Back before USB flash drives were widely and cheaply available, the only way to easily move around more than a few floppy's worth of data was the Zip drive.

100 MB was a lot back then. Even though the drive itself was not ubiquitous, the parallel port model could be easily transported, and it was supported on multiple operating systems. Macs were supported with SCSI. In some institutional environments, you'd find internal IDE zip drives. My local library branch had computers with internal drives, and for a few years it was the primary way I was able to download anything more than about 20 MB off the internet (hi-speed internet unavailable at home).

CD writers were expensive (my original 2X writer was $300), and came with all the problems of read-only media. Of course Zip had its problems - the drive itself wasn't very cheap, nor the disks, and of course there was the click of death... but all in all, it was IMO the most versatile portable storage medium we had between floppy disks and USB flash drives. Lugging around an IDE drive and opening up whatever you wanted to attach it to wasn't always an option :-)

I agree. Whether or not he's guilty/innocent or should be tried is not necessarily connected with whether his actions were intelligent. The former is a matter of law. But even if he is tried and acquitted, or never even tried, I think I'm still justified in thinking this outcome was not inevitable, and that he is responsible for the outcome.

I think you're missing my point. I was able to defend myself. I did not escalate the situation, and no one was injured. On the other hand, if either of us had a gun, including a legal one, one or both of us might have ended up injured or dead (or, bystanders might have been injured or dead). I fail to understand how the end result of my situation, in which no one was injured, is worse than me being "able to defend myself" and someone ending up injured or dead.

Sure, and on that count, I ended up fine, and so did he. If I had aggravated the situation, I expect that one or both of us would have ended up in the hospital and/or jail. I don't see how that's better than what actually happened.

It was a rhetorical question.

My opinion has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. The indisputable facts--which Zimmerman himself (or at least his lawyer/spokesperson) admits--are that Martin was unarmed, that Martin was returning home, that Zimmerman was armed, and that Zimmerman (at least initially) followed Martin. That's really all I need to know to conclude that the end result--Martin ending up dead--was not inevitable. And that conclusion has nothing to do with guilt or innocence or legal justification, which was my point.

To put it another way: just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I've tried to stick to the indisputable facts in forming my opinion on this case (of which there are few), but regardless of the legal outcome, it seems clear to me that Trayvon Martin did not need to die that night, and that his death was the result of George Zimmerman patrolling the neighborhood with a firearm and choosing to follow Martin.

Had Zimmerman not been patrolling, or had he been patrolling without a firearm, or had he been patrolling with a firearm but taken the 911 operator's suggestion and not followed Martin, Martin would not be dead.

Even if Zimmerman's actions were legally justified, it doesn't mean they were right or intelligent. I was assaulted in downtown Washington, DC in the middle of the day. I could have escalated the situation and probably have been legally justified in doing so, but for all I know I might have gotten myself stabbed or run down by the car the asshole was driving. And for what? And here, Martin is dead--for what?

Without getting into a debate about the ethics of IP infringement, from a policy perspective it doesn't really matter. People don't normally go around justifying every action they take. The industry and legal system are going to have to find some way to adapt to piracy as widespread behavior... or, they could waste an inordinate amount of resources in an ultimately doomed "war on piracy."

I torrent films and television. I also go to the local movie theater, the local arthouse theater, the local cinema and drafthouse, I use Redbox ($1.29 for a DVD or $1.79 for a Blu-Ray are great prices in my opinion... the whole model is really convenient... sad that the film industry considers Redbox an enemy), I watch films and TV in real-time on my cable service, and I DVR television shows. Which of these delivery mechanisms I choose mostly depends on what's available and who I'm with.

I eventually might try some kind of streaming service, although my HTPC runs Linux, and the Internet connection isn't particularly reliable, so I'm skeptical about how well it will work.

While that's technically true, my understanding is that it's only ever happened one time (Canada and an African country I don't remember off the top of my head), and that the drug manufacturer had such a bad experience with the process that they vowed to never do it again.

First off, why are you posting anonymously? Second, my original post was specifically responding to a comment about the potential for generic versions of these drugs leaking out of India and making their way into other markets.

Third, by "arbitrage in legal pharmaceuticals", I meant something different than what you assumed. I'm referring to taking advantage of price differentials between countries when dealing with non-counterfeit prescription drugs (which is a relevant topic in this discussion). For some reason, you read that as having to do with drug shortages in the U.S., which is not relevant to this discussion.

Well, I don't really have time to watch 2.5 hours of CSPAN right now, but I'll take your word for it. However, it's still not relevant to this discussion. Nothing in the linked document you noted even hints that gray market drugs are coming from other countries (rather, it points to domestic US theft). Even if they were, I suspect the number one candidate would be Canada, not India.

I'm sorry you completely misunderstood my comments and instead resorted to personal insults.

But "gray market" can refer to any number of strategies. The specific worry in this case is that generic versions of a drug are going to make their way out of India and into the U.S. and European markets. This isn't about trips to Canada, or buying low and holding to sell high during a shortage...

If you have peer-reviewed studies or any other kind of study with hard, empirical evidence (numbers) about this, I would greatly appreciate the citations. I'm interested in the prevalence of it, and specific instances that someone can point to where generic versions have been diverted from low-income countries and resold in siginificant quantities in high-income countries..

Trade secrecy probably wouldn't matter, as the composition of the drug could be legally reverse engineered without too much trouble (this is probably what Cipla did). The Indian company is prohibited from selling their version outside of India. What will Bayer do? They will complain to the U.S. Trade Representative about India's actions, and the US Trade Representative will write a nasty entry about India in their annual report citing this episode.

Sorry, that should be Medicare...

There are already many, many opportunities for arbitrage in legal pharmaceuticals, but I don't think anyone has hard evidence about how much of a problem in the North American and EU markets this really is. Typically seniors on Medicaid don't buy their drugs out of the back of El Camino that has a bunch of Folexes and Foakleys in it...

Yes, it's for domestic use only. It also has to manufactured domestically, which is why this type of agreement doesn't work in smaller countries without adequate manufacturing capacity for pharmaceutical products (e.g., most of Africa).

That argument does not work in this situation. Bayer had priced the drug so high in India that it was clear they had no interest in serving the Indian market. I'm on a listserv for this type of information, and someone close to the issue noted that "Last year Bayer sold 493 boxes of 120 tabs of Sorafenib in India. That was enough for about 49 people, in a country with a population of 1,210,193,422."

Any money Bayer was making in India off this drug was a rounding error compared to the lucrative North American and European markets. Furthermore, Bayer argued to the Indian court that the Indian population did have access to the drug through an infringing version produced by Cipla, while at the same time Bayer was suing Cipla for patent infringement, trying to get their product off the market.

Given the 6% royalty rate that NATCO has to pay to Bayer, I wouldn't be suprised if Bayer ends up making more money with the compulsory license than before.

I find it funny when people quote Einstein as if those statements indicated he believed in the quoter's God. Neither of those statements really have anything to do with intelligent design. Einstein also said this: