At best, this is gaming the system for guaranteed profit. At worst, it's murder for profit.

This is not an environment were the consumer can just automatically go to another vendor. The myth of a free market does not apply because there is no parity between the user and the producer. Although generics exist, they cannot always be substituted, and sometimes they don't even exist.

Medical companies are profit driven to the extent that they cannot be trusted. They routinely lie about both the safety and the efficacy of their products. This puts the health and even the lives of patients at risk all the time.

For example, De Puy/Johnson and Johnson produced metal on metal hip implants, and their own internal data showed that they were failing at a high rate and requiring additional surgery. Additionally, metal fragments were released into the bodies of recipients and causing metal poisoning. They decided to phase out the product because of "declining sales" and did not do a recall or inform doctors or the FDA.

At the beginning of 2010, DePuy Orthopaedics said they were phasing out the ASR Hip Implant because of declining sales, but never mentioned the high failure rate data from an Australian implant registry. In March 2010, the New York Times reported that DePuy issued its first warning to doctors and patients about the high early failure rate. However, at this point, they still had not issued a recall of the product. In fact, they claimed any statements referencing a recall were false.

Regulation is a necessity because the history of drug and medical equipment is filled with business practices leading to horrible outcomes, including needless death.

In addition, drug companies get huge direct and indirect subsidies from the government. A lot of the basic research is government funded and handed over the the drug companies at no cost. When a drug is going off patent, it is legal for the patent holder to pay other drug companies to not produce generic versions. This is the polar opposite of free enterprise. It's legalize collusion to maintain state sanctioned monopolies.

I'm routinely baffled and angered by self-styled "defenders of capitalism" who excuse dangerous and grossly anti-competitive business behavior. If the government did things like this they would be screaming like stuck pigs, but when the same or worse is done under the flag of capitalism it somehow is transformed into a sacred act, and negative consequences are left out of the picture. It seems obvious to me that the same kind of scrutiny should be applied to any big organization. Only being critical of one side is just stupid. Stop doing it.

When I see the US flag prominently displayed on the Atlas V rocket I wonder why there isn't a Russian flag right below it. The first stage liquid fuel engines are Russian built RD-180's. Without them the thing would just sit on the pad and go nowhere.

Yea 'Merica!

There is an intrinsic problem with the map presentation: it ignores the relative number of papers from each country. This can lead to a distorted perception for countries with a small number of papers in the data set.

To quote the article "It shows only the incidence of flagged authors for the 57 nations with at least 100 submitted papers, to minimize distortion from small sample sizes." If a country has a total number of papers in the hundreds it implies the number of authors is also low. Therefor, a small number of authors who routinely plagiarize can have a major effect.

It's analogous to a small town with a very low crime rate. All it takes is a few significant incidences to cause a huge jump in the statistics.

For comparison, it would be interesting to see the rates for other kinds of text reuse. From the article:

After filtering out review articles and legitimate quoting, about one in 16 arXiv authors were found to have copied long phrases and sentences from their own previously published work that add up to about the same amount of text as this entire article.

For comparison it would be useful to see the percentage of this reuse displayed on another map. I have a strong suspicion that countries that look good on the presented map would not look nearly as good by this measure.

"What possibly could go wrong?"

You will be attacked by your refrigerator.

C is important because it directly presents the actual machine memory model. If you want to have an understanding of how software works, you need to understand this. People who never learn how memory is really organized lack fundamental knowledge.

It's as if engineers could skip calculus because there are automated systems that will do it for them. Even if they never work directly with calculus, the experience is critical to being a competent engineer.

Yes, C has features/bugs that can be really ugly. But as a professional you can make a system like C and it's runtime libraries work then you are much better equipped to do other complex tasks. The experience can result in careful habits that will help your entire career.

Ah yes, the downtrodden shareholders. Selfless upper management live near the poverty line in order to maximize value for the shareholders.

Is your head encased in a concrete block? Have you ever looked at the winners and losers in the US economy? Upper management in the US don't give a tinker's damn about shareholders, customers, or employees. They screw everyone in their pursuit personal wealth. Large companies are run primarily for the gain of the corrupt insiders.

Look at what happened in the financial sector in the ten year run-up to the 2008 crash. The people at the top were wildly irresponsible because they were making obscene amounts of money. After the crash, none of them suffered at all.

Consider Angelo Mozilo the former CEO of Countrywide Mortgage. Conde-Nast Portfolio placed him the second on their list of the 25 worst CEOs of all time. It's hard to know the exact figures, but at one point his compensation was $470 million. Even though he had to personally pay a $46 million fine to keep from being criminally charged, he still ended up filthy rich. With the post 2008 stock market gains he may be worth more then $470 million by now.

Meanwhile, the shareholders at Bank of America, which bought Countrywide, are still paying for the bad loans that he was responsible for creating. The only reason banks are profitable right now is because the FED discount rate is between 0.0% and 0.25%, which is basically free money. A senile poodle could run a profitable business with 0% loans.

Those 0% loans from the FED are de facto backed by the people of the US. Effectively the common national debt increases. So the CEO class makes personal profit by siphoning wealth from everyone. We have an economic system that redistributes income upwards. The proof of this is the ever increasing wealth gap between the top 10% and the declining fortunes of the 90%.

So why are you making excuses for greedy incompetent psychopaths who will destroy anything as long as they are making money? What's wrong with you?

Good. I'll keep posting more of it.

The shorter version: you didn't bother to read the article.

It talks a lot about the actual decision making process, which you did not reference. It also goes into great detail on how sport fishing has been a major driving force in fishery policy since the introduction of salmon in the late 1960's. It ends with the current dilemma of balancing between the re-emergence of trout as the primary sport fish vs the salmon, which are not doing well. The irony is that a trout friendly ecosystem is much closer to the way the lakes were before the man made changes that lead to the introduction of salmon in the first place.

