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quietus writes:

Discovering a drug and bringing it to market can take more than 10 years and costs on average $2.6bn per medicine. Typically around five to seven years after, the exclusive rights on the discovery expire, and generic copycat versions quickly flood the market. Prices are slashed to super-cheap, and then for all time and eternity, society benefits greatly. Or, in the words of Pfizer's CEO Ian Read during an investor call: "The price of medicines drop significantly once the patent expires... Today, about nine out of ten prescriptions in the US offer generic drugs, which lead to significantly reduced costs in the healthcare system."

A recent Financial Times analysis doesn't completely agree though. Prices of branded medicines aren't slashed once the patent expires. They actually often sharply increase.

Before companies get to that phase however, a whole slew of other tactics have been used to maintain exclusivity. Many make small changes to a drug, then renew the patent. This is known as evergreening. Others "pay for delay" -- offering financial incentives to the generics producers to bring their alternatives to market more slowly. And once the generics get to market, pharma companies change tactics by attempting to stop patients, doctors and pharmacists from switching.

The end result is price differences between generics and brand medicines which are somewhat strange for a free market: Wellbutrin (bupropion, 150 mg) [Valeant]: $36 per pill versus $0.46 for the generic [bupropion]; Lipitor (atorvastatin 20mg) [Pfizer] 10.49 versus 0.13, Abmien (zolpidem 5mg) [Sanofi] 15.52 versus 0.02, Prozac (fluoxetine 20mg) [Eli Lilly] 11.39 versus 0.03, Xanax (alprazolam 1mg) [Pfizer] 8.14 versus 0.05 and Sarafem (fluoxetine 20mg) [Allergan] $15.98 versus $0.03 per pill.

There must be lot of people who prefer Cheerios over Walmart-os.

Original Submission

Microsoft has misplaced Melbourne, the four-million-inhabitant capital of the Australian State of Victoria.

A search on Bing Maps for "Melbourne, Victoria, Australia" says the city is at 37.813610, 144.963100 which we've screen-captured above (or here for those reading our mobile site).

The co-ordinates are right save for one important detail: Melbourne is at 37.8136° South. Bing's therefore put it in the wrong hemisphere.

Bing's not alone in finding Australia hard to navigate: in 2012 police warned not to use Apple Maps as it directed those seeking the rural Victorian town of Mildura into the middle of a desert. Apple Maps also sent those looking for the remote city of Mount Isa to an even less hospitable and more remote part of Australia's great inland deserts. ®

What is the best (worst?) IT data error that you can recall? We will discount the old chestnut 'Keyboard not found - Press F12 to continue' but share whatever else you have.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Late for work in Manhattan, you push the crosswalk button and curse silently at the slowness of the signal change. You finally get a green light, cross the street, arrive at the office, get in the elevator and hit the close door (>|<) button to speed things along. Getting out on your target floor, you find that hurrying has you a bit hot under the collar, so you reach for the thermostat to turn up the air conditioning.

Each of these seemingly disconnected everyday buttons you pressed may have something in common: it is quite possible that none of them did a thing to influence the world around you. Any perceived impact may simply have been imaginary, a placebo effect giving you the illusion of control.

In the early 2000s, New York City transportation officials finally admitted what many had suspected: the majority of crosswalk buttons in the city are completely disconnected from the traffic light system. Thousands of these initially worked to request a signal change but most no longer do anything, even if their signage suggests otherwise.

[...] Today, a combination of carefully orchestrated automation and higher traffic has made most of these buttons obsolete. Citywide, there are around 100 crosswalk buttons that still work in NYC but close to 1,000 more that do nothing at all. So why not take them down? Removing the remaining nonfunctional buttons would cost the city millions, a potential waste of already limited funds for civic infrastructure.

More examples are quoted in linked article, and some suggestions how tech can make our lives more pleasant while waiting - Pong anyone?.

http://99percentinvisible.org/article/user-illusion-everyday-placebo-buttons-create-semblance-control/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/gene-sequencing-technology-sparks-patent-fight-shrouded-mystery

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

from the beat-this dept.

