Seatbelts: "Consumers find them too restrictive!"

So, an aside here: There's absolutely no question that seat belts make drivers and their passengers safer -- none whatsoever.

Pedestrians, on the other hand, have a considerably higher death and injury rate in areas where seat belts are in use -- seat belts reduce risk for drivers, drivers behave more recklessly (because they can), and other road users who aren't protected by those seatbelts die.

I'm also reminded somewhat of guard rails on some of our major freeways (Austin area) being replaced with a trio of metal lines intended to redirect vehicles back onto the road rather than letting them cross the median into the other direction's traffic. It's not an entirely bad idea -- unless you're on a motorcycle, in which contact with those things at speed almost always means dismemberment.

Anyhow -- there's more than one kind of road user, and decisions made intended to protect one class can have unintended effects on the rest. A groundswell of support for something that makes drivers safer might well increase the risk of death for folks who are already in a marginalized class.

> What should open source programmers do in parts of the world without software patents?

Nothing. If there are no software patents you can't be sued for infringement, right?

nor do they really have the power to do jack didlysquat about it if they DID care. Really.

. . . well, to be fair, the same contingent of "geniuses" took us to war in Iraq based on a "1% chance" that Saddam Hussein had WMD. . .

Economists didn't give us good "costs and benefits" to changing taxation policies with the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and deregulation of the economy. We got vague platitudes about things like 17% annual growth, and creation of 4 million jobs per quarter (which was later, quietly revised down to something like 100,000).

These policy changes never achieved anything near that, and, in fact, collapsed the fucking economy.

And yet, nobody holds "Austrian" Economists to this same high standard of proof for their whack-a-doodle theories. And when it comes to the idea that investing in sound management of industrial emissions and natural resources - we hear the same claims from these fortune-tellers, that doing so will "ruin the economy". IMNSHO - that's evidence that we should do exactly the opposite of what the Economists say.

If you have insurance you pay the medical expenses for smokers, alcoholics or drug users . . . who are presumably WORKING, and on an employer-provided plan.

It's the NON-WORKING drug-users that I have a problem with. Gee, I wish I had the luxury to sit around all day, play video games, smoke crack, and have someone else work their ass off to pay for it.

Now that I think about it, yeah, I guess I was one of the beta users. What the hell, I tried that with Gmail, years ago, and that worked out pretty well ...

The pre-public-release G+ was kind of odd-looking, but my God it was fast. I'm really sad about how quickly it went downhill.

No, in 1490 the Church knew the Earth was round. The fact is that any educated person from the 3rd century BC on in Europe knew the Earth was round. In 1477 the Vatican commissioned two globes for the new Vatican library.

That's absolute poppycock. Anyone who knows geometry (I assume all competent scientists do) and investigates the situation will quickly determine the Earth is round.

The Pythaogoreans speculated the Earth was round in the 6th century BC, and Eratosthenes proved it and came up with a pretty accurate measure of it's diameter in the 3rd century BC. He even devised a system of longtitude and latitude.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth

WHAT DO THEY TEACH IN SCHOOL THESE DAYS?

The idea that scientists though the Earth was flat in the 1800s is the most ridiculous thing I have read on slashdot, I have a 5 digit ID!!!

I doubt if 97% of priests believe in God.

Certainly the Buddhists don't take a position on the question.

Yes, and that time frame is imposed by a government regulatory process known as FDA approval.

I'm fairly sympathetic to the idea of extending patents to account for the regulatory process. A lawyer once told me that a patent is:

A contract between an inventor and the government in which the inventor discloses the best known way to practice an invention so that it can be repeated by others in exchange for the right to prevent others from practicing that invention for a specified period of time.

So that specified time is right now 20 years. Well if the government also imposes a regulatory process that takes 15 years or some other variable but significant duration before sale can take place the patent contract becomes quite meaningless.

Holding patents is a defensive measure in the following ways:

1. It places art in the public record which may later be claimed as prior art. Of course other publication may also server the same purpose.

2. The patent office eats it's own dog food, that is prior art in the form of patents seems more likely to be searched and cited than the general literature.

3, Patents in a particular field may discourage a competitor from filing patents or even working on the same problem.

4. Patents in a field may trigger mutually beneficial cross licensing opportunities rather than lawsuits.

5. Patents in a field may provide counter-suit fodder or also M.A.D. style deterrence that is sort of an informal mutual cross-license that is cheaper than an actual shit storm of lawsuits.

No:

Doctor patient privilege per Larry
Lawyer client privilege
Spousal privilege
Confessional privilege
Self-incrimination exclusion
Public interest privilege
Accountant-client
Reporter's privilege
Right to silence

Larry, you are an idiot about social issues. Shut up.

A lot of what you describe is fixed by the ACA. However it doesn't fix the biggest problem, cost.

Ultimately I think that's what going to be what brings down the current system.

My father passed away three years ago. Apparently he had been donating money to various Republican causes (why I have no idea, he was a Federal employee all his life and was living on a generous Federal pension).

Well these guys apparently don't check the dead person list. Ever. Since I was executor of his estate I got ALL of the Republican mail. I'd write on it stuff like 'return to sender, addressee deceased'. Made no difference.

I'm more or less an independent. But now I cringe every time I get Republican mail.