Slashdot Mirror
Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message
Peace Corps Online writes "Vascular surgeon David Nott performed a life-saving amputation on a boy in DR Congo following instructions sent by text message from a colleague in London. The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous; there were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound. 'He had about two or three days to live when I saw him,' Nott said. Nott, volunteering with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and contacted Professor Meirion Thomas at London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before. 'I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it,' Nott said."
I long ago discovered my text-messaging device allows me to talk directly to another person through his or her text-messaging device. Amazing!
And, not only is this more efficient and accurate, it costs far less. Imagine the lives that could be saved if doctors were given instructions for talking through these text-messaging devices. I, for one welcome the emergence of these devices and their new-found features.
Must have been an expensive operation considering the price of text messaging today.
if this submission was sent by text... "sent my text"
He intended to do a prostate exam, so it's not quite as good as it sounds.
Because you want the doctor to be operating on you one-handed. Yea...
Taken from the text logs:
MK UR FST CT ALNG CLR BON WTH STRLZD RZR K?
Things got a little dangerous when another text message came in from his wife mid operation.
U WANT LEG OR SHOLDER CUT FOR DINR?
Heh, but still some great work. It's tragic though that there's still a dearth of medical facilities in some countries and life-saving make-do operations like this are common. Kudos to Medicines Sans Frontiers for doing what our own governments should be doing.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
else you are in deep trouble when the patient is open and the battery runs down or the net fails.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Spoken like somebody who's never needed to pay the astronomical roaming charges or put up with the hideous interference and quality loss on a voice call.
Sometimes text is faster and cheaper, because you're not spending 90% of the call going "What? Please repeat!"
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call. You also get all the information already available if you need to look back at it quickly and it's in neat understandable writing (anyone who's ever read a doctor's scrawl will know what I mean). For this purpose (transmitting a technical procedure step by step) it's the better of the two media.
Stories like this make me wonder if cell phones will be the devices that actually deliver on the promise of OLPC.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
What exactly _is_ the emoticon for 'cut off limb X'?
See? That's why I don't want a cell phone.
Text message will ensure that all the details get there
But none of the vowels.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
DN: hai r u awake?? im wrkn, ths guys missn heaps of his arm, wwyd?
MT: lol sup? tru tru... kk well ur guna need 2 do a 4 1/4 amp. req rm of the cola bone n shlda blde.
DN: yea nm nm...... ok so txt me how
MT: ok is he there now?
DN: no im at home
MT: txt me wen u get there k?
In the US you will likely be billed $1 per text + your rate each way + other doctors rate and you hmo says we don't pay for texts so we will pay $0 as we don't don't part pay for operations
I heard the doctor actually texted full instructions on how to reattach the arm but after 151 characters it got cut off.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Verizon takes an arm and leg for text messages every month, so amputation by text message isn't anything new.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Yeah, haha. Now think for a couple seconds about actually performing phone-directed surgery, and maybe you'll see an advantage or two to using text instead of voice.
The enemies of Democracy are
no wai reely? kid is 8-X X-P brb
k thx lol
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And sometimes there's enough garbling of the text to render it illegible...
include $sig;
1;
idk my bff jill?
Your ad here.
...MySpace? I especially like the embedded video clips.
Seriously, teaching someone how to do an operation through text messages will do the opposite of instilling trust in patients. I wonder if he came out of the operating room and said to the worried family, "Mrs Robinson, The operation went great, just like was written in the text message! I am going to stay at my Holiday in Express now."
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
...where this guy's doctor was talking him through doing an appendectomy. "It's very straightforward."
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
we joke about this.. but it really is amazing that this was possible. can you imagine taking directions for something like that through a text and doing it. to me it would be like someone texting me directions on how to build an engine and me truly making it run
I don't know where you're from, but I (in Germany) get a text message at the price of a minute of voice, and the first 50 in every month are included in the plan price.
In other countries it's much cheaper.
