however the point of this story is there's no actual money involved. The whole system of incentives, rewards and such is entirely simulated. None of this is real.
What is "actual money"? Small bits of paper with pictures of dead men on them? And this is more valuable than bits in a computer...how?
Money is whatever we want to call it. It's real because we trust it.
Personally I dont doubt for a second that they'd simply bury any substance (reorganize, change strategic direction) that appeared to actually have a chance at curing something they were selling a symptom treater for.
The problem is it's not just one guy, or a group of 3 big wigs, that can make that decision. There is tons of research and development done on vaccines, drugs, cures, etc., and if they happened to stumble on one, enough people would know that it could not be kept secret.
These are complicated problems, requiring lots of people working on them. At least one of those people (and all you need is one, really) will actually care about the thing they're working on, and if it gets covered up they will leak it, tell everyone, give some to a competitor, sell some to a competitor, or whatever.
Conspiracies don't work when there are hundreds of people involved.
The entire concept of contracts (which the libertarians are so in love with) only works if you accept the legal fiction that everybody reads all the contracts they've committed themselves to. Which is, of course, utterly impossible.
Why, exactly, is it impossible? When I am presented with a contract, I read it. It's a pain in the ass, but it's certainly reasonable.
It's also possible that a mistranslation occurred at some point over the last 4000 years. 7 "stages" or "time periods" or "ages" or whatever could become "days" easily enough, when you're going from one language to another.
Why? The whole point of insurance is to spread risk over a large population. With perfect information, all the healthy people would go to the cheap carrier and everybody else would pay through the nose because they lost the genetic lottery. That's no way to run a society. No, but it's about the only way to run a company. If you feel things shouldn't be like that (I don't), then perhaps medical care should be in the hands of government.
The important bit, to me anyways, isn't discrimination against somebody who *has a inherited illnesss... it's discrimination based on a genetic predisposition. As a male, I'm charged more than a woman (of similar driving history) for car insurance. Is that not a different type of discrimination based on genetic predisposition?
Yes, because it didn't cost anything to do all the tons and tons of research and testing (not to mention the cost of education for all the scientists) to produce the drug. Let's turn that around: Merck did not pay one single dime for the education of those scientists. The US taxpayers did. Merck did not pay one single dime for all the basic research needed to develop the drug. The US taxpayers did. Why should Merck be allowed to steal money from the US taxpayers?
Corporations pay tax too, don't they? (I'm Canadian, and I can assure you they do in Canada. If the US is different, I apologize.)
At the same time, if the cashier doesn't feel your signature matches, he/she can simply reject the sale entirely. My standard procedure was to check if the signature matched, and if it didn't (or if the sale felt fishy), I would simply say, "these signatures don't match. I'm afraid I can't sell this to you." Most people, at this point, will offer photo ID willingly.
Perverted? A device like this is perverted by its very nature. Unless you can make hot cocoa with it, there is no non-agressive alternate use for this.
What is wrong with paper ballots?!!!??!? Canada seems to be able to handle paper balloting followed up with results within 24 hours, so what is the deal with all of the money and risk associated with trusting our politics to hackable solutions?
We Canadians don't vote for 3234 different things when we have an election. We just get a little piece of paper with the candidates for our riding written on it and we put an x next to the one we want. This works perfectly for a single-issue voting day, but you crazy Americans like to vote on countless issues every couple years.
The kicker--the manager of the place made the customers pay for the computer time by entering your credit card information into the computers themselves! Needless to say the only thing that kept me from leaving immediately was the 5 minutes I took to laugh in his face.
You realize that any business that you use your credit card at will have your credit card info already, right? You know, since they need it to charge you and all...
That would be a valid argument for not deleting a hard drive that had belonged to Stephen Hawking. In my own hard drive, any file I delete to replace with another leaves a message to the future about which things are considered important today.
While I agree in a lot of ways, something archeologists and historians are often curious about is the day-to-day life of people in ages long past. Sure, the important stuff ought to be saved - but so should ordinary, everyday stuff like emails, instant messages, slashdot comments, etc. That'll tell the generations to come more about us than some physics formulas.
Page Rank seems to work on the premise that the more a site is linked to, the more valuable it is. So if five million people link to a white supremacist site, that means there's valuable content there, right?
It means there's popular content there, which is often what people are looking for. The white supremacist site with a pagerank of 6 is probably better (by whatever criteria one uses to judge white supremacist sites) then the one with a pagerank of 3.
Is it valuable content? Most people would say no. White supremacists would say yes.
unlike the World Series in baseball which as far as I can tell is contested between teams from USA and Canada exclusively and the Super Bowl where the winners are crowned as World champions (what a joke!)
To be fair, there really are no teams outside of the USA that would stand a chance of winning a game of baseball or American football.
Of course, that's largely because no one else is crazy enough to play them.
Re:Not so funny when/if the seller commits suicide
on
Online Revenge
·
· Score: 1
Everyone is having a nice laugh right now, but it won't seem so funny if this guy commits suicide. Then we'll be reading about how the 'buyer' is on trial.
One of the highlights is that, when asked if they believed "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" 47% of those polled (in 1991, it was 44 in '97) said YES.
Simple solution: You have a new encryption scheme where there are 2 private keys. The first one allows decryption, the second wipes the drive. Guess which one you give to the police?
I really don't think police are stupid enough to try anything without a backup or two.
Slashdot Mirror
however the point of this story is there's no actual money involved. The whole system of incentives, rewards and such is entirely simulated. None of this is real.
