Slashdot Mirror
Laser Surgery Goes Online
Ignat writes "Scientists in Australia successfully performed a laser surgery in a Southern California laboratory via the Internet. RoboLase, the new technology used showed that realtime surgeries can be performed from distant locations. Scientists from UC Irvine, UC San Diego and the University of Queensland used RoboLase to produce surgical holes in a distinct pattern of less than one micron in diameter (1/1000th of a millimeter) in single cells."
Kinda gives new meaning to the phrase blue screen of death, doesn't it? Ba dum bum! Thank you very much, I'll be here all week! Remember to tip your bartender!
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
i can't wait for my doctor to be outsourced to India.
GaaaAAAggghhh, My eye!!!
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
1 post
1.0e-3 and 1 are the zeroes of
"This was a particularly noteworthy accomplishment, because it demonstrated the amount of computer bandwidth (1 gigabyte/second) needed by the Australia and California research groups to observe and grab a fast-moving sperm with virtually no detectible delay in image transmission between the two laboratories."
It seems even the people who did this have no idea of the difference between bandwidth and latency. The above quote is from the original press release.
When I first read the title I thought someone had their lasik done this way, mostly because my wife had her lasik surgery done in Australia (we live there). She wrote about the experience http://www.sharonslasiksurgery.com/ if you want a laypersons point of view.
Doing it remotely is not something I would volunteer for and I suppose that is exactly where this technology is heading.
I don't want nobody to DDOS my eyeball thank you very much.
So we can expect to see RoboLase terminals on golf courses real soon.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
OMG MY EYE!
Will this work with my Linksys router?
www.lonseidman.com
Now we're going to need tin foil sunglasses to protect us from "free trials" of LASIK from spam?
The first eye's free!
Clones are people two.
This is great, soon I can call India from the U.S. and get someone to both fix my Dell and perform surgery. I just hope the link doesn't go down during the operation.
Laugh, it's funny, ok?
...stop humping the "laser". Maybe you and the "laser" should go get a freakin room.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yeah, this means it won't be long before a computer worm can really, directly kill someone ;-/
I'm sorry, Mr Smith. The receptionist clogged up our bandwidth with illegal P2P downloading while we were making the incision. So, uh, it's just a tad off. Sorry.
Luke
----
Have friends and family that don't understand computers? Don't want to explain them? Send them to ChristianNerds.com, the Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia.
After been killed multiple times on WOW, this lag could really kill you.... mmh... better not get Blizzard to do the Server.
...who's first up with the bad pingtime jokes?
What happens if hackers sniff the packets, save the procedure to a file, create a torrent, and distribute the surgery all over the internet?
The artist...er..doctors won't get paid for their work.
I would imagine if some packets were lost, or lag? It is inevitable, would you really want to risk it with that?
"Doctor, my arm, it hurts"
Incoherent mumble, laser keeps moving. BAM you're armless.
I think we can do better than outsource doctors to other countries, the lag time would be deadly in the surgery room.
The headlines:
"Angry patient sues Microsoft for Windows crashing while having laser surgery!"
Hrm... for the equipment to make this possible, they would have to put in quite a bit of cash to make that possible, so if the doctors over there are so good that it would make it worth outsourcing to them, I'd say go for it!
Luke
----
ChristianNerds.com, the Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia
Doctor Performing minor incision on a patients arm (Ping: 60ms)
...
Patient: MY ARM, YOU CUT OFF MY ARM!!! (Ping 800Ms)
Doctor: Damn Lag!!!!!!!!
I don't think I'll be able to trust doctors anymore when they blame making me blind on lag.
"Alright, now just lie down... omg lag"
"lol n00-- OW MY EYE I'M FUCKING BLIND OWWWWW"
"pwned gg"
"gg"
Um, yeah I really want to risk getting hacked and have my eyeballs permanently read "pwned".
How has redundancy been implemented? Have these bright people considered a fact that a Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attack could potentially be fatal to a soul on the surgery table?
