But is $40K a lot as far as medical devices cost? How much is the x-ray machine at the doctor's office, or the ultrasound equipment at the heart specialist?
Those machines go from $50,000 (xray) to $3,000,000 (CT, Linac, MRI). QC, operators and electricity are also expensive.
That makes this device sound cheap, but it could be way overpriced if it's nothing more than a microphone hooked to a stethoscope run through some FFTs. In that case, you are paying for a database of frequency signatures. Even if it's doing some kind of sonic imaging, the techniques are well known and you are paying for a specific implementation that will soon be duplicated. Other things you might be paying for are insurance and other parasitic paperwork. Hats off to the Doctor, but I'd like more details on how the thing works.
Now security and functionality can be achieved but make no mistake, security is not convenient, always has, and always will take a lot of work to maintain both in the physical world and in the electronic one. [several false analogies follow]
Like liberty, security is always easier than the alternative. A free and secure system works for me rather than the other way around.
With software, however, it's the programmer that has to put forth the effort, not the user and these don't have to turn up in the interface. When programmers share that effort, like they do with free software, the individual's work load is greatly reduced. It takes me less effort to use a nice free browser on a free system than it does for me to repair an insecure non free system because it's browser has gaping problems.
The kind of "security" M$ has to offer is little more than inconvenience designed to make the user think everything is their fault.
Rude dude, The Bungi, points to the employee's complete and utter submission to being fired for taking a photograph that offended His Gateness. He then goes on to call me a "half brain" and other names. Here's what I see in that blog:
I made a mistake This has been pointed out many times, sometimes more politely than others.
People were rude to him for what he did. You might not have a problem with that, but I do.
Microsoft... decided... to just cut me loose before I could do any more damage.
Only a person who works for M$ would consider telling the truth to be "damage". You might be OK with the way he was treated, but I think it sucks. I brought up the point to show what happens to people who violate M$'s PR. Your advocacy of such bad behavior only goes to prove what I said is true.
The man seems to have recovered from the vicious smearing he got for his entirely innocent actions. Most people like him and he seems to have gotten back enough self esteem to be critical of M$. It's also a sign that he's no longer afraid of them, so we might imagine he's got himself a nice job away from the asshole's reach.
It's just part of Microsofts standard strategy... Release new operating system, try and make the old one look bad.
The solution is to live in the future, not the past. That way you always know that the current version of Windoze is easy to 0wn, rather than mistakenly believing what they told you about the last version.
Vista is not selling, so XP must be killed. They do this with every OS, so you might as well imagine that it's 2011 and Win9 is out and they let you down with Vista.
With reasonable design choices, I get both. With sftp and konqueror, I can transfer files without worry. With real user and process separation, I can do a lot of other things without fear. If he's forced to chose between security and convenience, his system offers neither.
The only thing that could require that would be her to do that is that she's an "avid gamer". Even that's a questionable reason now because of driver problems, but the rest is a clear call for gnu/linux:
Run Word or another word processor for college stuff - Open Office or Word through Crossover Office or emulation.
Heavy Internet surfing (multiple windows) - Any GNU/Linux Window Manager blows Windoze away in both display and security.
Store and play plenty of music - Amarok is the clear winner. With software freedom, moving your collection is easy. With Vista you will have problems.
Store and manage big digital art files, including many-layered Photoshop files - Gimp or Crossover Office again.
Operate quietly - This is easier with a PC that does not consume 500W at idle like Vista wants.
Play the latest games without turning details way down - XP still has better video drivers and speed for this.
The real clincher is that her four year old computer is no longer adequate because it needs a new fan and is malwared out. That's only a good reason to replace a computer when you are using Windoze. Work computers should run an OS that does not have malware problems and that makes it easy to transfer the data in the case of real hardware problems. Vista is going to blow out all of her favorite settings and programs, causing her all sorts of grief while she struggles to become productive again. In the case of GNU/Linux, data backups are easy, any computer will do, and all your settings stay the same.
Gaming and work should be separate issues and they would have had a lot more options if they had kept an open mind. Vista is going to be a dissapointment for both.
As always, with script-related security flaws, the easiest solution is NoScript, of course.
That or a browser and Window Manager that does not do the annoying thing in the first place. The author reports Safari falls victim but the demo did nothing to Konqueror on Etch.
Being paranoid, I restarted X. The author may have other goals and tricks for you.
Ah, a taboo topic and the mod bomb comes out. The silly AC persists:
Yeah, 40 years of commercial software have proved that it is completely unsustainable. Oh, you mean because free software is "more" sustainable? I get it, it's your way or the highway. Awesome.
