Ubuntu should have a mode "only run signed apps" and the Ubuntu people themselves should test and approve a list of 3rd party apps. Then a user could choose this safer, more secure native app mode if it's appropriate to what they're doing.
You havent used Ubuntu have you?
Let me explain Ubuntu has what is known as signed repositories from which you can download apps from trusted sources, bit like an app store but cheaper.
you can download and install apps from untrusted locations provided you have sufficient privileges.
The problem with your idea , software designed to limit what I can do with my computer is that it is my computer and the person that decides what I run is me, where its not my computer and I don't have privileges to install software I ask someone who does. Canonical only get any say in what I run while the distro does what I want.
It's already normal to get software from a central trusted locations with Linux.
One other thing wtf is HD about a Zune? high definition radio what is that? better quality radio than normal everyday radio? better sample rates on mp3's? I can appreciate high definition video but audio is already high enough definition isn't it?
A friend recently lost most of her sight I was told yesterday, it can be restored if she is operated on within the next 3 weeks. Trouble is she doesn't have insurance, apparently medicaid will take about 90 days to get if she gets it and it will be too late.
surprising thing her and her husband oppose obama's health care reforms, how can anyone support a system that leaves them blind when its preventable.
How can Americans accept such a system? Which other countries fail to provide health care for its citizens when its needed?
If you want maps, just buy something and don't waste your time playing with the OSS variants or trying to use OpenStreetMaps, its really not worth it at this point.
unless you happen to travel in area's with incomplete commercial maps, where I live the road is unnamed and isn't marked on googlemaps or on tomtom maps. It also runs parallel to the N20 before turning 90 degree's left which is where I live.
The end result confused motorists turn left 5 meters too early the gps software corrects, assuming the data is a bit off for the N20. They carry on for a mile till they hit the 90 degree left turn and then proceed to turn around in my gateway.
The only maps showing the correct data for this area is openstreetmap and I put it there.
Paper maps tend to skip over details, Blarney tends to be a circle on most maps for example.
Unfortunately there are problems in all the mapping solutions, open streetmap isn't very good at naviation, other maps are less detailed (so is open streetmap depending on the area)
Contributing to open streetmap can be as easy as using your gps to make a trace and driving round. My mapping was done with a bluetooth gps and a htc universal (windows mobile phone). With sharing the gps I could both create traces and also run the Tomtom application. Which meant I still had working sat nav.
Openstreetmap is focused as a mapping project not a navigation project and so in my opinion if you want a map open street map may have the best available and if the data isn't good enough you can improve it.
Navigation is still pretty difficult with openstreetmap although being able to place your position and heading on a map is useful.
The Garmin handheld units can record traces suitable for openstreetmap.
The parent post is pretty dismissive of Oss solutions and openstreetmap in particular however it gets better every day and is the easiest project to contribute to
A second screen could be useful especially if you can turn it off when you don't need it. In the context of a book sometime theres a diagram or a map which you might want to reference at the same time as text. Maybe one screen would act as a keyboard/ mouse when needed.
one complaint about touch screens is obscuring the screen as you interact with it. Mirror the display and you don't have that problem.
chances are the machine itself will be capable of more than just being an ereader.
I don't think slashdot is immune from trivia, when you said scientists i immediately thought of hans reiser , steve jobs medical problems and various other personalities some even well known enough to be referred to by initials. maybe even a few regular posters on here. (anyone noticed New york country lawyer seems to have gone quiet recently).
Ok outside of slashdot these names mean nothing to most people but then we are interested in what they do and most people are not. We my not show any interest in personalities on the telly but we all have ideas what various personalities are like on the net.
I guess it can be similar but you are making the decisions as to what you view and absorb from the Internet.
Television has a schedule to feed you what the TV companies have decided will entertain you and is a relatively passive experience. Funny thing is the Internet is the biggest library ever and it used to be going to the library was a good use of your time.
Youtube for example can be used for Monty python clips or learning a new skill its up to the user what positive things they get from the Internet.
If Gordon Brown is as unpopular as he is painted then the winner to the greater or lesser extent will be the conservative party.
The conservative party will not need your vote to win but the pirate party needs every vote it can get to stand a chance of being seen as a significant interest group.
Actually I can do something fairly similar with an XDA universal phone. The phone has a small backlit querty keyboard and a 640x480 resolution touch screen
it becomes a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, working to control my mythtv frontend or a projector or... well anywhere and anything I want to use it for really, its a mouse and keyboard but pocket sized.
Other people might find it useful for windows media centre.
cutting deaths from heart disease would raise the percentage of deaths from other things it miht be cancer or it might be old age. You are ignoring the effect of cutting heart disease would be longer life. For the individual this is generally a good thing although like in animal farm retirement ages are liable to rise.
Is it in the national interest for people to live beyond their useful working lives? In fact it might be a similar question does society wish to support unproductive drug users? Both groups might be considered a burden on society It's a cynical point of view but why is it that the most powerful people seem to have the longest lives?
your final point about the patent-ability of modern drugs and the profits to be made in using them is also cynical and likely true. However my own daily dose of medications perhaps aspirin is one of the cheapest and most useful of the seven drugs I take each day. The other six are probably patent medicines costing much more.
