Sounds like the intelligence sector was working as designed, they are supposed to give facts to policy makers and not try to make policy. Policy includes military strategy.
Not policy, analysis. I.e. Here is a photo of Sadam's Nth battalion. Ok, so you know where it is. What you really need to know is are they armed and ready, or exhausted and out of ammo.? Will they put up a fight, or are they on the edge of mutiny?
Policy decides when to act. Before policy makers decide, they should have proper analysis telling them the likely consequences of their actions.
Code-breaking your private, personal information. Everybody's a target.
To target everyone would be a total waste of resources. I would spend as much money figuring out who to target as I would decrypting anything send by that target.
It's like saying, "We're going to mine the whole state of California to find the gold there."
But sampling a few people makes sense for the same reason. With a big enough infrastructure, 1,000,000 people is a reasonable sample, even if only 1,000 get full on 100% communications scrutiny. They have to have a baseline, what does a "normal" person look like, which they can then compare to known bad actors. Then they figure out the minimum amount of data they need to filters the bad guys from the norms. If that minimum amount times the population of the US is less than their resources, they could and will sample everyone.
Every time the NSA has been caught, they say "Ok, we won't do that again". (Where "That" means getting caught)
Using an image has problems in that they are not random, so are subject to analysis. If you stripped the headers, and used an "image" of captured static, it might be good enough, but almost anything organic like a photo of a tree, will have patterns in it.
How would we even know? The NSA will always have an advantage over public research: they have access to all the public research, as well as classified expertise.
Maybe. If you can't publish your findings, others can't error check them. Great for getting funding, not so great for actual work. In the final analysis, the KGB made up as much information as they gathered. Even when they did uncover the truth, they wouldn't bump it upstairs, instead telling their leaders what the leaders wanted to hear.
During Gulf War I, General Swartzkopf (sp?) complained that the intelligence he was getting was useless, because it was facts followed by the analysis "X might happen, or X might not happen"
Even if the check is older than n months, the retailer can still send it to a collections agent, and that agent can call the cops. Just because the bank won't honor the check, doesn't mean the debt doesn't have to be paid.
This was in a college town, where many checks are bounced. I'm sure the merchant sent the check to collections along with a stack of other checks. Unusally the collections company "buys" the checks for a % of face value. Then they try to collect as much as they can.
The collection agent may have tried to call the phone number on the check, but my friend had moved since. (This was before cell phones had number portability) When they couldn't get ahold of her, they probably sent the batch to the police to round up as many of the deadbeats as they could. The police are unlikely to have all the details, all they would need to know is "bounced a check". (Even if the check didn't technically bounce, it was treated as if it had) If she had left the county/state it's unlikely to have gone any further.
Upon bailing my friend out of jail, I advised her, "Get a lawyer". She did, and $500 + $5 later charges were dropped. Yes, the various authorities overreacted, but no, the lawyer didn't think she had a case for damages.
I helped bail out a friend that had closed an account with a year-old $5.00 outstanding check on it. The merchant had sent it to collections (it must have slipped behind a desk for that year)
Yes, you can be arrested for something simple. Yes, they will come on a holiday (July 4th), when the banks are closed. (Because that's when the criminals are home) A friend and I had to max out ATM withdrawls, plus wallet money to get enough cash for bail.
In this case, she had written the check, but it was over a year before. The courts should never have been involved. But, the cops were "Just Doing Their Jobs" (tm) Now, she only went to jail for a few hours, but jail is a gateway to prison. Imagine how much more difficult your life could get if someone else in jail starts telling the DA, "That's the guy, That's the guy!" while pointing at you.
Patents expire after a certain amount of time (much, much, shorter than copyright)
By not allowing one company to have a permanent monopoly on a drug, the government encourages new drugs to be created. Note that's there's no evidence that the current expiration period is optimal, it's just the best guess of Congress many years ago. There's also no optimization based on whether the company is actually producting new, useful products, and no requirement to do so.
When the first patent law was passed, it was something like 1/3 to 1/2 the lifetime of the average inventor.
Imagine that drug and medical device patents expiration period is set at 50% the lifespan of the average person. Would that encourage them to produce more life sustaning inventions? Discuss.
Perhaps this *is* the plan. That sold disk that you and your friends pass around is dead income, no more money is being made from it for anyone.