And now I make my first incision .
<nurse> Nice work there Doctor.
<doctor>.
<doctor>.
<doctor> DIE DIE DIE!!!!
* stab stab stab *
<nurse> What the hell are you doing!!!!???!!
<nurse> You've made a freakin' mess. There's bloody all over the theatre!
<nurse> Somebody help!!!!!!!!
<doctor>
<doctor> Sorry was AFK and my little brother was messing with my pc
Ever think you're taking things a little too deep? I mean really? I'm sur that comment was made precisely because he hates Indians, and not for the more probably reason of the absurdity of haveing doctors do surgery remotely across the globe just to save money. If you were so pro-Indian you'd fight for them to have equal wages with American IT workers instead of complaining that Americans don't respect them. You make me sick, tubacolossus.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
Dude i'm not a racist, have a sense of humor man. Also outsourcing is a very real problem and is really screwing up our economy.
Most-likely, the real reason it won't get outsourced will be medical insurance. Doctors over here have to have so much malpractice insurance that it's uber expensive, but most of our health insurance companies wouldn't allow for remote surgeries from areas where they wouldn't be able to check up on/sue the person on the other end.
However, if you're rich enough, I guess it'd be possible, but then again, if you're rich, you wouldn't need it outsourced to lower costs.
Luke
----
ChristianNerds.com, the Free, Easy-to-Understand Computer Encyclopedia
Batman!
KFG
They're putting the "eye" back into "I.T."
I agree with the parent to an extent, but with some qualifications.
Firstly, I think it's just a fact of the world that the doctors in India may not actually be as qualified as those in the US. India is still a developing nation. It has had massive improvements in infrastructure and education over the past 10 years, but I don't think there's enough experience or expertise for Indian doctors to be performing laser eye surgery online yet. (Not to mention the problems of internet congestion!)
Secondly, I don't think all opponents of outsourcing are "by definition" racist. There may be legitimate reasons for opposing outsourcing (e.g. protecting local employment). However, I would say many posters on slashdot (definitely the grandparent) have a "USA-all-the-way" superiority complex when it comes to IT and outsourcing to India. Indian employees can provide just as good service as local ones, once you get behind the "LOLOMG thiS GUYS IN INDiA!!!11!" inanity.
Though this achievement doubtless strikes fear into the hearts of fugitive sperm everywhere... it's hard to see it as a breakthrough. In other words... it's unlikely that there was ever much doubt about the success of this "demonstration", since any glitch would likely have been met by a mere retry. And, in still other words... do you feel even microscopically better about the prospect of, say, your next airline flight's pilot relaxing at a cable-modem in his condo?
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
Now the words "OMFG LAG!" really is a matter of life and death...
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
Do not look directly into laser with remaining eye.
Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler. -- Albert Einstein
error 404 the surgeon who was messing with your insides can no longer be found try pressing the refresh button, if the problem persists contact your network administrator...
Get your torrents...
Lag frag!
Or, perhaps, he's just pissed that his job, his American-based job, is being sent to India.
No offense to the Indians, but if they are just as capable as we are at doing our jobs, let them do their jobs in their country. Last I recall, their country isn't in the best of state...
Meanwhile unemployement here suffers due to us being out jobs, and well, there's really no solution for us. Companies just want to lower their bottom lines, and the best way to do that is fire employees and either pay a machine to do the work, or pay someone way, way less for it.
I'm not racist; I have many good friends who are Indian, Chinese, Slovic, and other races, and I have no problem with them being here in America working. My problem comes when the jobs here are being moved out of our country. We've almost reversed our position from the industrial revolution, when people would migrate here just to work. And we're losing our tech crown because nobody's willing to innovate because it costs too much. These are the things that piss us off, and it's not about racism. If you want to talk about hidden racism, go talk to one of the news *coughFOXcough* networks talking about the Middle East situtation.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
I for one welcome our new lasik overlords!