You'd rather just whine in complete ignorance rather then read something interesting and become more knowledgeable. Pathetic.

Sorry, I ment Kim Jong-un, not Kim Jong-il. Wrong mad generation of mad dictator.

This is the kind of retaliation that seems to fit the North Korean mold. It doesn't matter if they did it themselves or had someone else do it for them.

There seem to be two general styles of politically motivated hacking. One is the NSA/CIA style: the goal is to get as much information as quietly as possible. One of the things that the Snowden/Manning leaks revealed is how extensively the NSA was able to do this.

The other style is the highly visible attack. This is the kind of thing that the Syrian Electronic Army engages in. Much of what they do is intended to be high profile whether they claim responsibility or not.

Despotic leaders like Assad and Kim Jong-il want to see damage and humiliation inflicted on their enemies. It's fundamental to their political strategy. They do this internally to victims of their regimes and externally to their foes.

Rationally it doesn't make much sense for North Korea to waste this kind of capability on a single company. That kind of activity would be better used on a strategic target, say a western defense company or infrastructure in South Korea. (There have been attacks on South Korean banks that fit this description.) But Kim Jong-il is not a rational leader. Atacking Sony because of a perceived personal insult seem just like the kind of thing he would do.

There are plenty of examples of "bad behavior" on Slashdot. I've been accused of this myself, for not being "polite". So it seems obvious that it's only a matter of time until someone in London figures out that collectively Slashdot is a "bad influence" and it gets banned.

Which side won the Cold War again? Oh yeah, "Ignorance is Strength". That side.

Keep that KKK meme running, asshat!

The predominant native US movements using terrorist tactics are all right wing. Assassinating doctors at medical clinics providing abortion services. The truck bomb attack in Oklahoma City against a federal office building. The threats against BLM officials in Nevada and Utah. Militia movements./a> Posse Comitatus threatening violence to government officials.

Left wing violence is a thing of the past. You're flogging a dead horse. Environmental extremism is nowhere near the levels it was in the 70's through the mid 80's. When Greenpeace goes out and makes trouble it's not in the US, it's going against Japanese whaling ships. They may get funding from the US, but not doing much to get arrested here.

There are no radioactive scorpions with commie mind control venom lurking under your house. Maybe if you were taking the right meds the paranoia would abate and you would not live in such a distorted and fearful universe. It might even be simpler then taking prescription drugs. For a first step, try leaving your parents basement and watch something else besides Fox News. At least it would be a change...

People in southern California need help to stop fracking in earthquake prone areas, which is pretty much the entire southern end of the state. The oil companies have a lot of money to spend on local politicians to get fracking approved, so maybe it's time to get some help from a guy who really cares about the well-being of people around the world, Vlad (The Impaler) Putin.

Clearly oil companies don't give a rat's ass about the effects of oil extraction (can you say DeepWater Horizon?), so it just makes sense to find allies wherever you can. Given the Supreme Court ruling on non-disclosure of unlimited political contributions, it should be a snap to get Russian money into US politics. It's not like big business in the US has any national affiliation (Apple/Google paying no taxes), so why not get foreign funding? It's not that big a step from what corporations are doing already.

Cynical much?

You've got it completely backwards. Sony has lost a vast amount of credibility and trust, and it will take a long long time to get it back.

As you yourself said, "their connections, the power they have to move the industry" carry a lot of weight. A lot of people inside and outside Sony could have their reputations ruined by these leaks. The film industry is full of gossip and jealousy, and people often say things in private that can be incendiary if they get loose. If someone with big clout is offended, a lot of current and future deals could go out the window. Grudges are real, and can last a lifetime.

And even non-bigwigs can be wrecked. Suppose someone takes time off, or has other issues from stress and uses prescription medication as a result. This could easily end up in personal records. This gets out, and that person could find themselves unemployable anywhere. Not even able to get a minimum wage job in retail or fast food, much less the entertainment industry. Remember, there are a lot of show hires and workers are transient, so there are a lot of ex-employees with records at Sony.

Sony could be on the hook for a huge class actions suit, particularly if you consider ex-employees. No matter how long ago it was, if you name shows up online as a result of this breach you have a valid reason to sue.

And Sony is not a well regarded company in Hollywood. They are known for squeezing the life out of people and then giving them the boot. They routinely have layoffs while they are advertising for new hires. (Everyone in Hollywood does this, but Sony is a prime example.)

They keep a few people around but nobody lasts because it's cheaper, and transient workers are no threat to bad upper (or middle) management. Bad practice can be hidden if there is no one around to complain or remind anyone of previous mistakes. (Just ask anyone who has been cycled through Disney about this.)

Given the combination of ill will and a lot of ex-workers, don't be surprised when the civil actions start. Sony doesn't have a leg to stand on, particularly on personal records. They had no partitioned networks/systems, no encryption, and didn't detect the breach until they were screwed. It's going to be just like drug lawsuits: there will be multiple late night commercials fishing for anyone who worked at Sony to join in.

Hollywood is a schadenfreude kind of town. There will be a lot of movie industry types who will derive a lot of satisfaction from watching Sony suffer mightily because of this.

In the most recent election, there were 10 or so elected judge positions. Each had 3 or 4 candidates. Of the total candidates, over 50% listed their occupation as "Gang prosecutor", or a similar phrase. Because the only thing judges ever do is hear cases about gangs, or so one might think. No traffic court, no civil litigation, no other criminal cases. Only gangs.

Way to go 'Merica!!