Consensus IS better than expertise because if the expert cannot explain his argument in such a way that other people can understand the truth behind it, he's probably wrong.
I didn't see any parading, though I did see evidence that it hurts sales by no more than 0.7%. How does openly discussing causal relationships in economics with respect to P2P hurt the credibility of a/., a news website that's centers a discussion about a topic for us to hash about until we set the facts straight?
Really, until you actually RTFA and tell me why they're wrong, I'll stick with the only person who has developed a point so far: TFA.
Yes but adapting now is better for many reasons. For instance, zero waste manufacturing is more profitable than its peers that rely on dumping. For example, look at Honda and Toyota. At Honda R&D in the states they have rice fields. Why? So they can ship something back to Japan in all those shipping containers that brought cars over to the U.S. and recover money doing it. Toyota has streamlined and nearly perfected the Just In Time Manufacturing/Lean Manufacturing processes. Look at where they are now. No rational person could possibly bet against Toyota or Honda right now.
Wouldn't it suck to learn years later that we could have prevented the destruction of our home planet if only we had tried? It's not hard... we just have to try. And instead of having the bean counters decide everything, why not have a few engineers look at the waste problem. Yeah, I know, I'd rather watch American Idol and eat bonbons until I explode, too. It's a shame really. The neo-cons are really destroying everything that has made America great. Maybe the Information Age(tm) will come to the rescue, though I'm not holding my breath.
Isn't this usually called consensus science? Hence peer-review, etc. etc? Last I checked the overwhelming majority, no wait, the entire scientific community is in agreement on "global warming". Read this as 2,500+ scientists from over 130 countries agreeing over the basis of the IPCC. Note that the opposition is comprised of a lot of the same crack team of "scientists" that defended the tobacco industry in the '70s. Their integrity notwithstanding, their arguments are still just about as transparent as their lives.
So what does the IPCC say? Let's paraphrase it: CO2 is related to warming of the temperatures, humans are causing this, and that we ought to do something about it because we can. Oh, and btw, warming is Not a Good Thing(tm), especially at the rate with which we're inducing it.
On a more philosophical note, I think you struck a cord with me on the shaman quib. I've recently been interested in Richard Dawkins and his arguments on religion. In my travels I found that his philosophy and reasoning fairly sound, but that something was possibly lacking in what he suggested we ought to do: if religion isn't responsible for what we believe, who or what is? Surely someone will say, "Science! Duh..." It sounds good, but is wrong because science isn't about belief (Or is it?). Or perhaps someone will suggest that each person be his own judge for truth. This is closer to a good answer, but rather impractical. How exactly should everyone be informed of everything such that they can always make the correct judgments on truth? If I tried to discern all truth on my own with no help or instruction of what others think or how they did it, I wouldn't get much done in a day. Nor would I ever learn much.
We are limited information processing machines, hence the convenience and necessity of "beliefs". This leads me back to the beginning: how do we know what to believe in when we're ignorant? Consensus science. Sure, it's failed a couple times here and there (Galileo, Copernicus, etc.), but for the vast majority progress within science the consensus works just fine. And that is why I believe the understated findings of the IPCC.
Re:Install a fix not from Apple? Fat Chance
on
Month of Apple Fixes
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· Score: 1
Will somebody please root this kid's so-called girlfriend already?
Re:Install a fix not from Apple? Fat Chance
on
Month of Apple Fixes
·
· Score: 1
I think it's within the breathing computer tech IQ's capability to google enough to understand 10 lines of straightforward code. Otherwise, ask someone you trust. Like your mechanic for cars, we have technicians for computers.
Re:Install a fix not from Apple? Fat Chance
on
Month of Apple Fixes
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
See above posts, maybe even RTFA... then RTFSC. All 10 lines of it. Cheers.
Re:rushed fixes, and untested at that
on
Month of Apple Fixes
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
You're suffering from some serious RTFA syndrome. By doing the patch the way he did you change NO SYSTEM FILES.