Via El Reg, Richard Chirgwin asks if anyone has seen a dramatic failure of Microsoft's OS. One assumes that he is referring to very public instances.

In Topper style, he starts off with a real beauty[1] that was spotted in Thailand.

In the comments, cornz 1 mentions seeing every screen at Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) BSoD'd; Shadow Systems says he had to go to the other side of town when his branch bank's ATM BSoD'd; Robert Helpmann wasn't thrilled when the hotel elevator that was to take him up 20something storeys was showing a BSoD; James 51 also notes that Blue Screens are not a thing of the past, as his wife's Windows 10 update BSoD'd.

[1] If you have Facebook blocked, I have saved you the trip to Blake Sibbit's Facebook page.

Hat tips to TechWorm (though I wish you wouldn't put parts of your content behind scripts) and to Archive.is (which will run scripts for you on their machines).

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The FBI has released an app that displays information about bank robberies:

The FBI today released a Bank Robbers mobile app designed to help the public, law enforcement, and financial institutions see and share photos and information about robberies all over the country.

The app allows users to sort bank robberies by date, state, category (armed? disguised? serial offender?), as well as the FBI field station handling the case. You can get surveillance photos, details of the crime, physical descriptions of the suspect as well as the FBI's wanted poster. And if you want, a push notification will tell you when a bank robbery has occurred near your location and a link to the FBI's online tips page.

Install FBI code on my phone? Why not!?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Squatters who illegally occupy vacant homes or buildings are not always contributing to apathy or social disorder, says a new University of Michigan study that will be presented at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

It can actually be a good situation for a neighborhood to have these individuals move into abandoned homes, lessening the chance of them becoming sites for drug users or burned by arsonists, the study indicates.

In urban communities nationwide, such as Detroit, which are experiencing population decline, homes have been abandoned by owners or left unattended by private investors who often purchase them in bundles of tens, hundreds, or even thousands.

"While attempts to revitalize a city rely on private ownership to induce responsible care for property, that isn't always an option," said study author Claire Herbert, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, where she earned a PhD in sociology.

That's where squatters come in.

Herbert, who will be an assistant professor at Drexel University in the fall, interviewed more than 60 people, including squatters, city authorities, and residents between 2013-2015, while also gathering ethnographic data on illegal property use from various sources, such as community meetings and squatted areas across Detroit.

Surprisingly, many of the residents in the study welcome squatters to keep abandoned homes occupied. Squatting, however, was not considered acceptable to residents if the home was still occupied or if the legal owner was maintaining and overseeing the property.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

Well, that didn't take long: within a week of applause for Microsoft's decision to open-source PowerShell, a comment-war has broken out over curl and wget.

For those not familiar with these commands: they're open source command line tools for fetching Internet content without a browser. Apart from obvious applications like downloading whole sites (for example as backup), they're also under the hood for a lot of other toolsets (an example the author is familiar with – GIS tools use curl and/or wget to fetch maps from Web services).

For some reason, Microsoft's team decided to put aliases for curl and wget in Windows PowerShell – but, as this thread begins, those aliases don't deliver curl and wget functionality.

The pull request says the aliases should be spiked: "They block use of the commonly used command line tools without providing even an attempt to offer the same functionality. They serve no purpose for PowerShell users but cause confusion and problems to existing curl and wget users."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/23/your_wget_is_broken_and_should_die_powershellers_tell_microsoft/

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Bears are bolder, mosquitoes are multiplying and stream-dwelling fish are stressed. Beyond hurting crops and helping the tourism industry, New England's hot, dry summer also is affecting the region's wildlife.

All six New England states are experiencing at least moderate drought, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center, with severe patches in all but Vermont and pockets of extreme drought in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Low rainfall also means low stream flow levels across the region. The U.S. Geological Survey says all six states have areas exhibiting moderate hydrologic drought, with severe spots in Massachusetts and one extreme area in Maine.

[...] In Maine, officials are recommending that people fish earlier or later in the day when temperatures are cooler. The same goes for southern New Hampshire, said Scott Decker, inland fisheries program director at New Hampshire Fish and Game.