. ;) ;)
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Yeah. Other counties! Haven't you heard of them?
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Are you French or American?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
But really, what makes this news?
Basically what happened was the guy got bob on the phone and said, "yeah bob, can you fax me over page 113 of surgery for dummies?"
Sending what amounts to textbook instructions to trained personnel in the field is hardly a noteworthy achievement.
>>I long ago discovered my text-messaging device allows me to talk directly to another person through his or her text-messaging device. Amazing!
You mean those wireless devices which replaced the devices which ran over wires which were originally built to text messages to each other in morse?
I'm kinda glad we have to pay for incoming text messages now. At least that guy who wants to ampute me will have to think twice before pressing send!
You only need a vowel if you're vet
This is one of my favorite things about SMS. *When* the data arrive, they arrive intact.
I got my first cell phone about one year ago. I know, I know, but I really don't need one for normal communications. I just need it to place emergency calls. However (and since my prepaid arrangement allows free incoming texts), I was curious about this whole "texting" thing (which I would probably never use with another person), so decided to figure out just what is really happening. I discovered that most USA cell carriers have a text to email gateway.
Since the text messages are essentially email, I first decided to hack up a Python script that would alert me via text of any inclement weather. A simple NOAA weather data gatherer, parser, and sender to my SMS to email gateway has saved my ass numerous times. Really. And for a $10 TracPhone, that's not too bad. Of course this is not on par with doing surgery, but I thought it was pretty cool. I didn't stop there, though.
Since my carrier *does* in fact have a text to sms gateway, the communication can go two ways. Is it possible to create an *unsecure* remote shell so that I can give my home computer commands while away? Why not..? And so friends, in brief, text messages *do* in fact have use other than LOLing ur BFF, and doing remote surgery... You can monitor your torrents, and fetch new ones, kick your pesky friend off your wireless connection, write a new cron job, the possibilities are arbitrary... Just don't let anyone use your phone...
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
We are almost getting to the point where it will be possible to stab people in the internet!
Not only that, but there are times it takes a half hour or longer for me to get a text message from my friend on another carrier. And we're both in the same bar room.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Sometimes text is faster and cheaper, because you're not spending 90% of the call going "What? Please repeat!"
Apparently, you can land a plane with it (I can't find the /. link. Anyone?)
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call.
If you're somewhere that calls are garbled, what assurance do you have that text messages will get through?
Text is given a very low priority on the wireless network and there is no guarantee that it will ever arrive.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
... the party amputates you!
Lives saved by texting: 1
Loves lost by texting: ???
In other countries it's much cheaper.
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Yeah. Other counties! Haven't you heard of them?
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Are you French or American?
I don't know about France, but here in America we celebrate a diverse selection of counties.
Did you somehow miss the part where he was calling from Africa to the UK? Have you never priced an international call?
Assume that you're an Orange customer. (It's the first UK cell phone provider I could think of off the top of my head.) Roaming in Africa and calling England costs £1.20/minute (or over $1.75/minute) if you have the Orange Travel plan.
Texting is much, much cheaper. In fact, in Africa, it's the dominant form of cell phone communication because voice rates are so ridiculously high in comparison even among local carriers, according to a family member who spent several months there on a mission trip.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...to my karma. ;)
If only they knew, that I posted it as a joke, because unlike some other folks, I actually know that it's a funny stereotype.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Not so long ago, there was a story about a pilot who was guided into landing by an air-traffic controller through a series of text messages after all the plane's electrical systems failed.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
If you can connect a call, you can be pretty sure that a text can come through. Even though the call can be so garbled as to be unintelligible, the text only needs a tiny bit of data to come through. Setting up a call is more "expensive" data-wise.
Also, a text doesn't need a working connection for more than an "instant", while a call requires a long, continuous connection.
Oh, and if the network nears its limit with traffic, sms is given higher priority while voice calls are dropped.
They'll be all over this method of reducing healthcare costs!