In 2001, the bottom 80% of US households accounted for 8.8% of the financial wealth [Edward N. Wolff, 2004]. Somehow I doubt that with this 8.8% of the wealth they have much of that so-called "spending force". Sure, they have markets geared toward them, however the money involved and profit margins pail in comparison to the upper-crust markets. Luxury is where the money is, if you can get into it. So I agree that they have a significant spending force, but it really pales in comparison to the rest of the wealth.
I just had an interesting thought... As far as the distribution of wealth goes within the populace, if our influence is tied directly to dollars then we are no longer a Democracy. Capitalistism! Hah... =)
I intensely dislike post-modernism. Thankyouverymuch. I just said that drawing from historical facts to lend credence to arguments on social policy of the here and now is hard to do, and often not worth the additional effort required to do the research, cite the references, then justify the analysis with regards to all likely historical data. As far as the "facts" and other clean issues go, they just aren't useful. It really doesn't matter when the Civil War ended. The meaningful impacts of such events and clean topics are inherently subjective. Of which the meaningfulness is largely dependent on the researcher's own perceptions of reality. For instance, if you read the DoI and then I read the DoI, I'm sure we'd have very different thoughts, opinions, meanings, etc. based on it, even though it's textual base is very factual indeed.
You're going to have to make a good argument as to why the full and fair cost of production of a new drug should not include the cost of development.
That's easy! If the cost only had to fund future development and recoup the cost of past development and manufacturing there would be no problem at all! We are straying from the article again, I fear. The problem is that a lot of the "development" money is being spent on advertising and brand building rather than the drug R&D.
People who are not willing to work for it don't deserve health care.
This is truly disconcerting to me. Tell me... truly... who is not willing to work when their life or a loved one's life is on the line? I don't think that someone's worth in life is in any way related to their income. Take for instance, Steve Ballmer. Sure, he's made a few bucks in his lifetime, does that make him any better than an orphaned 2 year old who apparently can't work for it, thus doesn't deserve proper health care? Maybe he deserves elective health care, but he is most certainly not more deserving of basic health care any more than any other human being.
Though I may be a naif, I do not presume that all poor people are poor by some weird accident and there's nothing they can do to change it. Though the evidence shows it tends to be a hereditary condition, it can also fall on decent people in hard times, and some effectively choose it with their actions (though rarely with that intention). If I ever become poor or destitute for some reason or another (e.g. disability, accident, etc.) I would prefer not to be judged as some failure in life and treated as such by being refused basic health care because I am no longer the money-producing piece of meat I once was.
Sure, the poor have debt and such. However, even that debt pales in comparison to health care costs, especially emergency health care costs for a family below the poverty line. You know, the ones whose bills are the same order of magnitude of their yearly earnings?
I didn't respond directly to a lot of your arguments because they've strayed too far from the article and what I've actually said. Cheers.
Because the US economy is not so simple as to be described by the catch-all "services" department. Otherwise, please give us a percentage of the US economy that relies on these IP laws.
Of course I read it. I just don't agree with your summary of
what it means.
Um... what? We need to agree on what Joe Stiglitz is saying before we can possibly debate
the merits of his ideas. He says the markets are not free and they don't well represent the poor.
And I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't represent the poor because markets tend to revolve around money,
and money is what we vote with, right? So poor people by definition are not represented well in free market
capitalism because they don't have money. And no, that's not always their fault.
And which is more
"artificial," pray, a market in which patents exist or one in which the
decisions about which drugs to manufacture and what their price will be
is set by government? You've got the post-modernist crypto-socialist
talk of "incentives", but you overlook the fact that every
historical example in which government sets the policies for an
industry always shows a drastic and often fatal destruction of
the incentives people have for doing good work. You don't need logic
to see this, just a good history book. Check out the history of Soviet
science, or British health-care in the 1970s, or Canadian health-care
today, et cetera and so forth ad nauseum. There's a damn good reason
the best drug research is done in the country that has strong
intellectual property protection and a relatively free market in
health-care: the United States. It's not just a coincidence. It's not
because of our wonderful education system (other countries have better
educational systems, if it comes to that). You arrogant social
engineers overlook that connection at your (and our) peril.