~~"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." ~~Dennis Miller
Tell me - would any other country, rich or poor, welcome foreign citizens to take over a large portion of its jobs? I think there's a common attitude across the planet to secure jobs for the "tribe."
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Lasers. Sperm. the Internet?
This thing is a marketers dream.
Now, if you caught the sperm immediately post coitus, you've got a movie of the week.
Sunny
Be my Friend
I'd avoid this simply because of the fact that no U.S. Agency has juristiction over Indian doctors.
If you think getting your own government to do something when the doctor screws up was hard, wait until the doctor is in another country and you need a another country's government to help you.
Simple fact: Governments care more about their own citizens. This goes for any country in the world. (U.S., India, *Insert Country Here*)
If you believe otherwise, and that the U.S. is the only country that is like this, then, well...There isn't much of a point in talking to you because you're living your own little world. Enjoy!
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
Eye see what you mean... Will the medical students learning this have a good teacher pupil relationship?
Truth is, my understanding is that a lot of these surgeries are done with computers anyhow, just in thisb case the computer/doc-operator are far away. I am sure there will be nurses etc w/ the patient. I don't think that there will be a feature in Vista that allows us to get surgery at home.
It would be convenient however, to get a vasectomy online.
It seems like the doctors and IT pros are suffering from blind ambition.
Hopefully no one will lash out at them, and a lid will be kept on this. It will require a lot of focus to carry this out properly....
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
I've been meaning to get circumcised lately, but I think I'll wait until this procedure is a bit more mature before I subject my manhood to it.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Wonder what would happen .... "Dr. You have just been DoSed" ... ... "IIMM BLIIIIIIND"
Well, for the visual updates a dropped packet might not be as critical as in the transfer of data that moves the equipment. For that, I'd assume that they've got some decent error-checking or CRC going on.
I'll stick with the old fashioned "eye surgery in the bathroom mirror" routine. Come on, would rather be at the mercy of a reversed image and your own hand or the neighborhood P2P bandwidth hogs?
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Blue Screen of Death!
Ever think you're taking things a little too deep? I'm sure you made that comment prcisely because you hate people who are concerned about the negative effects of outsourcing on our economy...
"Doing it remotely is not something I would volunteer for and I suppose that is exactly where this technology is heading."
Those who don't have an alternative would most likely "volunteer". Surgery on a sub? Testing while in the Congo? How about when a community can't afford, or need a full time specialist? Economics comes to medicine. Just look at all the people going to thailand for their medical care.
Nice one AC, did you even read the rest of my post?
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
How about this question? Would you do it now? :)
No sig for now.
Medical students should be learning Chinese and at least one East Indian dialect as part of their major. And prepare to emigrate overseas!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
~ NO CARRIER
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
or that remote-controlled laser will fry your ass... and they won't use the cooling spray.
"But when I asked him about outsourcing, he gave me two good reasons why it'd never happen. THe first is many people prefer to see and know their doctor."
:)"
The front-man for all the specialists is the patients GP.
"Secondly, is the fact that if hospitals tried this, the doctors would go on strike in an instant. Generally, doctor's don't work "for" a hospital, they are given permission to set up shop inside the hopital in the space provided. What this means, is a group of radiologists do work out of a hospital (in this case, Elyria Hospital near Cleveland) in exchange for the hospital providing them patients. In return, they provide excellent an radiology department
Labour Unions go on strike. How well is it working out for them? If you're replacing one radiology department with another, then it doesn't really matter if the local one goes on strike.
...over the phone.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
slashdotting will blind some poor bastard
All I want is a frickin' router with a laser microscope on its head. Is that too much to ask?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Not true, If you look at the concept of comparative advantage, If it is cheaper for them to have doctors and it is cheaper for us to produce another good or service Y, through comparative advantage, wboth countries gain. So, just b/c the short term effect of not having a job upsets you and takes away from your job, doesn't mean that the economy is suffering.
for teh win!!!!1!