Plus, I'm not sure how reading a typed message from someone is any different from reading it out of a textbook.
Except that you can ask the person to clarify. I mean, yes this is funny. But it's not that goddamn funny. Or alarming at all.
Here's a headline:
"Person learns engineering by reading messages downloaded from the Internet."
Please stop stalking me, bro.
It's a neat story. You're so not invited to my birthday party, you party pooper.
> Thank you for taking the time to assist me Dr
>> np
> What do you mean?
>> No problem, its textspeak, shrtn words by mssng vowels, abbrvtin words etc its sppsd 2 b qckr
> Great! Time is of the essense ;-)
>> You mnt gr8
> :-) iv hrd bt ths txtspk - gttng th hng f ths nw
>> So, wuts th prblm
> hv b hr wth gngrn
>> b??
> boy
>> whr?
> cng
>> ??
> congo
>> no, i mnt whr is gngrn
> in rm
>> n room n cng?
> no, n arm f by n cng
>> is hs hd ffctd?
> no, jst hs rm
>> soz - fngr trbl, mnt hnd
etc
What is this, a "The Onion" article?
Are you guys kidding?
Why is this news and a front page article?
I mean we've been using SMS/txting on a regular basis for over 10 years now here in the Philippines! It's our primary means of communication as it's so much cheaper than voice calls.
"Indonesia Shariah law declares that husband may now divorce wife by texting 'I divorce you' thrice" is news.
This is like putting "Employee at McDonalds cooks burger" as front page news
wtf.
Not to sound like a troll, but what's so amazing with this incident? How is any more amazing than sending urgent instructions via fax?
Cost of SMS is not even a factor coz those guys are doctors from FIRST WORLD countries, and as for tech in the bush, setting up cel towers is way cheaper than laying down miles of cable which could be stolen by thieves looking to sell metal to scrap heaps.
Wtf, even poor folk shanty-town dwellers here in Manila regularly SMS with their family back in far-flung remote mountains in the provinces.
Wtf why is this news? Here in the Philippines, overthrowing entire governments with txt messages is like a boring everyday thing.
What is this, the stone age?
http://www.object404.com
Besides, the messages can be sent by a nurse who can then read the replies - no need for the doctor to hold the phone, he might have something else to do with his hands ...
. . . than "trial by ordeal" or "death by bulu"?
And, just for the sake of clarity and because it does seem to have been forgotten: they were both doctors! There was probably no need for a step by step take-your-knife-and-cut-exactly-there-then-cut-there-and-there typa thing. Just a set of quick instructions to help for this typical type of intervention would have been good, i'd assume.
IDK wat ur operator ds, but my datas nvr intact.
lol. Mint condition.
cracka stole my arm.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
vwlls r vl. thts why thr r n vwlls n hbrw.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
It is possible to send messages by sound without using any electronic equipment. If your muscles are developed enough for you to be able to walk to the bar, you may still have working vocal chords. If you exercise them, they won't atrophy away by the age of 20 like they do in most people.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well, I admit that not all doctors write well, but much of this comes from people being unable to decipher the language of prescriptions. A doctor doesn't write:
They write:
Juggling chainsaws one-handed again, Yagu?
Not A Jew
... is what we call it in the real world...
And sometimes there's enough garbling of the text to render it illegible...
The text is sent over a digital carrier; there's no chance of RF noise or poor reception causing the text received to actually be garbled.
Each text part is either received or not received.
Text message will ensure that all the details get there, not some garbled, half-heard phone call.
There is a serious problem, though: text messages may never get to the destination or may get there late, in case the text server is busy or unavailable, and the most serious problem is that you won't know that someone had tried to text you. With phone calls, at least, you know when the line gets cut off by network problems, but with text messages you can never know unless you were expecting a particular message. There is also no guarantee that you will receive the text messages in the order they were sent, if the server has problems.
