links for 2008-12-12

"Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company, paid ghostwriters to produce medical journal articles favorable to its female hormone replacement therapy Prempro, according to Congressional letters seeking more information about the company’s involvement in medical ghostwriting. At least one article was published even after a federal study found the drug raised the risk of breast cancer." Disgusting.

This is an interesting phenomenon to watch—fans of a previously for-pay-licensed software now complaining, post-free-license, that ads are a part of the future. As a NetNewsWire user [also run by NG], this does bother me. Like many commenters here, I prefer the dual paid/free model. As an example, I pay for Twitterrific both on my Mac and my iPhone, even though I could use either for free with ads from The Deck [the very same system NG is tapping into here]. I simply prefer not having the ads, so I understand folks' frustration, but I do wonder if, perhaps, the developers make more money off of me as a user with ads than with a paid, one-time license. If so, I am inclined to potentially reconsider my position, because *I WANT TO SUPPORT DEVELOPERS*.

Did I just try to one-up Bry? Yes, yes I did.

"The thing is, web developers should test their pages for CPU usage the same as app developers do. And anytime a page is idle, CPU usage should be at 0%. Same as with any other app."