Americans look to Canada for drugs to avoid the price fixing set by the drug companies here (note that Adam Smith opposed the idea of monopolies, yet you need more than an invisible hand to shake those particular economic monsters from their stranglehold on the flow of resources).
The rest of your post is not incorrect, but the above statement is somewhat erroneous. Americans look to Canada for drugs *because* of the price fixing by the drug companies there. One of the perks of single payer healthcare is that the.ca government can basically say "this is how much we're going to pay for $DRUG", and $DRUG_COMPANY basically has to suck it up and make the deal or refuse the market altogether. That's price-fixing, despite not having the same outcome as most instances of the term imply.
Contrast that to the US where the drug makers have a guaranteed monopoly for a period of time, yet are free to charge whatever they please.
Note: I'm not arguing the morality of either approach. I don't really care to get into a fight about which is "right" and "wrong". I'm simply pointing out how the pricing works.
While funny, SMS is being send over GSM, in the same package that is being exchanged with cell towers to maintain GSM (/2G) connectivity, irregardless. That package has empty space, so SMS (that's why it's limited by an amount of characters; so it can fit in that package) can be send without extra load on the cell tower buffer.
THIS IS WRONG. THIS IS WRONG. A HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE SAY THIS AND THEY'RE ALL WRONG BECAUSE THEY DO NOT FUCKING UNDERSTAND ANYTHING ABOUT GSM.
Yes, it goes on the control channel (the same one used for handset registration and call setup), because that's the channel you can use without requesting that another channel be set up. No, it is not "free". No, it doesn't go in the "slack space" of another message that would be sent anyway. It sends a completely new packet on that channel (plus a reply that the message was accepted, plus more if it's a multisegment message or if there are any problems with delivery). And again, this is the channel which there is only one of, which carries the messages that allow handsets to join and leave the cell, allow calls to be made and answered, and allow all other data connections to be made. It's a finite resource, and if it runs out, the whole system stops working in that location.
You know, I have to give Linux all these props, but once again they set the standard only to have Apple copy them and claim innovation. Linux boxes have been mounting ISO images and other image files for well over a decade now.
... why do you think you're being scammed at purchase?
Because: "This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to."
(Apologies to Mr. Stephenson.)
More seriously: because the current anti-capitalist attitude that's become increasingly prevalent on the web lately basically dictates that a group selling a product that you don't approve of based on cost/marketing/etc. is inevitably "a scam". Either that, or "exploitation".
Bull-fucking-shit. If it was that simple I wouldn't be seeing mommy SUVs speeding down the highway anymore, because gas is so expensive.
Oh dear. It seems you don't quite understand how a free market works.
You see the determination of whether or not a good/service is "worth it" is not made by a person or a group of people for the whole economy -- instead, it's made on an individual, purchaser-by-purchaser basis.
Yes, it might not make sense to you to pay the cost of an SUV's fill-up. And indeed you might not have an SUV for that very reason. But some people have decided that it is worth it -- and those are the people who drive those "mommy SUVs" that you're talking about.
The parent's point still stands: eventually, gas will get expensive enough that most people don't think it's worth it to drive inefficient cars anymore.
- The MafiAA control the booking for 99% of the performance venues that seat more than 50 people. Get yourself to a large enough following, and you'll have problems. Piss off the MafiAA by being independent too long and they'll have you blackballed from performance venues.
In civilized world (doesnt include america) corporations HAVE to pay interns at least minimum wage. Kids too. noone can have others work for him, and get out of it without paying for it. that is the way how it should have been, and it is the way how it is in civilized countries. apparently, it is again not as such, in usa.
Huh.
Having rarely traveled outside of the US, I was unaware that volunteering was illegal in all other "civilized" countries.
Do you think they do plastic surgery because it cures people? Do you think they are treating ulcers with tagamet instead of antibiotics because the antibiotics would cure you fast?
I was starting to listen to what you were saying until I read this.
The current standard treatment for Helicobacter Pylori is a triple-therapy regime which does indeed include antibiotics. It is highly effective and usually results in eradication.
Cimetidine hasn't been used as a treatment for ulcers in since the discovery of H. Pylori, many years ago. Considering that there are a number of modern antibiotics that are active against H. Pylori it is quite rare for a patient to not receive some antibiotic cocktail -- and even if there were a patient who (for some reason) could not receive *any* antibiotics, PPIs would almost certainly be used in place of cimetidine.
