That's actually an interesting engineering ethics issue: Can you, as a licensed software engineer, in good conscience release software under any license with such clauses, without totally violating your responsibilities and duties as an engineer?
Why not? As long as you explicitly note that you are NOT guaranteeing it under your engineering license, and you aren't providing it under conditions where signed-off software would be required, why would it be unethical?
Ethics -- in general, not in the sense of a legislated code of ethics -- requires I stand by any guarantees I make. It doesn't require I always make such guarantees.
Actually, in Canada I believe you can't do what you're proposing, and that is probably true for many other common law countries. You can't turn off your professionalism, because you can't withdraw from the duty of care you owe to your customers (even if you're not paid). This is due to the Hedley-Burne decision
I learned this almost 30 years ago in Engineering school, but I'm reasonably certain it still holds.
Well, first of all many major copyright holders have special deals with YouTube where they don't actually send DMCA requests. In that case it's just a private agreement between Sony and YouTube on content monitoring, at best you have a slander suit but no basis for a perjury. Secondly, they may have a legal claim to copyright on the whole clip reel as a collection - basically the selection and composition of clips - and that's enough to get them out of the perjury part. In generic terms, "Under penatlity of perjury, we are the copyright holders of movie X. We believe that the posted scene Y is in violation of our copyright on X." Even if that last part is wrong because it's freely licensed or in the public domain or for some other reason not eligible for copyright it's not under perjury. It sucks, but any competent lawyer will manage to wiggle Sony out of any trouble.
The youtube page in fact says: "This video contains content from Sony Pictures Movies & Shows, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."
Assuming they're as careful with their language as I am, that says the Sony, not Youtube, initiated the takedown.
And the judge declined to explain her rationale. I'm not accusing her of bias, despite her record with these two litigants, but she should certainly have seen fit to shine a little light onto her thinking. Poor.
Why would she allow a prejudicial video when an alternative, with no products from either side, is available? The entire text of her ruling reads:
Samsung’s objection to Apple’s proposed version of the Federal Judicial Center instructional video (ECF No. 1534) is overruled. The parties shall bring the November 2013 version of the video, “The Patent Process: An Overview for Jurors,” and shall include the handout referenced in the video in the jury binders.
The article apparently originally appeared on Recode.net so better to use primary source (which has the ruling and both videos.
The old Beetles were so light that it was often possible to simply _lift_ or push them out of trouble when they got stuck in snow or mud: they actually floated for a while if they ever landed in water. Lifting them out of trable happened repeatedly when I was much younger and snow plows buried my old car.
I recall many years ago in high school a great prank. An occasional supply teacher we didn't much like drove a Beetle. One day six of us lifted it from the parking lot and placed it between two trees, one touching each bumper. I never learned how he got it out.
You have the mentality of a peasant. Whatever the nobles do, it must be OK because they would never take advantage of their position at your expense. They're so much more deserving then you.
Let's use a car analogy: suppose that you buy gas at the same station that Google execs do. They get charged the rate that the gas costs at the refinery, and you pay retail. Their gas is 25% cheaper (made up value) then yours. You have to pay for shipping costs, infrastructure costs for the service station (electricity, upkeep), the salaries of everyone involved between the refinery and the pump, etc. All that stuff has to be paid for to get the gas to the pump, so you are subsidizing their gas.
Except it's not a private company selling the gas, it's government services paid for by your taxes.
+5 Insightful? I could see +5 Vituperative, but your post lacks both insight and manners. Rather than calling him a peasant, why didn't you spend time reading the linked letter and article widely cited above? NASA says, for example, "While we concluded that the fuel arrangement between Ames and H211 did not result in
an economic loss to NASA or DLA-Energy..." The cost H211 paid was the fully loaded cost. Go look that up in an management accounting text. There were no government services paid for by anyone's taxes. The price they paid was below market rates -- at the time the deal was signed all fuel was provided by DoD and sold at subsidized price (DoD craft) or fully loaded cost (non-DoD craft, including the H211 craft that NASA sometimes used). Here's a flash for you: sometimes these craft just flew in the air, so they didn't have the option of going to another "gas station" down the road -- Moffet Field was the only game in town for NASA, and was often convenient for H211 folks. Cost recovery is the default option for charges at most airports, and managers are very good at calculating fully loaded costs.
