Instead, of selling critical infrastructure to businesses, make sure the bidding process to build & maintain those things is based on solid business foundations. There's too much crony-ism in the bidding process, too much bias toward existing contractors regardless of performance.
That's because you're willfully ignorant [scientificamerican.com].
A citation, thank you! Now read it - it completely agrees with what the FDA said. The FDA says that Kratom does not cure any disease, and that it is not the best drug for getting people off of Opioids. The SciAm article you linked to, which is over 4 years old merely BTW, says that there is potential for using it to get people off Opiods.
Yes, yes they do. A Schedule I drug...
That's the DEA, not the FDA. Wrong organization.:-/
any study which wasn't done precisely by their guidelines is considered to be completely invalid, even if it is superior to a typical FDA-approved study overall. If it was Not Invented Here, then it's "no evidence". That's bunkum.
That's not how the FDA works. The term "FDA approved" doesn't apply to studies, it applies to medical device claims and pharmaceutical claims. "Claims" are statements about how a device or a drug works. The FDA looks at studies done by all kinds of organizations, from commercial companies to foreign universities.
Preventing bad things isn't positive
Now you are arguing just for the sake of arguing.
The federal government does this kind of thing all the time. There always was evidence that milk from cows treated with BGH/rBST is inferior to...
Hold up here. First you complain that the FDA's job is just to ban things, but now you are complaining that they didn't ban something. Apparently, all you want to do is complain when the science doesn't agree with your opinion. Trust me dude, the FDA does more than just read SciAm. If you really want to debate the FDAs conclusions on Kratom, stop complaining about congress, the DEA, the FDA, the USDA, and citing pop science articles. There's probably real valid discussion here, but nothing you have posted here in any way refutes the FDAs evidence.
Let's bring this back to the topic:
There's a limited amount of research on this drug. Maybe in the future it will be a safer alternative to Methadone for getting people off Opioids. But today, it is not. And people are lying about it, with some claiming it is a magical cure-all for pain, and others using it in really high dosages as a Methadone alternative. This kind of fraudulent and unsafe behavior is why the FDA made this statement. You pointed out that once something is schedule 1, that federal research money into it is limited. So hopefully the DEA won't do that, or if they do, maybe congress will change their funding rules. Same thing happened with marijuana and we lost decades of valid pain research. I personally know 2 people on medical cannabis for pain (one for back pain, another for cancer.) So I get your beef with the DEA. But none of this has to do with the very modest statement that the FDA made, which is completely solid: Kratom acts like an Opioid, and we don't have any current medically-proven use for it. That's all they said.
The actual true statement would be: "There is no FDA backed/approved studies to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use." Two very different things, as the FDA does not have exclusive rights to objective reality.
The FDA does not only look at "FDA backed/approved" studies. Heck, the FDA doesn't even "approve" studies. That isn't even what they do.
Your entire post is nothing but an ad-hominem attack on the FDA. The bottom line is that they made a claim, and cited tons of articles backing-up the claim. I'm sorry that you prefer to follow the word on the street instead of science.
There is evidence that kratom is effective for medical use.
So you claim. All I see is an article citing studies to the contrary.
Only one of those statements is scientifically backed
Read the article. They have citations for the entire thing.
The FDA says precisely the same thing about cannabis.
No they do not. Even if they did your statement is irrelevant, since this is a scientific article about Kratom not Cannabis.
And that's why the FDA is shit. It's only negative. It doesn't do anything positive.
Keeping dangerous drugs off the street is positive. Keeping bad medical devices out of doctors offices and hospitals is positive. Complaining that congress didn't give the FDA authority or money to invent new drugs is a lame criticism.
Except the best disease it seems to be useful for is opiod addiction
Read the article. The entire point of the FDA statement is because there is no evidence that it is useful for opioid addiction. They just linked to a bunch of studies showing that. There are better alternatives, and they are often free.
they find this Kratom which might help, and now that's banned too/quote> The FDA did not ban Kratom.
...before having every personal interaction recorded...
It doesn't need to record anything. It's such a shame that so many companies use cameras and microphones to record things that they shouldn't. Now we are afraid of what should be perfectly reasonable technology.
The FDA has no damn clue if Kratom is medicinally useful.
Agreed. And the FDA seems to be saying that too. Read on...
The next step, stating that it is not useful in treating any medical conditions, is complete bullshit.
They did not say that.
They said:
Kratom should not be used to treat medical conditions, nor should it be used as an alternative to prescription opioids. There is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use.
So they are merely saying that thereis no proof yet that this drug is safe or effective.
the next step would be to temporarily ban Kratom while THEY perform historic investigation...
This is a common misconception. The FDA does not do such investigations. The FDA reviews claims and evidence provided by others and make decisions based on it.