To be fair to John Mackey he is being attacked and his company for saying some dangerous truths. He is convinced that a lot of what his stores sell isn't really what people should be eating if they want to stay healthy from my own rapid introduction to heart disease I certainly agree with him on that point. The point which seems to be getting him into trouble about health care really stems from the belief that if your eating a healthy diet you don't need a system doling out pills and potions to the masses. He's right that there is a huge cost to providing health care and he is also probably right in thinking it wouldn't be needed if we stopped eating junk. It's being painted as if he is saying americans should't get free healthcare and he is gettin his company trashed as a result, just unfortunate or perhaps he's upsetting the apple cart by pointing out that most of our food is killing us.
Legalizing supply is made difficult in Mexico due to international agreements, even in the summary it said previous attempts at this legislation met with US led opposition. unilaterally legalizing production would bring trade embargo's if not actual invasion by the US.
It's kind of inevitable really with a cheap legal supply in Mexico the profits to be made smuggling into the USA would be huge. Although some licensed cultivation might be possible. For example in Lincolnshire in the UK opium poppies were grown in fields near the county show ground for medicinal use. The surprising thing was nobody appeared to have raided the fields which were easily accessible from the roadside.
It's rather obvious that the tatic of prosecuting users is a failure use still occurs and society still gets the consequences of thefts prostitution and ruined lives. The logical solution is to take control of the supply and remove the black market. Unfortunately its highly unlikely that there is the political will for this to occur even though the reduction in crime is an obvious benefit.
I'd agree with you if it wasn't for one thing. alcohol has been shown to be beneficial for people post heart attack in reasonable quantities. Cannabis also is useful for pain control for MS sufferers.
Thats not to say there are no negative effects if you over use either of these substances.
In 2005 Heart Disease was responsible for 27.1% of all American deaths. In 2009, heart disease is projected to cost more than $304.6 billion, including health care services, medications, and lost productivity.
The biggest substance abuse in the world today is food and the most lethal versions are fast foods high in fat content and sugar. The biggest dealers of this junk are household names and not even children have any protection in law.
Even worse there are companies taking healthy food and cutting it with junk like transfats and selling it on the open market, they are even allowed to advertise on the TV.
The biggest problems with drugs are not the substances themselves but the legal framework surrounding them. The resources consumed just by locking up drug users in prison, the crimes that are committed to pay black market rates for drugs that cost pennies to produce. Yet the real killers are allowed to operate openly legally.
The worst of the stupidity is that some drugs are given out which are worse than what people choose to use but have the one advantage of being legal. Logically the war on drugs is pointless and needs to end, far better to do something constructive like improving the health of the nation.
Yes drug use isn't exactly great for the health of the nation but throwing users in prison or giving them addictive or damaging legal substitutes is not helping.
I'm barely scratching the surface of these issues, two interesting questions why do people use drugs and why are some people so antidrugs.
Obviously some people use drugs to an extreme which is damaging but for myself the therapeutic moderate use of alcohol will prolong my life and the worst things i've put in my body have been and are perfectly legal.
3G Hspda isn't that bad but it varies on a good day the download speeds can be up to 2 meg and typically i can download at around 150-200kb a second. On a bad day it can be lousy. 10Gb isn't a huge amount but if your not big on movies its usually enough.
The overcharges are optional if your on pay as you go. Contract modems will go over, pay as you go stop working. There is some flexibility eg running out after 28days you can top up and have 10gb for 32 days. If you really want to go over just insert a 2nd sim card for a second pay as you go account and independent 30 days:)
What really sucks latency very variable latency makes voip calls very hit and miss. on the plus side no 12 month contract no line rental saving at least 300 a year and split 3 ways typically the modem costs 2 a week each.
A stent saved me, I had a heart attack in July, on a Saturday evening. The stent was fitted Sunday morning. They are actually remarkably simple to fit, inserted via an artery in my groin its not even counted as an operation. The whole procedure took around an hour. Theres a vast difference between my energy levels before and immediately after.
I'd say like most people I didn't really understand about heart attacks or how my life style contributed. Essentially its down to clots blocking your coronary arteries the lack of flow of oxygenated blood to the heart muscle causes the heart muscle to start to die after 20-30 minutes the dead muscle is replaced by scar tissue which doesn't help with pumping blood. The damage eventually causes your heart to be unable to pump blood then you die.
Smoking is bad for you since it narrows the arteries meaning smaller clots can kill you high cholesterol promotes the fatty deposits which cause narrowing of the arteries excess weight makes your heart work harder which makes it more likely for the artery to tear create a bleed and then a clot.
The biggest problem is the amount of saturated fat we have in our diet and unfortunately most of the food available will contribute to death by heart disease. All the processed gunk the supermarkets sell the reconstituted meat with dyed fat we really shouldn't be eating this.
Funny thing is you are usually around retirement age before the consequences of poor diet and lifestyle catch up with most of us, You would almost think its intentional. Eating better, taking some exercise not smoking thats pretty much all thats needed but because we are not aware of the state we are in we don't tackle these issues.
As I was going to hospital the one thing i was sure of was I wasn't ready to die yet.
I've been lucky I live in a country where health care is provided when its needed there is private sector health care but the insurance companies are restricted in how much they can charge. Even without medical insurance you can pay limited charges but below a certain income even those are waived.
The real shame of the USA is that it fails its citizens when it comes to health care. The only justification is the cost and these days you don't even save that.