No, I was pointing out that Vista is a failure. Non free software got it's start by stealing government funded software in the 1980s, so it's really only been around in it's current incarnation for 20 or 30 years. BSD and Maxsyma are examples of much robbed systems, where the "owners" attempted to cut the authors and users out so they could suck up the profits for themselves. It's been expensive, error prone and now it's bankrupt. Marketing hype has kept the non free companies around about ten years longer than they served any real purpose but the bottom line is the product non free can't really deliver. It's simply too expensive to do everything yourself, but that's what the non free companies have to do. Vista has taken six years to get out the door and it still does not work because M$ is out of companies to buy.
You are free to keep the software you own, but don't expect me to help you fix it or to pay for it unless you are willing to share and share alike. The days of taking without giving are close to over. If that leaves you feeling stranded, just remember that you are always welcome to the free software party.
Since when are 60 hour work weeks the norm? They're around, but last I knew, most people are working a standard 40 hours.
Since about 2000. The trend had already been going on but the stock crash of the late 90's and 9/11 really put the screws to everyone. People in the US now put in as many or more hours than anyone in the world. The declining earning power is something that's been going on since 1970 or so. Salaried workers at big dumb companies have been hit very hard, with many not taking vacation time for years. If you don't go along with it, you are not a team player and will soon get a vacation without end.
Here and here are more recent studdies. Things have not gotten better. Some 22% of US workers are pulling more than 48 hours a week. Want to guess what percentage of the population is self employed or on salary? The situation was well parodied by The Onion, but the situation is not very funny to anyone who wants a family.
What this all shows is that the US economy lacks real competition and is dominated by a small number of large firms who can treat their employees as they please. The rise of the "service sector" with it's franchises and the decline of manufacturing are both cause and symptoms and trading with China is a dissaster we will all regret.
This is a great incentive to take preventative action, when possible (BMI, smoking, a better diet, etc), and it is a reasonable provision when not possible.
It's not kind of incentive at all, if the company does not give you time to take action.
This will lower the insurance for the fit and healthy who never see a doctor
If you don't go see the doctor when something is wrong, you are going to cost everyone more. It's also a good idea to get yearly checkups and talk to your doctor about what's really healthy. This spots problems early, while they are easy to fix, and corrects misinformation that big food and others deal out every day. Once upon a time, companies used to pay for such checkups, often bringing doctors to the employees or having a doctor on staff, and many insurance companies still encourage these visits.
If you think insurance companies pass on savings, you are dreaming. It's kind of like Communist China - the boomers worked hard and put their money into a system that was supposed to look after them. Now that they are old, the system is shown to be bankrupt and a fraud form the beginning.
You're a higher risk so you pay more, seems like an insurance company at work to me.
Part of the obesity epidemic is the 60 hour work weeks that have become the norm, while real earning power has declined for most people. It's not like the company is going to give you the time to be healthy, so the pay cut is simply that and nothing more.
MS adopted patents as a defensive strategy (see this 1991 memo from Bill Gates.... [insipid praise of M$]... The honesty of his stance and clarity of vision is something his critics here should take note of.
I have taken note of M$'s use of patents as a weapon:
Then you can tell me about M$ honesty and their use of patents.
think about a world without patents -- how will any small company prevent an MS/Apple/Google/IBM from using/reverse-engineering/copying/whatever thier work and eroding thier business?
That's a tangent that's intersting but has nothing to do with business method and software patents, which are a novelty from the 1980s. I can easily imagine a better world without them.
Watch in amazement as the power of the Slashcode Engine provides anybody who gives a fuck with a complete history of every word you've ever posted in this forum.
I get a kick out of this sort of thing. Imagine a summer intern at some M$ PR firm having to read and make a report on all 7000+ plus Twitter comments. If you credit me with eris posts, I'm a member of the ten thousand club. Keep reading! You get 15 minutes to crap, 30 minutes for lunch and must be here between 8AM and 8PM to earn your five franks an hour. God, that's got to hurt, but these turds have shown me tremendous lists they thought would embarrass me. They must have read the majority to have found them, and that's just too funny for words.
What this is about is politics and fundamental disagreements among various vague factions of what could only be loosely defined as a "community". Don't let that stop you from making an orthogonal point to victoriously declare everything is OK...
When the software is free, what the authors think about other things does not matter. All that matters is that the authors believe in software freedom and release under a free license like the GPL. Everything else is "orthogonal" and the software goes on. M$ understands this, which is why they declared in their 1998 Halloween memo that free software has long term credibility that they can't match. M$ has worked very hard to encourage and exploit petty differences, but their efforts have all come to nothing. The proof is on my desktop, my laptop, my PDA, in my wifi access point and so on and so forth.