I'm sorry you have such a vendetta against physicians. Perhaps your views will change with age. I know that mine certainly did as I entered adulthood.
Unfortunately, it's in clear disagreement with reality. I take it you haven't read the actual law. If so, please cite exactly where you think freenet and tor run afoul, and why it applies to them and not any software with any form of encrypted communication.
Patents aren't the problem, stupid patents are the problem.
I agree. I also think sterilization is a bad idea. Microbes aren't the problem, bad microbes are the problem.
Seriously though, saying that "bad patents are the problem" is just silly. The problem is that we've created an excellent legal tool for large corporations to pummel their competitors with.
Here's the issue: we can either make patents really easy to obtain (such that any patient soul with a couple bucks for the paperwork can get one) or we can make the process as difficult and careful as possible so as to avoid everyone patenting everything. We're already doing the first option. Clearly that's not working. So what about the second? Well... my bet is that the actual inventors -- you know, the people who make shit (rather than spending all their time securing "intellectual property" for a parent company) will be disinclined to participate in an increasingly difficult process, especially when it is completely optional.
Here's a better idea: ditch the patent concept, but keep trade secrets. That way while a product is in development it's protected, but after release it's not. You get the best of both worlds that way: the incentive for R&D is still there (since you can get the first-to-market advantage), but once an idea is out there you can't abuse the legal system to stifle competition and improvement on the idea.
Everyone wins... except the patent lawyers and the corrupt politicians.
the massive investment in porting Office to Mac, release after release, even through Apple's transition to a BSD-like subsystem.
Yeah, about that...Office for Mac was never a port.
It's existed as a separate, independent codebase ever since the 80's. The MBU shares file format specs with the Office team proper, but there's virtually no code overlap.
So I'll just have to guess NSA and all the other good guys are protecting us (yeah right) until someone at Google stumbles across this issue.
While I understand the spirit in which your comment was written (and I happen to agree with you on this particular point), the NSA actually *does* have a mission to ensure US computer security. That's why they invested a hell of a lot of time in developing something like SELinux, which they open-sourced and donated, as well as providing substantial amounts of vulnerability research.
I'm not saying that their intentions are always pure, but rather that they function as a sort of chaotic good. They're not really on our [US citizens] side. They're not on the "bad guys"' side. They're playing their own game on a totally different field than us... It just so happens that often times our [citizens] interests align with theirs.
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
Yes.
They should not, however, be allowed to use the capture of the license plate as proof that you were driving the car...
... especially not if the car was found in a ditch 20 miles outside of town with the ignition lock popped from the steering column -- which is essentially the equivalent of trying a filesharer with an open AP on the basis of an IP match.
Your quote from Mr. Miller is way out of date. Apple now doesn't include Flash or Java by default, and does implement (although weakly) ASLR.
You're right about Flash and Java, but Apple's ASLR support is still quite weak -- plus it doesn't implement NX support for all binaries. Basically, NX and ASLR are there in name, but easy to bypass in practice.
This might have been a good point in 1987, but today most serious malware spreads by exploiting bugs in legitimate software. Why rely on the user to run your evil program manually when buffer overflows and such are so abundant?
Having an "execute bit" doesn't do anything to stop that
Uh... actually that's kinda the point of NX. Even the best NX implementation (PaX) has its holes -- but functional NX goes a long way towards stopping buffer overflows from being a useful attack vector.
Just in case anyone else is confused, that link actually has nothing indicating the existence of a backdoor in FreeBSD. It does indicate that a crypto card maker which used parts of OpenBSD with its hardware may have inserted a backdoor in the software intended for use in combination with the hardware.
AT&T can only force arbitration if you agreed to it in your contract. Which you did. All major companies make it a condition of the sale.
Speak for yourself. I crossed out that section of the contract, initialed and dated the removal, and signed my contract with no objection from the rep selling me the service.
So no, legally speaking, we did not *all* agree to it. Perhaps people just need to understand their contracts a bit better?
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Not worldwide. This is only in America, baby!
And in the UK -- at least for O2 customers.
Americans look to Canada for drugs to avoid the price fixing set by the drug companies here (note that Adam Smith opposed the idea of monopolies, yet you need more than an invisible hand to shake those particular economic monsters from their stranglehold on the flow of resources).