The problem is that H211 was getting a better deal than other craft at other airports in the area, not that the government or taxpayer was losing money. Given how much NASA was saving by having easy access to H211's aircraft, everyone was winning. However, NASA decided it looked bad, so to avoid any allegations of impropriety (like yours), it was in the government's interest to collect market rates and pass the profit on to the Treasury, so they've been doing that since September 2013. Mr. Schmidt's compensation is irrelevant.
What I find interesting is that NASA knows how much was sold, accepts that the sale was below market value. So my first question is, "why did NASA sell fuel to anyone?" Is NASA a public fuel station for anyone? Have the "Enlighted ones who do not suffer from 'Go Fever' decided that NASA should become a "Profit Center?" What else has NASA sold, at Tax Payer expense?
I would guess that there is a long tradition of people buying fuel on credit from most or all airports. It's not like your car where you can pass one gas station you don't like and go to the next one a mile down the road. You can't take off without a flight plan and enough fuel to get you to your destination plus a reserve. The system would have evolved to allow anyone to buy fuel from the airport they're parked at now -- any other system would be at best inefficient, at worst unsafe.
I'm no friend of trucks, but I wanted to clarify that 80,000 is the typical maximum weight allowed for a semi-truck. That would more likely be a shorter-haul truck moving gravel or other materials instead of less dense cargo like Walmart products. For the long-haul, materials are transported by train.
I'm a friend of trucks -- pretty much everything you have ever bought made its first and last trips by truck. There's no way modern logistics are feasible -- i.e. you don't get to buy stuff -- without trucks.
The weight being carried is a function of the number of axles on the truck. Each axle is good for about 8 tons, so your 80,000 pound load (40 (short) tons) is a 22 wheel tractor-trailer. You do need to balance the weight properly given the location of the axles, but this isn't rocket science.
There is a good reason for having a generally applied and precise limit on weight per axle: the wear and tear on the road is empirically proportional to the weight per axle to the fourth power. Those overloaded trucks or improperly loaded trucks do a lot of damage to the road, much more than you could ever do with a passenger car.
For requiring me to take a course on Victorian-era English literature as part of my engineering degree graduation requirements? By forcing me to take the course, they literally filled my brain up with useless stuff which will accelerate the onset of age-related dementia.
As an engineering graduate of 1986, I joined a group of classmates a couple of years ago on a visit to the Dean, who asked us what we would change, looking back, in the curriculum. There were two answers common to all of us: project management and English writing. We are all in management now, not practical engineering, and need words more than we need numbers and formulae. An English writing course should be required for all pure and applied science majors, in my opinion.
And I think you should have paid more attention in your one class: literally doesn't mean what you think it does.
When I first learned about this, there were two things I didn't understand: Why does Microsoft collect this data (error reports and USB insertions) and why is it sent in the clear? You and others have provided a plausible rationale for the first, but the sneakiness of the USB insertion calls home are disturbing. It still seems completely wrong to send it unencrypted. Very, very wrong in fact. Can you share why was this decision made?
They certainly identified the problem correctly... but then they had to meddle because there was just too much political hay to be made. Even when this corn ethanol program started, it was already pretty well established that corn was the wrong source material to use for fuel. As I recall, there was already a near consensus among researchers that switchgrass was probably the way to go. But they let some powerful legislators from the midwest shape the program in a manner designed NOT to be good for the country's long-term interests, but good for their short-term political gain.
I don't think it was a boon to farmers so much as a boon to Monsanto and ADM. This program was a monstrous subsidy to a couple of very fat companies, at the expense of pretty much everyone else -- people who pay taxes, people who eat, people who had other uses for the land, etc.
