Note to self: Don’t pay off the car loan on a full moon, or near it. :p
(Don’t worry, it – and I – am OK, just annoyed at what happened today.)
–TSK
PS – And yes, the 2010 weblog posts are a *bit* thin nowadays. Thinking about how to fix that; Maybe focus more on EvE-centered activities for awhile…
I’ve stumbled onto an short news item regarding the acne medicine Accutane. Quote is from Myway’s news section, as an AP newswire (http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100217/D9DTLS5O3.html).
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) – A New Jersey jury has hit the pharmaceutical company that makes Accutane with a $25.16 million judgment in a lawsuit filed by an Alabama man who blamed the drug for his inflammatory bowel disorder.
Thirty-eight-year-old Andrew McCarrell of Moody, Ala., took the acne drug in his 20s. He says Hoffmann-La Roche Inc. failed to adequately warn of its side effects. McCarrell eventually had his colon removed.
The compensatory damages award came Tuesday in a retrial. An appeals court overturned a $2.6 million judgment he won in May 2007.
Hoffmann-La Roche stopped selling the drug in June 2009. It cited generic competition and the cost of defending against lawsuits, which have sought to blame the drug for suicidal behavior and birth defects.
The Nutley, N.J.-based company says it will appeal.
What I find most interesting is that they finally stopped selling it, and that it took so long to get to this point. I’ve taken Accutane three times over the years, with varying degrees of success. But like some patients, it affected me mentally and I had refused taking it since then. It also only took about 5 or so years after taking it for some of my acne to come back to previous levels, though not as much on the face as it used to in the past.
I’m actually having better success these days with colloidal silver (ingested and topical) as well as tea tree oil (topical), though both are painfully slow. At least they’re natural, and the tea tree oil does have pleasing scent to it. Still need to be careful with them though.
–TSK
Ran across a great quote regarding backups, in the book ‘Python for Unix and Linux System Administration:’
. . . when you are dealing with backups, treat them like nuclear weapons, as backups are fraught with danger in ways you might not even imagine.
That’s pretty much sums up my last ten years at work. :)
–TSK
I’m a bit miffed at how long ago my last post was. It’s not my intent at all to let it wither. Of course, it was also not my intent to fervently ignore it either. :p
Anyway, the ‘general update’ is that I’m realizing certain things (that were a regular part of my life, outside of work) have not been as fun as they used to be. So I’m preparing to drop them. This includes my presence in SL (this was done awhile ago), plus some *much* older activities that have been slowly withering away anyway.
I’m also looking at trimming my Eve time for a little bit, since both characters have an opportunity for going into ‘hibernation’ (long training queue) for a couple weeks.
Hoping that this will give me time back for more recent endeavors, as well as this site. :) We will see.
–TSK
I’ve been watching the various videos that CCP is publishing during EvE FanFest this week. In particular, their economy session was the most interesting to me; It was mostly focusing on the effect of their ‘Unholy Rage’ banning program, implemented in late June.
First, the video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSgVeU7e9tU
I focus here on the first half of the video, regarding their economy model – a closed system. You put real money in (either US$ or Euro) and, no matter what you do, no actual money comes out to individuals (aka ‘cashing out’). This was generating some interest in what is known as RMT (Real Money Transactions); The video discusses it well, but in essence someone pays real money for in-game ‘goods’ (in Eve’s case, usually the in-game currency known as ISK). This, by CCP’s TOS and EULA, is illegal because (as above) they don’t want money going out.
So, in addition to the normal ‘waves of banning’ that every ‘closed’ MMO tries to do, CCP came out with an in-game commodity known as the PLEX – Pilot License EXtension. Each PLEX gives you 30 days of game time when redeemed, and are generated by converting a GTC (game time card/code). They are sold within the normal in-game market, which meant that players themselves negotiate the (ISK) price of PLEX over time; The only difference from other in-game commodities is that you cannot transport them (making PLEX trading applicable to the region-level only, instead of the entire universe).
I find this to be a very refreshing solution to the ‘gold farming‘ problem that plagues every currency-based MMO (rampant farming and grinding were the main reasons I never liked WoW and other PvP MMO systems). That problem is also why I was so attracted to Uru (pure story, no need for money) and Second Life (they gave up and tied themselves to RMT directly – but charged users in US$ on both sides of each transaction).
The PLEX setup has not been around for very long (less than a year), so I’m not willing to discuss yet its overall impact. But (after its own speculation bubble and crash) it appears to be having the desired effect. More interesting questions still abound, such as: Can you buy the *outside* services (related to EvE, but not in-game) generated by players for real-life currency?
I do think that its worth watching though, and am still keeping an eye on developments related to PLEX.
–TSK
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