The problem is, they've banned most "advertising" aimed at doctors. No more pretty girls giving out free tickets and sample packs of drugs to doctors. So, the drug companies have decided to advertise straight at potential end-users.
It's not an unexpected result in one of the most highly regulated and government controlled industries.
The 19 men involved with the 9/11 attacks, the USS Cole attack and even the attacks on US embassies in Africa were motivated by the US having troops stationed in the holy land of Saudi Arabia. The troops in SA were there to enforce the No Fly Zone and disarmament of Iraq after the first Gulf war.
If you think through what happened after 9/11, the US took care of this problem right away...by attacking Iraq and moving our troops out of SA. If you want the real motivation for the second Iraq war, you need to look no further than that. The House of Saud was about to be overthrown by religious zealots who were agitated by foreigners, especially female foreign soldiers, tramping around the same desert that was home to Mecca and Medina. Bush was already making plans to invade Iraq before 9/11 because of the growing Saudi instability.
Of course, the US cannot shout this out the world, as declaring the largest oil producing country in the world, and the de facto leader of OPEC, an unstable monarchy about to be overthrown by religious zealots whom plan on creating a worldwide Caliphate isn't really the best thing to say. But look at how quickly stories about the attacks on foreigners in Saudi Arabia left the news stream once the invasion of Iraq began. The attacks are still on going, but the newsworthiness of these stories has been downgraded.
I was going to say, it seems a bit of overkill for a country that already has one of the highest percentage of bicycle usage in the world. Plus, public transport there is fantastic. Besides business that rely on motor transport, this sort of program would affect the handful of people that live outside of cities or who need to drive somewhere relatively far away on their own schedule instead the train's.
There is a giant amount of taxation on vehicles already. Gasoline comes in at the equivalent of 1 to 2 dollars per liter. Vehicles are subject to taxes on top of the usual VAT charges. The have a yearly charge based on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle that is very steep if you have a gas guzzler.
I'm not sure how this magical wealth creation is happening. You're assuming the Swiss banks are either investing the money for you, or are offering an interest rate that is much higher than inflation.
Since the purpose of a Swiss Bank Account is to hold money safely and secretly, it's unlikely that the bank is using your money to investing in anything risky enough to make offering a high interest rate a viable option. And, if they invest the money for you, there is a whole bunch of paperwork and tracking going on there, because Banking secrecy laws are not likely to apply to Investments.
Most polls use the turnout numbers for last election as a baseline for potential voters, then ask questions to determine to which party the respondent belongs. If polls spit out just the raw numbers, they'd be more than useless.
Your worries about skewed numbers are mostly unjustified....it's been 50+ years since the "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!" days. (And younger, urban voters don't vote in mid-term elections anyhow.)
Oh...that's a shame that Verizon charges extra for tethering over the smartphone package...
I'm using a Droid with Verizon now. The Droid does almost everything that I would want to do with my computer on the road: read email including attachments, browse the web, watch on-line video (YouTube only). When they release the next patch, I should have a real version of flash on their too. If they're going to lock down the internet usage for
Soybeans, Cotton and Corn are the three most subsidized crops in the US. The Department of Agriculture gives out billions in subsidies to the factory farms that produce these three crops. Why else do you think they try to grow cotton, a crop that needs lots of water, in the deserts of Arizona?
So, a Round-Up resistant weed is a failure of government planning as much as it a failure of corporate welfare hogs.
What are you talking about? Any money earned in the US by these corporations are taxed at US tax rates. The purpose of off-shore holding companies is to handle money earned outside the US before it is repatriated into the US. Once the earnings are repatriated, they are required to pay US taxes.
The Bahamian and Bermudan governments give companies safe countries with stable banking systems and well-run legal systems for their off-shore business. They're like Delaware, but for international business.
You realize that the IRS accounting rules for taxation are completely different than the Account Standards Board's requirements for corporate reporting right?
The IRS rules are codified in the laws written by the US Congress, about 70,000+ pages of legalese that may or may not have anything to do with proper accounting of assets and earnings. While the Financial Accounting Standards Board has a set of accounting rules that are aimed at showing the true state of the company's economic health.
In fact, a company will have more than two sets of books, as European and Asian countries have their OWN accounting boards with their OWN set of accounting rules and their OWN tax laws with their OWN reporting requirements. And each of these books may show different levels of profitability.