Now not only will your web host be offering guarantees, your doctor will be too! 99.9% uptime guarantee, 2 GBIT connections across the Atlantic... All I have to say is, they better have diesel generators.
I see "remote surgery" and even AI-assisted remote surgery as the future for battlefields, outer space, and other conditions where surgery must be done quickly but the doctor cannot get to the operating room.
However, latency and quality-of-service issues will need to be addressed before this is anything more than experimental.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I keep getting email saying "Me get cash money, I laser you eyeball!"
(Stolen from Conan O'Brien's "actual items".)
So this FUNNY post is INSIGHTFUL exactly how? It's a joke. Or is the joke the current state of Slashdot moderation?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
OK, I can't speak to medical practitioners from India, but I can talk about their IT workers. On two seperate occasions I've worked for companies with significant offshoring in Bombay and Hyderabad. I know that my sample size is far too small for me to make any sweeping judgements about all Indian computer workers but from what I've seen -- they suck.
At my current position it shows up in our project management tool quite consistently. Yellow is the color for a deliverable which is late but not yet blocking another portion of the project. All of the Indian developers have significant amount of yellow next to their names.
What ends up happening is that each person in the stateside operations ends up needing to spend half their day doing babysitting and cleanup on their group of Indian developers. One of my favorite examples is when one of my cow-workers was tasked with writing a simple script. He handed it in two months late and it was a monstrosity -- More than 200 lines of spaghetti code. 22 if() clauses, 11 with else clauses, 17 exit points to the same function, 20 places which attempted to close the same filehandle -- and best of all it didn't work.
And this shit happens all the time. EVERY developer in my office is spending huge amounts of time fixing loads of late garbage delivered from India. Interns in our offices are doing much better work than experienced graduates in India.
Cultural superiority? Dunno. But the cultural differences are huge. One of the biggest ones is that it's impossible to fire someone in India. Seriously, because of their unemployment rate they'd rather keep a freeloader on the payroll than give him an invitation to the world. No matter what he's done. In the states we tend to have a "we can tackle that problem" attitude. In India they have an attitude they call "chalta hai" which is the opposite.
... to the word "hacker."
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.
A couple of articles before this told of how strong emotion could cause temporary blindness. I guess if the surgeon experienced strong emotion, the patient could experience permanent blindness?
On a serious note, if the Indian doctor made someone go blind in USA... who is accountable? I can see all kinds of legal problems stemming from this already.
Haha I hacked your eye, BLIND MAN!
OMGHAX!!!!1111
"i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet"
uh oh ....
great replies, /.
I work in a multi-specialist doctors office and one of the internists is from India, with a very "foreign" name. Inevitably, new patients would ask how well she speaks English (excellently), but because she takes the time to carefully explain things, reply to questions and assure her patients (good communication skills like you said) she is one of the most well liked doctors in the area. I would say she has even opened the eyes of a few borderline-racist patients.
Back on topic: you will never have me convinced that fully robotic- or tele- surgery will EVER replace a live, in the room doctor except in limited cases. Placing tubes in eardrums, colonoscopies and tonsillectomies are possibilities, but there are too many problems that can go wrong with most procedures. Plus, if you ask any surgeon they will tell you that surgery is a VERY tactile thing, and until we can reach a holodeck-level of sensory feedback, the doctor will still need to be physically in the room.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
I'm sorry but I think a Doctor carving on someone should at least be on the same continent. If he's carving on me he WILL be in the same room.
/. (26 - 33 years).
After two cervical spine and four knee surgeries I know way more about doctors and medicine than I ever wanted to. Thats why I now have time to program and work on computers, this beat up old body won't do much else anymore. The scars on my knees are older than most reading
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
Can I get this from my desktop? This might give new meaning to the Apple iSight.
