To be fair about it, Retail is not a place where people with tech skills find employment. Aside from one single mom-and-pop store in a city where I no longer reside, I have never run into anything but salespeople at tech stores. It's sad, but it's just the truth. Ask yourself, as a 'tech-savvy' slashdotter, if you could stand the environment and the low pay of working in a Computer Store.
Medical Device manufacturers, or their proxy, DO fully validate closed source software that is used in critical medical devices. That is part of what vendors of software like VxWorks offer to their customers. I am fairly certain that VxWorks customers get to see all the source of the base OS that they license. Everything is thoroughly audited. There is nothing fraudulent at all about keeping a body of source code 'closed' and within a company or partnership of companies, fully auditing it, and getting your code and the processes you use to develop it approved by the FDA.
There's nothing at all fraudulent about any of it. Why would you say there is? Is a company committing fraud when they don't let their competitors waltz in and look over their internal financial records openly? No, there are independent auditing processes in place to keep everybody honest. It's the same with code development in controlled and regulated environments, like for FDA regulated software.
Just because random joe blow on the Internet doesn't get to browse through a codebase doesn't render it automatically suspect.
Oh, come on, now. Tongue depressors need certification. This device uses Software, for gods sake. There will be a whole pack of 'Regulatory Affairs' people all over the project, like mud on my boots after taking our britanny out to the field on a rainy day.
There are three main classes of medical devices, ranging from bedpans to implantable pacemakers/defibrillators. All devices introduced to the market require regulatory oversight and qualification.
To be frank, the medical device industry has it all sewn up, with a close relationship and collaboration with the FDA. You ain't gonna get anything new qualified without buying into their system. Efficacy studies alone aren't going to do it.
It's hard enough to get just regular devices qualified through the process of 510K approval (where you piggyback on the history of similar devices already approved.) Lord help you if there's software involved in your product. If you're familiar with the advocates of the buzziest of leading-edge buzzwordology in software development, those are the busy-bees that you're gonna be dealing with to get your code qualified.
When a development team adopts a proprietary solution, i.e. VxWorks, there is already a lot of validation that has been performed. With an open source solution, the entire body of code would need to be thoroughly audited and qualified. This would be fine, but somebody needs to spend the big bucks getting this accomplished. Afterwards, a specific frozen snapshot of the code will be easier to qualify for future projects/products. However, your organization has now spent a whole bunch of money qualifying a codebase that your competitors, too, can take advantage of.
The medical device development field is rarely populated with philanthropists, no matter how many heartwarming testimonials are given at the annual shareholder's meeting. 'Reimbursement issues' are high on the list of requirements for any medical device development to go forward. If there isn't a good financial return forseen, a device isn't gonna get developed.
Telemedicine is a rising field. If this instrument can be used to record and upload diagnostic information, it will be of use. It doesn't need to be an AI at the other end of the remote connection, simply an expert specialist to listen. There are many remote or rural areas of the world where experts do not reside. In a networked world a device like this will allow rapid remote diagnosis. Not every local clinic is equipped with a cluster of the latest buzzword-compliant diagnostic equipment.
I got my Blade 100 at a University Auction about 9 months ago for $60.
Then, at the last similar auction (about two months ago) I saw someone wheeling out a whole skid of Sun boxes, which included a bunch of Blade 100's, that he'd probably paid about $100 for (that's about what the skid lots go for especially when they don't, duh, have boxes that duh, run windoze.)
I have so much older Sun hardware here now that the big piles are getting in the way. About half of it is Ultrasparc.
True, but you can dupe the IRIX cd set with XCDRoast (and probably plain old dd as well). From the read you get an 'iso' file that is foreign to XCDRoast, but if you burn it as a raw image to a CD, you've got your copy. So you make your copy, back up all the CD images to a few DVD ROMS, then you sell the original set back to somebody else on eBay. Done right, you pay negative money for your IRIX. Done wrong, you pay a little bit for it.
None of this is recommended, since it would be illegal.
Sun hasn't charged for 'the new OS' since they started giving away Solaris 7 years ago.
Now, I need to figure out if I can put a 'generic, cheap' DVD Rom drive in my Blade 100, since it only has a CD drive at present.