Final thought even though the stent has saved my life, I could have avoided it by choosing healthy low fat foods Generally if its not as it was raised on the farm it has generally been altered to make it cheaper easier to consume and generally with the addition of crap that is bad with your health.
Smoking is a real bitch, my last cigarette I was having a coronary, Niquitin cq clear patches actually work, they stink but they do work. The other leading brand did not help me. A phased withdrawl seems to be effective sometimes i want a cigarette but i find a fresh patch works. There is a mild side effect the patch gives me an itch where its applied, which tells me its working.
The surgeon who gave me my stent did say if I didn't stop smoking I had months. That helps also my framed ECG and ultrasound of my heart gives me some more will power.
Nothing like the prospect of death in the near future to aid concentration. Simple truth is by ignoring my bad choices I've reduced my life expectancy and most people reading this are doing the same thing. 30% of people who have a heart attack die immediately 21% within a year of it. I've just got through month 1 where i'm 10x more likely to die than in 2 years after.
Thats why i'm sayin sort your life out now don't wait for the heart attack. One more thing 300mg of asprin chewed when having a heart attack may break down the clot saving you the damage caused before you can get treated.
75mg of asprin daily reduces the formation of clots and doesn't cost much, if your high risk then this is something to consider.
The BSA has one purpose ensuring enough licenses have been bought and even better they stick to going after people using software to make a buck thats all pretty much fair.
The rest of the media industries go way beyond making sure IP is paid for.DRM Schemes are causing more and more irritations.
Why should pre-schoolers be forced to watch anti piracy crap and advertising? why should we, we paid (those that didn't don't have to)!
Really the difference is the bsa wants customers to pay , the Entertainment industries want everyone to be their bitch.
I wouldn't care if they stuck to the stuff they have some right to control but they don't. Simple example digital camcorder tape has a family event on. plug the firewire cable between the dvd recorder and the camcorder hit play and record and after 5 seconds the recorder says the tape is protected wtf? Granny cant be sent a dvd of the happy event because of the DRM imposed on the users own content.
Then there is the racket of collecting payments for music that has been created and given away freely and then the payments are withheld from the very people who created the music in the first place.
Then you get insane prosecution and Judgements beyond all reason for content which can even be downloaded legally for a dollar or less or even free (via google china for example).
Oh I forgot to mention the insane copyright extensions which get longer and longer so the legacy of performers long dead cannot be appreciated by anyone unless its one of the rare exceptions that have commercial value like mickey mouse.
To top it all off we are getting our privacy and our communications spied on and inspected just in case we might do something that possibly could have made the media industries a few cents.
not popular? they trash our rights our culture and threaten us when we create things without their input.
If 1 in 12 download something illegally there are 11 in 12 being treated as criminals with no justification at all.
You said nobody wants to make video phone calls, I'm not so sure about that. Plenty of people are making video calls with Skype just not paying extra for the service.
My own setup is a bit obscure but i use a pay as you go sim card in a USB Hspda modem my ubuntu server forwards to a router running Tomato firmware. (ethernet card to wan port) and thats distributed to the rest of us theres a 2nd identical router linked wirelessly to increase the range.
It's not perfect by any means mobile isn't anywhere near as reliable as cable or adsl and if the server didn't have other roles (cctv for one) but it costs about 8 a month each and yes we have video calls.
People still think in an old fashioned way about telecoms, landlines are pretty much obsolete, why do people still pay for this? 3 has made things even more interesting by including skype on mobiles for free.
People are still tied to the traditional phone system and really its way past time we all broke free.
One anonymous coward told a fantastic tale of this sheriff burning down a house killing a dog and whoops causing $4,000 worth of damage to an innocent neighbors car. No link thou
It sounds as fanciful as the Dukes of Hazzard but it appears not to be fiction but to be quite real or is it surreal.
No wonder the criminals hate him he's bat shit insane, even as a law abiding member of the public you'd be keeping your head down any time the Sheriff and his merry men are in the area.
He makes Jack Thompson seem quite reasonable and the RIAA a benevolent society for destitute music fans.
Sure you use a little more time on your bike but then it could save a regular gym session or three. That could save a Heart Attack in latter life and thats not comfortable. I'm a bit sensitive about that, especially since its my own fault.
Freedom thats an interesting argument especially if you spend regular parts of your working day sat in commuter traffic. no body says you can't have both a bike and a car.
People are not comfortable with eating intelligent animals and cows are intelligent enough, the fact that they trust the people who raise them to lead them off for slaughter isn't a sign of stupidity. Your average small child would be as trusting.
Funny thing is we tend to reward animals that escape the slaughter house with a reprieve. Is this just due to a natural support of the underdog or perhaps that the animal will know whats coming and will freak out and alert the other animals to whats going on.
Chickens tend not to show the same survival instinct but being raised in a cage unable to move or see daylight is it any wonder they tend to just sit there when accidentally released early from a cage. death might seem a welcome release from such a poor quality of life.
An interesting thing is the difference between an animal and meat, it seems for most people once an animal has had its head removed it transitions from being an animal and some emotional involvement, to becoming meat something to eat.
I'm not a vegetarian by any means and I enjoy meat and fish, you can't beat eating fish that you have caught and prepared yourself (assuming you master deboning).
