> Why shouldn't it be? Companies are free to set prices to whatever the market will bear.
Those are the rules of a free market, I'm not contesting this in general, but we're practically talking deceit here. IMO the pricing for a "crucial subset" of WHO's essential medicine list (as if "essential" wasn't atomic enough...) should be capped, plain packaging enforced and no advertising campaigns permitted. Medical professionals being bound by law to inform of the availability of generics in certain jurisdictions is simply not enough. I'm not saying this is realistic or achievable, but it would benefit the society. That same list also includes common antidepressants and antipsychotics for example, even if it's under palliative care management, and those are biiig money makers.
As to the rest, fully agreed. With own brand groceries quality does often follow pricing, but doubting the quality of pharma generics is doubting the whole regulatory system - not unwise - but if we do, that should equally, and especially, apply to the big names for whom more money is at stake, with the good side that this brings (rigorous testing) and the bad side (shady practices).
A diplomatic mission established for the sake of establishing it and staff making the best out of their time there I can somewhat understand, but not tourism into DPRK for the "curious" and leaving money in that state. Going there to play golf would feel like visiting Pol Pot's Cambodia because they have good forest hikes, just be careful not to slip on all the blood seeping out of the ground.
As to the lack of fear of physical harm, this was reported from a very privileged position where that safety was guaranteed by the clearly willing host. As a civilian visitor I wouldn't feel that confident. One odd look or an unfortunate question an official didn't take a liking to, will get you into questioning. So I'm told.
I get that the discussion here focuses on doubtful decongestants, but just the mention of acetaminophen makes me think of
pharmaceuticals and people's relationship with them in the US. It's a strange world to me, especially how deeply ingrained the brand names are in people's minds - years of evidently successful marketing.
What, to me, should be illegal, is building expensive branding around a group of very basic analgesics - well and other groups like antihistamines.
In the UK I can buy an own-brand 16-pack (8 g) of paracetamol in a supermarket for £0.35 / $0.45. At the same time, I can buy a packet of Panadol (GSK), same substance, same content, same amount, for £2.35, nearly 7 times the price of generics.
How is THAT legal, and how are people so unaware as to actually buy it? "Unaware" may be the key here.
As a (very) frequent "µ" user (and several others like ± and Δ and °) I've had the alt codes memorised for ages but having recently, out of necessity and a bit of a nomad lifestyle, moved to a "tenkeyless" keyboard (the horror), I simply macroed it, but I find it refreshing that some keyboard layouts simply include it. I have an obscure pocket 8-bit with an even more obscure OS written in Sweden that also has µ.
2009 indeed. Their app store was an absolute cesspit even in the early, pre-WebOS days and it hasn't changed much since, like, who would install any of this and why? Even the "official" app selection isn't the best. OS aside, they are pretty good TVs and quite popular, so I find this mind-boggling.
I wholeheartedly second this. I'm an individual member and a member of a specific IEEE society that sponsors a specific standard and I still have to pay for a copy. In contrast, the same standard has been adapted for specific industries and there are IEC, ITU and a SMPTE specs adopting it and those I can get for free. Doubly irritating because some of the most crucial standards like the 802 family are all paywalled. And it's not like it's warranted because if I need a standard I'm probably a vendor. Take high-speed Ethernet for example, there is such a proliferation of media types, lane counts, line encodings, FEC options and speed combinations that an engineer needs a reference from the source, and instead it's either third-party information or "stolen" PDFs.
There's an obscure Polish film from 2002, "Haker" (Hacker), obscure for many reasons and not in a good way; it's absolute drivel, not even accidentally funny in a MST3K, B movie kind of way - it's just really, really bad.
In this gem there is a conversation about hacking into some system, and a character asks another a completely nonsensical semi jargon question, which goes like this: "Did you try Emacs via Sendmail?". I shit you not.
This expression firmly cemented itself into Polish tech speak as a way to refer to or call out someone having absolutely no idea what they are taking about.
Not exactly full "IP KVM" and missing the VM part, BUT for basic screen access to say a server or scope or whatever with a VGA output, those dirt cheap "VGA to USB" converters found all over Amazon etc., can do a semi decent job as well. Not as good as gold standard VGA frame grabbers, but they present as a video device so they are supported out of the box in every major OS. There's always one or two in my kit bag. So much better than pushing a monitor on wheels.
The article covers a range of "new" KVMs but doesn't even mention the staples used for decades like Avocent, Aten and APC. When I ran or built a lab, we'd always have the key systems on KVM but always three or four "swing" adapters on long runs of cat6 to reach anywhere in the whole room. Lifesaver.
There is also the name of the site / product that is reminiscent of a Russian placename or surname, say Voloshov (which happens to be both). It's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the URL. Take that as you will.
To me, Pandoc is "never have to touch Word again", in other _words_, salvation.
Sadly, the .docx templates aren't enough - they have the styling, but for those forced to produce a .docx output as a necessity for "corporate" consumption - you will find it that it's not quite straightforward to insert a title page, and out of the reference docx file, only the styles are used, not the content. You can define headers and footers in the reference file, but not more than that.
As of 3.2.1, Pandoc supports OpenXML template files for its docx writer as well as pre and post body insertion: --template, --include-before-body and --include-after-body, but if you prefer to define your title page in Word, or haven't gotten your head around doing an OpenXML thing like me, I found this Windows tool:
You can define your title page in one docx file and then merge it with Pandoc's output. But since styles from both get merged, it's best to start your title page with a copy of your reference and/or delete as many styles as possible from your title page so you don't have to make changes to both.
There are also some other quirks like fitting tables to contents properly in docx - a workaround is a PowerShell script (shock, horror), that opens the file, iterates over tables, sets autofit and saves the document.
Doing "Werd" right: edit markdown, type "make". -> docx, pdf. The world is a good place sometimes.
*.eu.org, was (is) an early attempt at something similar this side of the pond, starting in the early 2000s, also free although community managed, but still surviving. Used to be a good way to get a free "proper" domain delegation rather than a shitty iframe alias soon to become ad-ridden, or banner-ridden in those days should I say. Good for 1337 IPv6 hostnames for IRC as well.
> Why shouldn't it be? Companies are free to set prices to whatever the market will bear.
Those are the rules of a free market, I'm not contesting this in general, but we're practically talking deceit here. IMO the pricing for a "crucial subset" of WHO's essential medicine list (as if "essential" wasn't atomic enough...) should be capped, plain packaging enforced and no advertising campaigns permitted. Medical professionals being bound by law to inform of the availability of generics in certain jurisdictions is simply not enough. I'm not saying this is realistic or achievable, but it would benefit the society. That same list also includes common antidepressants and antipsychotics for example, even if it's under palliative care management, and those are biiig money makers.
As to the rest, fully agreed. With own brand groceries quality does often follow pricing, but doubting the quality of pharma generics is doubting the whole regulatory system - not unwise - but if we do, that should equally, and especially, apply to the big names for whom more money is at stake, with the good side that this brings (rigorous testing) and the bad side (shady practices).