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Comment Re:Time warp? (Score 1) 130

These surgeries are safer and less painful than traditional gut-opening ones. ...

So while some are no doubt botched, overall people are better with than without, a net gain.

You cannot say that all robot surgeries are better and safer because that is not true. This new surgical technique has different pros and cons, reduces some risks but increases others, so it's use needs to be evaluated (epidemiological studies) for each kind of surgery in order to assert if it is beneficial for that kind of surgery. New things are not better just because they are new, they need to be tested and proven.

An example from a couple of years ago, some studies shown that robot prostate cancer surgery decreased the risk of in-hospital complications, but increased the risk of impotence and incontinence. So in this case (prostate cancer) robot surgery does not shows a clear net gain.

Comment Re:Interesting (Score 1) 513

The big difference is that in Netherlands they can trust law enforcement to destroy the samples after that investigation was done. In the other hand, in NYC you can be fairly certain that law enforcement would hold on to those samples and resulting DB, breaking promises and maybe the law with impunity.

Comment Re:RCMP staff should be sued and then fired (Score 5, Insightful) 770

What the RCMP officers did VERY wrong was to blindly take sides in a dispute, helping an aggressor against his victim. They arrived to the scene where suspect A was assaulting, holding down and trying to destroy property of suspect B who was resisting the aggression and trying to protect his property. Then they proceeded to cuff suspect B (the victim), damage and confiscate his property, and arrest him; all while leaving suspect A (the aggressor) free.

Comment Re:God bless the free market! (Score 1) 386

First, no human can know all the effects of all the ingredients of all the products someone consumes, not even a phd in medicine or bioquemestry. So no, I'm not saying consumers are retards, I'm saying they are only human.

And Second, yes, there is a concept of reputation, but it is something that, without oversight, can be easily manipulated by unethical advertising, fake reports/certifications, astroturfing, etc.

Comment Re:God bless the free market! (Score 1, Redundant) 386

Before there was such legislation you could still restrict yourself to only purchase from companies that voluntarily got certified and voluntarily informed ingredients. No one were making you buy food from producers who didn't list ingredients.

There are several flaws in your hypothetical no-legislation scenario:

  • - Companies can get "voluntary certified" by their own shell companies or other kind of fake/biased certification, and there is no way for the consumer to distinguish a serious/real certification from a fake/biased one.
  • - Companies can "voluntary inform" an incomplete list of ingredients and there is no way for the consumer to know which product have a real collectively exhaustive list or just the ones the producer wanted you to know.
  • - Competitors can band together to omit inconvenient truths together

Comment Re:Make it illegal (Score 2) 1199

This policy went too far, the cost to personal freedoms is too great to be justified.

Having said that, I can understand the rationale behind it. I wouldn't like to hire a smoker (even one who smoked only after hours) the same way I wouldn't like to hire an alcoholic (I mean a non recovery one). Hiring any addict has costs, he will always have times where the only thing he can think is “where is my next fix”.

Comment Re:Not a problem iOS users have. (Score 1) 111

As I said before, their guidelines are published, but their interpretation of the guidelines are not. So that is not an open and transparent process.

It would be the equivalent of a country having public laws, but having all case records and jurisprudence sealed for everyone but the judge and the prosecutor. Then, if you lose in court, they just say “you lost” without giving you details, so you have no base to mount your appeals.

Comment Re:Not a problem iOS users have. (Score 1) 111

... their app submission guidelines are fairly open and transparent, ...

That is simply not true. Apple submission guidelines are ambiguous and their official interpretation of it is a secret. Once you are refused you have no way of knowing why or how to fix it. There are plenty of examples in the media of developers who, after having an app rejected, try in vain to get an answer from Apple on why exactly the app was refused. Most of those cases the developer simply loses all hope and abandon the app, losing months of development.

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