Are you going to let New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and all the rest of the Southwestern states actually use all that land the Federal Government has marked off as special?
I mean, you can't bitch about them getting more in Federal dollars when 50% of their land is Federal property.
Dammit, California's electricity "deregulation" wasn't. How can it be deregulation when retail prices were still fixed and controlled by the government?
Besides which, who the hell let's the company that's going to run the wholesale market also write the rules for the market? There were other companies, besides Enron, that have the expertise to write your laws for you.
The newer model Priuses get better mileage than the 2002 model. The '02 model was the first year that the Prius was tuned to US style of driving. The newer models are better tuned to US driving. Your 20 year old diesel car sounds great for gas mileage, but it probably is a horrible failure at passing modern emission standards.
I had an '02 Prius up in the Northeast, I finally traded it in '07. It was a great car, but I had about 160K miles on it, and I could afford a newer car. I only had two small problems with the '02 Prius, and those only occurred after the 100K mark.
If it sets a minimal baseline platform, then it's difficult (though arguably not impossible) to add any features that make upgrading worth the hassle and risk.
Personally, I think that sentence, right there, sums up all of Microsoft's problems in a nutshell.
New Features are awesome, new features sell software, but new features don't have to be more resource intensive. How about spending some time tuning your existing features so they run better on lesser hardware? Really, isn't the baseline of an "improved" function is that it can the same job as the old function faster, better and/or cheaper. Who wants to spend money on bigger and faster hardware so it can copy files slower?
There used to be big differences between diesel sold in the US and diesel sold in Europe. US diesel was until last year(?) much dirtier, lots of sulfur, etc.
With the changes to diesel fuel in the past year, it's now just a new matter of getting states to accept the European diesels. Beware though, that most auto emissions standards also include specific technology requirements that the European diesel motor makers just don't feel are necessary.
I hate to slashdot the poor fellow's blog, but if you want a glimpse of the hassles of medicinal chemistry, take a look at the Pipeline Blog.
Medicine more than just coming up with a compound, it's coming up with a compound that won't kill or harm the person taking it and will still be effective once it reaches where it needs to be.
Of course, climateaudit.org has been under DDoS attack the past day. So that's pretty awesome.
What will change and what is the fix for TiVo?
on
GPLv2 Vs. GPLv3
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
This is what I'm seeing from the comments here about the problem of "Tivo-ization".
The current TiVo system is three components: Hardware - DRM - GPL OS and software. The box will shut down if the compiled binaries of any GPL programs are changed.
The GPL v3 says that's bad. The TiVo users should be able to change the binaries of compiled GPL software with different GPL versions of those software.
TiVo's obvious fear here is that new versions of the GPL components could be used to circumvent their DRM. Once the box is in the user's hands, it's only a matter of time before the DRM is hacked.
The GPL v3 promoters' response is that TiVo can customize their hardware and firmware instead of locking down the GPL binaries. So the future state Tivo components will be:
Hardware - DRM - Command Validating Firmware/Hardware- GPL OS and software
If the command validating Firmware or Hardware shuts the TiVo down when it receives an invalid command from the OS or software, then this is functionally no different than the original version of the TiVo. That will be unacceptable to the GPL v3 promoters. If the Command Validation does something more benign, then it's only a matter of time until the DRM component is circumvented. That will be unacceptable to the broadcast media companies.
Is there another option for TiVo to keep using GPL software while finding some way to protect their DRM component from being hacked by the user?
CEO Megacorp 1: "Megacorp 2 just retooled their production lines to produce the same product except one version can be sold in Washington State and one version can be sold everywhere else. Plus, they have to ensure their 'dirty' products are redistributed, accidentally, to Washington State. Why, that's must have cost them at least 3 months of profit for this year. Well, I hope the big stockholders are happy, especially that Washington State Public Employee Pension Fund, about that money losing proposition."
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is, they've banned most "advertising" aimed at doctors. No more pretty girls giving out free tickets and sample packs of drugs to doctors. So, the drug companies have decided to advertise straight at potential end-users.
It's not an unexpected result in one of the most highly regulated and government controlled industries.