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
The US invented the internet and promotes free trade/globalization. What do you expect to happen?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
I guess it would give the phrase "do not look into laser with remaining eye" a whole new meaning
They poked tiny holes into cells with a laser. Calling that "cell surgery" doesn't make it surgery; it's just operating a scientific instrument remotely over the Internet. People have been doing that for years.
does this mean doctors and surgeons can be outsourced now?
HD Trailers
Newer, seperate internets, like Internet 2 I could see having long term functionality, but I really don't think it's sustainable on the existing networks.
In other news, one town has offered $50 surgerical procedures from 4 year old doctors, and the resulting stampede has created an infinite loop of supply and demand.
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Wow, now there really is a device that can stab someone in the face over the internet
Touch eyeballs to screen for cheap laser surgery.
My VDU has been burning my eyes for years now
Go home and shave your giant head of smell with your bad self
Beeing a High Ping Bastard gives you a new way of seeing things...
And now I'll make a careful incision into the hea[BUFFERING 67%]
Here come the patent lawyers!
Doing laser surgery . . .
. . . OVER THE INTERNET
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Doctors get paid the big bucks because they know the secret of leading the cells before they shoot rockets--I mean, laser spots.
The real question is this: will researchers soon be able to join a different research group if they can't get a good ping to the one they're working with at the moment? It's an important issue for many reasons. Nothing's worse than some 14 year old scientist getting into your research group and spamming crap like "LOL Nd:YAG? more liek Nd:FAG!!!"
I'd let anyone into the U.S. on two conditions. First, they are not an evil person (criminal, terrorist etc). Second, they have no rights to any free societal financial assistance (i.e. welfare, free treatment in the E.R., medicare, education etc.) for a substantial period of time (perhaps 10-15 years).
Sure, this would result in lower salaries in the U.S., but at least the U.S. would remain relevant by having a base of intellectual capital on a par with the "best of the best" among other countries. It also may wake up our public education system in this country before it's too late (although, I fear, it's already too late because by the time it is repaired, the game will be over).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Please let there not be a packet dropped during my laser eye surgery!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
And to think, the bandwidth for this to be performed only has a retail cost of $240,000 per month!
($30,000 for a gigabit colo times 8 times 2)
As many people have said, they prefer a doctor to be in the room with them. I ABSOLUTLEY agree. The internet can be used for many things, but surgery is not one of them.
Awwww!!! Fucking LAG!!!
...you can't be using dial-up.
So the doctor begins adjusting the power of the beam and turns on the laser just as a lag spike hits. The computer continually increaes the laser power... then the delayed UDP message to "fire" the laser arrives...
The doctor stares bewildered at his monitor as the word HEADSHOT! is returned...
(Then a remote nurse claims he has an aimbot...)
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
i'm going to become rich and famous after i invent a device that allows you to stab people in the face over the internet
http://bash.org/?4281
"Touch eyes to screen for cheap laser surgery" :)
One of my favorite examples is when one of my cow-workers was tasked with writing a simple script.
Do you hire cow workers especially for the indian market?
May I use your sig please?
I hope he didn't get a ...BUFFERING... screen during the operation.
And that nobody cracked/DoSed the system.
I wouldn't want to be operated in this way, especially if it's Windows-powered.
Remember the story of the computer programmer who's job was outsourced and now he picks up dog shit for a living? Quite a career change, don'tcha think? Really puts that computer science degree to good use too.
Doctor 1: I'd make the incision there :(
Doctor 2: Right, I concur *click click*
Doctor 1: wtf, ping is like 1000
Doctor 2: omg lag.
Doctor 1: You cut his heart in half
Doctor 2:
Doctor 1: fucking tk'er
doctor - Bring the patient in ...
...
doctor - Ahhh i see... This man accute bloated internal spleen rupture, we're gonna need suction.
nurse - but doc, how the hell can you tell that you've not even opened him up?
doctor - its ok, i got OGC wallhack enabled
doctor - *sloshy splatty splish* right all done
nurse - CHRIST that was quick
doctor - speeed hack enabled
doctor - counter patients win
It is not necessarily a "fact of the world" that other countries have inferior qualifications, especially since in many countries doctors take UK and USA exams so that they can practice in a lot of places.