Say you have a disk you paid $18 for years ago. Now all your friends are paying $2 each for a digital copy, and they can measure usage.
Not so completely insane. (Still probably won't work, but not as insane as DivX)
The problem with this is that it leads to the Viagra/iPod problem. You can charge whatever you want for Viagra or an iPod, since it doesn't save lives. On the other hand, you can't charge whatever you want for a live-saving medication, because then you're evil. So, as a result it is more profitable to develop the next iPod or Viagra then to develop a life-saving medication. Then everybody wonders why we don't have enough antibiotics
Perhaps then, investors should be investing in "ethical companies" vs. maximum profit, if they want life saving drugs, (What good is money when you're dead?)
"No snowflake in a avalance feels responsible". That principle cuts both ways. People don't feel their vote counts for anything, so they don't feel responsible for their governments misdeeds, nor do they think it can help.
Greed may be a deadly sin, but it's feedback is immediate. Investing in the company that gives the highest return seems the responsible thing to do when you are looking at retirement, but altruism might increase your odds of living to retirement. Mostly, people are worried that the other guy will have more than them at that time.
Most people don't choose their passwords from a decent vocabulary. I've seen too many instances of P@ssw0rd, that people think is secure.
Throw some uncommon names and foreign words into your phrase, and it essentially becomes unguessable.
But, many people don't know any foreign words.
... Amazon's PayPhrase registration page. Because the page prohibits the use of any pass-phrase that has been used by another user, it's possible to identify which pass-phrases are in use.
This is a well known, bad idea. Unless you also lock out the original user of an obvious passphrase, you give an attacker information.
Better is to just start with a dictionary of "bad" phrases, that no-one can use. Then, when an existing phrase is no longer in use, you mark it "bad" and unusable in the future. Of course, someone might start using that phrase berfore the rest stop using it. If it's an especially bad case, you might have to lock all those users, and make them reset their password through a different, secure, channel.
Throw some uncommon names and foreign words into your phrase, and it essentially becomes unguessable.
Surely you must realize that the money to develop Nexavar came from profits on previous drugs.
Not without studying their balance sheets.
Money comes from a variety of sources. Yes, ultimately for a company that has been in business a long time, some of the R&D money comes from it's bank account, but these days there's almost always some government money in the form of University grants.
My point is that just because N dollars of past profit may have lead to this new drug, N+M dollars isn't necesarily going to lead to more, new, better drugs. It's entirely possible that more money might lead to fewer better drugs. Just look at the TSA. The piles of money that have been given them have just led to snake-oil solutions.
Holding out for more money is ethical if it's the difference between someone's good life and luxury. It's not ethical when it's the difference between life and death. (You don't have to give someone your last dollar, but to let them die because they won't give you theirs isn't ok)
Yep, they can, and that would probably maximize their profits. Rational economic theory says this is just what they will do.
However, if the legal department at Bayer is overstaffed, the VP of legal might make up some bogus numbers and get the approval to go ahead a sue, even though the production department wants to sell. Lets say the profit in question is $50,000,000. If the VP of production is bogged down with $100,000,000 decisions, the $50 million decision will get backburnered. Also if the VP of legal plays a worse game of golf with the board members, then he gets his way.
Most companies are not about maximizing profit, they are run for the egos of their leaders.
Any decent chem lab can reproduce almost any drug given the patents and FDA approval documents. (Some drugs are difficult or perishable) People are responding that the big pharm companies will leave these markets, but if they do, it's unrelated to this.
R&D are sunk costs. *Any* sales over your fixed production costs results in profit. If you want to maximize profit, you sell.
What this might do, is limit the number of new drugs in the pipeline, but even that isn't a given. It's possible that (most) every good idea is being worked on, and all the great scientists are working on them. Once you've reached idea saturation, more money in a system just increases profits to the shareholders.
Wait, wait, I hear people yelling. If there's more money given to the shareholders, then they will invest in venture startups, and many more great new drugs will be discovered. Maybe. It's also possible that too much money in the drug company ecology will just lead to more viagra clones if not "snake oil" type products. More money might lead to more advertising, causing people to misuse drugs they don't really need.