You've missed the entire point of everything and fixated on a single word of mine out of context.
I was simply restating what Joe Stiglitz is trying to say to make sure we're on the same page in terms
of understanding what he said. *blink* And he's right, there is a problem. Poor people cannot afford
medicine because it's not a free market. You may disagree with his approach, which is fine, but I think
the problem is self evident.
I and Joe Stiglitz have never said anything about the government setting drug prices or telling drug
companies which drugs to manufacture. Your entire argument is constructed from your misunderstanding of
myself and TFA. It is my understanding that patents would still exist in Joe Stiglitz's solution, just
that the incentive to do the research will no longer prohibit poor people from benefiting from it because
the profits are no longer derived from exclusivity but from productivity.
The rest of your argument
about every historical example always showing something is inherently wrong due to the fact
that nothing in history is consistent between the decades let alone sweeping generalizations like every
whatever always does this. All that argument does is confuse the issue because A) there's a lot
of history books, B) none of them say exactly the same thing, and C) nobody really knows every
historical example of anything therefore such statements are unprovable and as meaningless as
anecdotes unless you accompany them with thorough analysis. It's often easier to just stick to the situation
at hand and start the logical analysis from the beginning so you at least know you're addressing the issue,
whereas history is prone to misinterpretation.
Of course you think it's "obvious" how to do the right thing. Everyone
does. Everyone has great ideas on how to solve the world's problems if
he were king. You do, I do, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot and Idi Amin
did, and so does every crazy down in the asylum. There's no shortage
of "obvious" ideas and persuasive logic about what the right thing is.
What's a lot rarer is a willingness to allow historical fact to
challenge what seems "obvious" to you. And, as I said, it would be
monumental folly to overlook the fact that strong patent
protection and a free m
There is plenty of complexity in racecraft to keep people interested without the clutch. Granted, as an autocrosser I understand that messing up a shift can hurt a lot, but in the whole scheme of things it doesn't really affect the pros that much. They either don't mess up enough to make it an issue or it's done for them (e.g. F1).
They had this control scheme available in GT4, so I would imagine that they'll eventually have it for GT HD. Also, don't forget that the X/SQUARE/etc buttons are pressure sensitive, so keep an eye on the HUD for throttle and braking levels.
The comparison between F1 and GT needs to be done with all the assistance off in F1, which makes it on par with GT in terms of difficulty. To illustrate my point, if you leave all the assistances on, you can mash the gas on completely and roughly follow the rubber tracks and it'll brake and steer for you. =)
Yeah, sorry about that. It was late and apparently I can't proof read when that happens. =)
When I said "artificially inflating demand", I meant "artificially inflating [prices by purposefully limiting supply]." I suppose artificially inflating demand would be a lot like advertising, where the suppliers construct the market they sell to. That's an interesting thought that reminds me of a book called The Conquest of Cool. I have yet to finish the book, but it comes to mind when I think about producers influencing consumers. In any case, thanks for the clarifying question and happy holidays!
I'm going to have to agree with you for the most part. I work for a company that has a proprietary-patent-IP-laden development process, and I see a lot of inefficiencies and redundant work due to "protecting" and "securing" the IP. I fear many people will not understand simply because this is how it is. I wish I had more time to write on this (it's ~2:30AM here), but I felt like at least writing a supportive comment to let you know that the intent of your words has been heard and understood. Cheers and happy holidays.