Essentially texting has very similar problems to email when the email servers and intermediaries don't work correctly.
So, imagine getting the instructions for reattaching the arm before the instructions for removing it, while the instructions for cutting the bone were never delivered at all...
Sometimes text is faster and cheaper, because you're not spending 90% of the call going "What? Please repeat!"
Also, a voice call of any significant length is more likely to be dropped. Once the system has received a text message, it can store it and forward it in a burst, so short communications have a better chance of getting through during a given slice of connectivity. This applies even when cell systems are congested.
Not that I use texting, but I guess I should at least learn to use it. I live in California. My daughter recently told me about the more certain delivery of text messages when the Big One hits.
In a way, the better delivery of text vs. voice is vaguely analogous to the better delivery of IP vs. UDP.
Just text "amputation instructions" to 466453. I've used it twice, it works pretty well.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Perhaps you should bother to learn what UDP and IP are before you use them in an analogy, since you obviously only have a VERY vague idea of what you are talking about.
I remember before text messages when BFF meant something slightly different... It always makes me laugh a little on the inside
Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine -- Robert C. Gallagher
he must be using one of those analog texting services.
So use a laptop with an IM client. Magnify the text to make it more readable. Might even be useful to exchange photos or videos.
What the article fails to mention is that all the plane's electrical systems failed because the pilot was using his cell phone.
Anyone got a light for my sig?
The doctor in England had done the procedure before, presumably successfully, whereas the textbook could make no such guarantee. Plus, as you said, the doctor in the DRC could ask him to clarify.
And you're right, it's not that funny, or alarming. What it is is fraking badass and awesome. I mean, they both had the skills to pull off an amputation by text message. That's some serious medical street cred right there, on both sides!
Plus, they saved a kid's life. Good for both of them! *raises glass*
*sigh* its news like this that makes me weep like a little girl..
In other news;
Moon Impact Probe Launched By Caveman's Stick.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
.. give HMOs any ideas!
"Mr Nott, from Fulham, west London, had just one pint of blood and an elementary operating theatre, but the operation, performed in October, was a success and the teenager made a full recovery."
The term "full recovery" for an amputation seems like a bit of dark humor when you think about it too long.
Perhaps you should bother to learn what UDP and IP are before you use them in an analogy, since you obviously only have a VERY vague idea of what you are talking about.
Or, perhaps you should learn to accept people make mistakes and realize the original poster almost certainly meant TCP (high reliability) vs. UDP (unreliable). Of course, I'm sure you've got everything there is to know about networking, routers, and switches memorized.
Not a problem as long as you code in perl ;)
All comments are properties and trademarks of the voices in my head. Not like I'm gonna claim them.
In other countries it's much cheaper.
Yes, but coverage is cheap if you have two countries splitting the cost of your cell phone tower. :P
DATABASE WOW WOW
Unless this is the Local Mime Club's Pint Night, I'd have to rate this one "+5, Sad".
Butt Fuck Friday?
You can't take the sky from me.
I don't get what the big deal is. One would expect a surgeon to be able to follow instructions from another surgeon. Are people amazed that a medical professional is literate, or something?
... and then they built the supercollider.
"rite nw u slice of da 3rd tndn"
"wtch 4 da musl"
idk my bff jill?
U mean I nd 2 cut my arm? Pls clrfy.
They write:
2T SL BID AC UF
They may do so, but I can rarely even read the name of the med, even if I know what it is.
FWIW, "2T SL BID AC UF" means 2 tablets, sub lingua, bis in dia, ante cenam, until finished.
I nearly peed my pants I was laughing so hard!
That's about as legible as your sig.
so sms is like hebrew?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Vowells [sic] are evil. That's why there are no vowells in Hebrew.
That was really hard. But I'm REALLLY stoned. Did I win?
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
Or, perhaps you should learn to accept people make mistakes and realize the original poster almost certainly meant TCP (high reliability) vs. UDP (unreliable).
