The vast majority of people who need such a treatment would not be able to afford it. A large portion of these people would have to be paid through social security, further reducing profit margins.
By your logic, Cancer drugs should be extremely profitable because everyone needs them, but they are not. Cancer treatments run into the hundreds of thousands, and most people can't afford them- if they're lucky they'll have health insurance that lasted, and if they're not, companies will get their money on a lay away plan. The biggest reason cancer drugs are being developed is because of the abundant funding. If you really want to know more about how the drug industry actually works, I'd recommend you read The Truth About Drug Companies. The title may seem off-putting, but virtually all of the information provided in the book is true.
Because contrary to popular belief, curing things like paralysis and Alzheimer's disease aren't nearly as profitable as penis pills and cholestrol medications.
As with the Xbox, where they use their monopoly rent to pay for losses in the console area.
That's a pretty standard tactic when it comes to consoles. You have Sony to thank for that.
Mr. Nakamura purposely declined an offer from Sony to work for the smaller company so he could have a greater impact, working for the underdog, so to say.
He essentially put the company on the map, and they screwed him in return.
I wouldn't go that far. I couldn't see CNN having 'fun facts' including 'George W. Bush: Arrested for DWI in 1976.' 'Snorted Cocaine in 70's.' 'All of his companies tanked.' 'Rangers venture utter failure.'
The Daily Show is another story, though. But despite its popularity, it still remains a fake news program. =P
After spending an entire day watching news channels looking for bias (I'm bored an still on winter break), I've come to the conclusion that both CNN and Fox News are biased.
However, I believe Fox is worse, because it's much more aggresive in its reporting. Wheras the bias on CNN is mostly word choice, Fox straight-up attacks people.
For example, while they were analyzing the recent CBS scandal, their 'fun facts' were all negative. All of them had something to do with Dan Rather being punched or how he had caused CBS ratings to plummet after Walter Cronkite.
The problem is that open-sourcing a gaming engine would take 'untold dozens' of years to develop. We'd have another Duke Nukem Forever on our hands.
Farming it out to more progammers doesn't help, because then you'll just get more incompatabilities.
Do they have a case against Microsoft if they make changes to their dominant OS that intentionally break spyware? Lots of people say yes, I would say no. That's like saying that the government shouldn't prosecute conmen because they make their living by cheating other people out of their money.
The industry is turning into an arena of untouchable behemoths and tiny indy groups who can't hope for decent sales, but can hope to get rich by being bought out and shut down by the large corporations.
Wow, sounds exactly like the drug, car, and (to a limited extent) movie industries.
Heh, you should've seen what passed for a sequel in the early days of FPS's. Take Doom I and compare it to Doom II, and you'd be hard pressed to find any substantial differences. Ever play any of the commander Keen games? All pretty much the same, but there were 7 of them that qualified as sequels.
<i>a sequel to me atleast generally implies a new engine,</i>
You don't seem to have played many games, or at least paid attention to the gaming industry for very long.
The vast majority of sequels use the same engine as the previous game. FF7-9 all used the same engine. GTA, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA used the same engine. Spiderman & Spiderman 2 used the same engine. Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II all used the Infinity engine, and I don't think any sane person would call them expansion packs.
You don't seem to have played Halo 2 much, either. If you've actually <i>played</i> the game, you'd notice that only one weapon remained unchanged (the sniper rifle), three had their graphics redone, and the rest were completely new. There were something like 15 weapons in Halo 2, wheras there were only 5 in the original.
That's a huge problem with Linux in general, in my experience. Every linux program or even open-source program I've used has been extremely wasteful regarding screen space - compare the size of the OpenOffice toolbars to that of Microsoft word.
This renders most applications almost unusable on anything less than 1024x768, and forget editing magazine-quality images on that.
Do you have any idea how much time and money it costs to sue?
Sure, legal action would've fixed this mess in a jiffy, but then he'd be out thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of wasted time before it was over.
As far as furthering human understanding, yes.
Ethics play no role in determining whether an advancement is ethical or not -- the nuclear bomb was probably the important scientific discovery in the 40's, despite its 'bad ethics'.
Most of the people I know who focus with laser like intensity on one small field are complete failures at every other aspect of their life.
