What planet are you from? Yes, they can say misleading things about security and interoperability, because those things are subjective. That's what marketing does, they try to make everything look as shiny as possible. But they can't lie about something that is easily and accurately measured such as sales figures. If they did that they would face some very heavy penalties, not only from the government but more importantly from the shareholders.
Let me get this straight. You are talking about a series where good anthropomorphic intelligent alien robots that change into cars and planes come to Earth and fight evil anthropomorphic intelligent alien robots that change into cars and planes and you're worried that it's unrealistic? Somehow I don't think that's really the point:)
You could've said the same thing about Democrats after JFK/LBJ royally fucked up pretty much everything in the 60's (including dramatically escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War, which was much worse than Iraq). People turned to the Republicans because, hey, at least they were better than the Democrats, right? Right?
WAKE UP!
Yes, currently the Democrats are better than the Republicans. There's no doubt about that. But they're not better because they actually care for the people or have a respect for democracy. They're better because they haven't had the power to screw things up like the Republicans have. It's been shown in the past that it doesn't matter what party holds power, they are all equally corrupt.
How many Democrats voted against going to war in Iraq? A few did, but none of them are running for President. How many Democrats voted against the PATRIOT Act? How many actually took a stand for freedom and justice until it was absolutely clear without any shred of doubt that the voters would support them?
Until the system is dramatically revised, we will keep seesawing between the two parties and absolutely nothing will change.
I really don't see a big difference there, and I kinda appreciate the fact that once I can get a better computer the game will look even more amazing than it does now.
The only reason WoW had lag issues in the beginning was because even Blizzard didn't anticipate such a quick adoption by so many people. That was in part because so many people could play it (it barely required a decent PC when it came out, let alone now). They quickly fixed the lag issues, and even offered credit to players for server down time. The difference is that lag is fixed by adding more equipment on the server side, poor performance on the client side can only be fixed by upgrading your computer. Most people will not do that.
Yes, of course it's propaganda. Any large-scale attempt to change people's beliefs or ideas is propaganda. Obviously they're trying to get people to like the military more, but I'll wait and see if it's the good type of propaganda (giving solid evidence from their point of view) or negative (using fallacies and inaccurate evidence). As long as it's fair and factual there is no problem with information coming from a biased source.
I agree. Rome was a good show, but how could it not be? If you spend $100 million trying to tell one of the greatest stories in the history of the world it better at least be watchable. Hopefully HBO steps up and brings in some new blood because losing Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos, and The Wire in two years would end my subscription without some new shows to fill the void.
Let's look at current figures. Last week the Wii sold about 100,000 in Japan and 90,000 in the US. The 360 sold 4,000 in Japan and 65,000 in the US. Since Nintendo has shipped 6.92 million Wiis and MS 9.64 million 360's, even on the current trends it will take most of the year for Nintendo to draw even with the 360. Also, drawing trends out that far is extremely sketchy. Most likely sales for both consoles will fall flat during the summer, and rebound strongly in the fourth quarter when more AAA games are out. After next winter we'll have a better idea of what is going on, but it's hard to say that Nintendo is "trouncing" Microsoft when Microsoft still has the overall lead in consoles and software sold.
MS is not being trounced by the Wii. They have sold 10 million 360's to 7 million Wii's, and have more than doubled the amount of Wii's sold in the US. Remember, this is not a zero-sum game.
No you don't. In fact, those are two laws that I break on a regular basis. You just have to be prepared to accept the consequences if you get caught. But yes, I agree that you are only in absolutely extreme cases an asshole for obeying the law. This certainly isn't one of them.
Re:So lemme get this straight....
on
The Human Mutation
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
1. Scientist suspects that there are differences between humans and apes.
2. Scientist looks for said difference...
8. World realizes that world already suspected as much and Scientist fades into obscurity.
9. World's knowledge of the world is slightly improved by Scientist affirming suspected hypothesis and introducing more data to World.
Not every scientific discovery has to be of the earth-shaking, paradigm-shifting variety.
Not in a free market. In a free market, profit is a margin a competitor can exploit.
This isn't a free market. It's not even close. This is a government deciding to ignore government-instuted patent law in order to provide a socialist program. Like I said, that's a fine idea but hopefully governments stay cautious and only do this in extreme cases. If this were the norm the pharmaceutical industry wouldn't exist.
if this happens often enough then drug companies go bankrupt... and others will rise to take their place. This happens in every industry. Just because a company makes a product does not make it mandatory for anyone to actually buy it at the price demanded - especially when (as in this case) another company is willing to sell the product at a lower price.
I wasn't referring to a single drug company. If this happened the drug companies would stop all research and simply manufacture generics. There would still be some advancement because of public research, but progress would drop off dramatically. The government has an interest in stopping that from happening (even if the patent holder is from another country), so hopefully they took that into consideration and will continue to be cautious about doing this in the future.
The music industry certainly loses money because of rampant piracy. Anybody denying that is a complete idiot. What people correctly deny is the statement that *every* download should be counted as a lost sale.