Thank you -- that's exactly what I meant (the IP instead of TCP part) and the distinction between reliable and unreliable. This bozo probably also thinks the entire Constitution is invalid because of the phrase "a more perfect Union" since, as any worthy pedant knows, "perfect" is an absolute and does not admit of comparisons like "more" or "less".
You did notice the part where it said that he was in Africa without access to advanced medical facilities and that the boy was only days away from dying without this operation, right? But hey, better to let a kid die when you can save him than embarrass your profession through expediency, I guess.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Vowells [sic]
srry cnt spllchck dsmvwld nglsh, spclly f t ss md p wrds.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
they'll be using short wave radio and morse code.
(which would actually have some distinct advantages).
but i guess you make do with what you got.
It seems he applied the old surgeon's maxim:
Watch one, Do one, Teach one.
It's about the complexity of the task involved. You'd assume concert pianists to typically be literate, but I doubt another pianist could play a Scriabin etude off of a text message from Horowitz.
[22:49] Kramer: "Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message" - http://science.slashdot.org/science/08/12/03/2345206.shtml
[22:49] Kramer: This time they've gone too far. Doctors are going mad with power! This is scary stuff, I'm gonna turn off my cell phone!!
[22:49] Brianna: lol.
[22:50] Brianna: Well, it worked...
[22:50] Brianna: If it hadn't been available, the person could've bleed out.
[22:50] Brianna: bled*
[22:50] Kramer: That's what scares me! What happens if doctors start randomly texting amputations to random numbers!? I COULD BE NEXT!!
[22:50] Brianna: LOL
[22:51] Kramer: This could spark a whole new phenomenon of "Crank Amuptations" performed by bored and half-drunk doctors at 2 AM!
[22:51] Brianna: OMG LOL
[22:52] Kramer: One of these days you could wake up to find a limb or two missing, an unexpected insurance co-pay bill, and a message on your phone saying "PWNED! ROFL - M.D."
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
I've done a lot of work in that neighbourhood, and believe me, there's no such thing as stable reception out there. You're luck on the odd occasion that you can get a call through.
Then you get screwed by your home operator cutting you off when you hit some predefined limit that you weren't aware was on there, and you can't call home to tell your wife that you weren't in the hotel that was shelled. Good times....
but I really don't need one for normal communications
I feel sorry for you and your lack of social skills.
What it is is fraking badass and awesome.
Actually that is awesome. And somewhat badass. Though not fraking badass and awesome.
Fraking badass and awesome would be for example when Dr Leonid Rogozov removed his own appendix at Vostok Station in Antarctica in 1961. Of course when your own ass is on the line, your ability to perform suck fraking badass and awesome feats generally increases exponentially.
Vowels, bowels, what's the difference?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Yeah. Other counties! Haven't you heard of them? ;) ;)
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Are you French or American?
I don't know about France, but here in America we celebrate a diverse selection of counties.
Here in France we have no counties whatsoever. I think the Swiss have some though.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
"medical street cred", now there's a phrase with interesting visuals.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
We're talking long distance here.
On the other hand, imagine a surgeon following handwritten notes from another surgeon.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It's actually impressive, but based on the headline I was expecting a fully SMS-controlled robot. Relative to that, the real story was a let-down. Bad headline, good story.
"I can't imagine how things could get any worse!" (some guy) "That could just be failure of imaginatioÂn on your p
To be a tad bit pedantic, there is a small chance that RF noise could cause your text message to be garbled. The digital carrier is still modulated over something that's analog, which means you might receive a 1 when you were sent a 0. Checksums and other error coding can help you detect when stuff like this happens, but it will always be possible that enough bits will flip in just the right way that you won't be able to detect the error.
The voice calls to another country are extremely expensive, and in the case of DR Congo I would imagine that call would cost more than the value of the town they were in.