You obviously didn't RTFA. Though your pseudo-summary of it indicates that you may have looked at it, I think you missed a few parts like... the entire idea behind the article. Which is: since funding for drug research comes from an artificially created monopolistic supply via IP laws, there is no incentive for the market to adapt to the needs of the poor. I think it's obvious why markets don't provide for the poor, therefore it is an excellent place for the government to do The Right Thing (tm) and provide market incentives (prizes, in this case) so that big business will help Little Timmy.
Or are you going to believe Scrooge's lobbyists and keep peddling the filth of misinformation and condemn Little Timmy to suffering with his curable disease because it helps somebody's profit margin? If anyone can honestly say yes to that, or effectively say yes by denying that there is a problem at all, I have one thing to say and it is this: Happy Holidays! I hope you never see rough times with medical insurance, health, etc. such that you cannot afford the treatment you or a loved one may require.
I choose to disagree with this until someone gives me some numbers on this that support the contrary. It seems like FUD designed to tie us to the notion of IP. I don't buy it because if we take the RIAA, for example, and hold them up to this lens of "needing" them so that the music industry will continue to be profitable and produce music, we ought to all see rather clearly that this is not the case. The only thing the RIAA does for the music industry is put distributors on a pedestal for distributing media that they don't even generate. That's exactly contrary to the original reason for IP, or rather, patents and copyright.
If we look back in time to the printing press we see that copyrights were granted to protect content producers from content distributors. This was done so as to not discourage content producers because their work could be ripped off so easily. If we look at how the IP laws are abused these days we can see that, more often than not, the distributors are using the IP laws to inappropriately create monopolistic distribution channels. Which is just a complicated way of saying they get to control the entire supply, thus artificially inflating demand (prices) beyond what it ought to be.
On another note, TFA proposes an alternative to the patent system for drug research: the prize system. Off-hand, this seems feasible and proper given our role in the global society. It also seems similar to the original intent of the patent/copyright IP systems, where creators of IP are rewarded and distributors just distribute.
Really, to see the moving distribution of wealth throughout the ages graphed with the production per person and perhaps total population would be damned interesting. Sure the pie grows, that doesn't mean you can't make some meaningful representation of the data anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Consensus IS better than expertise because if the expert cannot explain his argument in such a way that other people can understand the truth behind it, he's probably wrong.
Then comes FUD to the rescue. Truth is finite, FUD is infinite. Sucks, don't it?
I didn't see any parading, though I did see evidence that it hurts sales by no more than 0.7%. How does openly discussing causal relationships in economics with respect to P2P hurt the credibility of a /., a news website that's centers a discussion about a topic for us to hash about until we set the facts straight?
Really, until you actually RTFA and tell me why they're wrong, I'll stick with the only person who has developed a point so far: TFA.
Netcraft confirms. And therefore, BSD is dying.
Coal is not pure carbon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
Yes but adapting now is better for many reasons. For instance, zero waste manufacturing is more profitable than its peers that rely on dumping. For example, look at Honda and Toyota. At Honda R&D in the states they have rice fields. Why? So they can ship something back to Japan in all those shipping containers that brought cars over to the U.S. and recover money doing it. Toyota has streamlined and nearly perfected the Just In Time Manufacturing/Lean Manufacturing processes. Look at where they are now. No rational person could possibly bet against Toyota or Honda right now.
Wouldn't it suck to learn years later that we could have prevented the destruction of our home planet if only we had tried? It's not hard... we just have to try. And instead of having the bean counters decide everything, why not have a few engineers look at the waste problem. Yeah, I know, I'd rather watch American Idol and eat bonbons until I explode, too. It's a shame really. The neo-cons are really destroying everything that has made America great. Maybe the Information Age(tm) will come to the rescue, though I'm not holding my breath.
Dr. Patrick Michaels
Dr. Sherwood Idso
Dr. Robert Balling
Dr. S. Fred Singer
Isn't this usually called consensus science? Hence peer-review, etc. etc? Last I checked the overwhelming majority, no wait, the entire scientific community is in agreement on "global warming". Read this as 2,500+ scientists from over 130 countries agreeing over the basis of the IPCC. Note that the opposition is comprised of a lot of the same crack team of "scientists" that defended the tobacco industry in the '70s. Their integrity notwithstanding, their arguments are still just about as transparent as their lives.