To answer your question, yes it is about recovering R&D costs. For pharmaceutical companies to make money, they must offset ridiculously high research costs by selling drugs at a high price. Normally after a few years generics are allowed to be produced by other companies under a different name at a much lower cost. This strikes a balance between encouraging research from big companies and allowing the drug to enter public domain fairly quickly. The drug patent laws are actually quite sane in comparison to other IP laws. The drug companies are making large concessions for developing countries, but even if they sell at cost (something a few companies have offered in other circumstances) it is still cheaper to buy generics from India.
Merck was trying to make money by selling the drug at a high price under current laws. Brazil decided that the price was too high to be able to provide the health service to their citizens. They then decided that public health was more important than protecting Merck's profits. This is sketchy because Merck put the effort and research into developing the drug, and they should be allowed to make a profit. If they didn't have an expectation of a profit then they wouldn't have produced the drug. If this happens often enough then drug companies go bankrupt because they can't make any money. Hopefully world governments will take caution and only do this in extreme cases (mostly AIDS-related drugs have been the target so far).
Considering its[sic] a global company, They[sic] should have taken Brazils[sic] offer and looked to Europe and N.America to recover costs. OTOH, since Merick[sic] wouldn't sell to Brazil anyways, there[sic] not actually loosing[sic] money now, are they?
Yes, of course they are. This isn't some hypothetical situation where Brazil may have possibly used this drug. This is money they should've had but didn't thanks to a combination of their own arrogance/ineptitude and Brazil's blatant disregard for patent law.
BTW, please preview your posts. Your grammar is terrible and you spelled Merck wrong two different ways. I hope you're not a native English speaker.
Amazon didn't burn through $6 billion in capital during that eight years. And even though it's obviously possible that the Xbox division can post a profit now, is there any business in the world where you can't post a modest profit after six years and billions of dollars invested? They could've used that money to buy a 15% stake in Nintendo and made a real gain instead of being six billion dollars in the hole. Hell, they probably could've bought Sega completely and continued with that brand.
What unutterable bollox. The US is the most insane investment a person could make right now.
What an apt description of your own point. Are you sure that the US is the most insane investment a person could make? Over the Zimbabwean dollar? Iraqi dinar? Kyat? Yes, currently GBP and Euros are beating the dollar (I wouldn't go for yen personally), but it's hardly an insane investment. It's more of a personal judgement on what you invest it, but the dollar is so far from worthless it's an extreme understatement to call what you said simple hyperbole. The idea that inertia is the only thing propping up the dollar's value is patently absurd. There are many things you can criticize the US for, but fiscal policy is definitely not one of them. The only countries even in the same echelon are the UK (who is IMHO slightly better) and the Swiss.
Slashdot Mirror
What planet are you from? Yes, they can say misleading things about security and interoperability, because those things are subjective. That's what marketing does, they try to make everything look as shiny as possible. But they can't lie about something that is easily and accurately measured such as sales figures. If they did that they would face some very heavy penalties, not only from the government but more importantly from the shareholders.
Yes, I did find it coincidental. But I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Let me get this straight. You are talking about a series where good anthropomorphic intelligent alien robots that change into cars and planes come to Earth and fight evil anthropomorphic intelligent alien robots that change into cars and planes and you're worried that it's unrealistic? Somehow I don't think that's really the point :)
I hear there's more than one nowadays.
Other crazy people.
Bullshit.
You could've said the same thing about Democrats after JFK/LBJ royally fucked up pretty much everything in the 60's (including dramatically escalating US involvement in the Vietnam War, which was much worse than Iraq). People turned to the Republicans because, hey, at least they were better than the Democrats, right? Right?
WAKE UP!
Yes, currently the Democrats are better than the Republicans. There's no doubt about that. But they're not better because they actually care for the people or have a respect for democracy. They're better because they haven't had the power to screw things up like the Republicans have. It's been shown in the past that it doesn't matter what party holds power, they are all equally corrupt.
How many Democrats voted against going to war in Iraq? A few did, but none of them are running for President. How many Democrats voted against the PATRIOT Act? How many actually took a stand for freedom and justice until it was absolutely clear without any shred of doubt that the voters would support them?
Until the system is dramatically revised, we will keep seesawing between the two parties and absolutely nothing will change.
The only reason WoW had lag issues in the beginning was because even Blizzard didn't anticipate such a quick adoption by so many people. That was in part because so many people could play it (it barely required a decent PC when it came out, let alone now). They quickly fixed the lag issues, and even offered credit to players for server down time. The difference is that lag is fixed by adding more equipment on the server side, poor performance on the client side can only be fixed by upgrading your computer. Most people will not do that.
Yes, of course it's propaganda. Any large-scale attempt to change people's beliefs or ideas is propaganda. Obviously they're trying to get people to like the military more, but I'll wait and see if it's the good type of propaganda (giving solid evidence from their point of view) or negative (using fallacies and inaccurate evidence). As long as it's fair and factual there is no problem with information coming from a biased source.
It apparently also made you "loose" your passion for grammar.