So why sms messages? Because when you send a message to another country you get charged the same as you were texting anyone else in the country you are in (which is not expensive). This is the reason why they've used sms messages.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
If you're doing surgery, I believe you need both of your hands to do the operation. Choosing between having the guideline on how to perform a forequarter amputation as text is a much better option than having an assistant trying to request the step by step instructions through a shitty phone line.
Yeah and as RollingThunder mentioned, roaming costs are great. Probably we'd now have one less doctor helping the people of Kongo as he couldn't afford volunteering anymore.
Yeah, I helped knock up a C implementation of this ages ago : SmS (I'm "Bob"). It's passworded, but I make no guarantees that it's secure ... in particular CJK made the max password length 5 for some reason, that really should be changed.
Damn that's a close call of which series of messages Pwned the most.
A. Surgery
B. Landing Aircraft.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think you'd be hard pressed to find a doctor to work for less than $1.75 per minute.
Your priorities in saving money are a bit skewed if you're monopolizing a surgeon's time for several hours but your primary concern is the airtime costs.
There is a serious problem, though: text messages may never get to the destination or may get there late, in case the text server is busy or unavailable
You mean like when the TUBES get full on the Internet? Then someone can send you an Internet, and you'd have to wait a few days....
We are the all singing, all dancing crap of the world....
I'm sure you're being funny. And I do actually walk around the bar. But some of the bars I go too w/ my friends it's easier to text them and ask where they are in the bar than try to call them w/ the music blaring or walk around drunk in a place aimlessly looking for them.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Should have been more specific. Same club. Hunting them down isn't always that easy when you're trying to meet up for a reason.
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Text messages are not cheap either!
Or "vowells are oval" or, ...
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Yes, and there's a probability that your phone spontaneously explode in a big puff of smoke, because it misinterprets the received text message as a self-destruct.
SMS messages transmitted over GSM are protected not only by >3 bytes of checksum at the Connection Management layer, but also by the signalling method itself, and the 2-byte frame check sequence (FCS) provided by the LAP-D protocol at the datalink layer.
These checksums are good enough to foil any errors of the physical link.
The errors that remain are ones intentionally introduced by a malicious third party.
Am I the only one that cringed when reading the part about taking off the collar bone and shoulder blade?
Remove either for a real stinker.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Chances are he needed to use a satellite phone with charges of 20-40 euros/dollars a Minute.
Strange seeing people finding the need to justify having a cell phone, or saying they only got one a year ago.
In Europe, everyone has a cellphone, and there are more cellphones than people. I got my first one about 11 years ago.
Can I have a copy of that script?
You have départments, which are essentially the same thing.
not to mention the flying spaghetti monster out of the quantum foam!
Biblically Forbidden Fornication?
I'm trying to improve my English. Please correct me on any spelling/grammar errors in this post.
This is one of my favorite things about SMS. *When* the data arrive, they arrive intact.
You used the proper pronoun for 'data', which is the plural. You are my new hero.
...but it does sound like more fun than Boatmurder
Or... translating the name, that would be "Doctors Without Borders", which has a presence in the USA as well.
There is a famous story of a patient in hospital complaining of an earache. The doctor doing the rounds wrote a prescription for a nurse to fulfill. The prescription stated that several drops of a particular drug should be put in "R ear" ("R" being an abbreviation for "right").
The nurse dutifully put the earache drops in the patients anus.
Yes, I know this has nothing to do with texting, but abbreviations are common in text messages so I was reminded of this story.
The dots transmit fine, but the dashes can be tricky.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
I know a guy who amputated his own arm when it got jammed in the works of an oil rig. He's pretty hardcore.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
That was beautiful.
*sniff*
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Is it possible to create an *unsecure* remote shell so that I can give my home computer commands while away?
Yes. Mail rules + AppleScript = fun. I'm linking to those because I just so happen to have heard of them; I'm sure similar things could be done with other scripting languages and operating systems. Bonus fun: if you have a Mac, you can use Apple's "say" command.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Wow, talk about phoning it in...
