important then saving lives and all your arguments point that way.
Look into the history of patent medicines before the FDA
I am not advocating abolishment of FDA. An organization to keep an eye on business where human lives are concerned is an absolute must. My objection is to the fact that FDA and the industry are so cross-polinated with former employees and executives that no reasonable oversight is possible anymore and instead a chummy, "helping-hand", promotional role is played by the FDA for the few select multinationals.
Older drugs are indeed sold more cheaply--you have to cut the price to sell a product against a superior competitor.
If it were true, there wouldnt be problems in Africa and elsewhere. What happens instead, is that they are dropped from production and the generic makers must wait 20 years for the patent to expire. Rendering them effictively, illegal. "Brand" makers wont sell the license (unles you are willing to pay some astronomical sum) because then the generics would be making drugs that while indeed having more side effects, would sell because people are facing a chocice of: 1. sell house and buy "new" medicine, 2. keep house, have nausea, vomit and bends but still get cured. And in Africa, even starker one: sell all the possesions of 3 generations of your family, versus just your lifestock to get a cure.
The GAO thought that the NIH underpriced it.
The whole thing reaks of corruption. And it would be totally unnecessary if NIH licensed its research to anyone free of charge, enabling competition on the quality of the execution of the drug. After all NIH's role is research. And by doing so, the drug would not cost the public further 5 billion that went to the fucking Bristol-Meyers (they made 2 billion profit!). Instead 20 generic makers would make it for 1/100th the cost and sold at 1/100th the price. NIH's mission is to help US citizens to get healthy. Instead they made vast profits for Bristol-Meyers and denied the cure to many taxpayers who could afford it otherwise. And the GAO is bickering that NIH didnt make enough profit for itself. What a bunch of perverted, greedy, sick bastards, the whole lot of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, no. The DVD is merely a messenger, a bearer of the message, just like the Sattellite TV broadcast signal is. Bob in our case is the dumbass who attempted to encrypt the message in the first place, i.e. some movie studio drone. DVD player cannot be thought of as Alice, as I explained in some other reply above, because for it to be so, it would have to be the final destination of the message. But instead the viewer is, who is both Alice and Neo.
Trouble is that this is a greed train run amok for people like Verisgn. $3000 fees per server (or whatever the marker will bear), etc.
Those must be insane by neccessity because they go against the whole idea of cryptography as I described. All sane ideas are too obviously inneffective. Insane ones are ineffective too, but they are convoluted enough to fool drooling morons, otherwise known as investors. The entire thing is typical of cocaine-induced, wet pipe dreams of movie studio executives, people who have absolutely no understanding of technology and who think of those who do as "lowly, dirty servant gnomes". And why should they think otherwise? After all it is them who are worshipped, grant themselves bonuses equalling 1/3 of yearly incomes of their companies and are able to pervert the laws of nations.
Ah, but there is the rub. If it were true in cryptographic terms, the chip would be the final destinatuon. This is akin to having a Roman emperor sending a courier with a cryptogram to his troops, which usually resulted in the enemy sooner or later feeling the tips of their spears. So then you are saying that we would be in a position of those Germanic tribes, not aware of the message but aware of the sharp pointy things. Well if this is so, the message and the effect would have to be only loosely related. But in our case, virtually the entire contents of the message is being blabbed out by the crypto chip, every time, in higherst fidelity possible (say HDTV). This, right there, makes the viewer the final destination of the message and thus both the recipient and the attacker. The convoluted manouvers you described, although clearly what the studios want, are utterly futile by definition. Remember, at one point or another, the message must be decrypted and become organized into photons of light that hit our retinas. And that means they have to be recordable in the same fashion our eyes see them or else gradma will have a hell of a time watching her undecrypted soap opera: "Orville! The aliens ate our television ... again!"
This is the only thing I was referring to, based on the original post.
If you are looking at ways of cracking other then design break, yours can result in five millenia of computing if the keys are strong enough, in essence you would play the game by the rules of the system designers who wish to make their thing computationally intensive. First rule of cracking: never play by your enemy's rules.
Far better approaches include:
You assumed that a cracker would not use an equally automated, specialized tool to reverse the automated process you described. This is akin to making really smart dis-assemblers/de-compilers that can de-obfuscate code, something crackers have been doing for years. You are then simply pitting your VLSI design generator against the cracker's VLSI "design distiller" or some such.