To pull a medicinal herb without any plans to properly study it
The FDA did not "pull" the herb. They merely stated two scientifically-backed statements: That it acts like an opioid, and that there is not yet evidence it cures any disease. If someone wants to sell this, then they need to do that research and submit it to the FDA.
How about the maps? Surely the server holds those to prevent users from going to unintended locations. What about the data used to determine drop locations and rates, stuff like that? I wonder if that is copyrightable. (I don't play WOW so sorry if my questions are lame.)
Companies only started releasing those games in response to the public constantly pirating them. It seems like we need pirates to help the copyright holders find valid business models.
I see all these posts talking about technological workarounds for what is really a social & corporate problem. The only real solution here is to stop using sites that track you. We've created this problem by allowing a monoculture to be established. Everybody uses Google & Chrome, then complains when they are being tracked. Maybe it's worth pulling up Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo sometimes, even if they aren't as good at searches. Privacy is a part of the overall product they are offering, so if that is important to you, then weigh it accordingly.
Mod up please. This is exactly the kind of quality information that makes me read the comments before the article. The entire discussion makes no sense without knowing this. Shame on The Washington Post for publishing making this sound like some controversial idiotic thing, without providing the basic background!
This is why I use a different email address for every service. If you don't have your own domain, then use one of the many services that let you do this easily. Then you can just delete the email address when companies like Facebook start spamming you. It also lets you know who is selling your email address to advertisers.
Every PC has dozens of microprocessors, so adding an ARM chip into a computer is no big paradigm shift. A typical PC has a SATA controller, USB controller, video card, etc. One of the big things that Intel has been good at over the years is integrated more features onto a single die. Around 2000 is when they started adding wireless directly onto the die ("Centrino") followed by integrated video. I forget when the memory controller got integrated.
How is it capitalistic? You can't choose who you buy it from, can't negotiate the cost, can't enroll any time you want, can't compare costs... I'm not seeing a single capitalistic aspect about it.
The US concept that health insurance is tied to your employer is simultaneously anti-capitalistic and anti-socialist. In this system, nobody wins. We don't do it with anything else in our society: Not your car insurance, homeowners insurance, flood insurance, liability insurance, internet, telephone, food, electricity, or anything else. "Portable" insurance isn't some crazy idea, it just means "treat insurance like every other thing in society."
There is a common myth that Network Neutrality means that ISPs cannot provide bandwidth tiers. I've had to explain to dozens of people that NN does not forbid an ISP from offering a 10GB/sec plan, a 25GB/sec plan, and a 50GB/sec plan. I've had people tell me that they didn't support NN because they did not think that it was fair to force the ISP to offer me the same bandwidth they offer Google or Amazon or Netflix. Surely those companies should be able to pay for greater bandwidth. Those people are right, and if that is what neutrality meant then I would think that too!
You started the post with "nope" but then you seemed to agree with me. *shrugs* As someone else in this chain pointed out, the analogy would really only work if Burger King started selling Big Macs, but slower. The whole thing makes no sense.
That was informative but didn't really answer the crux of my question, and perhaps it is my way of asking it that is the problem. If I elaborate can you answer in more depth? Something is fundamentally wrong here:
Who in the chain is writing and delivering the JavaScript? Suppose I go to goodsite.com, and I see an ad delivered by Google's ad delivery division, for Joe's Lemonade? If goodsite.com wrote the script, that seems okay. If Google wrote the Javascript, that's fine too because I assume goodsite.com has vetted Google as a safe advertiser. But if Joe's Lemonade is providing the JavaScript, then something really stupid is happening here.
What seems to be happening is that I go to goodsite.com, and refresh 25 times, and I get 25 ads, with 25 different java scripts. That doesn't make sense. All the stuff you described about what they are doing with the script seems like what Google would do, not what Joe's Lemonade would do. I see no reason that each ad has different javascript. It would be really hard to vet the JavaScript inside each ad. That seems to be the problem here. It would be absolutely idiotic to run a web site where an unknown 3rd-party can add javascript into your site. No rational developer would do that. So... what is going on here? Who is writing these malicious scripts and how do they get into the chain? I am very confused.
I understand why an ad network like Yahoo or Doubleclick might use javascripts. But why would the individual advertiser need a custom javascript? Just provide a PNG or JPG or MP4 and be done with it. The idea that the ad networks permit arbitrary code in the ad is utterly ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
agreed! Why are 95% of Slashdot submissions simple cut-and-pastes? Instead, we should be tailoring the summary to the geek audience.
Instead, of selling critical infrastructure to businesses, make sure the bidding process to build & maintain those things is based on solid business foundations. There's too much crony-ism in the bidding process, too much bias toward existing contractors regardless of performance.