If a drug has been patented, and made it's way through FDA approval, it's chemistry is well known, and any decent lab will be able to make it. Not selling in a market is only cutting off the nose to spite the face. They will continue to sell in that market, because rich people will still pay for it rather than the generic.
R&D are sunk costs. *Any* sales over your fixed production costs results in profit. If you want to maximize profit, you sell. (Of course, as others have pointed out, you have to make sure none of the low cost sales gets resold to someone in another country. YMMV)
It's the CC company that takes the hit, albeit there's a minor hastle with canceling your credit card and getting a new one.
You *do* have a throw-away CC, don't you. One you use for internet and other dodgy enterprises, not the one that is only used at reputable establishments. You can ask the CC company to put just about any name on a 2nd card.
then nuke it from orbit and disavow ever seeing it.
CP is such a charged issue it's simply not reasonable to get involved with it for any reason at any level.
Lets be honest, we're all geeks and would do something to cover our asses.
-nB
There's a non-zero possibility that the police put it there themselves or had someone do it for them. Then when you don't report it, they swoop in. Their "expert" tells the courts that you had the stuff on your machine. You go to jail.
It's back. These days, most people with Down's syndrome are terminated before birth. Birth defects may be eliminated simplely by eliminating the people before they are born.
Of course, the real issue is that some existing people don't equate certain bags of meat with "People". It's not an easy question, any hard, evidence based criteria would include some bags of meat like dogs or dolphins as people.
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like the intelligence sector was working as designed, they are supposed to give facts to policy makers and not try to make policy. Policy includes military strategy.
Not policy, analysis. I.e. Here is a photo of Sadam's Nth battalion. Ok, so you know where it is. What you really need to know is are they armed and ready, or exhausted and out of ammo.? Will they put up a fight, or are they on the edge of mutiny?
Policy decides when to act. Before policy makers decide, they should have proper analysis telling them the likely consequences of their actions.
Code-breaking your private, personal information. Everybody's a target.
To target everyone would be a total waste of resources. I would spend as much money figuring out who to target as I would decrypting anything send by that target. It's like saying, "We're going to mine the whole state of California to find the gold there."
But sampling a few people makes sense for the same reason. With a big enough infrastructure, 1,000,000 people is a reasonable sample, even if only 1,000 get full on 100% communications scrutiny. They have to have a baseline, what does a "normal" person look like, which they can then compare to known bad actors. Then they figure out the minimum amount of data they need to filters the bad guys from the norms. If that minimum amount times the population of the US is less than their resources, they could and will sample everyone.
Every time the NSA has been caught, they say "Ok, we won't do that again". (Where "That" means getting caught)
Everyone used one time pad for all of their clandestine agent communications. OTP, it's the only way to be sure.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_stations
Using an image has problems in that they are not random, so are subject to analysis. If you stripped the headers, and used an "image" of captured static, it might be good enough, but almost anything organic like a photo of a tree, will have patterns in it.
How would we even know? The NSA will always have an advantage over public research: they have access to all the public research, as well as classified expertise.
Maybe. If you can't publish your findings, others can't error check them. Great for getting funding, not so great for actual work. In the final analysis, the KGB made up as much information as they gathered. Even when they did uncover the truth, they wouldn't bump it upstairs, instead telling their leaders what the leaders wanted to hear.
During Gulf War I, General Swartzkopf (sp?) complained that the intelligence he was getting was useless, because it was facts followed by the analysis "X might happen, or X might not happen"
Even if the check is older than n months, the retailer can still send it to a collections agent, and that agent can call the cops. Just because the bank won't honor the check, doesn't mean the debt doesn't have to be paid.
This was in a college town, where many checks are bounced. I'm sure the merchant sent the check to collections along with a stack of other checks. Unusally the collections company "buys" the checks for a % of face value. Then they try to collect as much as they can.
The collection agent may have tried to call the phone number on the check, but my friend had moved since. (This was before cell phones had number portability) When they couldn't get ahold of her, they probably sent the batch to the police to round up as many of the deadbeats as they could. The police are unlikely to have all the details, all they would need to know is "bounced a check". (Even if the check didn't technically bounce, it was treated as if it had) If she had left the county/state it's unlikely to have gone any further.