The rest of your post is not incorrect, but the above statement is somewhat erroneous. Americans look to Canada for drugs *because* of the price fixing by the drug companies there. One of the perks of single payer healthcare is that the .ca government can basically say "this is how much we're going to pay for $DRUG", and $DRUG_COMPANY basically has to suck it up and make the deal or refuse the market altogether. That's price-fixing, despite not having the same outcome as most instances of the term imply.
Contrast that to the US where the drug makers have a guaranteed monopoly for a period of time, yet are free to charge whatever they please.
Note: I'm not arguing the morality of either approach. I don't really care to get into a fight about which is "right" and "wrong". I'm simply pointing out how the pricing works.
While funny, SMS is being send over GSM, in the same package that is being exchanged with cell towers to maintain GSM (/2G) connectivity, irregardless. That package has empty space, so SMS (that's why it's limited by an amount of characters; so it can fit in that package) can be send without extra load on the cell tower buffer.
No.
Allow me to quote a relevant passage from a similar discussion elsewhere:
The IT industry has not been able to provide a superior or even equal solution to fax yet.
The hell we haven't!
It's just that most people (apparently yourself included) don't understand how insecure fax really is.
Ok, smartass. You start: the computer you typed that on, where was it made?
You know, I have to give Linux all these props, but once again they set the standard only to have Apple copy them and claim innovation. Linux boxes have been mounting ISO images and other image files for well over a decade now.
... why do you think you're being scammed at purchase?
Because:
"This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to."
(Apologies to Mr. Stephenson.)
More seriously: because the current anti-capitalist attitude that's become increasingly prevalent on the web lately basically dictates that a group selling a product that you don't approve of based on cost/marketing/etc. is inevitably "a scam". Either that, or "exploitation".
Bull-fucking-shit. If it was that simple I wouldn't be seeing mommy SUVs speeding down the highway anymore, because gas is so expensive.
Oh dear. It seems you don't quite understand how a free market works.
You see the determination of whether or not a good/service is "worth it" is not made by a person or a group of people for the whole economy -- instead, it's made on an individual, purchaser-by-purchaser basis.
Yes, it might not make sense to you to pay the cost of an SUV's fill-up. And indeed you might not have an SUV for that very reason. But some people have decided that it is worth it -- and those are the people who drive those "mommy SUVs" that you're talking about.
The parent's point still stands: eventually, gas will get expensive enough that most people don't think it's worth it to drive inefficient cars anymore.
- The MafiAA control the booking for 99% of the performance venues that seat more than 50 people. Get yourself to a large enough following, and you'll have problems. Piss off the MafiAA by being independent too long and they'll have you blackballed from performance venues.
Indeed. This is why artists such as Dispatch were never able to play venues such as Madison Square Garden, and were unable to get more than a few people at their show at the Hatch Memorial Shell.
Oh. Maybe not...
In civilized world (doesnt include america) corporations HAVE to pay interns at least minimum wage. Kids too. noone can have others work for him, and get out of it without paying for it. that is the way how it should have been, and it is the way how it is in civilized countries. apparently, it is again not as such, in usa.
Huh.
Having rarely traveled outside of the US, I was unaware that volunteering was illegal in all other "civilized" countries.
Feedback:
Don't have your site crash with a NullPointerException when somebody with a blank user agent visits it.
Remember, someString.equals() only works if someString != null
Do you think they do plastic surgery because it cures people? Do you think they are treating ulcers with tagamet instead of antibiotics because the antibiotics would cure you fast?
I was starting to listen to what you were saying until I read this.
The current standard treatment for Helicobacter Pylori is a triple-therapy regime which does indeed include antibiotics. It is highly effective and usually results in eradication.
Cimetidine hasn't been used as a treatment for ulcers in since the discovery of H. Pylori, many years ago. Considering that there are a number of modern antibiotics that are active against H. Pylori it is quite rare for a patient to not receive some antibiotic cocktail -- and even if there were a patient who (for some reason) could not receive *any* antibiotics, PPIs would almost certainly be used in place of cimetidine.
I'm sorry you have such a vendetta against physicians. Perhaps your views will change with age. I know that mine certainly did as I entered adulthood.
Under DMCA, freenet and tor are probably "circumvention devices". So you are guilty of wanting free speech.
Wonderful exaggeration there. Really chilling stuff.
Unfortunately, it's in clear disagreement with reality. I take it you haven't read the actual law. If so, please cite exactly where you think freenet and tor run afoul, and why it applies to them and not any software with any form of encrypted communication.