I consider data to be a mass noun, like money. "All this money is useful." "This data is inconclusive."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data#Usage_in_English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_noun
Not that there's a single right answer--I'm just sayin'. :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I mean, you can't have a cell phone powered on in the hospital. It damages the equipment. Or at least that's what all the hospitals I have been to in the last ten years have indicated. Certainly if it is so horrible to have a cell phone on in the lobby, then it must be that much worse in the actual surgery room. Surely, they are not just lying to us about how bad cell phones are for the equipment.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Doctors Without Borders for all you English speakers out there.
You must live under a rock. BFF ment "best friend forever" since at least the 80's.
Or you could pay for a data plan and just have all that stuff native and even secure. I SSH from my phone all the time, and even use it as a bluetooth modem when I need a real computer.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
With a satellite phone (as a modem) and a laptop with web camera and you have teleconference. The doctor could have saved some shoulder blade bone if he scraped the bone. The gangrene affects the bone but it can be scraped or bleached to save the man's shoulder.
The responses to this item support the worthiness of text messaging - Amen. But there is a bleaker side to this - reflecting the deterioration of quality in surgical education, at least here in the USA, but probably elsewhere. Any vascular surgeon should know how to do a forequarter amputation, or any amputation. It's not that hard, and it is a basic concept in General Surgery, the grandaddy and pre-requisite of Vascular Surgery. It's not like this was a brain tumor or pancreatectomy, where some specialized knowledge and experience is needed. So, while the story sounds heroic, and it had a happy outcome for the patient, and it demos the value of text messaging and instant world-wide communication, even into the most remote bush or outback, please consider what this story sounds like to a seasoned surgeon:
Hi, I'm a baker. I run our local bake shop. We make pies and cakes, bread and cookies all day long . . .
Wow, I am so glad to be a finalist in the Food Network Pro Baker's Bake-Off, what an honor . . .
What's that you say? Our secret bake-off challenge is to bake a muffin? Holy crap Batman, I don't know how to bake a muffin. Quick, how can I text message the Iron Chef?
Puleeeze . . . .
Better than text-sanitize-operate-repeat.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Sure there is. Data IS a mass noun these days, no-one uses "datum/data" any more. Data is a mass noun, "37 items of" or "435 bytes of" are the units.
That makes sense...
Couldn't he just have called him on the same phone?
Maybe I'm missing something critical here like reliability of vox vs txt in that area, but cellphone+speakerphone/wired headset/bluetooth would make more sense to me than txting.
Disclaimer: The opinions and actions of the US Gov't are in no way representative of those held by this author or its ci
You have départments, which are essentially the same thing.
Maybe. Although I'm mostly saying this because I'm not sure what counties are :)
Departments (départements) were supposedly originally designed so they were 1 day*horse wide. There's a bit over 90 of them in mainland France but there are a few that are further away. Of course with those you presumably *could* push the horse more and try and get it to swim a bit. If it can hang on to a cluster of coconuts (it could grip it by the husk), it might even make it to the next department.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
http://www.thehardway.com/stories/survival.htm
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
How about the woman who managed to perform a rough and ready Ceasarian section on herself. That's pretty hardcore.
Almost everyone in the US has had a cell phone for the last couple years. Anecdotally I'd guess they hit 50% penetration among everyone between 12 and 60 somewhere between '99 and '02. My 80 year old grandparents for some reason have three between the two of them. Granted our networks aren't nearly as integrated as yours and I suspect we therefore have bigger holes in coverage...
GP poster is in the slim minority. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
That article mentioned 'April 31st'. There is no 'April 31st'. I call BS.
Now replace th doctor with a machine that passes the Turing test...