That is because we dont and we never will. The basic premise of cryptography is that a sender (Bob) sends an encrypted message to receiver (Alice) so that an attacker (Neo) wont be able to read it no matter how hard he tries. Forgetting for the moment the discussion of our ability to encrypt hard enough for a really, really clever Neo, in this case (TV and DVD's), Neo and Alice are the same person. This "only" breaks the whole foundation of cryptography. Not to mention it also presents a gender-bender conundrum.
Better yet, build your own!
Parlimentary monarchy. A wee difference between the Queen being an all-powerful tyrant and a mere figurehead. For your information, we happen to have 4 major political parties and a few small ones. Minority governments are possible (we have one presently). Although people always complain, I take this system any night and day over the "one two-headed horse race" you got going over there since ... well ... basically day one. Which seemed to bother noone, only until recently, when it is became apparent that both of these entrenched choices are getting desperately lame. USA was extremely fortunate for most of its history that this Democrat/Republican farce did not go bad much earlier.
So we do. Since this, unlike physical slavery, deals with information and not blood and bones of our bodies, we seek asylum by setting up servers in foreign countries, hoping for reprieve from our persecutors. In turn, those who aspire to own our minds, try to coerce and intimidate those countries, with varying success. But to say that we should be meek and obedient, is insulting.
You have to realise that to some of us, "Intellectual Property" laws are akin to the slave-trade laws, of which the US was so fond before the civil war. Your suggestion can then be read as "...and you slaves do not try to run away, there is no excuse to break the law. Petition your masters humbly to free you". This analogy rings even more true if you realise the extent of corruption and influence the media companies have over law makers, be it via lobbying, bribes or self-serving news coverage, when contrasted with our pitifuly muffled voices.
Here is where it shows you didnt think it through. Bringing this "example" which is as far from business reality as possible. Unlike your homework, a company cannot just snap fingers and start manufacturing something unless the "product" is as trivial and unimportant as your homework. More compex the product, longer it takes to bring it into production even when you have a complete, well documented bluerprint. Never you mind a reverse-engineered, "we think its how they did it", stuff that needs lots of trial and error to make work. You need retooling of machinery, procurement of materials, marketing strategies designed, advertising campaigns perpared, plants reallocated, employees trained, etc etc. Its months if not years for any non-trivial product.
So who is going to fund their next $500 million dollar project?
Those who wish to earn even 5% profit. As it should be.
Who will invest in a company where the rate of return is lower? Are you going to put your retirement money to a company earning 5% or one earning 50% rate of return? Once you dry up the investment dollars you dry up industries that rely heavily on IP.
The reason the 50% (and higher) profits exist is due to lack of competition. Pure and simple. In an efficient market, there is a constant preassure from competition that erodes profits. Its a constant battle between clever greed and competition. If clever greed prevails, profits rise, if competition prevails profits decline. So if there is someone raking in 50% for more then a few moments, its a sure sign of corporate socialism and barriers to competition. Barring that, you still have a choice of companies returning 5% vs more efficient, better managed companies who can do, say, 7%.
You are also assuming nobody else comes up with an alternate method for gene therapy
Which according to you should be patented for 20 years at least, which does not alter the situation in the slightest. Besides I object to this callous "it would affect a small population" nonsense. Right. Is OK to have a few slaves, as long as the thing does not get out of hand and affect anyone you know. This is precisely the sort of attitude that brought us slavery in the first place (after all noone "who counts" was related to those "negro apes from Africa" and they were being given a "priviledge" to be touched by the illustrious Western Culture)
Most likely not, unless you know what you are looking for (which you wont since people wont publish the information), it will take a long time to reverse engineer a gene treatment. It would require a large sample of treated people to determine what sequence(s) were affected.
You are assuming that: a) the research was made perfectly secret (something CIA, KGB nor Mossad managed) and b) it was done in total vacuum, independently of all other research (something totally impossible as all progress is made of small increments based on prior research). In absence of these two miracles, there would be either people who know at least a good part of what went on, and on top of that there would be good understanding in the scientific community as to where the succesful change was made. If you couple it with an investment and effort by greedy competitors of course. What makes me laugh is that you are desperately trying to have it both ways and claim that reverse-engineering is as "easy" as stealing your homework and then turn around and claim that it is "impossible" to do when it suits you.