I confess this is what I can't understand about the whole concept. It's been years since I've had to do a lot of work poking around BIOS settings, but I can't see any reason why BIOS settings would ever need to be writeable by userspace programs, so this attack shouldn't be, well, an attack. What am I missing?
Google and Facebook offer simple two-factor that works with any cellphone capable of SMS. Facebook also has a keygen built into their smartphone app. I wish everyone did this.
My 2FA from Google stopped working a few months ago, so I had to turn it off. I don't know why, but I no longer got SMS messages when I asked them to authorize something. Annoying.
U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Zoe vs. Williams (1982).
I'll add that, although it is not the law of the USA, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 13(2) is explicit: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
All this talk isn't about the military, but about the economy. Anything that can be used to give other countries an edge against the largest country's economy is going to be leveraged to its fullest.
I live in Indonesia.
In this case it's not about the economy, it's about politics. Indonesia will have parliamentary elections in May 2014 and politicians of all stripes are looking for ways to distinguish them from their competitors. Since none have any platforms to speak of, and all are disgustingly corrupt, they use chest-thumping nationalism as one way to garner attention and hopefully votes. This has just given them a great opportunity and all are trying to out chest-thump the other parties. Mostly harmless.
"and spend 20 minutes on Google finding out what they really mean?"
that why. You do not have the knowledge to do that, and the fact you think how they mean to you can be sussed out via google is laughable.
However, I don't see why you could take the results to your Dr.
I completely and totally disagree. You have an inalienable right to the results of tests of your body, whether paid for by you or someone else, whether ordered by a doctor or yourself. You have the right to Google the results of those tests, and even act on your limited knowledge if you are so inclined, even if that is foolish. The medical profession has been able to convince many people that the potential for misuse overrides your basic rights, but it doesn't. You must be free to choose among, say, waiting two weeks for a doctor's appointment or getting the test yourself and doing with the results what you will, assuming the technology exists, which is the subject of this article.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. I am a type I diabetic and feel much more in control of my diabetes and my life since I moved from Canada to Indonesia. My Canadian endocrinologist was an asshole, but I couldn't go to another one -- all the ones recommended to me were refusing to take on new patients without a referral, and my GP referred his patients to the asshole. Tests could only be done on a doctor's order. Now, I can go to any number of clinics, walk in and get the critical blood test (for me, HbA1C) done in a few minutes for a few dollars. I can store my history over time, and show it to anyone I want, including any doctor I happen to be seeing. I self medicate, yes, using Google, for other conditions. I am in control and my life is better.
Dean living with type I diabetes for 27 years, without complications. And happy.
The cost-per-test, or marginal cost, is impacted neither by the pharmaceutical company's study used to verify the accuracy of the test nor the FDA approval.
These costs are fixed costs, not marginal costs. That is, these costs do not change dependent on the number of test kits produced.
So technically, no, they don't push the cost-per-test up quite a bit. The company's desire to turn a profit is what pushes up the cost-per-test.
You are so right. I test my blood sugar a few times a day (Type I diabetic). Each test costs around $1, whether I buy test strips in Canada, Singapore or Indonesia. I'm locked into a meter given to me free by Bayer -- that's how much money there is in this business. I would guess the strips cost one cent to manufacture in bulk, two cents at most. The rest is obscene drug store and manufacturer margin. Canadian public health insurance (OHIP in my case) doesn't cover these, nor insulin. Do I believe these should be included in public health care? Absolutely. I haven't checked whether Obamacare specifically includes them, but assuming it does I think it is a huge step forward. Everyone's life includes some random elements, and including some treatments while excluding others from public insurance, or mandated private insurance, strikes me as arbitrary.