Some people think its cruel to do your own slaughtering and butchery, it could be if you didn't ensure a rapid and as pain free as possible death for the animal. It's not a good thing that people are divorced from the reality of how meat is produced because it means low standards of care get applied to animals while they are alive in the name of cheap meat production and maximum profit.
Honestly if you choose to eat meat you should choose to be informed about its production.
It's funny but a lot of racism seems to flow in the same way, denigrating intelligence, emphasizing small differences in order to treat people as less than human. Perhaps if there was a better understanding of killing and cruelty there would be less of it in the world.
Some ones already suggested disk imaging but a few virtual machines could help you out. nice clean install x 2 , use one to install the junk and then copy the other to replace the now messed up install.
You might even do the same for your development environment provided the performance is still acceptable.
A few Gb of hd space has to be worth less than a couple of hours of your time.
First time I've ever been called an Industry Shill, however I don't work for any drug company. If you had clicked the link I provided you would have seen that the studies that give that 2.5% figure are the studies that concluded that hormone therapy had harmful effects and resulted in a 50% reduction in the use of hormone therapy.
To provide a better sense of the additional risks that come with combination hormone therapy, the study data can be summarized more simply. Compared to a group of 10,000 women taking placebo, 10,000 women taking combination hormone therapy will experience: -- 7 more heart attacks -- 8 more strokes -- 8 more cases of breast cancer -- 18 more blood clots -- 6 fewer cases of colorectal cancer -- 5 fewer hip fractures
Largely the negative effects are an increase in blood clots, which kind of leads on to my next point.
Me and my grandfather have one thing in common we both had coronaries however his was in the 50's and mine was 3 weeks ago. His killed him, I'm recovering pretty well. The difference are the drug treatments and therapies that have been developed. I've now got a stent in my heart, thats an alternative to a bypass, which was first tried in 1977. Hoping for new treatments to be developed false hope? Well its clear that medical science has advanced since my grandfather had his heart attack, I would be dead without the drug that busted that clot that was killing me.
A Coronary is what happens when a clot blocks an artery feeding oxygenated blood to your heart after 20-30 minutes your heart muscle starts to die, after enough damage, heart failure the inability to pump blood occurs.
Smoking increases the load on the heart and narrows arteries, fat and high cholesterol result in a build up of fat lining the arteries and when this breaks off it causes a bleed and a clot. Obviously losing weight will reduce the amount of fat your carrying and reduce the strain on your heart. You can make 'lifestyle' changes to reduce the risks something which everyone should be doing. The supermarkets are full of junk that is liable to kill us.
Seems that the risks of Hormone Therapy could be mitigated by the same lifestyle changes that I'm having to make after my heart attack. Actually I'd strongly recommend making changes before experiencing the effects of poor diet, lack of exercise and smoking.
The original poster was asking why Wyeth shouldn't be totally nailed for misrepresenting the risks of hormone therapy and while I don't think its right what they did I also don't see a need to bring out the pitchforks and torches either and I'm cynical enough to see that any punishment thats given out is going to be paid for by the people needing the drugs and treatments.
I'd like to hear a womans point of view regarding hormone therapy and its benefits and dangers. Hormone therapy is quite widespread even now, its certainly in a different league to some of the other notorious drug treatments that have been brought out and then proven to be harmful.
"It's important to note that only 2.5% of the women in the study experienced health problems. So, while the percentage increase in some diseases was rather large, the risk for most patients remained relatively small. That does not mean these risks are not important however."
The pro's and cons and associated risks and benefits is complicated and research is still on going. while some women have decided that they do not want to risk hormone therapy others continued in spite of the greater risks now known to exist.
3 weeks ago I had to choose to have a drug with a 5% chance of giving me a bleed on the brain 20:1 sounds bad doesn't it till you know it was almost certain death if I didn't take it.
While its bad that the real risks were hidden, you do have to remember hormone therapy can increase the quality of life for many women, and suing the drug company just increases the cost of drugs and treatments including those that are unrelated to hormone therapy. Is this practice exceptional? I doubt it.
If you sue this company your just making drugs cost more and could be making the difference between patients living or dieing due to the ability to pay for more expensive treatments.
I don't expect this to be a popular view especially with many Slashdot readers being both young and healthy. but for older readers, who start the day with their daily meds, perhaps they would be less appreciative of the calls to make their drugs either unavailable or far more expensive.
Theres a good number of people with incurable diseases and cancers hoping and praying that the drug companies find effective treatments before they die. When you look at it that way a 2.5 % chance of some negative effect occurring isn't worth pushing a drug company to bankruptcy or delaying bringing new treatments to market.
Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu should have a mode "only run signed apps" and the Ubuntu people themselves should test and approve a list of 3rd party apps. Then a user could choose this safer, more secure native app mode if it's appropriate to what they're doing.
You havent used Ubuntu have you?
Let me explain Ubuntu has what is known as signed repositories from which you can download apps from trusted sources, bit like an app store but cheaper.
you can download and install apps from untrusted locations provided you have sufficient privileges.
The problem with your idea , software designed to limit what I can do with my computer is that it is my computer and the person that decides what I run is me, where its not my computer and I don't have privileges to install software I ask someone who does. Canonical only get any say in what I run while the distro does what I want.
It's already normal to get software from a central trusted locations with Linux.