That's because you're willfully ignorant [scientificamerican.com].
A citation, thank you! Now read it - it completely agrees with what the FDA said. The FDA says that Kratom does not cure any disease, and that it is not the best drug for getting people off of Opioids. The SciAm article you linked to, which is over 4 years old merely BTW, says that there is potential for using it to get people off Opiods.
Yes, yes they do. A Schedule I drug...
That's the DEA, not the FDA. Wrong organization. :-/
any study which wasn't done precisely by their guidelines is considered to be completely invalid, even if it is superior to a typical FDA-approved study overall. If it was Not Invented Here, then it's "no evidence". That's bunkum.
That's not how the FDA works. The term "FDA approved" doesn't apply to studies, it applies to medical device claims and pharmaceutical claims. "Claims" are statements about how a device or a drug works. The FDA looks at studies done by all kinds of organizations, from commercial companies to foreign universities.
Preventing bad things isn't positive
Now you are arguing just for the sake of arguing.
The federal government does this kind of thing all the time. There always was evidence that milk from cows treated with BGH/rBST is inferior to ...
Hold up here. First you complain that the FDA's job is just to ban things, but now you are complaining that they didn't ban something. Apparently, all you want to do is complain when the science doesn't agree with your opinion. Trust me dude, the FDA does more than just read SciAm. If you really want to debate the FDAs conclusions on Kratom, stop complaining about congress, the DEA, the FDA, the USDA, and citing pop science articles. There's probably real valid discussion here, but nothing you have posted here in any way refutes the FDAs evidence.
Let's bring this back to the topic:
There's a limited amount of research on this drug. Maybe in the future it will be a safer alternative to Methadone for getting people off Opioids. But today, it is not. And people are lying about it, with some claiming it is a magical cure-all for pain, and others using it in really high dosages as a Methadone alternative. This kind of fraudulent and unsafe behavior is why the FDA made this statement. You pointed out that once something is schedule 1, that federal research money into it is limited. So hopefully the DEA won't do that, or if they do, maybe congress will change their funding rules. Same thing happened with marijuana and we lost decades of valid pain research. I personally know 2 people on medical cannabis for pain (one for back pain, another for cancer.) So I get your beef with the DEA. But none of this has to do with the very modest statement that the FDA made, which is completely solid: Kratom acts like an Opioid, and we don't have any current medically-proven use for it. That's all they said.
The actual true statement would be: "There is no FDA backed/approved studies to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use." Two very different things, as the FDA does not have exclusive rights to objective reality.
The FDA does not only look at "FDA backed/approved" studies. Heck, the FDA doesn't even "approve" studies. That isn't even what they do.
Your entire post is nothing but an ad-hominem attack on the FDA. The bottom line is that they made a claim, and cited tons of articles backing-up the claim. I'm sorry that you prefer to follow the word on the street instead of science.
There is evidence that kratom is effective for medical use.
So you claim. All I see is an article citing studies to the contrary.
Only one of those statements is scientifically backed
Read the article. They have citations for the entire thing.
The FDA says precisely the same thing about cannabis.
No they do not. Even if they did your statement is irrelevant, since this is a scientific article about Kratom not Cannabis.
And that's why the FDA is shit. It's only negative. It doesn't do anything positive.
Keeping dangerous drugs off the street is positive. Keeping bad medical devices out of doctors offices and hospitals is positive. Complaining that congress didn't give the FDA authority or money to invent new drugs is a lame criticism.
Except the best disease it seems to be useful for is opiod addiction
Read the article. The entire point of the FDA statement is because there is no evidence that it is useful for opioid addiction. They just linked to a bunch of studies showing that. There are better alternatives, and they are often free.
they find this Kratom which might help, and now that's banned too/quote>
The FDA did not ban Kratom.
...before having every personal interaction recorded...
It doesn't need to record anything. It's such a shame that so many companies use cameras and microphones to record things that they shouldn't. Now we are afraid of what should be perfectly reasonable technology.
You are misunderstanding what the FDA is saying.
The FDA has no damn clue if Kratom is medicinally useful.
Agreed. And the FDA seems to be saying that too. Read on...
The next step, stating that it is not useful in treating any medical conditions, is complete bullshit.
They did not say that.
They said:
Kratom should not be used to treat medical conditions, nor should it be used as an alternative to prescription opioids. There is no evidence to indicate that kratom is safe or effective for any medical use.
So they are merely saying that thereis no proof yet that this drug is safe or effective.
the next step would be to temporarily ban Kratom while THEY perform historic investigation...
This is a common misconception. The FDA does not do such investigations. The FDA reviews claims and evidence provided by others and make decisions based on it.