It seems that Tom's post is stuck at 2, and I don't understand why, so let me chime in. He's right. I have managed CSR programs in Indonesia, including one at a firm where they had previously invested around $10,000 to establish a microfinance lender. The lender has grown every year, and now has deposits and loans worth around 250,000. They employ people, but nothing compared to the employment their borrowers create. They are careful about screening applicants, and people pay back -- NPL (Non-performing loans) under 2%. I have had experiences with other projects which have generated much poorer returns, I suspect largely due to poor enforcement of the obligation to make regular payments. This stuff is capitalism at it's absolutest finest.
Banks can't do this stuff because their overheads and cost allocation models tell them it's unprofitable for them. That doesn't mean it doesn't work just fine if you don't have their overhead allocation methods. The only alternative for the rural near-poor (under $2 / day) are loan sharks, who charge 5-15% interest per month, which is a good example of unregulated banking at its lowest.
Monopolies aren't just businesses. It's possible that because he has so much more cash to throw at problems than everyone else, he could even be doing harm by overwhelming other possible solutions.
It's possible but it's not currently happening. The types of things he's doing are, as he specifically states in the article, complementary to what others, largely governments, are doing. The point he doesn't mention in the article, but which I think is critical, is that some of the problems his foundation is tackling are bigger than anything governments can do. Infectious diseases cross borders, so are beyond the scope of any single national government to solve. The work on malaria builds on, and exceeds, anything a government can do. Philanthropy sometimes gets a bad name, even among those in the CSR field (where I work) but there are some things that can only be solved by huge philanthropic investments. Polio and malaria are among them.
I agree. I can be a real pedant, but the modern use of "begs the question" clearly fills a need to express an idea which is not as easily expressed in other ways. Circular reasoning already is in the common vocabulary, so having an obscure rough equivalent serves no purpose. In this case the modern usage is superior, and will win out, deservedly.
I remember playing this in 1985, although the code was much older than that, on a PDP-8. I wonder if the code was structured that way to allow blocks of it to be read in from tape, as it wouldn't have been wise to assume a hard drive on some of those architectures.
Seriously? For ONE year, in ONE place, they choose to raise their children in a way similar to the way they were raised. The children will have many, many years of the experiences of their peers, and one year of different experiences. I think it's a bit like living in another country / culture for a year: the children will be much better off for it.
It's irrelevant; because the hypothetical proposes a fairly stiff standard of evidence to meet (and would only kick in when both that standard is met and a text-reading driver does something unpleasant enough to get the courts involved)
It's not irrelevant at all. If you are one of the defendants in a suit as a result of a motor vehicle collision, you and the other defendants are all subject to "joint and several" liability. That means that if you are found 1% at fault, and the driver is 99% at fault but dead, you are on the hook for all the damages. This judge knows that, and seems to be an idiot whose version of the law will be not be confirmed by higher courts, but it's a mildly troubling decision.
I guess... I mean, if you want to use words and definitions and stuff, then yes, you're right.
BTW, this story has some kind of clustersummary. Monkeys and keyboards don't mix.
I read the summary thinking "citation needed... citation needed" and "What does that mean?" Turns out the words were just lifted from the article at threatpost.com which was just as poorly written, and also only includes one link -- to another page on the same site. That original article simply describes a method of carrying out a DDOS attack by paying for some ads then using javascript (could even be html) on those ads to contribute to the DDOS. Cheap, not fancy, put would work if someone is stupid enough to pay ransom for getting their web site back up.
The other article, linked to in the summary, piles a shitload of hyperbole, unsubstantiated claims and bullshit on top of that, and then gets someone to link to it here. Nothing substantiated about Android, SMS, or anything else. There is no link to Palo Alto Networks, but I googled them. There is nothing about this on their web site that I could find quickly. Nothing.
What we have here is a completely fabricated story posted on Slashdot because someone wanted to post a story, I guess, and the editors didn't even get suspicious about the obviously wrong article and click on the one link there. Slashdot, you are sometimes great, but you would be more consistently great if the editors just spent a few more minutes with the content. Like reading the articles. This was just fucking awful.