Given that mosquitoes breed in standing water, you might expect fewer instead of more during a drought, said Pete Pekins, wildlife professor at the University of New Hampshire. But the opposite happens because as water levels drop, river banks and the edges of ponds widen, he said.

[...] The drought has implications on land as well as water, with bears, snakes and ants among those species venturing further afield in search of food or water. In Quincy, Massachusetts, a timber rattlesnake showed up on someone's front steps. In New Hampshire, bears have been foraging for food at campgrounds and neighborhood trash cans because drought-stricken berry bushes didn't produce as much as usual.

Too bad there is no simple way for Louisiana to export some of their excess rainfall to New England.

[Ed. Note: For our international readers, "New England" refers to the northeast region of the USA that encompasses the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.]

Original Submission

EpiPen's price has ballooned about 400% since 2008, rising from about a $100 list price to $500 today. The EpiPen is one of the most important life-saving medical innovations for people with severe food allergies—which affect as many as 15 million Americans and 1 in 13 children in the United States. But its price has exploded over the last decade despite few upgrades to the product itself. The product's lack of competitors is likely a significant driver of the costs. [...] [The] EpiPen enjoys a near-monopoly on the market with annual sales of more than $1.3 billion and nearly 90% U.S. market share.

At Fortune, NYT, The Hill.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A biotech company will attempt to use gene therapy in order to improve responses to a Parkinson's disease treatment:

Parkinson's patients who take the drug levodopa, or L-Dopa, are inevitably disappointed. At first, during a "honeymoon" period, their symptoms (which include tremors and balance problems) are brought under control. But over time the drug becomes less effective. They may also need ultrahigh doses, and some start spending hours a day in a state of near-frozen paralysis.

A biotech company called Voyager Therapeutics now thinks it can extend the effects of L-Dopa by using a surprising approach: gene therapy. The company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is testing the idea in Parkinson's patients who've agreed to undergo brain surgery and an injection of new DNA.

[...] The cause of Parkinson's isn't well understood, but the reason the drug wears off is. It's because the brain also starts losing an enzyme known as aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase, or AADC, that is needed to convert L-Dopa into dopamine. Voyager's strategy, which it has begun trying on patients in a small study, is to inject viruses carrying the gene for AADC into the brain, an approach it thinks can "turn back the clock" so that L-Dopa starts working again in advanced Parkinson's patients as it did in their honeymoon periods.

Reprinted at NextBigFuture.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has accused Microsoft of disregarding user choice and privacy with Windows 10. In a scathing editorial, EFF employee Amul Kalia calls on Microsoft to "come clean with its user community" over a growing number of Windows 10 privacy concerns. "Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft," explains Kalia, noting that enabling Cortana increases the amount of data passed to Microsoft. Privacy advocates have argued that Windows 10 sends back location, text input, voice input, touch input, websites you visit, and other telemetry data to Microsoft.

"While users can disable some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft's servers," says Kalia. "A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives." Microsoft has previously insisted it anonymizes telemetry data, but the EFF is concerned the company hasn't explained exactly how it does this. "Microsoft also won't say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes."

While telemetry data is clearly a concern, the EFF focuses on Microsoft's confusing link between this data and security patches. "Microsoft has tried to explain this lack of choice by saying that Windows Update won't function properly on copies of the operating system with telemetry reporting turned to its lowest level," claims Kalia. "Microsoft is claiming that giving ordinary users more privacy by letting them turn telemetry reporting down to its lowest level would risk their security since they would no longer get security updates."

The story then proceeds to blast Microsoft's Windows 10 upgrade tactics, as well.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for butthurt with a story from hackaday that became:

World War II can be thought of as the first electronic war. Radio technology was firmly established commercially by the late 1930s and poised to make huge contributions to the prosecution of the war on all sides. Radio was rapidly adopted into the battlefield, which led to advancements in miniaturization and ruggedization of previously bulky and fragile vacuum tube gear. Radios were soon being used for everything from coordinating battlefield units to detonating anti-aircraft artillery shells. But it was not just the battlefields of WWII that benefitted from radio technology. From apartments in Berlin to farmhouses in France, covert agents toiled away over sophisticated transceivers, keying in coded messages and listening for instructions. Spy radios were key clandestine assets, both during the war and later during the Cold War.