What is "actual money"? Small bits of paper with pictures of dead men on them? And this is more valuable than bits in a computer...how?
Money is whatever we want to call it. It's real because we trust it.
Personally I dont doubt for a second that they'd simply bury any substance (reorganize, change strategic direction) that appeared to actually have a chance at curing something they were selling a symptom treater for.
The problem is it's not just one guy, or a group of 3 big wigs, that can make that decision. There is tons of research and development done on vaccines, drugs, cures, etc., and if they happened to stumble on one, enough people would know that it could not be kept secret.
These are complicated problems, requiring lots of people working on them. At least one of those people (and all you need is one, really) will actually care about the thing they're working on, and if it gets covered up they will leak it, tell everyone, give some to a competitor, sell some to a competitor, or whatever.
Conspiracies don't work when there are hundreds of people involved.
Ok. Let's say you have no insurance, and you don't make a lot of money. How long untill you get an MRI?
Oh. You mean...never, as in...not ever?
I'll stick with waiting, thanks.
So I could make a license that you own me your liver if you use my software while not drinking milk - but it would be pointless.
Damn you, that's in my software's EULA! You're the one guy actually reading it, aren't you?
The entire concept of contracts (which the libertarians are so in love with) only works if you accept the legal fiction that everybody reads all the contracts they've committed themselves to. Which is, of course, utterly impossible.
Why, exactly, is it impossible? When I am presented with a contract, I read it. It's a pain in the ass, but it's certainly reasonable.
It's also possible that a mistranslation occurred at some point over the last 4000 years. 7 "stages" or "time periods" or "ages" or whatever could become "days" easily enough, when you're going from one language to another.
Corporations pay tax too, don't they? (I'm Canadian, and I can assure you they do in Canada. If the US is different, I apologize.)
At the same time, if the cashier doesn't feel your signature matches, he/she can simply reject the sale entirely. My standard procedure was to check if the signature matched, and if it didn't (or if the sale felt fishy), I would simply say, "these signatures don't match. I'm afraid I can't sell this to you." Most people, at this point, will offer photo ID willingly.
Perverted? A device like this is perverted by its very nature. Unless you can make hot cocoa with it, there is no non-agressive alternate use for this.
Tell that to masochists.
I hate to be the one to tell you, but your grandfather was never blind. He just pretended to be for 30 years so he'd have an awesome party trick.
Or he could, you know, live in a place where they give out money, not food stamps.
What is wrong with paper ballots?!!!??!? Canada seems to be able to handle paper balloting followed up with results within 24 hours, so what is the deal with all of the money and risk associated with trusting our politics to hackable solutions?
We Canadians don't vote for 3234 different things when we have an election. We just get a little piece of paper with the candidates for our riding written on it and we put an x next to the one we want. This works perfectly for a single-issue voting day, but you crazy Americans like to vote on countless issues every couple years.
The kicker--the manager of the place made the customers pay for the computer time by entering your credit card information into the computers themselves! Needless to say the only thing that kept me from leaving immediately was the 5 minutes I took to laugh in his face.
You realize that any business that you use your credit card at will have your credit card info already, right? You know, since they need it to charge you and all...
You are kidding, right? CNN is considered to be big and important outside the US.
I'm in (western) Canada. CNN is one step above Fox News.
That would be a valid argument for not deleting a hard drive that had belonged to Stephen Hawking. In my own hard drive, any file I delete to replace with another leaves a message to the future about which things are considered important today. While I agree in a lot of ways, something archeologists and historians are often curious about is the day-to-day life of people in ages long past. Sure, the important stuff ought to be saved - but so should ordinary, everyday stuff like emails, instant messages, slashdot comments, etc. That'll tell the generations to come more about us than some physics formulas.
Page Rank seems to work on the premise that the more a site is linked to, the more valuable it is. So if five million people link to a white supremacist site, that means there's valuable content there, right?
It means there's popular content there, which is often what people are looking for. The white supremacist site with a pagerank of 6 is probably better (by whatever criteria one uses to judge white supremacist sites) then the one with a pagerank of 3.
Is it valuable content? Most people would say no. White supremacists would say yes.
How do you get a fraction of a liter?
We use these crazy things called "milliliters". It's really quite simple.
Even if you get it so a system doesn't generate false positives (which will be a big problem, it's not like CCDs are unique in this property)
False positives don't matter in a case like this. False negatives are what you want to avoid, in this particular instance.
unlike the World Series in baseball which as far as I can tell is contested between teams from USA and Canada exclusively and the Super Bowl where the winners are crowned as World champions (what a joke!)
To be fair, there really are no teams outside of the USA that would stand a chance of winning a game of baseball or American football.
Of course, that's largely because no one else is crazy enough to play them.
Everyone is having a nice laugh right now, but it won't seem so funny if this guy commits suicide. Then we'll be reading about how the 'buyer' is on trial.
For what?
No, we live in a nation where people can make shit up and get modded insightful.
Since I was simply curious, I did a quick search, and came up with this: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm/
One of the highlights is that, when asked if they believed "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" 47% of those polled (in 1991, it was 44 in '97) said YES.
"Making shit up" indeed.
They also use bookmarks. That one took a LONG TIME to break. I can not tell you how many people I've seen with that one.
I must have missed the memo on this one. What's wrong with bookmarks?
Simple solution: You have a new encryption scheme where there are 2 private keys. The first one allows decryption, the second wipes the drive. Guess which one you give to the police?
I really don't think police are stupid enough to try anything without a backup or two.
I hope not, anyway.