My AC friend has more fun, I mean "steaming bullcrap":
I'm pretty sure Microsoft have better things to do than troll a Linux website waiting for you to show your face only to - and this is the most horrible part of all - disagree with you?!
I think they have better things to do too. M$ has been trolling news groups forever and their time and money did not show up in Vista. They do seem to have fastened a large part of someone's time to me personally, which is flattering in a way - I'm getting something out of paying the M$ tax after all.
The ultimate goal of their trolling it to use Slashdot and other news groups for their own interests. They praise M$, insult "competitors", crapflood where they can, and harass genuine conversation. They would like to destroy all useful news sources and leave you with M$NBC. It's not really working out for them, but I'm happy to point out the little pieces of their attempted dilution where I see it. This place and others will be much nicer when they are gone.
Seems to me Shuttleworth is saying the exact opposite of what this Slashdot editor thinks.
Now, now. EWeek is reporting a success, despite what the expert they asked told them. If Slashdot reported it the other way, people would be screaming that EWeek said no such thing. He does believe that Novel has been harmed:
Developers have been abandoning Novell ever since they did the deal with Microsoft, and they have gone to Oracle and Google among others. That's unfortunate for Novell, but was a fairly predictable consequence of their decision and it ultimately portrays a lack of understanding about what it is that really empowers free software."
If there has been any fracture, it was between the community and a few companies that drank M$ patent Kool-Aid (TM, M$ corp 1980).
The "petty schisms" are all silly and the free software world has gone from strength to strength anyway. Free software encourages people to fork and merge, so disagreements are really a strength because the good results are always picked back up.
It's no wonder that even the pro-Linux posters here hate you. You drag them down by association.
As usual, the AC is not "pro-Linux". Asking the AC to understand free software is almost hopeless. Such clueless hatred along with the usual M$ PR drones, who have great memories when it comes to tracking and troubling me, means I must have said something right. Thanks AC!
Windows XP worked. There is room to improve things under the bonnet quite a lot, but not in terms of features to add.... what can they do?
They can get out of the way and let users do what they want. There are tons of features in KDE, Gnome and other desktops that you won't find in Windoze. If M$ won't relinquish their death grip on the internals, the least they can allow is people a choice of Window Managers and make it so the user can chose pieces of each without conflict as happens in the free software world. As an example, sometimes I want gedit, sometimes write, sometimes kate, sometimes bluefish, sometimes vi. The difference in sometimes is what I'm doing because each has it's strength is different situations. Text editors, of course, are only the beginning. The only way M$ can really add features that users want is to let people have control of their computers - they need to GPL all of their code. Anything short of that will fail.
Slashdot Mirror
man mount says:
Is there something I'm missing?
But is $40K a lot as far as medical devices cost? How much is the x-ray machine at the doctor's office, or the ultrasound equipment at the heart specialist?
Those machines go from $50,000 (xray) to $3,000,000 (CT, Linac, MRI). QC, operators and electricity are also expensive.
That makes this device sound cheap, but it could be way overpriced if it's nothing more than a microphone hooked to a stethoscope run through some FFTs. In that case, you are paying for a database of frequency signatures. Even if it's doing some kind of sonic imaging, the techniques are well known and you are paying for a specific implementation that will soon be duplicated. Other things you might be paying for are insurance and other parasitic paperwork. Hats off to the Doctor, but I'd like more details on how the thing works.
Now security and functionality can be achieved but make no mistake, security is not convenient, always has, and always will take a lot of work to maintain both in the physical world and in the electronic one. [several false analogies follow]
Like liberty, security is always easier than the alternative. A free and secure system works for me rather than the other way around.
With software, however, it's the programmer that has to put forth the effort, not the user and these don't have to turn up in the interface. When programmers share that effort, like they do with free software, the individual's work load is greatly reduced. It takes me less effort to use a nice free browser on a free system than it does for me to repair an insecure non free system because it's browser has gaping problems.
The kind of "security" M$ has to offer is little more than inconvenience designed to make the user think everything is their fault.
Rude dude, The Bungi, points to the employee's complete and utter submission to being fired for taking a photograph that offended His Gateness. He then goes on to call me a "half brain" and other names. Here's what I see in that blog:
I made a mistake This has been pointed out many times, sometimes more politely than others.
People were rude to him for what he did. You might not have a problem with that, but I do.
Microsoft ... decided ... to just cut me loose before I could do any more damage.
Only a person who works for M$ would consider telling the truth to be "damage". You might be OK with the way he was treated, but I think it sucks. I brought up the point to show what happens to people who violate M$'s PR. Your advocacy of such bad behavior only goes to prove what I said is true.