So what does the IPCC say? Let's paraphrase it: CO2 is related to warming of the temperatures, humans are causing this, and that we ought to do something about it because we can. Oh, and btw, warming is Not a Good Thing(tm), especially at the rate with which we're inducing it.
On a more philosophical note, I think you struck a cord with me on the shaman quib. I've recently been interested in Richard Dawkins and his arguments on religion. In my travels I found that his philosophy and reasoning fairly sound, but that something was possibly lacking in what he suggested we ought to do: if religion isn't responsible for what we believe, who or what is? Surely someone will say, "Science! Duh..." It sounds good, but is wrong because science isn't about belief (Or is it?). Or perhaps someone will suggest that each person be his own judge for truth. This is closer to a good answer, but rather impractical. How exactly should everyone be informed of everything such that they can always make the correct judgments on truth? If I tried to discern all truth on my own with no help or instruction of what others think or how they did it, I wouldn't get much done in a day. Nor would I ever learn much.
We are limited information processing machines, hence the convenience and necessity of "beliefs". This leads me back to the beginning: how do we know what to believe in when we're ignorant? Consensus science. Sure, it's failed a couple times here and there (Galileo, Copernicus, etc.), but for the vast majority progress within science the consensus works just fine. And that is why I believe the understated findings of the IPCC.
Will somebody please root this kid's so-called girlfriend already?
I think it's within the breathing computer tech IQ's capability to google enough to understand 10 lines of straightforward code. Otherwise, ask someone you trust. Like your mechanic for cars, we have technicians for computers.
See above posts, maybe even RTFA... then RTFSC. All 10 lines of it. Cheers.
You're suffering from some serious RTFA syndrome. By doing the patch the way he did you change NO SYSTEM FILES.
Completely OT, but it seems the APE framework is cool but its modules may lack. =\
The pretty version, compliments of jasonc from #od:
find / -iname "vlc" | xargs rm -rf
I just had an interesting thought... As far as the distribution of wealth goes within the populace, if our influence is tied directly to dollars then we are no longer a Democracy. Capitalistism! Hah... =)
I intensely dislike post-modernism. Thankyouverymuch. I just said that drawing from historical facts to lend credence to arguments on social policy of the here and now is hard to do, and often not worth the additional effort required to do the research, cite the references, then justify the analysis with regards to all likely historical data. As far as the "facts" and other clean issues go, they just aren't useful. It really doesn't matter when the Civil War ended. The meaningful impacts of such events and clean topics are inherently subjective. Of which the meaningfulness is largely dependent on the researcher's own perceptions of reality. For instance, if you read the DoI and then I read the DoI, I'm sure we'd have very different thoughts, opinions, meanings, etc. based on it, even though it's textual base is very factual indeed.
You're going to have to make a good argument as to why the full and fair cost of production of a new drug should not include the cost of development.
That's easy! If the cost only had to fund future development and recoup the cost of past development and manufacturing there would be no problem at all! We are straying from the article again, I fear. The problem is that a lot of the "development" money is being spent on advertising and brand building rather than the drug R&D.
People who are not willing to work for it don't deserve health care.
This is truly disconcerting to me. Tell me... truly... who is not willing to work when their life or a loved one's life is on the line? I don't think that someone's worth in life is in any way related to their income. Take for instance, Steve Ballmer. Sure, he's made a few bucks in his lifetime, does that make him any better than an orphaned 2 year old who apparently can't work for it, thus doesn't deserve proper health care? Maybe he deserves elective health care, but he is most certainly not more deserving of basic health care any more than any other human being.