No, even though the information isn't property, the act of sharing information, would damage the company and they could sue
If you are thinking that would be any worse that it is now, you should check out a standard NDA agreeme
You have things totally backwards. I understand that it is fashionable amongst proponents of corporatism to label everything pro-consumer as "socialist" and claim that Soviets tried to implement it. You should know, however, this absolutely basic fact: Socialism as it was practiced in the Eastern Europe meant nothing but protections. Noone was allowed to compete with government owned enterprises to protect them, they were not allowed to compete with each other, imports were totally restricted in effort to protect small and large businesses, etc etc. One gigiantic morass of protections. You could not possibly pick a worse example for your claim.
Why would a company spend $500 million to come up with something new when it gives them no competitive advantage?
If the were no protection on infomation sharing, a company still has a great advantage of doing the research. Simply it cannot bank on making vast profits from being a government protected, Soviet-like, monopoly. The competitors will catch up very quickly and vicious competition will insue, as it should be in a free market economy. One of the fundamental cornerstones of capitalism is free, unrestricted, unprotected competition. This is the part that people, including you it seems, have difficulty comprehending. Also, it is urestricted competition between businesses but not people, ideas, countries etc. That is why it is quite possible to have a government with taxpayer funds provide a skeleton of a society, social fabric so to speak, including schools, medicare, welfare for the disabled, roads, electric grid, defense, etc. and academic research while leaving everything else to dog-eat-dog-no-holds-barred capitalism. Unfortunately, businessmen, being only selfish, do what they can to prevent competition via import/export barriers, patents, copyrights, various weird laws that protect business and restrict free markets. They only pay lip service to the idea of capitalism and when they say "capitalism" they really mean "socialism for corporations". So they will complain and whine how they would never invest $500 million if the payoff was "only" $600 million. It is just too "beneath" them, since with "Intelectual Property" laws they can get 20 times that for 20 years and do not suffer any of that "disguisting", competition. Thats for the peasants in that "small business crowd".
The parents purchased with the understanding of the consequences
You are a fine upstanding defender of individual freedoms, arent you? What about the frigging child? Had he/she any say in this? Yet she will soon find out that she is someone's property. The term is "slavery". Look it up sometime. And no, nothing wich will ever be invented by any corporation will be worth that price. AIDS cure included. If it were to guardians of humanity like yourself, there would be a "Human Property" market somewhere next to New York Stock Exchange, USA having two classes of people in it: corporate citizens and slaves.
The status quo is companies "playing things my way" I didn't realize my video card and mice and hard drives, and monitor are all incompatible.
You clearly didnt try to use your computer in any way that was not approved by those vendors when they colluded to agree on their restricted view of how things should be, even though, when you purchased your PC, you purchased a "general computing" device and not a DRM-infected "enterntainment center". I know you do not care, and as long as you are being dazzled with mind-numbing enterntainment you are willing to let those who propose further restrictions and controls do as they will. Besides, wherever their cooperation happens to be actually successful, inevietably at the core of that success you will find open
It is impossible to make any distinction between low-latency or low-priority traffic as soon as one Windows box is around other then to manually mess with the QoS on the routers on a per IP-address basis. Which is a major pain in a large organisation. This impacts things like terminal servers the most, where user interactivity suffers as soon as someone else tries to send mail over the same router.
Especially on your corporate LAN? Right. Everything in TCP/IP is meant for the Internet, nothing else exists.
Nothing of the sort. I am annoyed though at people who take Capitalism and try to apply it where it does not belong (thoughts, data, information) and cause all sorts of grief, chickanery and damage for the sole purpose of ripping me and countless other millions off.
Ah, yes, now we are getting somewhere. It is a matter of who is the authority, and in public discussion, who counts. A few academics in their ivory towers or fiery "historians" with multi-million book copies staying for months on the top 10 bestseller lists. This is probably the whole core of our argument. I, just like vast majority of people, cannot distinguish between "legitimate" historians, who do probably try to do all those things you defend (with varying levels of success), and bogus ones. And the latter probably outnumber the former 10 to 1. And unfortunately that is what makes history so unreliable for most of us. Unlike other sciences, the noise to signal ratio is tremendous and sometimes only increases with the passage of time (say Israel/Palestine conflict, where history 2000 years old is contested).
I don't deny that there are other uses for history, it does teach progress of human civilization and that alone is worthwile. But I focused on one aspect of it, which is most relevant to this discussion. It was prompted by claims of "victimhood" by one ethnic group based on "historical" data. That is the only (albait narrow) context I am interested in for the purpose of this discussion.
But that's not where history falls apart. It's where politics falls apart
The two are irrevocably intertwined.
It's the bigger picture that historians will be more interested in, and that will become clearer in time, as more details previously unknown come to light, the full impact becomes clearer, and people can consider the events a bit more calmly and rationally. Surely that is more important to your stated desire to resolve nationalist agendas?