The 19 men involved with the 9/11 attacks, the USS Cole attack and even the attacks on US embassies in Africa were motivated by the US having troops stationed in the holy land of Saudi Arabia. The troops in SA were there to enforce the No Fly Zone and disarmament of Iraq after the first Gulf war.
If you think through what happened after 9/11, the US took care of this problem right away...by attacking Iraq and moving our troops out of SA. If you want the real motivation for the second Iraq war, you need to look no further than that. The House of Saud was about to be overthrown by religious zealots who were agitated by foreigners, especially female foreign soldiers, tramping around the same desert that was home to Mecca and Medina. Bush was already making plans to invade Iraq before 9/11 because of the growing Saudi instability.
Of course, the US cannot shout this out the world, as declaring the largest oil producing country in the world, and the de facto leader of OPEC, an unstable monarchy about to be overthrown by religious zealots whom plan on creating a worldwide Caliphate isn't really the best thing to say. But look at how quickly stories about the attacks on foreigners in Saudi Arabia left the news stream once the invasion of Iraq began. The attacks are still on going, but the newsworthiness of these stories has been downgraded.
I was going to say, it seems a bit of overkill for a country that already has one of the highest percentage of bicycle usage in the world. Plus, public transport there is fantastic. Besides business that rely on motor transport, this sort of program would affect the handful of people that live outside of cities or who need to drive somewhere relatively far away on their own schedule instead the train's.
There is a giant amount of taxation on vehicles already. Gasoline comes in at the equivalent of 1 to 2 dollars per liter. Vehicles are subject to taxes on top of the usual VAT charges. The have a yearly charge based on the fuel efficiency of the vehicle that is very steep if you have a gas guzzler.
You mean little Johnny in the motorized wheel chair? You mean he'll be perfectly fine traveling down the road on his own?
I'm not sure how this magical wealth creation is happening. You're assuming the Swiss banks are either investing the money for you, or are offering an interest rate that is much higher than inflation.
Since the purpose of a Swiss Bank Account is to hold money safely and secretly, it's unlikely that the bank is using your money to investing in anything risky enough to make offering a high interest rate a viable option. And, if they invest the money for you, there is a whole bunch of paperwork and tracking going on there, because Banking secrecy laws are not likely to apply to Investments.
Most polls use the turnout numbers for last election as a baseline for potential voters, then ask questions to determine to which party the respondent belongs. If polls spit out just the raw numbers, they'd be more than useless.
Your worries about skewed numbers are mostly unjustified....it's been 50+ years since the "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN!" days. (And younger, urban voters don't vote in mid-term elections anyhow.)
*cough*PDAnet*cough*
Oh...that's a shame that Verizon charges extra for tethering over the smartphone package...
I'm using a Droid with Verizon now. The Droid does almost everything that I would want to do with my computer on the road: read email including attachments, browse the web, watch on-line video (YouTube only). When they release the next patch, I should have a real version of flash on their too. If they're going to lock down the internet usage for
Capitalism?
Soybeans, Cotton and Corn are the three most subsidized crops in the US. The Department of Agriculture gives out billions in subsidies to the factory farms that produce these three crops. Why else do you think they try to grow cotton, a crop that needs lots of water, in the deserts of Arizona?
So, a Round-Up resistant weed is a failure of government planning as much as it a failure of corporate welfare hogs.
What are you talking about? Any money earned in the US by these corporations are taxed at US tax rates. The purpose of off-shore holding companies is to handle money earned outside the US before it is repatriated into the US. Once the earnings are repatriated, they are required to pay US taxes.
The Bahamian and Bermudan governments give companies safe countries with stable banking systems and well-run legal systems for their off-shore business. They're like Delaware, but for international business.
You realize that the IRS accounting rules for taxation are completely different than the Account Standards Board's requirements for corporate reporting right?
The IRS rules are codified in the laws written by the US Congress, about 70,000+ pages of legalese that may or may not have anything to do with proper accounting of assets and earnings. While the Financial Accounting Standards Board has a set of accounting rules that are aimed at showing the true state of the company's economic health.
In fact, a company will have more than two sets of books, as European and Asian countries have their OWN accounting boards with their OWN set of accounting rules and their OWN tax laws with their OWN reporting requirements. And each of these books may show different levels of profitability.
I would have gone with "failed race-war instigator" and a link to a video clip of Cartman shouting "race war! race war everyone!"