Have you seen the number and quality of research papers coming out of India over the last 30 years? Hunter gatherers do not have large particle physics labs - and remember that the first heart transplants occured in the far less developed nation of South Africa.On a more practical note - ping times halfway around the world would mean that laser eye surgery from a different hemisphere is unlikely to be a good idea if you can find someone closer - but if the expert in a paticular procedure is in India or wherever they could give almost realtime advice to the person driving the instrument from a spot where they wouldn't have to worry about latency. Either that or move everything very slowly.
Courtesy of Family Guy and IMDB quotes...
[Luke is performing an operation on a ladies eye]
Luke Skywalker: Okay I'll just make a quick incision here and we'll be all done, Mrs. Wilson.
Ben Kenobi: Luke, use the Force.
Luke Skywalker: Really? Because I was just gonna...
Ben Kenobi: Just use the Force.
Luke Skywalker: Okay!
[Luke's lightsaber floats above Mrs. Wilson and stabs her right through the eye. She starts screaming]
Luke Skywalker: Are you happy?
Ben Kenobi: I've never been happy.
IT Marketing News - December 2000
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
Actually the word you're looking for is "xenophobic", but it still doesn't apply completely.
An engineer or scientist that has used a variety of different systems and programmed in a few languages doesn't have to do much to get better results than a base level MSCE or a recent one year tech college graduate - which appears to be the skill level in a disturbing number of cases.
Well you won't mind that this one has gone back to your country, dubbed Dr Death here in Australia,
8 ,00.html
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16120939-124
This week, hearings began into the deaths of 87 of Dr Patel's patients, 20 more than previously known. But the investigation, which has the sweeping powers of a royal commission, is not only concerned with fatalities. It is also looking at claims of needless suffering under Dr Patel's scalpel.
Seems to me like a legitimate concern. The fact is, computers aren't perfect, and the Internet is anything _but_ the perfect real time medium for something like this.
If I'm to look at just my experience with WoW, I got disconnected three times in half an hour at one point yesterday. All of a sudden there'd be no more packets coming, and about half a minute later the game would finally get the clue and disconnect me. Was someone playing with a router along the way? I wouldn't know.
Stuff like that happens on the Internet every single day. A router crashes. A cable breaks. A connection is DDOSed. Or it gets Slashdotted: what happens if on the same day the hospital's web page gets linked to by Slashdot or whatever? I'm going to guess that's gonna mean a lot less bandwidth and a lot more latency for that operation.
The internet is OK for non-critical stuff and stuff that doesn't need a guaranteed response time. For playing WoW or UT2004, meh, I can reconnect or find another server. For buying stuff online, meh, I can hit refresh. Etc. It's not important stuff.
But the thought that someone's life (or eyesight for an eye operation) would be _gambled_ on an internet connection... now that makes me cringe.
If the operation _has_ to be performed from a remote location, I'd want a direct dedicated connection, and a redundant one at that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
To India.
See how they like it!
And for our next trick - LAWYERS!
To where I can control the laser over the Internet?
One of the critical things that a doctor does is to release a pedal or switch to shut off the laser in case someone's eye drifts or flickers around. Remote operating will always add a small bit of lag to this, possibly leading to minor problems with the overall evenness of the burn.
Chika Chik-ah... do-e ow ow.
So if you believe that people should sacrifice their own welfare to benefit other's economies then you should be donating your income to someone in the Congo, New Guinea, or Iceland.
Those who lose their jobs in the US due to outsourcing can always find new ones, that will be even bigger contributions to the US economy. Free trade (and that includes movement of labour) is mutually beneficial.
None of that is true. You only want to believe that because it benefits you. You obviously have not lived here and seen the steady decline in real wages over the last thirty years and the difficulty of finding a good job.