Yes, but these are the people who actually *discover* new things. =P
PEG is used to alter a solutions viscosity in lab. By itself it has no detrimental effect on cells I'm aware of, which is why it's used for that purpose.
This is a bit late, but most deals allow you to make upgrades on them, especially Dell deals. That's how I got my laptop. My only real complaint about it is that Dell Keyboards are terrible, but I'm satisfied with what I got for the price. I never considered an Apple, but I haven't seen any iBooks with 64 MB of VRAM.
I'd have to say that Apple laptops are nice. I may get one in the future when I have a lot of money to spare, but if I'm forced to have one computer, it's definitely going to be an x86 for flexibility alone.
The worst thing about this is that if software companies actually *supported* Linux, they would never have to deal with any of this. They are forcing people to crack copy protection so they can view media that they purchased online.
I don't really understand it. There's Windows Media Player for Mac OS X and its market share is roughly equal to that of Linux. It really wouldn't be that hard for Microsoft to release a generic codec pack for Linux.
It seems to me that history would teach us that when a popular activity is outlawed, that activity doesn't go away it moves underground. Look at the roaring 20's and the temperance movement that caused prohibition. Outlawing alcohol didn't make it go away, it just drove it underground and made common criminals wealthy and willing to protect their enterprise with guns and a little enterprise called "Murder Inc."
I don't think it's going to get quite that bad, considering alcohol was a tradition for thousands of years before the prohibition and p2p technology is barely a decade old.
I have a hard time imagining anyone trafficking in MP3 players the same way alcohol was. You can't make an iPod by fermenting grain.
Slashdot Mirror
The truth of the matter is that claims of disease cures from embryonic stem cells are as wildly overblown as every other medical fad.
Wrong.
The vast majority of people who need such a treatment would not be able to afford it. A large portion of these people would have to be paid through social security, further reducing profit margins.
By your logic, Cancer drugs should be extremely profitable because everyone needs them, but they are not. Cancer treatments run into the hundreds of thousands, and most people can't afford them- if they're lucky they'll have health insurance that lasted, and if they're not, companies will get their money on a lay away plan. The biggest reason cancer drugs are being developed is because of the abundant funding.
If you really want to know more about how the drug industry actually works, I'd recommend you read The Truth About Drug Companies. The title may seem off-putting, but virtually all of the information provided in the book is true.
Because contrary to popular belief, curing things like paralysis and Alzheimer's disease aren't nearly as profitable as penis pills and cholestrol medications.
As with the Xbox, where they use their monopoly rent to pay for losses in the console area.
That's a pretty standard tactic when it comes to consoles. You have Sony to thank for that.
It's all nice and dandy, but it seems like nobody's willing to fix the biggest problem GNOME has: Its collosal waste of screen space.
Every button is twice as big as it should be and has an obscene amount of space between it and the next.
Although this may be a problem inherent in GTK itself, I guess. Windows gaim suffers from the same problems.
Does OpenOffice also use GTK? Because I've noticed that it to, wastes obscene amounts of screen space when compared to Word.
There's also the fact that merely having WEP, as weak as it is, will drive off every single wardriver on the planet.
I doubt there are very many wardrivers who will stop and crack the encryption if they find an encrypted network.
I have a strange feeling NASA isn't that concerned with eye candy.
Mr. Nakamura purposely declined an offer from Sony to work for the smaller company so he could have a greater impact, working for the underdog, so to say.
He essentially put the company on the map, and they screwed him in return.
I wouldn't go that far. I couldn't see CNN having 'fun facts' including 'George W. Bush: Arrested for DWI in 1976.' 'Snorted Cocaine in 70's.' 'All of his companies tanked.' 'Rangers venture utter failure.'
The Daily Show is another story, though. But despite its popularity, it still remains a fake news program. =P
After spending an entire day watching news channels looking for bias (I'm bored an still on winter break), I've come to the conclusion that both CNN and Fox News are biased. However, I believe Fox is worse, because it's much more aggresive in its reporting. Wheras the bias on CNN is mostly word choice, Fox straight-up attacks people. For example, while they were analyzing the recent CBS scandal, their 'fun facts' were all negative. All of them had something to do with Dan Rather being punched or how he had caused CBS ratings to plummet after Walter Cronkite.