One other thing wtf is HD about a Zune? high definition radio what is that? better quality radio than normal everyday radio? better sample rates on mp3's? I can appreciate high definition video but audio is already high enough definition isn't it?
haiku 5 7 5
syllable total seventeen
multiple clear now
A friend recently lost most of her sight I was told yesterday, it can be restored if she is operated on within the next 3 weeks.
Trouble is she doesn't have insurance, apparently medicaid will take about 90 days to get if she gets it and it will be too late.
surprising thing her and her husband oppose obama's health care reforms, how can anyone support a system that leaves them blind when its preventable.
How can Americans accept such a system? Which other countries fail to provide health care for its citizens when its needed?
If you want maps, just buy something and don't waste your time playing with the OSS variants or trying to use OpenStreetMaps, its really not worth it at this point.
unless you happen to travel in area's with incomplete commercial maps, where I live the road is unnamed and isn't marked on googlemaps or on tomtom maps. It also runs parallel to the N20 before turning 90 degree's left which is where I live.
The end result confused motorists turn left 5 meters too early the gps software corrects, assuming the data is a bit off for the N20. They carry on for a mile till they hit the 90 degree left turn and then proceed to turn around in my gateway.
The only maps showing the correct data for this area is openstreetmap and I put it there.
Paper maps tend to skip over details, Blarney tends to be a circle on most maps for example.
Unfortunately there are problems in all the mapping solutions, open streetmap isn't very good at naviation, other maps are less detailed (so is open streetmap depending on the area)
Contributing to open streetmap can be as easy as using your gps to make a trace and driving round. My mapping was done with a bluetooth gps and a htc universal (windows mobile phone). With sharing the gps I could both create traces and also run the Tomtom application. Which meant I still had working sat nav.
Openstreetmap is focused as a mapping project not a navigation project and so in my opinion if you want a map open street map may have the best available and if the data isn't good enough you can improve it.
Navigation is still pretty difficult with openstreetmap although being able to place your position and heading on a map is useful.
The Garmin handheld units can record traces suitable for openstreetmap.
The parent post is pretty dismissive of Oss solutions and openstreetmap in particular however it gets better every day and is the easiest project to contribute to
A second screen could be useful especially if you can turn it off when you don't need it.
In the context of a book sometime theres a diagram or a map which you might want to reference at the same time as text. Maybe one screen would act as a keyboard/ mouse when needed.
one complaint about touch screens is obscuring the screen as you interact with it. Mirror the display and you don't have that problem.
chances are the machine itself will be capable of more than just being an ereader.
I don't think slashdot is immune from trivia, when you said scientists i immediately thought of hans reiser , steve jobs medical problems and various other personalities some even well known enough to be referred to by initials. maybe even a few regular posters on here. (anyone noticed New york country lawyer seems to have gone quiet recently).
Ok outside of slashdot these names mean nothing to most people but then we are interested in what they do and most people are not.
We my not show any interest in personalities on the telly but we all have ideas what various personalities are like on the net.
Bridge uses rotated cards to make it easy to count tricks.
Some Tarot Layouts have a crossed card.
That's two games with crossed cards as part of the game mechanics.
I guess it can be similar but you are making the decisions as to what you view and absorb from the Internet.
Television has a schedule to feed you what the TV companies have decided will entertain you and is a relatively passive experience. Funny thing is the Internet is the biggest library ever and it used to be going to the library was a good use of your time.
Youtube for example can be used for Monty python clips or learning a new skill its up to the user what positive things they get from the Internet.
It is worse than that when the DRM kicks in most people assume they have done something wrong and it is their fault it doesn't work.
To be honest I just don't bother now, I have plenty of things to do that don't involve sitting watching a box.
If Gordon Brown is as unpopular as he is painted then the winner to the greater or lesser extent will be the conservative party.
The conservative party will not need your vote to win but the pirate party needs every vote it can get to stand a chance of being seen as a significant interest group.
Actually I can do something fairly similar with an XDA universal phone. The phone has a small backlit querty keyboard and a 640x480 resolution touch screen
with a little software
http://mobilesrc.com/MobileRemote.aspx
it becomes a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, working to control my mythtv frontend or a projector or... well anywhere and anything I want to use it for really, its a mouse and keyboard but pocket sized.
Other people might find it useful for windows media centre.
well i never considered the windows users but you may have a point.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/662254.stm is perhaps a more informative link.
cutting deaths from heart disease would raise the percentage of deaths from other things it miht be cancer or it might be old age. You are ignoring the effect of cutting heart disease would be longer life. For the individual this is generally a good thing although like in animal farm retirement ages are liable to rise.