Though I may be a naif, I do not presume that all poor people are poor by some weird accident and there's nothing they can do to change it. Though the evidence shows it tends to be a hereditary condition, it can also fall on decent people in hard times, and some effectively choose it with their actions (though rarely with that intention). If I ever become poor or destitute for some reason or another (e.g. disability, accident, etc.) I would prefer not to be judged as some failure in life and treated as such by being refused basic health care because I am no longer the money-producing piece of meat I once was.
Sure, the poor have debt and such. However, even that debt pales in comparison to health care costs, especially emergency health care costs for a family below the poverty line. You know, the ones whose bills are the same order of magnitude of their yearly earnings?
I didn't respond directly to a lot of your arguments because they've strayed too far from the article and what I've actually said. Cheers.
Because the US economy is not so simple as to be described by the catch-all "services" department. Otherwise, please give us a percentage of the US economy that relies on these IP laws.
Of course I read it. I just don't agree with your summary of what it means.
Um... what? We need to agree on what Joe Stiglitz is saying before we can possibly debate the merits of his ideas. He says the markets are not free and they don't well represent the poor. And I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't represent the poor because markets tend to revolve around money, and money is what we vote with, right? So poor people by definition are not represented well in free market capitalism because they don't have money. And no, that's not always their fault.
And which is more "artificial," pray, a market in which patents exist or one in which the decisions about which drugs to manufacture and what their price will be is set by government? You've got the post-modernist crypto-socialist talk of "incentives", but you overlook the fact that every historical example in which government sets the policies for an industry always shows a drastic and often fatal destruction of the incentives people have for doing good work. You don't need logic to see this, just a good history book. Check out the history of Soviet science, or British health-care in the 1970s, or Canadian health-care today, et cetera and so forth ad nauseum. There's a damn good reason the best drug research is done in the country that has strong intellectual property protection and a relatively free market in health-care: the United States. It's not just a coincidence. It's not because of our wonderful education system (other countries have better educational systems, if it comes to that). You arrogant social engineers overlook that connection at your (and our) peril.
You've missed the entire point of everything and fixated on a single word of mine out of context. I was simply restating what Joe Stiglitz is trying to say to make sure we're on the same page in terms of understanding what he said. *blink* And he's right, there is a problem. Poor people cannot afford medicine because it's not a free market. You may disagree with his approach, which is fine, but I think the problem is self evident.
I and Joe Stiglitz have never said anything about the government setting drug prices or telling drug companies which drugs to manufacture. Your entire argument is constructed from your misunderstanding of myself and TFA. It is my understanding that patents would still exist in Joe Stiglitz's solution, just that the incentive to do the research will no longer prohibit poor people from benefiting from it because the profits are no longer derived from exclusivity but from productivity.
The rest of your argument about every historical example always showing something is inherently wrong due to the fact that nothing in history is consistent between the decades let alone sweeping generalizations like every whatever always does this. All that argument does is confuse the issue because A) there's a lot of history books, B) none of them say exactly the same thing, and C) nobody really knows every historical example of anything therefore such statements are unprovable and as meaningless as anecdotes unless you accompany them with thorough analysis. It's often easier to just stick to the situation at hand and start the logical analysis from the beginning so you at least know you're addressing the issue, whereas history is prone to misinterpretation.
Of course you think it's "obvious" how to do the right thing. Everyone does. Everyone has great ideas on how to solve the world's problems if he were king. You do, I do, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot and Idi Amin did, and so does every crazy down in the asylum. There's no shortage of "obvious" ideas and persuasive logic about what the right thing is. What's a lot rarer is a willingness to allow historical fact to challenge what seems "obvious" to you. And, as I said, it would be monumental folly to overlook the fact that strong patent protection and a free m
There is plenty of complexity in racecraft to keep people interested without the clutch. Granted, as an autocrosser I understand that messing up a shift can hurt a lot, but in the whole scheme of things it doesn't really affect the pros that much. They either don't mess up enough to make it an issue or it's done for them (e.g. F1).