The problem is that open-sourcing a gaming engine would take 'untold dozens' of years to develop. We'd have another Duke Nukem Forever on our hands. Farming it out to more progammers doesn't help, because then you'll just get more incompatabilities.
Do they have a case against Microsoft if they make changes to their dominant OS that intentionally break spyware?
Lots of people say yes, I would say no. That's like saying that the government shouldn't prosecute conmen because they make their living by cheating other people out of their money.
The industry is turning into an arena of untouchable behemoths and tiny indy groups who can't hope for decent sales, but can hope to get rich by being bought out and shut down by the large corporations.
Wow, sounds exactly like the drug, car, and (to a limited extent) movie industries.
Heh, you should've seen what passed for a sequel in the early days of FPS's. Take Doom I and compare it to Doom II, and you'd be hard pressed to find any substantial differences. Ever play any of the commander Keen games? All pretty much the same, but there were 7 of them that qualified as sequels.
<i>a sequel to me atleast generally implies a new engine,</i>
You don't seem to have played many games, or at least paid attention to the gaming industry for very long.
The vast majority of sequels use the same engine as the previous game. FF7-9 all used the same engine. GTA, GTA:VC, and GTA:SA used the same engine. Spiderman & Spiderman 2 used the same engine. Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Icewind Dale, and Icewind Dale II all used the Infinity engine, and I don't think any sane person would call them expansion packs.
You don't seem to have played Halo 2 much, either. If you've actually <i>played</i> the game, you'd notice that only one weapon remained unchanged (the sniper rifle), three had their graphics redone, and the rest were completely new. There were something like 15 weapons in Halo 2, wheras there were only 5 in the original.
That's a huge problem with Linux in general, in my experience. Every linux program or even open-source program I've used has been extremely wasteful regarding screen space - compare the size of the OpenOffice toolbars to that of Microsoft word.
This renders most applications almost unusable on anything less than 1024x768, and forget editing magazine-quality images on that.
Every eMac (The current budget Mac) that I've run into ended up having serious hardware issues within a year.
Unless Apple figures out what it's doing wrong on the hardware side, I wouldn't recommend that anyone buy one of those machines.
Do you have any idea how much time and money it costs to sue? Sure, legal action would've fixed this mess in a jiffy, but then he'd be out thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of wasted time before it was over.
As far as furthering human understanding, yes. Ethics play no role in determining whether an advancement is ethical or not -- the nuclear bomb was probably the important scientific discovery in the 40's, despite its 'bad ethics'.
Most of the people I know who focus with laser like intensity on one small field are complete failures at every other aspect of their life. Yes, but these are the people who actually *discover* new things. =P
PEG is used to alter a solutions viscosity in lab. By itself it has no detrimental effect on cells I'm aware of, which is why it's used for that purpose.
This is a bit late, but most deals allow you to make upgrades on them, especially Dell deals. That's how I got my laptop. My only real complaint about it is that Dell Keyboards are terrible, but I'm satisfied with what I got for the price. I never considered an Apple, but I haven't seen any iBooks with 64 MB of VRAM. I'd have to say that Apple laptops are nice. I may get one in the future when I have a lot of money to spare, but if I'm forced to have one computer, it's definitely going to be an x86 for flexibility alone.
The worst thing about this is that if software companies actually *supported* Linux, they would never have to deal with any of this. They are forcing people to crack copy protection so they can view media that they purchased online. I don't really understand it. There's Windows Media Player for Mac OS X and its market share is roughly equal to that of Linux. It really wouldn't be that hard for Microsoft to release a generic codec pack for Linux.
Actually deals are extremely common if you're shopping for a laptop. If you don't buy one under a deal, you just fail at laptop shopping.
It seems to me that history would teach us that when a popular activity is outlawed, that activity doesn't go away it moves underground. Look at the roaring 20's and the temperance movement that caused prohibition. Outlawing alcohol didn't make it go away, it just drove it underground and made common criminals wealthy and willing to protect their enterprise with guns and a little enterprise called "Murder Inc." I don't think it's going to get quite that bad, considering alcohol was a tradition for thousands of years before the prohibition and p2p technology is barely a decade old. I have a hard time imagining anyone trafficking in MP3 players the same way alcohol was. You can't make an iPod by fermenting grain.
That's probably because your central network services router connects to both I2 and I1 networks.