That's who LiveJournal works. You can mark your journal (or flag someone elses) journal as Adult Content.
But I still get in trouble for staring and commenting out loud on the size of their nipples. This is a strange world we live in.
What if you use a large mass of magnetic monopole instead of another blackhole?
So Doc...
Are you going to let New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and all the rest of the Southwestern states actually use all that land the Federal Government has marked off as special?
I mean, you can't bitch about them getting more in Federal dollars when 50% of their land is Federal property.
http://www.nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/preview/fedlands/az.gif
Dammit, California's electricity "deregulation" wasn't. How can it be deregulation when retail prices were still fixed and controlled by the government?
Besides which, who the hell let's the company that's going to run the wholesale market also write the rules for the market? There were other companies, besides Enron, that have the expertise to write your laws for you.
Jet packs...check. Now all I need is a few chainswords and plasma pistols and I can build my assault squad.
Brazil also has a large amount of oil production and a large proven reserve
http://www.indexmundi.com/brazil/oil_production.html
The newer model Priuses get better mileage than the 2002 model. The '02 model was the first year that the Prius was tuned to US style of driving. The newer models are better tuned to US driving. Your 20 year old diesel car sounds great for gas mileage, but it probably is a horrible failure at passing modern emission standards.
I had an '02 Prius up in the Northeast, I finally traded it in '07. It was a great car, but I had about 160K miles on it, and I could afford a newer car. I only had two small problems with the '02 Prius, and those only occurred after the 100K mark.
Personally, I think that sentence, right there, sums up all of Microsoft's problems in a nutshell.
New Features are awesome, new features sell software, but new features don't have to be more resource intensive. How about spending some time tuning your existing features so they run better on lesser hardware? Really, isn't the baseline of an "improved" function is that it can the same job as the old function faster, better and/or cheaper. Who wants to spend money on bigger and faster hardware so it can copy files slower?
Stubear,
There used to be big differences between diesel sold in the US and diesel sold in Europe. US diesel was until last year(?) much dirtier, lots of sulfur, etc.
With the changes to diesel fuel in the past year, it's now just a new matter of getting states to accept the European diesels. Beware though, that most auto emissions standards also include specific technology requirements that the European diesel motor makers just don't feel are necessary.
I hate to slashdot the poor fellow's blog, but if you want a glimpse of the hassles of medicinal chemistry, take a look at the Pipeline Blog. Medicine more than just coming up with a compound, it's coming up with a compound that won't kill or harm the person taking it and will still be effective once it reaches where it needs to be.
Of course, climateaudit.org has been under DDoS attack the past day. So that's pretty awesome.
This is what I'm seeing from the comments here about the problem of "Tivo-ization".
The current TiVo system is three components: Hardware - DRM - GPL OS and software. The box will shut down if the compiled binaries of any GPL programs are changed.
The GPL v3 says that's bad. The TiVo users should be able to change the binaries of compiled GPL software with different GPL versions of those software.
TiVo's obvious fear here is that new versions of the GPL components could be used to circumvent their DRM. Once the box is in the user's hands, it's only a matter of time before the DRM is hacked.
The GPL v3 promoters' response is that TiVo can customize their hardware and firmware instead of locking down the GPL binaries. So the future state Tivo components will be:
Hardware - DRM - Command Validating Firmware/Hardware- GPL OS and software
If the command validating Firmware or Hardware shuts the TiVo down when it receives an invalid command from the OS or software, then this is functionally no different than the original version of the TiVo. That will be unacceptable to the GPL v3 promoters. If the Command Validation does something more benign, then it's only a matter of time until the DRM component is circumvented. That will be unacceptable to the broadcast media companies.
Is there another option for TiVo to keep using GPL software while finding some way to protect their DRM component from being hacked by the user?
CEO Megacorp 1: "Megacorp 2 just retooled their production lines to produce the same product except one version can be sold in Washington State and one version can be sold everywhere else. Plus, they have to ensure their 'dirty' products are redistributed, accidentally, to Washington State. Why, that's must have cost them at least 3 months of profit for this year. Well, I hope the big stockholders are happy, especially that Washington State Public Employee Pension Fund, about that money losing proposition."
CEO Megacorp 2: "I'm fired?!?"