I said I wanted remote controlled sharks with frickin' laser beams, not eye surgery robots.
So - what would have happened if either of the ends were ddos'ed in the middle of the procedure here ?
I can see the first lawsuit.
California Hospitol and Aussie Dr. sued due to lag. The victim was cited as saying, "I shoulda gone with those HPF's".
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Is this related to http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/1 7/224231&tid=99&tid=14/? I think we should be told.
I hope they arent running windows...
But I'll trust this when one of the researchers claiming success has his/her own (critical, sensitive to failure) surgery using this method.
-Styopa
Latency and losing route to host are killers!
"Excellent Ms. Jones, I'll make the first inc/BUFFERING/BUFFERING/BUFFERING/we are I hope you aren't moving much, you must keep very s/BUFFERING/BUFFERING/BUFFERING/you must keep very s/BUFFERING/BUFFERING/eep very sti/BUFFERING/BUFFERING/nd we're done. $2500 please."
"Touch Eyeballs to Screen for Cheap Laser Surgery" while streaming Futurama.
You keep thinking, Butch. Thats what you're good for.
... is National Instruments' LabVIEW. Amazing stuff.
Berto
Just an FYI, but there is some outsourcing of medical care happening. Here's a brief article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6199772/site/newsweek/ .
I also recall reading an article a year or so ago (I believe in Newsweek) of a man who traveled to India to receive some type of heart operation. Rather than go through the expensive US healthcare system, he decided to go to India. He was able to receive what he felt was a comparable level of care, but at a fraction of the cost. He was also able to receive luxury accomodations and was treated like a king.
So, this is purely anecdotal (feel free to look for the article), but it shows anything is possible. Of course, this isn't quite outsourcing as people in IT face. And I don't think you'd ever see the medical profession held in such low regards as IT, but it's still interesting (IMO, at least).
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
I have figured out an interesting and efficient way to compute a minimum-distance path between all the dog-poops in the park. Using this, I can pick everything up in a minimum of time and effort. See? I can use my computer-science degree to pick up dog poop.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Bzzt!
Outsourcing affects plenty of people, but there is a total myth that our economy has been badly damaged by outsourcing jobs - tech or not - to India, China, and other countries.
Have some companies been hurt by their own poor decision to outsource too much? Yes. GM outsources factory work to Mexico and Jamaica.
* It's more expensive and less productive to outsource certain kinds of jobs. *
So the jobs that really get outsourced are help desk jobs, entry-level and middle-level programmer jobs, tech writers, etc.
There is no shortage of jobs that I can see. In fact, I hear complaints from companies all the time that they can't seem to find qualified tech people. Look on any job website and you'll see a plethora of IT jobs out there.
* If you can't find a job, it's because you're not looking or because you're un-hireable. *
Are you asking for too much money? Do you have the qualifications for the job? Are you just another entry-level programmer that thought he'd make a fortune because of the late-90s economy but is discovering that he has no place in today's IT workplace?
Happy 30th Birthday Logan
It is time to be renewed. Just let me hook up this nifty internet surgery thingy. Don't worry these lasers are fool proof...
There is no reason to run off. This *always* works.
Randy.Flood@RHCE2B.COM
There's a pretty easy test for that. Would most slashdotters complain if instead of India all these jobs were going to England, Ireland, or .
I believe the answer is yes, we would. There's enough racism in the world, don't make it up where it doesn't exist.
All true wisdom can be found in sigs.
I want to perform laser surgery out of a shrunken-down micro submersible, injected into someone's bloodstream!
A female assistant with a tight scuba suit would also help...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
This is all just a really big scam. The truth is, some researcher got PWN3D a few months ago at Q3, and set about to get the best ping times he possibly could.
This is what you get when you headshot GreyHats, people!!! Do not taunt happy fun ball!!!
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
...you first.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Whoa,
Nobody in America wants this but the corporations, and they are the ones that run the country. They are not elected and cannot be voted out of office.