I agree. Rome was a good show, but how could it not be? If you spend $100 million trying to tell one of the greatest stories in the history of the world it better at least be watchable. Hopefully HBO steps up and brings in some new blood because losing Deadwood, Rome, The Sopranos, and The Wire in two years would end my subscription without some new shows to fill the void.
Let's look at current figures. Last week the Wii sold about 100,000 in Japan and 90,000 in the US. The 360 sold 4,000 in Japan and 65,000 in the US. Since Nintendo has shipped 6.92 million Wiis and MS 9.64 million 360's, even on the current trends it will take most of the year for Nintendo to draw even with the 360. Also, drawing trends out that far is extremely sketchy. Most likely sales for both consoles will fall flat during the summer, and rebound strongly in the fourth quarter when more AAA games are out. After next winter we'll have a better idea of what is going on, but it's hard to say that Nintendo is "trouncing" Microsoft when Microsoft still has the overall lead in consoles and software sold.
Please for the love of God stop using outdated terminology. The whole Caucasoid/Mongoloid/Astraloid thing is wildly inaccurate.
MS is not being trounced by the Wii. They have sold 10 million 360's to 7 million Wii's, and have more than doubled the amount of Wii's sold in the US. Remember, this is not a zero-sum game.
No you don't. In fact, those are two laws that I break on a regular basis. You just have to be prepared to accept the consequences if you get caught. But yes, I agree that you are only in absolutely extreme cases an asshole for obeying the law. This certainly isn't one of them.
9. World's knowledge of the world is slightly improved by Scientist affirming suspected hypothesis and introducing more data to World.
Not every scientific discovery has to be of the earth-shaking, paradigm-shifting variety.
I think he was more pointing out that the government is fucking up regardless of party lines as opposed to defending Republicans.
Hopefully so.
This isn't a free market. It's not even close. This is a government deciding to ignore government-instuted patent law in order to provide a socialist program. Like I said, that's a fine idea but hopefully governments stay cautious and only do this in extreme cases. If this were the norm the pharmaceutical industry wouldn't exist.
I wasn't referring to a single drug company. If this happened the drug companies would stop all research and simply manufacture generics. There would still be some advancement because of public research, but progress would drop off dramatically. The government has an interest in stopping that from happening (even if the patent holder is from another country), so hopefully they took that into consideration and will continue to be cautious about doing this in the future.
The music industry certainly loses money because of rampant piracy. Anybody denying that is a complete idiot. What people correctly deny is the statement that *every* download should be counted as a lost sale.
To answer your question, yes it is about recovering R&D costs. For pharmaceutical companies to make money, they must offset ridiculously high research costs by selling drugs at a high price. Normally after a few years generics are allowed to be produced by other companies under a different name at a much lower cost. This strikes a balance between encouraging research from big companies and allowing the drug to enter public domain fairly quickly. The drug patent laws are actually quite sane in comparison to other IP laws. The drug companies are making large concessions for developing countries, but even if they sell at cost (something a few companies have offered in other circumstances) it is still cheaper to buy generics from India.
Merck was trying to make money by selling the drug at a high price under current laws. Brazil decided that the price was too high to be able to provide the health service to their citizens. They then decided that public health was more important than protecting Merck's profits. This is sketchy because Merck put the effort and research into developing the drug, and they should be allowed to make a profit. If they didn't have an expectation of a profit then they wouldn't have produced the drug. If this happens often enough then drug companies go bankrupt because they can't make any money. Hopefully world governments will take caution and only do this in extreme cases (mostly AIDS-related drugs have been the target so far).
Come on, 100 comments in and nobody has made a pr0n joke? What is slashdot coming to these days?
True, but only five years ago the Rand was at an all-time low compared to the dollar, so it's not surprising it has been going up.
Yes, of course they are. This isn't some hypothetical situation where Brazil may have possibly used this drug. This is money they should've had but didn't thanks to a combination of their own arrogance/ineptitude and Brazil's blatant disregard for patent law.
BTW, please preview your posts. Your grammar is terrible and you spelled Merck wrong two different ways. I hope you're not a native English speaker.
Amazon didn't burn through $6 billion in capital during that eight years. And even though it's obviously possible that the Xbox division can post a profit now, is there any business in the world where you can't post a modest profit after six years and billions of dollars invested? They could've used that money to buy a 15% stake in Nintendo and made a real gain instead of being six billion dollars in the hole. Hell, they probably could've bought Sega completely and continued with that brand.
What an apt description of your own point. Are you sure that the US is the most insane investment a person could make? Over the Zimbabwean dollar? Iraqi dinar? Kyat? Yes, currently GBP and Euros are beating the dollar (I wouldn't go for yen personally), but it's hardly an insane investment. It's more of a personal judgement on what you invest it, but the dollar is so far from worthless it's an extreme understatement to call what you said simple hyperbole. The idea that inertia is the only thing propping up the dollar's value is patently absurd. There are many things you can criticize the US for, but fiscal policy is definitely not one of them. The only countries even in the same echelon are the UK (who is IMHO slightly better) and the Swiss.