Free Republic

I recently served jury duty at the county level. I swear I did not see one male face among the courthouse administrators, the lawyers, and the judges I came into contact with on that one day of service. It was quite a sobering revelation.

Oops... that "r" should have been an "l."

What about the people of New Zealand?! You need to thank them too!

Best brothers in all of the free world.

People will need to decide to die. Humans have never had to do that before. It's an awesome thing to face.

You must lead a sheltered life. Pain and quality of life are the overriding factors. They could put terminal cancer or heart patients on machines and keep them alive forever, but they don't. Any technology or medicine which delivers the patient from pain and restores quality of life will become affordable solely on the basis of the supply being cranked up to meet the demand. Whenever a "silver bullet" medical technology is invented, it soon becomes routine and affordable.

My employer's rules on this kind of thing are some of the strictest in the business. We are not allowed to accept any token or promotional item from a vendor or customer that is valued over $20. Microsoft got around this by setting up a "special purchase" program where we can buy a complete MS Office install disk for $19.95. The $19.95 probably just about covers the shipping and handling.

And some jury sat there and listened to both sides of the argument, and decided that she was guilty as charged.

True enough. But we are not so unsophisticated as to believe there's no such thing as a "showcase prosecution," and this one certainly smells like one - no "Eat the Rich" implications about it. Everything I've been able to read about this case tells me that Stewart was prosecuted for lying to the feds about a crime they established she didn't commit - insider trading. Was she guilty of lying? Yes, the jury has spoken. But I'd feel more comfortable knowing just how often and how hard such cases are routinely prosecuted before I wrote the episode off as "just one of those things."

Limbaugh's illegal pill purchases are another example of this kind of thing. Almost universally, prescription drug addicts are given a pass if they cooperate with authorities and seek treatment. Not that there are many good Samaritans to be found among prosecutors, but because there's rarely a chain of evidence or "risk to the community" in such cases to make it worth the while. But give a prosecutor - essentially a lawyer in apprenticeship for public office - a shot at getting his name in the paper for six months, and they would prosecute their own mothers for littering.

people should be adult not to get offended at every little slight.

5 yr old boys should "be adult?"

Unthinking macho-duck statements like that will naturally attract flames.

"Yeah, and there's a guy at Kodak who can tell you just as good a story about why there will always be a market for silver halide film."

Bad example. Kodak, just a month or so ago, was the first big film camera manufacturer to announce a withdrawal from that business to concentrate on the digital camera market. W/r/t their silver halide film operations, I found this:

"In September Kodak unveiled an ambitious new strategy to accelerate its foray into filmless imaging markets. It also acknowledged that chemical-based photography businesses were in irreversible decline."

They've already fixed the problem. See http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1070394/posts. I'm not surprised that you don't know about it.

You bend over backwards to tell me it's not a problem, then you finally tell me "they fixed the problem." Was it a "problem" or not? You already know the answer. What a waste of time.

The reason I was blissfully ignorant of the "problem" is that I avoid IE like the plague. Who needs a browser that is a parasite on the OS?

Clearly, the average person wouldn't be able to -- nor would they bother to -- distinguish between the two URLs."

But the deception is still there, regardless. And it took me all of a minute to discern it, once warned. It is you who inserted the qualifier "average person." It is the only way out of the argument for you, and a lame one at that.

So, what is Microsoft doing to help customers avoid or discern nefarious URL spoofing?

That may be as good as it gets, given the fact that we have to share the Earth with 30% liberals and 30% people who really don't know what to do, but get all excited about singing birds and happy rainbows.

What you seem to be saying is that the left currently controls the middle ground. This will never change if those on the right don't stand firmly planted.

The fact of the matter is that his original point -- that IE is somehow unique with this flaw -- is a pile of stinking Linux leavings...

Nick Danger demonstrated to me that IE fails to indicate spoofed URLs while Firebird does not. The analogy of not having an "idiot light" vs. not recognizing the "idiot light" seems appropriate. The evidence in Danger's favor is that a patch exists to make IE more like Firebird, rather than vice versa.

Given the same redirection command, IE also does what it was told to do, but it does not tell the user what that was.

OK. Now I understand your original answer. I apologize for my laziness in not trying the link via IE.