Slashdot Mirror
Real respect is dragging grandpa's corpse to several pubs for a last night of drinking with family and friends.
I know you're joking, but there's nothing I would want more.
Why not? As long as you explicitly note that you are NOT guaranteeing it under your engineering license, and you aren't providing it under conditions where signed-off software would be required, why would it be unethical?
Ethics -- in general, not in the sense of a legislated code of ethics -- requires I stand by any guarantees I make. It doesn't require I always make such guarantees.
Actually, in Canada I believe you can't do what you're proposing, and that is probably true for many other common law countries. You can't turn off your professionalism, because you can't withdraw from the duty of care you owe to your customers (even if you're not paid). This is due to the Hedley-Burne decision
I learned this almost 30 years ago in Engineering school, but I'm reasonably certain it still holds.
Well, first of all many major copyright holders have special deals with YouTube where they don't actually send DMCA requests. In that case it's just a private agreement between Sony and YouTube on content monitoring, at best you have a slander suit but no basis for a perjury. Secondly, they may have a legal claim to copyright on the whole clip reel as a collection - basically the selection and composition of clips - and that's enough to get them out of the perjury part. In generic terms, "Under penatlity of perjury, we are the copyright holders of movie X. We believe that the posted scene Y is in violation of our copyright on X." Even if that last part is wrong because it's freely licensed or in the public domain or for some other reason not eligible for copyright it's not under perjury. It sucks, but any competent lawyer will manage to wiggle Sony out of any trouble.
The youtube page in fact says: "This video contains content from Sony Pictures Movies & Shows, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."
Assuming they're as careful with their language as I am, that says the Sony, not Youtube, initiated the takedown.
And the judge declined to explain her rationale. I'm not accusing her of bias, despite her record with these two litigants, but she should certainly have seen fit to shine a little light onto her thinking. Poor.
Why would she allow a prejudicial video when an alternative, with no products from either side, is available? The entire text of her ruling reads:
Samsung’s objection to Apple’s proposed version of the Federal Judicial Center instructional video (ECF No. 1534) is overruled. The parties shall bring the November 2013 version of the video, “The Patent Process: An Overview for Jurors,” and shall include the handout referenced in the video in the jury binders.
The article apparently originally appeared on Recode.net so better to use primary source (which has the ruling and both videos.
The old Beetles were so light that it was often possible to simply _lift_ or push them out of trouble when they got stuck in snow or mud: they actually floated for a while if they ever landed in water. Lifting them out of trable happened repeatedly when I was much younger and snow plows buried my old car.
I recall many years ago in high school a great prank. An occasional supply teacher we didn't much like drove a Beetle. One day six of us lifted it from the parking lot and placed it between two trees, one touching each bumper. I never learned how he got it out.
You have the mentality of a peasant. Whatever the nobles do, it must be OK because they would never take advantage of their position at your expense. They're so much more deserving then you.
Let's use a car analogy: suppose that you buy gas at the same station that Google execs do. They get charged the rate that the gas costs at the refinery, and you pay retail. Their gas is 25% cheaper (made up value) then yours. You have to pay for shipping costs, infrastructure costs for the service station (electricity, upkeep), the salaries of everyone involved between the refinery and the pump, etc. All that stuff has to be paid for to get the gas to the pump, so you are subsidizing their gas.
Except it's not a private company selling the gas, it's government services paid for by your taxes.
+5 Insightful? I could see +5 Vituperative, but your post lacks both insight and manners. Rather than calling him a peasant, why didn't you spend time reading the linked letter and article widely cited above? NASA says, for example, "While we concluded that the fuel arrangement between Ames and H211 did not result in an economic loss to NASA or DLA-Energy..." The cost H211 paid was the fully loaded cost. Go look that up in an management accounting text. There were no government services paid for by anyone's taxes. The price they paid was below market rates -- at the time the deal was signed all fuel was provided by DoD and sold at subsidized price (DoD craft) or fully loaded cost (non-DoD craft, including the H211 craft that NASA sometimes used). Here's a flash for you: sometimes these craft just flew in the air, so they didn't have the option of going to another "gas station" down the road -- Moffet Field was the only game in town for NASA, and was often convenient for H211 folks. Cost recovery is the default option for charges at most airports, and managers are very good at calculating fully loaded costs.
The problem is that H211 was getting a better deal than other craft at other airports in the area, not that the government or taxpayer was losing money. Given how much NASA was saving by having easy access to H211's aircraft, everyone was winning. However, NASA decided it looked bad, so to avoid any allegations of impropriety (like yours), it was in the government's interest to collect market rates and pass the profit on to the Treasury, so they've been doing that since September 2013. Mr. Schmidt's compensation is irrelevant.
What I find interesting is that NASA knows how much was sold, accepts that the sale was below market value. So my first question is, "why did NASA sell fuel to anyone?" Is NASA a public fuel station for anyone? Have the "Enlighted ones who do not suffer from 'Go Fever' decided that NASA should become a "Profit Center?" What else has NASA sold, at Tax Payer expense?
I would guess that there is a long tradition of people buying fuel on credit from most or all airports. It's not like your car where you can pass one gas station you don't like and go to the next one a mile down the road. You can't take off without a flight plan and enough fuel to get you to your destination plus a reserve. The system would have evolved to allow anyone to buy fuel from the airport they're parked at now -- any other system would be at best inefficient, at worst unsafe.
I'm no friend of trucks, but I wanted to clarify that 80,000 is the typical maximum weight allowed for a semi-truck. That would more likely be a shorter-haul truck moving gravel or other materials instead of less dense cargo like Walmart products. For the long-haul, materials are transported by train.
I'm a friend of trucks -- pretty much everything you have ever bought made its first and last trips by truck. There's no way modern logistics are feasible -- i.e. you don't get to buy stuff -- without trucks.
The weight being carried is a function of the number of axles on the truck. Each axle is good for about 8 tons, so your 80,000 pound load (40 (short) tons) is a 22 wheel tractor-trailer. You do need to balance the weight properly given the location of the axles, but this isn't rocket science.
There is a good reason for having a generally applied and precise limit on weight per axle: the wear and tear on the road is empirically proportional to the weight per axle to the fourth power. Those overloaded trucks or improperly loaded trucks do a lot of damage to the road, much more than you could ever do with a passenger car.
For requiring me to take a course on Victorian-era English literature as part of my engineering degree graduation requirements? By forcing me to take the course, they literally filled my brain up with useless stuff which will accelerate the onset of age-related dementia.
As an engineering graduate of 1986, I joined a group of classmates a couple of years ago on a visit to the Dean, who asked us what we would change, looking back, in the curriculum. There were two answers common to all of us: project management and English writing. We are all in management now, not practical engineering, and need words more than we need numbers and formulae. An English writing course should be required for all pure and applied science majors, in my opinion.
And I think you should have paid more attention in your one class: literally doesn't mean what you think it does.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Matt
When I first learned about this, there were two things I didn't understand: Why does Microsoft collect this data (error reports and USB insertions) and why is it sent in the clear? You and others have provided a plausible rationale for the first, but the sneakiness of the USB insertion calls home are disturbing. It still seems completely wrong to send it unencrypted. Very, very wrong in fact. Can you share why was this decision made?
They certainly identified the problem correctly... but then they had to meddle because there was just too much political hay to be made. Even when this corn ethanol program started, it was already pretty well established that corn was the wrong source material to use for fuel. As I recall, there was already a near consensus among researchers that switchgrass was probably the way to go. But they let some powerful legislators from the midwest shape the program in a manner designed NOT to be good for the country's long-term interests, but good for their short-term political gain.
I don't think it was a boon to farmers so much as a boon to Monsanto and ADM. This program was a monstrous subsidy to a couple of very fat companies, at the expense of pretty much everyone else -- people who pay taxes, people who eat, people who had other uses for the land, etc.