To pull a medicinal herb without any plans to properly study it
The FDA did not "pull" the herb. They merely stated two scientifically-backed statements: That it acts like an opioid, and that there is not yet evidence it cures any disease. If someone wants to sell this, then they need to do that research and submit it to the FDA.
According to the article, there are
44 cases in which kratom at least helped kill people — often otherwise healthy young people.
How about the maps? Surely the server holds those to prevent users from going to unintended locations. What about the data used to determine drop locations and rates, stuff like that? I wonder if that is copyrightable. (I don't play WOW so sorry if my questions are lame.)
Can you post sources for any of these numbers? In particular, the materials information is interesting.
Are there no assets on the server that were copied? Maps, images, sounds...?
Companies only started releasing those games in response to the public constantly pirating them. It seems like we need pirates to help the copyright holders find valid business models.
I see all these posts talking about technological workarounds for what is really a social & corporate problem. The only real solution here is to stop using sites that track you. We've created this problem by allowing a monoculture to be established. Everybody uses Google & Chrome, then complains when they are being tracked. Maybe it's worth pulling up Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo sometimes, even if they aren't as good at searches. Privacy is a part of the overall product they are offering, so if that is important to you, then weigh it accordingly.
Mod up please. This is exactly the kind of quality information that makes me read the comments before the article. The entire discussion makes no sense without knowing this. Shame on The Washington Post for publishing making this sound like some controversial idiotic thing, without providing the basic background!
This is why I use a different email address for every service. If you don't have your own domain, then use one of the many services that let you do this easily. Then you can just delete the email address when companies like Facebook start spamming you. It also lets you know who is selling your email address to advertisers.
Not sure how that's irony.
Every PC has dozens of microprocessors, so adding an ARM chip into a computer is no big paradigm shift. A typical PC has a SATA controller, USB controller, video card, etc. One of the big things that Intel has been good at over the years is integrated more features onto a single die. Around 2000 is when they started adding wireless directly onto the die ("Centrino") followed by integrated video. I forget when the memory controller got integrated.
Thanks for the following-up!
How is it capitalistic? You can't choose who you buy it from, can't negotiate the cost, can't enroll any time you want, can't compare costs... I'm not seeing a single capitalistic aspect about it.
The US concept that health insurance is tied to your employer is simultaneously anti-capitalistic and anti-socialist. In this system, nobody wins. We don't do it with anything else in our society: Not your car insurance, homeowners insurance, flood insurance, liability insurance, internet, telephone, food, electricity, or anything else. "Portable" insurance isn't some crazy idea, it just means "treat insurance like every other thing in society."
There is a common myth that Network Neutrality means that ISPs cannot provide bandwidth tiers. I've had to explain to dozens of people that NN does not forbid an ISP from offering a 10GB/sec plan, a 25GB/sec plan, and a 50GB/sec plan. I've had people tell me that they didn't support NN because they did not think that it was fair to force the ISP to offer me the same bandwidth they offer Google or Amazon or Netflix. Surely those companies should be able to pay for greater bandwidth. Those people are right, and if that is what neutrality meant then I would think that too!
You started the post with "nope" but then you seemed to agree with me. *shrugs* As someone else in this chain pointed out, the analogy would really only work if Burger King started selling Big Macs, but slower. The whole thing makes no sense.
That was informative but didn't really answer the crux of my question, and perhaps it is my way of asking it that is the problem. If I elaborate can you answer in more depth? Something is fundamentally wrong here:
Who in the chain is writing and delivering the JavaScript? Suppose I go to goodsite.com, and I see an ad delivered by Google's ad delivery division, for Joe's Lemonade? If goodsite.com wrote the script, that seems okay. If Google wrote the Javascript, that's fine too because I assume goodsite.com has vetted Google as a safe advertiser. But if Joe's Lemonade is providing the JavaScript, then something really stupid is happening here.
What seems to be happening is that I go to goodsite.com, and refresh 25 times, and I get 25 ads, with 25 different java scripts. That doesn't make sense. All the stuff you described about what they are doing with the script seems like what Google would do, not what Joe's Lemonade would do. I see no reason that each ad has different javascript. It would be really hard to vet the JavaScript inside each ad. That seems to be the problem here. It would be absolutely idiotic to run a web site where an unknown 3rd-party can add javascript into your site. No rational developer would do that. So... what is going on here? Who is writing these malicious scripts and how do they get into the chain? I am very confused.
I understand why an ad network like Yahoo or Doubleclick might use javascripts. But why would the individual advertiser need a custom javascript? Just provide a PNG or JPG or MP4 and be done with it. The idea that the ad networks permit arbitrary code in the ad is utterly ridiculous.