What follows is an interesting presentation on some of the advances that made their way out to the field. The epitome of miniaturization was the "suitcase radio" which provided a simple means of transporting and somewhat concealing a working radio receiver and transmitter. The included pictures and video provide a glimpse back to a time that seems so quaint — so many people today think nothing of the advances which permits a cell phone to fit in a pocket.

Even more fascinating, one of the comments to that story referred to this amazing act of clandestine creativity: Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp. POWs were able to construct a radio receiver with a lot of trial and error, best guesses and approximations, and a smuggled-in valve (tube) and headphones. Fascinating read!

Original Submission

takyon writes:

ARM licensees will be able to operate on 16 times more information per vector per instruction than before, using ARM's new Scalable Vector Extensions:

Today ARM is announcing an update to their line of architecture license products. With the goal of moving ARM more into the server, the data center, and high-performance computing, the new license add-on tackles a fundamental data center and HPC issue: vector compute. ARM v8-A with Scalable Vector Extensions won't be part of any ARM microarchitecture license today, but for the semiconductor companies that build their own cores with the instruction set, this could see ARM move up into the HPC markets. Fujitsu is the first public licensee on board, with plans to include ARM v8-A cores with SVE in the Post-K RIKEN supercomputer in 2020.

Scalable Vector Extensions (SVE) will be a flexible addition to the ISA, and support from 128-bit to 2048-bit. ARM has included the extensions in a way that if included in the hardware, the hardware is scalable: it doesn't matter if the code being run calls for 128-bit, 512-bit or 2048-bit, the scheduler will arrange the calculations to compensate for the hardware that is available. Thus a 2048-bit code run on a 128-bit SVE core will manage the instructions in such a way to complete the calculation, or a 128-bit code on a 2048-bit core will attempt to improve IPC by bundling 128-bit calculations together. ARM's purpose here is to move the vector calculation problem away from software and into hardware.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

For decades, conservationists have considered blue-winged warblers to be a threat to golden-winged warblers, a species being considered for federal Endangered Species protection. Blue-winged warbler populations have declined 66 percent since 1968, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The two species are known to frequently interbreed where they co-occur, and scientists have been concerned that the more numerous blue-winged warblers would genetically swamp the rarer golden-wing gene pool.

New research from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Fuller Evolutionary Biology Program shows that, genetically speaking, blue-winged and golden-winged warblers are almost identical. Scientists behind the research say the main differences between the two species are in feather color and pattern, in some cases just a simple matter of dominant or recessive pairings of gene variants, or alleles.

[...] The team investigated the genetic architecture behind the differences between the two warblers by analyzing the genomes of 10 golden-winged and 10 blue-winged warblers from New York, with birds sampled from the Sterling Forest along the New Jersey border to the St. Lawrence River Valley. Across their analysis of the entire genomes of both species, they found only six regions (or less than .03 percent) that showed strong differences. In other words, blue-winged and golden-winged warblers are 99.97 percent alike genetically. One of the differentiating regions has a gene that likely controls yellow/white versus black throat coloration; the black throat of the golden-winged warbler is a Mendellian recessive trait, occurring only in birds that have a pair of recessive alleles of this genetic variant. Another region likely controls body color; the yellow body of blue-winged warblers is likely an incompletely recessive trait.

When blue-winged and golden-winged warblers interbreed, they produce various hybrids, including two forms called the Brewster's Warbler (with a light body and no black throat) and Lawrence's Warbler (with a yellow body and black throat). The new research shows the Brewster's form of golden- and blue-winged warbler hybrids seems to be an expression of dominant traits for throat and body color, whereas the Lawrence's form of hybrid exhibits recessive trait expression for both.

Plumage Genes and Little Else Distinguish the Genomes of Hybridizing Warblers (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.06.034) (DX)

Original Submission