How about explaining why the picture sucked at my local cinema before this 3D craze took off?
Oh, that's easy.
You've seen 1+ movies at that cinema, yes?
And you paid money (i.e. they weren't free)?
There you go. That's why.
You just know you fucked up when migrating away from Lotus Notes results in a worse experience.
Patents aren't the problem, stupid patents are the problem.
I agree. I also think sterilization is a bad idea. Microbes aren't the problem, bad microbes are the problem.
Seriously though, saying that "bad patents are the problem" is just silly. The problem is that we've created an excellent legal tool for large corporations to pummel their competitors with.
Here's the issue: we can either make patents really easy to obtain (such that any patient soul with a couple bucks for the paperwork can get one) or we can make the process as difficult and careful as possible so as to avoid everyone patenting everything. We're already doing the first option. Clearly that's not working. So what about the second? Well... my bet is that the actual inventors -- you know, the people who make shit (rather than spending all their time securing "intellectual property" for a parent company) will be disinclined to participate in an increasingly difficult process, especially when it is completely optional.
Here's a better idea: ditch the patent concept, but keep trade secrets. That way while a product is in development it's protected, but after release it's not. You get the best of both worlds that way: the incentive for R&D is still there (since you can get the first-to-market advantage), but once an idea is out there you can't abuse the legal system to stifle competition and improvement on the idea.
Everyone wins... except the patent lawyers and the corrupt politicians.
I have an install of OS X 10.5 on a PPC Mac at home that is still working just fine after 5 years.
Ah yes, the little known Apple TARDIS.
(Hint: Leopard was release in October of 2007.)
the massive investment in porting Office to Mac, release after release, even through Apple's transition to a BSD-like subsystem.
Yeah, about that...Office for Mac was never a port.
It's existed as a separate, independent codebase ever since the 80's. The MBU shares file format specs with the Office team proper, but there's virtually no code overlap.
You loose.
He's tight. You lose.
So I'll just have to guess NSA and all the other good guys are protecting us (yeah right) until someone at Google stumbles across this issue.
While I understand the spirit in which your comment was written (and I happen to agree with you on this particular point), the NSA actually *does* have a mission to ensure US computer security. That's why they invested a hell of a lot of time in developing something like SELinux, which they open-sourced and donated, as well as providing substantial amounts of vulnerability research.
I'm not saying that their intentions are always pure, but rather that they function as a sort of chaotic good. They're not really on our [US citizens] side. They're not on the "bad guys"' side. They're playing their own game on a totally different field than us... It just so happens that often times our [citizens] interests align with theirs.
Car analogy! If my car is caught on a video camera running over children, shouldn't they be allowed to go to the DMV with my license details, get my address and interview me?
Yes.
They should not, however, be allowed to use the capture of the license plate as proof that you were driving the car...
... especially not if the car was found in a ditch 20 miles outside of town with the ignition lock popped from the steering column -- which is essentially the equivalent of trying a filesharer with an open AP on the basis of an IP match.
Your quote from Mr. Miller is way out of date. Apple now doesn't include Flash or Java by default, and does implement (although weakly) ASLR.
You're right about Flash and Java, but Apple's ASLR support is still quite weak -- plus it doesn't implement NX support for all binaries. Basically, NX and ASLR are there in name, but easy to bypass in practice.
This might have been a good point in 1987, but today most serious malware spreads by exploiting bugs in legitimate software. Why rely on the user to run your evil program manually when buffer overflows and such are so abundant?
Having an "execute bit" doesn't do anything to stop that
Uh... actually that's kinda the point of NX. Even the best NX implementation (PaX) has its holes -- but functional NX goes a long way towards stopping buffer overflows from being a useful attack vector.
Just in case anyone else is confused, that link actually has nothing indicating the existence of a backdoor in FreeBSD. It does indicate that a crypto card maker which used parts of OpenBSD with its hardware may have inserted a backdoor in the software intended for use in combination with the hardware.
AT&T can only force arbitration if you agreed to it in your contract. Which you did. All major companies make it a condition of the sale.
Speak for yourself. I crossed out that section of the contract, initialed and dated the removal, and signed my contract with no objection from the rep selling me the service.
So no, legally speaking, we did not *all* agree to it. Perhaps people just need to understand their contracts a bit better?