Is it in the national interest for people to live beyond their useful working lives? In fact it might be a similar question does society wish to support unproductive drug users? Both groups might be considered a burden on society
It's a cynical point of view but why is it that the most powerful people seem to have the longest lives?
your final point about the patent-ability of modern drugs and the profits to be made in using them is also cynical and likely true. However my own daily dose of medications perhaps aspirin is one of the cheapest and most useful of the seven drugs I take each day. The other six are probably patent medicines costing much more.
you might be interested in the wholefoods problems brought about by the CEO.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8216685.stm (americans don't haave an intrinsic right to health care)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/05/whole-foods-boss-junk-food (we sell a lot of junk says CEO)
To be fair to John Mackey he is being attacked and his company for saying some dangerous truths. He is convinced that a lot of what his stores sell isn't really what people should be eating if they want to stay healthy from my own rapid introduction to heart disease I certainly agree with him on that point. The point which seems to be getting him into trouble about health care really stems from the belief that if your eating a healthy diet you don't need a system doling out pills and potions to the masses. He's right that there is a huge cost to providing health care and he is also probably right in thinking it wouldn't be needed if we stopped eating junk. It's being painted as if he is saying americans should't get free healthcare and he is gettin his company trashed as a result, just unfortunate or perhaps he's upsetting the apple cart by pointing out that most of our food is killing us.
Legalizing supply is made difficult in Mexico due to international agreements, even in the summary it said previous attempts at this legislation met with US led opposition. unilaterally legalizing production would bring trade embargo's if not actual invasion by the US.
It's kind of inevitable really with a cheap legal supply in Mexico the profits to be made smuggling into the USA would be huge. Although some licensed cultivation might be possible. For example in Lincolnshire in the UK opium poppies were grown in fields near the county show ground for medicinal use. The surprising thing was nobody appeared to have raided the fields which were easily accessible from the roadside.
It's rather obvious that the tatic of prosecuting users is a failure use still occurs and society still gets the consequences of thefts prostitution and ruined lives. The logical solution is to take control of the supply and remove the black market. Unfortunately its highly unlikely that there is the political will for this to occur even though the reduction in crime is an obvious benefit.
I'd agree with you if it wasn't for one thing. alcohol has been shown to be beneficial for people post heart attack in reasonable quantities. Cannabis also is useful for pain control for MS sufferers.
Thats not to say there are no negative effects if you over use either of these substances.
Lets look at a bigger problem heart disease
http://www.cdc.gov/heartDisease/statistics.htm
In 2005 Heart Disease was responsible for 27.1% of all American deaths.
In 2009, heart disease is projected to cost more than $304.6 billion, including health care services, medications, and lost productivity.
The biggest substance abuse in the world today is food and the most lethal versions are fast foods high in fat content and sugar. The biggest dealers of this junk are household names and not even children have any protection in law.
Even worse there are companies taking healthy food and cutting it with junk like transfats and selling it on the open market, they are even allowed to advertise on the TV.
The biggest problems with drugs are not the substances themselves but the legal framework surrounding them.
The resources consumed just by locking up drug users in prison, the crimes that are committed to pay black market rates for drugs that cost pennies to produce. Yet the real killers are allowed to operate openly legally.
The worst of the stupidity is that some drugs are given out which are worse than what people choose to use but have the one advantage of being legal. Logically the war on drugs is pointless and needs to end, far better to do something constructive like improving the health of the nation.
Yes drug use isn't exactly great for the health of the nation but throwing users in prison or giving them addictive or damaging legal substitutes is not helping.
I'm barely scratching the surface of these issues, two interesting questions why do people use drugs and why are some people so antidrugs.
Obviously some people use drugs to an extreme which is damaging but for myself the therapeutic moderate use of alcohol will prolong my life and the worst things i've put in my body have been and are perfectly legal.
3G Hspda isn't that bad but it varies on a good day the download speeds can be up to 2 meg and typically i can download at around 150-200kb a second. On a bad day it can be lousy. 10Gb isn't a huge amount but if your not big on movies its usually enough.
The overcharges are optional if your on pay as you go. Contract modems will go over, pay as you go stop working. :)
There is some flexibility eg running out after 28days you can top up and have 10gb for 32 days. If you really want to go over just insert a 2nd sim card for a second pay as you go account and independent 30 days
What really sucks latency very variable latency makes voip calls very hit and miss.
on the plus side no 12 month contract no line rental saving at least 300 a year and split 3 ways typically the modem costs 2 a week each.
A stent saved me, I had a heart attack in July, on a Saturday evening. The stent was fitted Sunday morning.
They are actually remarkably simple to fit, inserted via an artery in my groin its not even counted as an operation. The whole procedure took around an hour. Theres a vast difference between my energy levels before and immediately after.
I'd say like most people I didn't really understand about heart attacks or how my life style contributed.
Essentially its down to clots blocking your coronary arteries the lack of flow of oxygenated blood to the heart muscle causes the heart muscle to start to die after 20-30 minutes the dead muscle is replaced by scar tissue which doesn't help with pumping blood. The damage eventually causes your heart to be unable to pump blood then you die.
Smoking is bad for you since it narrows the arteries meaning smaller clots can kill you high cholesterol promotes the fatty deposits which cause narrowing of the arteries excess weight makes your heart work harder which makes it more likely for the artery to tear create a bleed and then a clot.
The biggest problem is the amount of saturated fat we have in our diet and unfortunately most of the food available will contribute to death by heart disease. All the processed gunk the supermarkets sell the reconstituted meat with dyed fat we really shouldn't be eating this.
Funny thing is you are usually around retirement age before the consequences of poor diet and lifestyle catch up with most of us, You would almost think its intentional. Eating better, taking some exercise not smoking thats pretty much all thats needed but because we are not aware of the state we are in we don't tackle these issues.
As I was going to hospital the one thing i was sure of was I wasn't ready to die yet.