The iPod entered a market that it catalyzed in a time period when it's competitors were all small players.
This Apple Phone thing is being introduced into a crowded market, where it's one of the most expensive on the market, with features that people in these discussions on slashdot have definitely shown are fulfilled as well or better by products already on the market.
Welcome to the real world, Apple. Hope you didn't bet the whole company on this thing.
Correct. You produce your software program. It gets adopted by enough 'early adopters' who will work with a source tarball that it gets picked up by some of the distros. It becomes a 'package' for said distros and someone within that distro's community takes charge of packaging it and integrating it into said distro.
It's a far cry from the days of tossing zipped.exe files onto the web, or worse, installers that play havoc in the realm of dll hell.
It's a new world. You apparently hearken from the old world.
It's been a number of years since I used it, but I think you can use notepad.exe by just installing Wine.
Of course, the last time I ran 'Wine' for any length of time was in about 1998, and it was on top of a copy of Caldera's port of WABI to Linux. The good old days.
Apple's products have been successful because they have controlled a lot of the "freedom"
I'm sure the trains will run on time. Count me out of the Apple paradise, though.
Apple gives their community lots of time before that support gets cut off, usually two to three years.
Two or three years is NOT a long time. In many settings, that is how long it takes for a new version to be rolled out completely. Added to that the comment about 'their community' is telling: you either need to buy into the whole 'community' thing and become a singing, dancing Mac user, or just accept that they'll be obsoleting programs you like at random points in time.
Sorry, I don't fit into a 'community' nor should I have to, to get many years of use out of software I buy.
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He made most of his money off of PayPal, though.
Nobody should ever forget that.
To be fair about it, Retail is not a place where people with tech skills find employment. Aside from one single mom-and-pop store in a city where I no longer reside, I have never run into anything but salespeople at tech stores. It's sad, but it's just the truth. Ask yourself, as a 'tech-savvy' slashdotter, if you could stand the environment and the low pay of working in a Computer Store.
The Apple store doesn't sell pc-board mount DB-9 connectors. Hell, they don't even sell soldering irons.
I don't understand how the New York Times can call them the ideal techie retail store.
Maybe if your idea of 'techie' is someone who has a friend who owns the O'Reilly 'Programming Python' book, or something equally dubious.
Medical Device manufacturers, or their proxy, DO fully validate closed source software that is used in critical medical devices. That is part of what vendors of software like VxWorks offer to their customers. I am fairly certain that VxWorks customers get to see all the source of the base OS that they license. Everything is thoroughly audited. There is nothing fraudulent at all about keeping a body of source code 'closed' and within a company or partnership of companies, fully auditing it, and getting your code and the processes you use to develop it approved by the FDA. There's nothing at all fraudulent about any of it. Why would you say there is? Is a company committing fraud when they don't let their competitors waltz in and look over their internal financial records openly? No, there are independent auditing processes in place to keep everybody honest. It's the same with code development in controlled and regulated environments, like for FDA regulated software. Just because random joe blow on the Internet doesn't get to browse through a codebase doesn't render it automatically suspect.
All I got was a 'you'd have to be dumb enough to install Flash to be spammed by this site' message. Clean and efficient blocking of webgarbage.
You can make somebody your 'foe' and then mark the default moderation of 'foes' at -5 or so. Really, it's trivial these days to killfile somebody.
Oh, come on, now. Tongue depressors need certification. This device uses Software, for gods sake. There will be a whole pack of 'Regulatory Affairs' people all over the project, like mud on my boots after taking our britanny out to the field on a rainy day.
There are three main classes of medical devices, ranging from bedpans to implantable pacemakers/defibrillators. All devices introduced to the market require regulatory oversight and qualification.
To be frank, the medical device industry has it all sewn up, with a close relationship and collaboration with the FDA. You ain't gonna get anything new qualified without buying into their system. Efficacy studies alone aren't going to do it.
It's hard enough to get just regular devices qualified through the process of 510K approval (where you piggyback on the history of similar devices already approved.) Lord help you if there's software involved in your product. If you're familiar with the advocates of the buzziest of leading-edge buzzwordology in software development, those are the busy-bees that you're gonna be dealing with to get your code qualified.