Ergo all cell phones shold have epert sstems built in, at least as a source of knowledge on all things related to the common person: survival, first aid, cooking, dating, etc.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
That occurred to me too; but if so, then it's equally impressive as a scam:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/08/0830_040830_aronralston.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/04/cnn25.tan.ralston/index.html
http://www.cmu.edu/magazine/03fall/aralston.html
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Doctor: Now that the blade is clean, put on the choke and pump the primer 6 times.
Surgeon: Okay.
Doctor: Now pull the starter handle as fast as you can.
Surgeon: It stopped.
Surgeon: NM got it going. What now?
Doctor: Wait. Give it some time to warm up a bit first.
Doctor: Okay, let it rip. Remember, start at the fourth rib, and go up to the collarbone. DO NOT OVERCUT.
Surgeon: OMG THERES BLOOD EVERYWHERE
Doctor: How's it going?
Surgeon: Good! Everything worked out great.
Please submit your comment again in voice format. I'll listen to it when I have the chance.
Seriously, both formats have advantages in different situations. If you had even read the summary you'd see that one doctor was in the UK, one was in the Congo in a 3rd world situation. I doubt that a phone call was an option. Other advantages of text include not needing to be awake at the same hour (asynchronous communication), and being able to reference the typed text several times to ensure you got it right. Also, your claim that talking is universally more accurate than text is suspicious at best.
Don't go rushing off to buy a Mac just for that reason alone, now. You can easily use "espeak" on Linux to do the same thing. I've got a script that runs DCOP calls to KDE (yeah, yeah, I haven't upgraded to the DBUS-using KDE4 yet) that reads out the subject headings email messages when they arrive so I know what email has/has not arrived.
echo "Get off the phone, Susie, I need to talk to mom" | espeak
Of course, you might have to "sudo apt-get install espeak" (or equivalent) before that.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Right, *when they arrive*.. I've had messages to/from my SO arrive as much as 2 days later. Not sure how that happens exactly, but it's been "better" since we switched to the same carrier.
By the way, Weather.com will send you text alerts for free. http://www.weather.com/mobile/customtextmessaging.html
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I did for my MLS program, I was reading how in Disaster planning, Texting is considered a godsend in disaster situations. It can make messages where normally phone calls can't make it, it can convey information fast, the network is all ready in place, and it's cheap. Also it's pretty generic - if a friend asked you to borrow his phone for a text, would you say no?
After the gulf coast storm disasters, at least one big company (I'm thinking starbucks for some reason) used Texts to get in touch with scattered employees. It saved them a lot of time and money, and got them operating faster.
Is it possible to create an *unsecure* remote shell so that I can give my home computer commands while away? Why not..? And so friends, in brief, text messages *do* in fact have use other than LOLing ur BFF, and doing remote surgery... You can monitor your torrents, and fetch new ones, kick your pesky friend off your wireless connection, write a new cron job, the possibilities are arbitrary... Just don't let anyone use your phone...
xkcd material right there
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thank you, AC. Between your suggestion and the "pumpkin thing" from earlier today, you just lifted my spirits a little higher :-)
I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
Just the other day I got a text message from my wife ("will be home soon") literally 12 hours later.
Yeah, it's even like there must have been a reason they couldn't talk to one another... Snark aside I'll admit I cheated and saw the report on BBC World news, since the details aren't actually in TFA. Being in the middle of nowhere Congo, he was getting really shitty signal on his phone and couldn't hear anything the guy in London was saying, so they texted the instructions instead.
snig
The Telegraph has an interesting article on this, plus the actual text message itself. Story is at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/3565928/British-surgeon-tells-of-how-he-carried-out-amputation-via-text-message.html
Text message was:
Start on clavicle. Remove middle third. Control and divide subsc art and vein. Divide large nerve trunks around these as prox as poses. Then come onto chest wall immed anterior and divide Pec maj origin from remaining clav. Divide pec minor insertion and (very imp) divide origin and get deep to serrates anterior. Your hand sweeps behind scapula. Divide all muscles attached to scapula. Stop muscle bleeding with count suture. Easy! Good luck. Meirion