I've been lucky I live in a country where health care is provided when its needed there is private sector health care but the insurance companies are restricted in how much they can charge. Even without medical insurance you can pay limited charges but below a certain income even those are waived.
The real shame of the USA is that it fails its citizens when it comes to health care.
The only justification is the cost and these days you don't even save that.
Final thought even though the stent has saved my life, I could have avoided it by choosing healthy low fat foods Generally if its not as it was raised on the farm it has generally been altered to make it cheaper easier to consume and generally with the addition of crap that is bad with your health.
Smoking is a real bitch, my last cigarette I was having a coronary, Niquitin cq clear patches actually work, they stink but they do work. The other leading brand did not help me. A phased withdrawl seems to be effective sometimes i want a cigarette but i find a fresh patch works. There is a mild side effect the patch gives me an itch where its applied, which tells me its working.
The surgeon who gave me my stent did say if I didn't stop smoking I had months. That helps also my framed ECG and ultrasound of my heart gives me some more will power.
Nothing like the prospect of death in the near future to aid concentration. Simple truth is by ignoring my bad choices I've reduced my life expectancy and most people reading this are doing the same thing. 30% of people who have a heart attack die immediately 21% within a year of it. I've just got through month 1 where i'm 10x more likely to die than in 2 years after.
Thats why i'm sayin sort your life out now don't wait for the heart attack.
One more thing 300mg of asprin chewed when having a heart attack may break down the clot saving you the damage caused before you can get treated.
75mg of asprin daily reduces the formation of clots and doesn't cost much, if your high risk then this is something to consider.
The BSA has one purpose ensuring enough licenses have been bought and even better they stick to going after people using software to make a buck thats all pretty much fair.
The rest of the media industries go way beyond making sure IP is paid for.DRM Schemes are causing more and more irritations.
Why should pre-schoolers be forced to watch anti piracy crap and advertising?
why should we, we paid (those that didn't don't have to)!
Really the difference is the bsa wants customers to pay , the Entertainment industries want everyone to be their bitch.
I wouldn't care if they stuck to the stuff they have some right to control but they don't.
Simple example digital camcorder
tape has a family event on. plug the firewire cable between the dvd recorder and the camcorder hit play and record and after 5 seconds the recorder says the tape is protected wtf?
Granny cant be sent a dvd of the happy event because of the DRM imposed on the users own content.
Then there is the racket of collecting payments for music that has been created and given away freely and then the payments are withheld from the very people who created the music in the first place.
Then you get insane prosecution and Judgements beyond all reason for content which can even be downloaded legally for a dollar or less or even free (via google china for example).
Oh I forgot to mention the insane copyright extensions which get longer and longer so the legacy of performers long dead cannot be appreciated by anyone unless its one of the rare exceptions that have commercial value like mickey mouse.
To top it all off we are getting our privacy and our communications spied on and inspected just in case we might do something that possibly could have made the media industries a few cents.
not popular? they trash our rights our culture and threaten us when we create things without their input.
If 1 in 12 download something illegally there are 11 in 12 being treated as criminals with no justification at all.
You said nobody wants to make video phone calls, I'm not so sure about that.
Plenty of people are making video calls with Skype just not paying extra for the service.
My own setup is a bit obscure but i use a pay as you go sim card in a USB Hspda modem my ubuntu server forwards to a router running Tomato firmware. (ethernet card to wan port) and thats distributed to the rest of us theres a 2nd identical router linked wirelessly to increase the range.
It's not perfect by any means mobile isn't anywhere near as reliable as cable or adsl and if the server didn't have other roles (cctv for one) but it costs about 8 a month each and yes we have video calls.
People still think in an old fashioned way about telecoms, landlines are pretty much obsolete, why do people still pay for this? 3 has made things even more interesting by including skype on mobiles for free.
People are still tied to the traditional phone system and really its way past time we all broke free.
One anonymous coward told a fantastic tale of this sheriff burning down a house killing a dog and whoops causing $4,000 worth of damage to an innocent neighbors car. No link thou
I found this http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2004-08-05/news/dog-day-afternoon/full
It sounds as fanciful as the Dukes of Hazzard but it appears not to be fiction but to be quite real or is it surreal.
No wonder the criminals hate him he's bat shit insane, even as a law abiding member of the public you'd be keeping your head down any time the Sheriff and his merry men are in the area.
He makes Jack Thompson seem quite reasonable and the RIAA a benevolent society for destitute music fans.
time comfort and freedom
Sure you use a little more time on your bike but then it could save a regular gym session or three. That could save a Heart Attack in latter life and thats not comfortable. I'm a bit sensitive about that, especially since its my own fault.
Freedom thats an interesting argument especially if you spend regular parts of your working day sat in commuter traffic. no body says you can't have both a bike and a car.
People are not comfortable with eating intelligent animals and cows are intelligent enough, the fact that they trust the people who raise them to lead them off for slaughter isn't a sign of stupidity. Your average small child would be as trusting.
Funny thing is we tend to reward animals that escape the slaughter house with a reprieve. Is this just due to a natural support of the underdog or perhaps that the animal will know whats coming and will freak out and alert the other animals to whats going on.
Chickens tend not to show the same survival instinct but being raised in a cage unable to move or see daylight is it any wonder they tend to just sit there when accidentally released early from a cage. death might seem a welcome release from such a poor quality of life.