When a development team adopts a proprietary solution, i.e. VxWorks, there is already a lot of validation that has been performed. With an open source solution, the entire body of code would need to be thoroughly audited and qualified. This would be fine, but somebody needs to spend the big bucks getting this accomplished. Afterwards, a specific frozen snapshot of the code will be easier to qualify for future projects/products. However, your organization has now spent a whole bunch of money qualifying a codebase that your competitors, too, can take advantage of.
The medical device development field is rarely populated with philanthropists, no matter how many heartwarming testimonials are given at the annual shareholder's meeting. 'Reimbursement issues' are high on the list of requirements for any medical device development to go forward. If there isn't a good financial return forseen, a device isn't gonna get developed.
Telemedicine is a rising field. If this instrument can be used to record and upload diagnostic information, it will be of use. It doesn't need to be an AI at the other end of the remote connection, simply an expert specialist to listen. There are many remote or rural areas of the world where experts do not reside. In a networked world a device like this will allow rapid remote diagnosis. Not every local clinic is equipped with a cluster of the latest buzzword-compliant diagnostic equipment.
That's a magic world, where software is made by elves, from a different dimension.
I got my Blade 100 at a University Auction about 9 months ago for $60. Then, at the last similar auction (about two months ago) I saw someone wheeling out a whole skid of Sun boxes, which included a bunch of Blade 100's, that he'd probably paid about $100 for (that's about what the skid lots go for especially when they don't, duh, have boxes that duh, run windoze.) I have so much older Sun hardware here now that the big piles are getting in the way. About half of it is Ultrasparc.
Sun also did this with Solaris (7) about 8 years ago.
True, but you can dupe the IRIX cd set with XCDRoast (and probably plain old dd as well). From the read you get an 'iso' file that is foreign to XCDRoast, but if you burn it as a raw image to a CD, you've got your copy. So you make your copy, back up all the CD images to a few DVD ROMS, then you sell the original set back to somebody else on eBay. Done right, you pay negative money for your IRIX. Done wrong, you pay a little bit for it.
None of this is recommended, since it would be illegal.
Sun hasn't charged for 'the new OS' since they started giving away Solaris 7 years ago. Now, I need to figure out if I can put a 'generic, cheap' DVD Rom drive in my Blade 100, since it only has a CD drive at present.
The iPod entered a market that it catalyzed in a time period when it's competitors were all small players. This Apple Phone thing is being introduced into a crowded market, where it's one of the most expensive on the market, with features that people in these discussions on slashdot have definitely shown are fulfilled as well or better by products already on the market. Welcome to the real world, Apple. Hope you didn't bet the whole company on this thing.
You're kidding, right?
Or is Apple paying you?
Cute cheerleader outfit, btw.
Correct. You produce your software program. It gets adopted by enough 'early adopters' who will work with a source tarball that it gets picked up by some of the distros. It becomes a 'package' for said distros and someone within that distro's community takes charge of packaging it and integrating it into said distro. It's a far cry from the days of tossing zipped .exe files onto the web, or worse, installers that play havoc in the realm of dll hell.
It's a new world. You apparently hearken from the old world.
It's been a number of years since I used it, but I think you can use notepad.exe by just installing Wine. Of course, the last time I ran 'Wine' for any length of time was in about 1998, and it was on top of a copy of Caldera's port of WABI to Linux. The good old days.
What's not to like about having two good choices?
From the point of view of a monomaniac 'control the whole world' type, two choices is inherently bad.
For the rest of us, the only thing not to like is that there aren't three, four, or seven good choices.
Apple's products have been successful because they have controlled a lot of the "freedom" I'm sure the trains will run on time. Count me out of the Apple paradise, though.
Apple gives their community lots of time before that support gets cut off, usually two to three years.
Two or three years is NOT a long time. In many settings, that is how long it takes for a new version to be rolled out completely. Added to that the comment about 'their community' is telling: you either need to buy into the whole 'community' thing and become a singing, dancing Mac user, or just accept that they'll be obsoleting programs you like at random points in time.
Sorry, I don't fit into a 'community' nor should I have to, to get many years of use out of software I buy.