All this globalization stuff is the result of the corporate lobby buying the souls of our elected officials. Vote them out, and new gov officials are quickly turned into lapdogs by the bribes.
Lets get one thing straight... globalization is good for everyone but the US common worker. Do you honestly think the people here want to lose their jobs to cheap labor overseas?
Get real LOL.
I don't hold India or any other country's people responsible for this. Were I an Indian programmer, I'd probably do the same thing. A job is a job. Eventually we will be brought down to the level of the rest of the world in terms of GDP etc. and we'll have the same poverty rate as everyone else.
It's up to the reader to decide if this is good or bad. It depends on where you live.
If I were running the country, I certainly wouldn't just give all of our wealth and spending power to other countries. I'd do everything I could to pass laws against draining our economy.
Corporations would leave, but the ones that would, we really don't need, and new ones would quickly spring up to take their place.
We didn't become the greatest country on earth by giving everything away. It's a fools move with only shortsighted gains to be had. It will kill us long term.
l8,
AC
and remember that the first heart transplants occured in the far less developed nation of South Africa.
By a white doctor, when the country was under white rule.
Sorry, not trying to be racist, just pointing out facts.
And by the way, in the 1960s - 1980s, South Africa was indeed more developed than India, had a much stronger currency and economy, and to this day has a more internationally recognized education system. (Hint: Indians with PhDs in Visual Basic are not internationally recognized for quality, only for price).
The US has idealized corporate freedom for a long time, this is what corporations do with it.
The jobs aren't `yours'. The jobs aren't `american'. The jobs belong to the corporation that is hiring, and the corporation will go with what it feels the best course for bottom line is.
This is an unavoidable side-effect of any sort of approximately laissez-faire economic approach, and you just can't have that cake and eat it too.
Time to grow up.
You hit the nail on the head. Exactly my experience.
It seems like it's a secret that everyone knows but no one wants to talk about out of fear of being labeled a racist.
The reason why it's done ? Hype and to a certain degree "development aid" provided by decision makers from indian ancestry here in the states.
so when can i get one in drive-thru?
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Maybe jobs are being outsourced because americans have gotten selfish, and don't realize how lucky they are to have the jobs they do, simply by virtue of being born in a certain country. If someone else is willing to work harder than me, and for less, I think that's perfectly legitimate for the job to go to them. They deserve it more.
The problem is that americans think we deserve the quality of life we have, and we really don't. That's going to come and bite us in the butt when India and China come of age technologically and educationally.
I'm sorry. The number you have reached is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again.
I've had times when someone asks someone else for a quick n dirty script to do one little thing, or to just produce a quick report to read a number. The request ended up to me as get this report done properly, double check everything, make it look pretty and built a nice and secure interface because the big guys want it. Now the difference may be 30min to 2 days there.
I dont know how much do the dudes in India suck, I just know that the best results are obtained when I'm sitting with the person requesting the project, looking into my eyes and expressing the importance of the various parts of the project in a language that cannot be written. Send the same request to India through 3 people, to a totally different culture, so many time zones away that they cannot ask quick questions while they're working on it. And you'll end up with spaghetti.
The problem with IT is there are way too many ways to do one thing, and a bigger problem is the people who are requesting the results cant define it clearly because theyre not IT people. In meetings I frequently finish the requester's sentences because (s)he cant clearly express what (s)hes looking for.
Now you could say Indian workers suck when they have software companies in India able to compete in International markets on equal terms, and still produce sucky software.
Yet I agree with the 'chalta hai' attitude that stretches from Karachi to Dacca. It means 'it'll work' or more like, the stupid white men will buy it. The recent IT craze in which countless uninterested kids entered the field in a goldrush doesnt help things either.
More to do with culture. Nothing to do with racism.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
what about vasectomies? Ouch!
Christ you reply sarcastically to one post that's crazy, that post gets modded into oblivion and suddenly everbody thinks you're accusing someone of racism. Damn.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me