An interesting thing is the difference between an animal and meat, it seems for most people once an animal has had its head removed it transitions from being an animal and some emotional involvement, to becoming meat something to eat.
I'm not a vegetarian by any means and I enjoy meat and fish, you can't beat eating fish that you have caught and prepared yourself (assuming you master deboning).
Some people think its cruel to do your own slaughtering and butchery, it could be if you didn't ensure a rapid and as pain free as possible death for the animal. It's not a good thing that people are divorced from the reality of how meat is produced because it means low standards of care get applied to animals while they are alive in the name of cheap meat production and maximum profit.
Honestly if you choose to eat meat you should choose to be informed about its production.
It's funny but a lot of racism seems to flow in the same way, denigrating intelligence, emphasizing small differences in order to treat people as less than human. Perhaps if there was a better understanding of killing and cruelty there would be less of it in the world.
Some ones already suggested disk imaging but a few virtual machines could help you out. nice clean install x 2 , use one to install the junk and then copy the other to replace the now messed up install.
You might even do the same for your development environment provided the performance is still acceptable.
A few Gb of hd space has to be worth less than a couple of hours of your time.
First time I've ever been called an Industry Shill, however I don't work for any drug company. If you had clicked the link I provided you would have seen that the studies that give that 2.5% figure are the studies that concluded that hormone therapy had harmful effects and resulted in a 50% reduction in the use of hormone therapy.
heres the link again, it is quite readable.
http://www.center4research.org/wmnshlth/2009/hrt02-2009.html
To provide a better sense of the additional risks that come with combination hormone therapy, the study data can be summarized more simply. Compared to a group of 10,000 women taking placebo, 10,000 women taking combination hormone therapy will experience:
-- 7 more heart attacks
-- 8 more strokes
-- 8 more cases of breast cancer
-- 18 more blood clots
-- 6 fewer cases of colorectal cancer
-- 5 fewer hip fractures
Largely the negative effects are an increase in blood clots, which kind of leads on to my next point.
Me and my grandfather have one thing in common we both had coronaries however his was in the 50's and mine was 3 weeks ago. His killed him, I'm recovering pretty well. The difference are the drug treatments and therapies that have been developed. I've now got a stent in my heart, thats an alternative to a bypass, which was first tried in 1977. Hoping for new treatments to be developed false hope? Well its clear that medical science has advanced since my grandfather had his heart attack, I would be dead without the drug that busted that clot that was killing me.
A Coronary is what happens when a clot blocks an artery feeding oxygenated blood to your heart after 20-30 minutes your heart muscle starts to die, after enough damage, heart failure the inability to pump blood occurs.
Smoking increases the load on the heart and narrows arteries, fat and high cholesterol result in a build up of fat lining the arteries and when this breaks off it causes a bleed and a clot. Obviously losing weight will reduce the amount of fat your carrying and reduce the strain on your heart. You can make 'lifestyle' changes
to reduce the risks something which everyone should be doing. The supermarkets are full of junk that is liable to kill us.
Seems that the risks of Hormone Therapy could be mitigated by the same lifestyle changes that I'm having to make after my heart attack. Actually I'd strongly recommend making changes before experiencing the effects of poor diet, lack of exercise and smoking.
The original poster was asking why Wyeth shouldn't be totally nailed for misrepresenting the risks of hormone therapy and while I don't think its right what they did I also don't see a need to bring out the pitchforks and torches either and I'm cynical enough to see that any punishment thats given out is going to be paid for by the people needing the drugs and treatments.
I'd like to hear a womans point of view regarding hormone therapy and its benefits and dangers. Hormone therapy is quite widespread even now, its certainly in a different league to some of the other notorious drug treatments that have been brought out and then proven to be harmful.
There are benefits to hormone therapy for women as well as negative effects.
http://www.center4research.org/wmnshlth/2009/hrt02-2009.html
"It's important to note that only 2.5% of the women in the study experienced health problems. So, while the percentage increase in some diseases was rather large, the risk for most patients remained relatively small. That does not mean these risks are not important however."
The pro's and cons and associated risks and benefits is complicated and research is still on going.
while some women have decided that they do not want to risk hormone therapy others continued in spite of the
greater risks now known to exist.
3 weeks ago I had to choose to have a drug with a 5% chance of giving me a bleed on the brain 20:1 sounds bad doesn't it till you know it was almost certain death if I didn't take it.
While its bad that the real risks were hidden, you do have to remember hormone therapy can increase the quality of life for many women, and suing the drug company just increases the cost of drugs and treatments including those that are unrelated to hormone therapy. Is this practice exceptional? I doubt it.
If you sue this company your just making drugs cost more and could be making the difference between patients living or dieing due to the ability to pay for more expensive treatments.
I don't expect this to be a popular view especially with many Slashdot readers being both young and healthy.
but for older readers, who start the day with their daily meds, perhaps they would be less appreciative of the calls to make their drugs either unavailable or far more expensive.
Theres a good number of people with incurable diseases and cancers hoping and praying that the drug companies find effective treatments before they die. When you look at it that way a 2.5 % chance of some negative effect occurring isn't worth pushing a drug company to bankruptcy or delaying bringing new treatments to market.
That explains a job advert i saw recently looking for a Linux admin with mcse beng an advantage, seriously.