I confess this is what I can't understand about the whole concept. It's been years since I've had to do a lot of work poking around BIOS settings, but I can't see any reason why BIOS settings would ever need to be writeable by userspace programs, so this attack shouldn't be, well, an attack. What am I missing?
Google and Facebook offer simple two-factor that works with any cellphone capable of SMS. Facebook also has a keygen built into their smartphone app. I wish everyone did this.
My 2FA from Google stopped working a few months ago, so I had to turn it off. I don't know why, but I no longer got SMS messages when I asked them to authorize something. Annoying.
U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1, as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Zoe vs. Williams (1982).
I'll add that, although it is not the law of the USA, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 13(2) is explicit: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country."
All this talk isn't about the military, but about the economy. Anything that can be used to give other countries an edge against the largest country's economy is going to be leveraged to its fullest.
I live in Indonesia.
In this case it's not about the economy, it's about politics. Indonesia will have parliamentary elections in May 2014 and politicians of all stripes are looking for ways to distinguish them from their competitors. Since none have any platforms to speak of, and all are disgustingly corrupt, they use chest-thumping nationalism as one way to garner attention and hopefully votes. This has just given them a great opportunity and all are trying to out chest-thump the other parties. Mostly harmless.
"and spend 20 minutes on Google finding out what they really mean?" that why. You do not have the knowledge to do that, and the fact you think how they mean to you can be sussed out via google is laughable.
However, I don't see why you could take the results to your Dr.
I completely and totally disagree. You have an inalienable right to the results of tests of your body, whether paid for by you or someone else, whether ordered by a doctor or yourself. You have the right to Google the results of those tests, and even act on your limited knowledge if you are so inclined, even if that is foolish. The medical profession has been able to convince many people that the potential for misuse overrides your basic rights, but it doesn't. You must be free to choose among, say, waiting two weeks for a doctor's appointment or getting the test yourself and doing with the results what you will, assuming the technology exists, which is the subject of this article.
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. I am a type I diabetic and feel much more in control of my diabetes and my life since I moved from Canada to Indonesia. My Canadian endocrinologist was an asshole, but I couldn't go to another one -- all the ones recommended to me were refusing to take on new patients without a referral, and my GP referred his patients to the asshole. Tests could only be done on a doctor's order. Now, I can go to any number of clinics, walk in and get the critical blood test (for me, HbA1C) done in a few minutes for a few dollars. I can store my history over time, and show it to anyone I want, including any doctor I happen to be seeing. I self medicate, yes, using Google, for other conditions. I am in control and my life is better. Dean living with type I diabetes for 27 years, without complications. And happy.
The cost-per-test, or marginal cost, is impacted neither by the pharmaceutical company's study used to verify the accuracy of the test nor the FDA approval. These costs are fixed costs, not marginal costs. That is, these costs do not change dependent on the number of test kits produced. So technically, no, they don't push the cost-per-test up quite a bit. The company's desire to turn a profit is what pushes up the cost-per-test.
You are so right. I test my blood sugar a few times a day (Type I diabetic). Each test costs around $1, whether I buy test strips in Canada, Singapore or Indonesia. I'm locked into a meter given to me free by Bayer -- that's how much money there is in this business. I would guess the strips cost one cent to manufacture in bulk, two cents at most. The rest is obscene drug store and manufacturer margin. Canadian public health insurance (OHIP in my case) doesn't cover these, nor insulin. Do I believe these should be included in public health care? Absolutely. I haven't checked whether Obamacare specifically includes them, but assuming it does I think it is a huge step forward. Everyone's life includes some random elements, and including some treatments while excluding others from public insurance, or mandated private insurance, strikes me as arbitrary.