I fail to see how more details can come to light. I see more confusion coming to light. From which biased historians will pick elements that fit their pre-conceived view of events, and print millions of copies of books, with aid from their national governments, dwarfing and ridiculing information produced by anyone of contrary oppinion. That is the way it works. History, just like any other human endavour, is a land of egos, petty bickering amongst historians and mob mentality. When it comes to precision, I have far lass faith in it then any other "science" (barring economics and psychology which should be combined under the name of "voodoo").
That is one of most often repeated falsities. If it were true, vast majority of science and art would not have occured as most of it was motivated by things other then greed. Using greed as an all-mighty incentive and claiming that it was so forever is one of the dirtiest tricks of the present corporatist scumbaggery.
To replace that with a publicly funded nationalized drug development industry would require massive additional investment, because there would no longer be a reason for private firms to pick up the enormous bill for safety and efficacy testing.
You keep forgetting that lion share of that money already comes from taxpayers via various medicare and insurance programs.
Giving the government control over both the creation and the evaluation of all drugs would create a massive conflict of interest, and would politicize the drug development process--i.e. there would be a strong motivation to approve drugs whether they were safe and effective or not, to make it look tax money was being well spent.
That is a valid concern, however if the approval agency was separated from the academia and made responsible for the outcome (as in being allowed to be sued by consumers) this could be mitigated. Furthermore I fail to see how this could possibly get worse when compared to the current FDA crew being in the back pocket of the drug industry.
gave us the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster, the bad Hubble mirror, and the Mars probe that crashed because there was nobody competent enough to check the conversion between feet and meters.
These are all examples of government doing research and implementing that research. As anyone competent will tell you, the research was good, execution abysmal. I already addressed that part. You simply do not let government get involved in production and delivery. This also allows for the private industry to act as a watchdog and simply reject some of the stranger outcomes of the academic research or implementing them carefully on small scale first, in effect veryfing the government claim. Keep in mind that in this scenario, the manufacturing/distribution/marketing are the only costs involved and the company might simply run a small scale trial of its own before commiting vast resources in a mega-1000billion-pill-a-minute plant.
That is not the purpose of history. But just like the purpose of mathematics is not to improve your ability to count change, that is its practical effect. History as an abstract collection of curious but useless data is certainly one approach. However most political movements will attempt to use history to justify their views, and thats where it falls apart.
severely exaggerating..
Yes that was the idea. I was being funny.
Like I said, this is too recent to be considered "history". Come back to me in 30 years.
How is this going to improve things? The point I am making is that even with events that occur in our time, we have little ability to determine the facts, other then those verified by technology, since eyewitnesses and, subequently, the partizan "commisions" who study it are totally unreliable. Future historians will only have a pile of goo produced by both of these to "analyse". Their findings are by definition only as good as the input data. Were it not for camera footage and other technological data, this would be utterly impossible. So on "macroscopic" scale, they can tell that 9/11 happened and have some vague idea about the sequence of events. Any fine detail on the other hand is a lost cause even now. Fast forward 30 years and the data will get only fuzzier.
In Orwell's 1984, sports where the chief distraction used to keep the sheep obedient. Go figure.
Oh cry me a river. This is different from any other industry on the planet how exactly? Yet you rarely hear about multi-billion profits in the risky real-estate industry for example. It happens to 1 or 2 firms once in a decade. Not on a regular basis. If it did it means that the capitalist system failed in that area: something prevented free competition from arising and driving the profits/prices down. In a true, free market capitalism, profits are rare because the competition is ruthless and unhampered by artificial barriers like someone blocking a path to discovery with a roadblock marked "Come back in 20 years".
Acquisitions happen regardless of success or failure and are primarilly driven by Wall Steet mad CEOs who attempt to create "value" for shareholders. It has absolutely nothing to do with the subject.
People are rightfully skeptical of drug makers for two reasons: prolonged multi-billion dollar profits are a sign of a failure of the capitalist system in the area, as they are indicative of absence of effective competition, and secondly, the entire industry operates on suffering of people. If it were truly the humanist entity it purports itself to be, there would be a strong and effective effort to minimize the cost of drugs. Instead as I attemted to show you, exact opposite is happening: mad rush to ever increasing profits, using perverted laws to prevent competition, attempts at ownership of research results, inflated "cost" analysis, corruption, collusion with governmental bodies, raping of taxpayers, etc etc.