To tell the truth, I probably wouldn't normally look beyond the first three fields to check my online coordinates. But now I am forewarned.

Thank you.

OK, I was too lazy to copy everything down, I figured you'd understand what I meant.

So, when I click on the following using my Firebird browser...

Click here for Windows Update

The URL window at the destination website reads as follows:

http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com%01@security.openwares.org/Update.htm

I'm trying to understand how this is strictly an IE flaw... honestly I am.

It is probably true that if Firebird (or whatever) someday achieves the 80% market share that IE has now, the Evil Nigerians will target Firebird.

I'm using Firebird right now, and my URL window still said "microsoft.com" when I clicked to your faked hyperlink. What's up with that?

They just released a live action version of Peter Pan this past Christmas. This makes no sense

The article is from November of '03. I thought it discussion-worthy, and a keyword search came up empty for previous articles on the subject.

I recall seeing trailers for the PP movie's release scheduled for Christmas of '03, but do not recall seeing any notices that it actually came out on schedule. If it was released, it either bombed, or was devastatingly overshadowed by LOTRIII.

Found this while surfing for news on the Disney/Pixar split.

Whether Disney is in the wrong legally or not, what CEO wants to be known as "that guy who screwed over the children's hospital"? Eisner might think he dodged that bullet by pulling out of the movie, but it's too late. The faster Disney loses this guy, the better its chances of possibly surviving into the next decade. So far, it ain't lookin' good.

...Mucus Welby, MD.

Which us, of course, the answer to the age old question "What's green, slimy, and carries a black bag?"

No matter what wonders become routine, there will always be some new wonder that costs $3 million, and there will always be people who need whatever it is.

Allowing for your monetary inflation, and my advancing technology, I'm still trying to fathom how the impact of, say, brain transplant surgery in the year 2070, will present a different moral, ethical, and social challenges than did heart transplant surgery did in 1970. The for-profit and the non-profit sectors of healthcare each did their part to bring the procedure to Joe Blow when the needed skills rippled through the medical profession.

We are approaching an era where there will always be something that could be tried, the only brake on using it will be cost.

The development costs for wiping out every disease, infirmity, and malady known to man will have approached infinity long before point-of-service treatment costs will even be a consideration. By then, we'll be using magical Federation "credits" like on Star Trek. 'Til then, we just need to minimize the interaction between the legal and medical professions and hope for the best.

As medical technology improves and the number of retirees increases, we could, in theory, keep lots of people around for a very long time, if only we tax everyone into poverty. I don't think people will accept that. So, some of the people who want the procedures, and could benefit from them, will die instead. Who does the picking-and-choosing is going to be an issue. If you think it will left up to individual MD's, you haven't factored in the lawyers.

The flaw in your argument is that the price of your "$3 million medical procedure" stays fixed at $3 million indefinitely. I still maintain that the only answer to the dilemma is the free market. Take heart transplants. The first one may have cost tens - if not hundreds - of millions of dollars, if one factors in the medical research leading up to it. Nowadays, you looking at about $250,000, well within the realm of any half decent insurance or co-op plan or even the procedes of one "Beef and Beer" night at the local church. Cutting edge procedures not involving the removal, storage, transportation and preparation of donor organs can cost half that. The same can be said for cancer and other treatments as they proceed from experimental to practically routine. The market has responded to insurance and hospital red tape by opening up commercial centers for many specialized procedures. Doctors now routinely advertise their laser vision treatments, "stand up" MRIs, and non-invasive colonoscopies on talk radio stations. I can't think of an example of a healthcare treatment or medicine that doesn't go down in cost with increased availability.

Your nightmare scenario is the stuff of socialized medicine run amok, and I think you meant it that way. It's an unavoidable flaw of capitalism that only the rich can afford cutting edge life saving medical treatments. Traditionally, charities have made up for the "inequities" that would otherwise put the poor at the medical disadvantage. The democrats know this. One of the things the Democrats tried to do "under the radar" during the push for HillaryCare is to make charity hospitals like Deborah ineligible from collecting insurance payments. If that doesn't give one a clue that the democrat party has anything but the well being of the American poor at heart, I don't know what would.