Upon bailing my friend out of jail, I advised her, "Get a lawyer". She did, and $500 + $5 later charges were dropped. Yes, the various authorities overreacted, but no, the lawyer didn't think she had a case for damages.
I helped bail out a friend that had closed an account with a year-old $5.00 outstanding check on it. The merchant had sent it to collections (it must have slipped behind a desk for that year)
Yes, you can be arrested for something simple. Yes, they will come on a holiday (July 4th), when the banks are closed. (Because that's when the criminals are home) A friend and I had to max out ATM withdrawls, plus wallet money to get enough cash for bail.
In this case, she had written the check, but it was over a year before. The courts should never have been involved. But, the cops were "Just Doing Their Jobs" (tm) Now, she only went to jail for a few hours, but jail is a gateway to prison. Imagine how much more difficult your life could get if someone else in jail starts telling the DA, "That's the guy, That's the guy!" while pointing at you.
...I sent out "Dinner is served" back in the 80s, by the way.
Holy Crap. So when the aliens arrive, they're going to be carrying forks and knives?
Patents expire after a certain amount of time (much, much, shorter than copyright)
By not allowing one company to have a permanent monopoly on a drug, the government encourages new drugs to be created. Note that's there's no evidence that the current expiration period is optimal, it's just the best guess of Congress many years ago. There's also no optimization based on whether the company is actually producting new, useful products, and no requirement to do so.
When the first patent law was passed, it was something like 1/3 to 1/2 the lifetime of the average inventor.
Imagine that drug and medical device patents expiration period is set at 50% the lifespan of the average person. Would that encourage them to produce more life sustaning inventions? Discuss.
Ack, imagine they release a ton of movies for free, just left laying around various places. With the Last 10 Minutes Missing.
The only really effective solution to the tragedy of the commons is government taxation.
Yep. And things like expiring patents that are round-about taxation. Good argument for estate (death) taxes.
Perhaps this *is* the plan. That sold disk that you and your friends pass around is dead income, no more money is being made from it for anyone.
Say you have a disk you paid $18 for years ago. Now all your friends are paying $2 each for a digital copy, and they can measure usage. Not so completely insane. (Still probably won't work, but not as insane as DivX)
Or the $1 rental from the RedBox right outside the store?
Are they planning to physically mark the disks, so you can't sell them used, and then the buyer gets a $2 digital copy?
Perhaps their business model makes money if there are exactly N physical copies, and lots of people paying $2 again and again. Crazy like a fox?
The problem with this is that it leads to the Viagra/iPod problem. You can charge whatever you want for Viagra or an iPod, since it doesn't save lives. On the other hand, you can't charge whatever you want for a live-saving medication, because then you're evil. So, as a result it is more profitable to develop the next iPod or Viagra then to develop a life-saving medication. Then everybody wonders why we don't have enough antibiotics
Perhaps then, investors should be investing in "ethical companies" vs. maximum profit, if they want life saving drugs, (What good is money when you're dead?)
"No snowflake in a avalance feels responsible". That principle cuts both ways. People don't feel their vote counts for anything, so they don't feel responsible for their governments misdeeds, nor do they think it can help.
Greed may be a deadly sin, but it's feedback is immediate. Investing in the company that gives the highest return seems the responsible thing to do when you are looking at retirement, but altruism might increase your odds of living to retirement. Mostly, people are worried that the other guy will have more than them at that time.
If you have a decent vocabulary, ...
Most people don't choose their passwords from a decent vocabulary. I've seen too many instances of P@ssw0rd, that people think is secure.
Throw some uncommon names and foreign words into your phrase, and it essentially becomes unguessable. But, many people don't know any foreign words.
... Amazon's PayPhrase registration page. Because the page prohibits the use of any pass-phrase that has been used by another user, it's possible to identify which pass-phrases are in use.
This is a well known, bad idea. Unless you also lock out the original user of an obvious passphrase, you give an attacker information.
Better is to just start with a dictionary of "bad" phrases, that no-one can use. Then, when an existing phrase is no longer in use, you mark it "bad" and unusable in the future. Of course, someone might start using that phrase berfore the rest stop using it. If it's an especially bad case, you might have to lock all those users, and make them reset their password through a different, secure, channel.
Throw some uncommon names and foreign words into your phrase, and it essentially becomes unguessable.
I don't know how the FDA approval process will work, but in the future, drugs will be tailored to your DNA. So your drug won't work for anyone else.
I suspect the rich will get their healthcare on remote islands beyond the FDA, while the rest of us will have to use generics.
Surely you must realize that the money to develop Nexavar came from profits on previous drugs.
Not without studying their balance sheets.
Money comes from a variety of sources. Yes, ultimately for a company that has been in business a long time, some of the R&D money comes from it's bank account, but these days there's almost always some government money in the form of University grants.
My point is that just because N dollars of past profit may have lead to this new drug, N+M dollars isn't necesarily going to lead to more, new, better drugs. It's entirely possible that more money might lead to fewer better drugs. Just look at the TSA. The piles of money that have been given them have just led to snake-oil solutions.
Holding out for more money is ethical if it's the difference between someone's good life and luxury. It's not ethical when it's the difference between life and death. (You don't have to give someone your last dollar, but to let them die because they won't give you theirs isn't ok)
Yep, they can, and that would probably maximize their profits. Rational economic theory says this is just what they will do.
However, if the legal department at Bayer is overstaffed, the VP of legal might make up some bogus numbers and get the approval to go ahead a sue, even though the production department wants to sell. Lets say the profit in question is $50,000,000. If the VP of production is bogged down with $100,000,000 decisions, the $50 million decision will get backburnered. Also if the VP of legal plays a worse game of golf with the board members, then he gets his way.
Most companies are not about maximizing profit, they are run for the egos of their leaders.
Any decent chem lab can reproduce almost any drug given the patents and FDA approval documents. (Some drugs are difficult or perishable) People are responding that the big pharm companies will leave these markets, but if they do, it's unrelated to this.
R&D are sunk costs. *Any* sales over your fixed production costs results in profit. If you want to maximize profit, you sell.
What this might do, is limit the number of new drugs in the pipeline, but even that isn't a given. It's possible that (most) every good idea is being worked on, and all the great scientists are working on them. Once you've reached idea saturation, more money in a system just increases profits to the shareholders.
Wait, wait, I hear people yelling. If there's more money given to the shareholders, then they will invest in venture startups, and many more great new drugs will be discovered. Maybe. It's also possible that too much money in the drug company ecology will just lead to more viagra clones if not "snake oil" type products. More money might lead to more advertising, causing people to misuse drugs they don't really need.
If a drug has been patented, and made it's way through FDA approval, it's chemistry is well known, and any decent lab will be able to make it. Not selling in a market is only cutting off the nose to spite the face. They will continue to sell in that market, because rich people will still pay for it rather than the generic.
R&D are sunk costs. *Any* sales over your fixed production costs results in profit. If you want to maximize profit, you sell. (Of course, as others have pointed out, you have to make sure none of the low cost sales gets resold to someone in another country. YMMV)
It's the CC company that takes the hit, albeit there's a minor hastle with canceling your credit card and getting a new one.
You *do* have a throw-away CC, don't you. One you use for internet and other dodgy enterprises, not the one that is only used at reputable establishments. You can ask the CC company to put just about any name on a 2nd card.
This xkcd about this would be something like the boss opens the FB account, finds pictures of himself with wildlife. He lets you have the job.
then nuke it from orbit and disavow ever seeing it. CP is such a charged issue it's simply not reasonable to get involved with it for any reason at any level.
Lets be honest, we're all geeks and would do something to cover our asses. -nB
There's a non-zero possibility that the police put it there themselves or had someone do it for them. Then when you don't report it, they swoop in. Their "expert" tells the courts that you had the stuff on your machine. You go to jail.
It's back. These days, most people with Down's syndrome are terminated before birth. Birth defects may be eliminated simplely by eliminating the people before they are born.
Of course, the real issue is that some existing people don't equate certain bags of meat with "People". It's not an easy question, any hard, evidence based criteria would include some bags of meat like dogs or dolphins as people.
Yes, there was that piece of crap Divx, but there really were self destructing DVD's that would oxidize to black. They were about $5 each.
I considered buying one disk, then keeping it in a CO2 or nitrogen atmosphere, but there weren't any movies that I wanted to watch, at any price.
It would be cool to have your DVD player in an acrylic box, with dry ice effects every time you open it.