It seems that Tom's post is stuck at 2, and I don't understand why, so let me chime in. He's right. I have managed CSR programs in Indonesia, including one at a firm where they had previously invested around $10,000 to establish a microfinance lender. The lender has grown every year, and now has deposits and loans worth around 250,000. They employ people, but nothing compared to the employment their borrowers create. They are careful about screening applicants, and people pay back -- NPL (Non-performing loans) under 2%. I have had experiences with other projects which have generated much poorer returns, I suspect largely due to poor enforcement of the obligation to make regular payments. This stuff is capitalism at it's absolutest finest.
Banks can't do this stuff because their overheads and cost allocation models tell them it's unprofitable for them. That doesn't mean it doesn't work just fine if you don't have their overhead allocation methods. The only alternative for the rural near-poor (under $2 / day) are loan sharks, who charge 5-15% interest per month, which is a good example of unregulated banking at its lowest.
Monopolies aren't just businesses. It's possible that because he has so much more cash to throw at problems than everyone else, he could even be doing harm by overwhelming other possible solutions.
It's possible but it's not currently happening. The types of things he's doing are, as he specifically states in the article, complementary to what others, largely governments, are doing. The point he doesn't mention in the article, but which I think is critical, is that some of the problems his foundation is tackling are bigger than anything governments can do. Infectious diseases cross borders, so are beyond the scope of any single national government to solve. The work on malaria builds on, and exceeds, anything a government can do. Philanthropy sometimes gets a bad name, even among those in the CSR field (where I work) but there are some things that can only be solved by huge philanthropic investments. Polio and malaria are among them.
I agree. I can be a real pedant, but the modern use of "begs the question" clearly fills a need to express an idea which is not as easily expressed in other ways. Circular reasoning already is in the common vocabulary, so having an obscure rough equivalent serves no purpose. In this case the modern usage is superior, and will win out, deservedly.
I remember playing this in 1985, although the code was much older than that, on a PDP-8. I wonder if the code was structured that way to allow blocks of it to be read in from tape, as it wouldn't have been wise to assume a hard drive on some of those architectures.
Seriously? For ONE year, in ONE place, they choose to raise their children in a way similar to the way they were raised. The children will have many, many years of the experiences of their peers, and one year of different experiences. I think it's a bit like living in another country / culture for a year: the children will be much better off for it.
It's irrelevant; because the hypothetical proposes a fairly stiff standard of evidence to meet (and would only kick in when both that standard is met and a text-reading driver does something unpleasant enough to get the courts involved)
It's not irrelevant at all. If you are one of the defendants in a suit as a result of a motor vehicle collision, you and the other defendants are all subject to "joint and several" liability. That means that if you are found 1% at fault, and the driver is 99% at fault but dead, you are on the hook for all the damages. This judge knows that, and seems to be an idiot whose version of the law will be not be confirmed by higher courts, but it's a mildly troubling decision.
I guess ... I mean, if you want to use words and definitions and stuff, then yes, you're right.
BTW, this story has some kind of clustersummary. Monkeys and keyboards don't mix.
I read the summary thinking "citation needed... citation needed" and "What does that mean?" Turns out the words were just lifted from the article at threatpost.com which was just as poorly written, and also only includes one link -- to another page on the same site. That original article simply describes a method of carrying out a DDOS attack by paying for some ads then using javascript (could even be html) on those ads to contribute to the DDOS. Cheap, not fancy, put would work if someone is stupid enough to pay ransom for getting their web site back up.
The other article, linked to in the summary, piles a shitload of hyperbole, unsubstantiated claims and bullshit on top of that, and then gets someone to link to it here. Nothing substantiated about Android, SMS, or anything else. There is no link to Palo Alto Networks, but I googled them. There is nothing about this on their web site that I could find quickly. Nothing.
What we have here is a completely fabricated story posted on Slashdot because someone wanted to post a story, I guess, and the editors didn't even get suspicious about the obviously wrong article and click on the one link there. Slashdot, you are sometimes great, but you would be more consistently great if the editors just spent a few more minutes with the content. Like reading the articles. This was just fucking awful.