Unlike all the other industries, medical industry, and drug companies specifically are not dealing with some "disposable income" trivia products. They meddle in things that mean life or death. That gives them extraordinary powers and thus demands extraordinary scrutiny. That is why resarch should not be ever allowed to be in any way controlled by these people. If they had their way, no cures would ever be produced, only "treatments" which mask the effects of a desease so that an infinite revenue stream is possible. All companies want to do this. It is the nature of business: greed. Microsoft locks people to their standards and wants perpetual royalties. Bristol-Myers, Pfizer and the rest of the gang are no different. Profit is the only god they answer to.
That is why having public research and private manufacturing is the best combination: greed combined with fair and ruthless competition on a free and unrestricted playing field will motivate the manufacturers to make drugs efficiently and at lowest possible price. While free exchange of ideas in academia will produce a stream of discoveries as it always had before being taken over by the corporate greed. People who are now mercenaries, would simply go back to the labs sponsored by public and various foundations. And the market for inflated bogus "research" expenditures will simply disappear. All one has to do, to achive this, is to abolish the abysmal "Intellectual Property" law which is creating this and many other quagmires all over the landscape.
This is just really a meaningless side effect. If someone is dumb enough to bother with some imbecillic drivel translated to chinese, thats their time to waste.
Why is windows so popular in China?
Why is windows so popular in the West? I have no clue. Marketing? Monopoly status abuse? Sure as hell it is not product quality. They just copy what is popular. If Microsoft disappeared from the face of the planet, they would be using whatever, Linux or some home-grown thing. Sure as hell they wont pay $250 a copy to Microsoft no matter what happens. As it should be. Information is not "private property" and thus software "industry" in the West is a mere flight of opportunistic fancy based on perverted laws. If it is to continue, something will have to give: the "Intelectual Property" will be exposed for the fraud it is or the scientific/industrial progress and subsequently the economy of the West will be crippled beyond repair.
The excesses of war on terror notwithstanding, massive sums are being given to bolster "brand" drug companies bottom lines via various "medicare" programs where taxpayers are made to pay for hideously overpriced products in form of aid to seniors, etc. Make drugs cheap and that massive pile of money can go to research.
More likely, nobody would be making it at all. The generic drug makers wouldn't be able to afford the safety and efficacy testing
You know, you choose to be really blind about how things work. A company will do something if it brings 1% profit. Profit is proftit. As to "being able to afford safety testing", you are kidding, right? What does that mean? 100 sick people, 50 on placebo and 50 on drug? Paperwork to fill? Where does the money go? I know: artificial beaurocracy and massive profits of the companies conducting the "trial". Fuck, most of these poeple would pay to be in a trial for a potentially life-saving drug.
I am beginning to fear that this conversation is futile, you seem to believe that profit is far more important then saving lives and all your arguments point that way.
I am not advocating abolishment of FDA. An organization to keep an eye on business where human lives are concerned is an absolute must. My objection is to the fact that FDA and the industry are so cross-polinated with former employees and executives that no reasonable oversight is possible anymore and instead a chummy, "helping-hand", promotional role is played by the FDA for the few select multinationals.
Older drugs are indeed sold more cheaply--you have to cut the price to sell a product against a superior competitor.
If it were true, there wouldnt be problems in Africa and elsewhere. What happens instead, is that they are dropped from production and the generic makers must wait 20 years for the patent to expire. Rendering them effictively, illegal. "Brand" makers wont sell the license (unles you are willing to pay some astronomical sum) because then the generics would be making drugs that while indeed having more side effects, would sell because people are facing a chocice of: 1. sell house and buy "new" medicine, 2. keep house, have nausea, vomit and bends but still get cured. And in Africa, even starker one: sell all the possesions of 3 generations of your family, versus just your lifestock to get a cure.
The GAO thought that the NIH underpriced it.
The whole thing reaks of corruption. And it would be totally unnecessary if NIH licensed its research to anyone free of charge, enabling competition on the quality of the execution of the drug. After all NIH's role is research. And by doing so, the drug would not cost the public further 5 billion that went to the fucking Bristol-Meyers (they made 2 billion profit!). Instead 20 generic makers would make it for 1/100th the cost and sold at 1/100th the price. NIH's mission is to help US citizens to get healthy. Instead they made vast profits for Bristol-Meyers and denied the cure to many taxpayers who could afford it otherwise. And the GAO is bickering that NIH didnt make enough profit for itself. What a bunch of perverted, greedy, sick bastards, the whole lot of them.