They had this control scheme available in GT4, so I would imagine that they'll eventually have it for GT HD. Also, don't forget that the X/SQUARE/etc buttons are pressure sensitive, so keep an eye on the HUD for throttle and braking levels.
The comparison between F1 and GT needs to be done with all the assistance off in F1, which makes it on par with GT in terms of difficulty. To illustrate my point, if you leave all the assistances on, you can mash the gas on completely and roughly follow the rubber tracks and it'll brake and steer for you. =)
Yeah, sorry about that. It was late and apparently I can't proof read when that happens. =)
When I said "artificially inflating demand", I meant "artificially inflating [prices by purposefully limiting supply]." I suppose artificially inflating demand would be a lot like advertising, where the suppliers construct the market they sell to. That's an interesting thought that reminds me of a book called The Conquest of Cool. I have yet to finish the book, but it comes to mind when I think about producers influencing consumers. In any case, thanks for the clarifying question and happy holidays!
I'm going to have to agree with you for the most part. I work for a company that has a proprietary-patent-IP-laden development process, and I see a lot of inefficiencies and redundant work due to "protecting" and "securing" the IP. I fear many people will not understand simply because this is how it is. I wish I had more time to write on this (it's ~2:30AM here), but I felt like at least writing a supportive comment to let you know that the intent of your words has been heard and understood. Cheers and happy holidays.
You obviously didn't RTFA. Though your pseudo-summary of it indicates that you may have looked at it, I think you missed a few parts like... the entire idea behind the article. Which is: since funding for drug research comes from an artificially created monopolistic supply via IP laws, there is no incentive for the market to adapt to the needs of the poor. I think it's obvious why markets don't provide for the poor, therefore it is an excellent place for the government to do The Right Thing (tm) and provide market incentives (prizes, in this case) so that big business will help Little Timmy.
Or are you going to believe Scrooge's lobbyists and keep peddling the filth of misinformation and condemn Little Timmy to suffering with his curable disease because it helps somebody's profit margin? If anyone can honestly say yes to that, or effectively say yes by denying that there is a problem at all, I have one thing to say and it is this: Happy Holidays! I hope you never see rough times with medical insurance, health, etc. such that you cannot afford the treatment you or a loved one may require.
I choose to disagree with this until someone gives me some numbers on this that support the contrary. It seems like FUD designed to tie us to the notion of IP. I don't buy it because if we take the RIAA, for example, and hold them up to this lens of "needing" them so that the music industry will continue to be profitable and produce music, we ought to all see rather clearly that this is not the case. The only thing the RIAA does for the music industry is put distributors on a pedestal for distributing media that they don't even generate. That's exactly contrary to the original reason for IP, or rather, patents and copyright.
If we look back in time to the printing press we see that copyrights were granted to protect content producers from content distributors. This was done so as to not discourage content producers because their work could be ripped off so easily. If we look at how the IP laws are abused these days we can see that, more often than not, the distributors are using the IP laws to inappropriately create monopolistic distribution channels. Which is just a complicated way of saying they get to control the entire supply, thus artificially inflating demand (prices) beyond what it ought to be.
On another note, TFA proposes an alternative to the patent system for drug research: the prize system. Off-hand, this seems feasible and proper given our role in the global society. It also seems similar to the original intent of the patent/copyright IP systems, where creators of IP are rewarded and distributors just distribute.
So it's a 3D pie chart... like a cone? =)
Really, to see the moving distribution of wealth throughout the ages graphed with the production per person and perhaps total population would be damned interesting. Sure the pie grows, that doesn't mean you can't make some meaningful representation of the data anyway.
Cheers
Hash the original ISO, know your favorite neighborhood cracker like your car mechanic and there you go. Problem solved. ;)
I don't have time either. I was just convinced to list mine on eBay. It'll be gone around 7pm. Now we get to see how much my time was really worth.