The man seems to have recovered from the vicious smearing he got for his entirely innocent actions. Most people like him and he seems to have gotten back enough self esteem to be critical of M$. It's also a sign that he's no longer afraid of them, so we might imagine he's got himself a nice job away from the asshole's reach.
Any employee who says something that doesn't necessarily reflect the "official" view of the company should be fired?
No, but that's how M$ works
It's just part of Microsofts standard strategy... Release new operating system, try and make the old one look bad.
The solution is to live in the future, not the past. That way you always know that the current version of Windoze is easy to 0wn, rather than mistakenly believing what they told you about the last version.
Vista is not selling, so XP must be killed. They do this with every OS, so you might as well imagine that it's 2011 and Win9 is out and they let you down with Vista.
Microsoft didn't issue a press release, one guy voiced his opinion.
If they fire him, they disagreed.
I love that false choice. If you have to chose between the two, you don't have either.
He's giving a lecture called:
Making the Tradeoff: Be Secure or Get Work Done.
With reasonable design choices, I get both. With sftp and konqueror, I can transfer files without worry. With real user and process separation, I can do a lot of other things without fear. If he's forced to chose between security and convenience, his system offers neither.
[shitty BF] made her install Vista
The only thing that could require that would be her to do that is that she's an "avid gamer". Even that's a questionable reason now because of driver problems, but the rest is a clear call for gnu/linux:
The real clincher is that her four year old computer is no longer adequate because it needs a new fan and is malwared out. That's only a good reason to replace a computer when you are using Windoze. Work computers should run an OS that does not have malware problems and that makes it easy to transfer the data in the case of real hardware problems. Vista is going to blow out all of her favorite settings and programs, causing her all sorts of grief while she struggles to become productive again. In the case of GNU/Linux, data backups are easy, any computer will do, and all your settings stay the same.
Gaming and work should be separate issues and they would have had a lot more options if they had kept an open mind. Vista is going to be a dissapointment for both.
As always, with script-related security flaws, the easiest solution is NoScript, of course.
That or a browser and Window Manager that does not do the annoying thing in the first place. The author reports Safari falls victim but the demo did nothing to Konqueror on Etch.
Being paranoid, I restarted X. The author may have other goals and tricks for you.
Ah, a taboo topic and the mod bomb comes out. The silly AC persists:
Yeah, 40 years of commercial software have proved that it is completely unsustainable. Oh, you mean because free software is "more" sustainable? I get it, it's your way or the highway. Awesome.
No, I was pointing out that Vista is a failure. Non free software got it's start by stealing government funded software in the 1980s, so it's really only been around in it's current incarnation for 20 or 30 years. BSD and Maxsyma are examples of much robbed systems, where the "owners" attempted to cut the authors and users out so they could suck up the profits for themselves. It's been expensive, error prone and now it's bankrupt. Marketing hype has kept the non free companies around about ten years longer than they served any real purpose but the bottom line is the product non free can't really deliver. It's simply too expensive to do everything yourself, but that's what the non free companies have to do. Vista has taken six years to get out the door and it still does not work because M$ is out of companies to buy.
You are free to keep the software you own, but don't expect me to help you fix it or to pay for it unless you are willing to share and share alike. The days of taking without giving are close to over. If that leaves you feeling stranded, just remember that you are always welcome to the free software party.
Since when are 60 hour work weeks the norm? They're around, but last I knew, most people are working a standard 40 hours.
Since about 2000. The trend had already been going on but the stock crash of the late 90's and 9/11 really put the screws to everyone. People in the US now put in as many or more hours than anyone in the world. The declining earning power is something that's been going on since 1970 or so. Salaried workers at big dumb companies have been hit very hard, with many not taking vacation time for years. If you don't go along with it, you are not a team player and will soon get a vacation without end.
Here and here are more recent studdies. Things have not gotten better. Some 22% of US workers are pulling more than 48 hours a week. Want to guess what percentage of the population is self employed or on salary? The situation was well parodied by The Onion, but the situation is not very funny to anyone who wants a family.
What this all shows is that the US economy lacks real competition and is dominated by a small number of large firms who can treat their employees as they please. The rise of the "service sector" with it's franchises and the decline of manufacturing are both cause and symptoms and trading with China is a dissaster we will all regret.
This is a great incentive to take preventative action, when possible (BMI, smoking, a better diet, etc), and it is a reasonable provision when not possible.
It's not kind of incentive at all, if the company does not give you time to take action.
This will lower the insurance for the fit and healthy who never see a doctor
If you don't go see the doctor when something is wrong, you are going to cost everyone more. It's also a good idea to get yearly checkups and talk to your doctor about what's really healthy. This spots problems early, while they are easy to fix, and corrects misinformation that big food and others deal out every day. Once upon a time, companies used to pay for such checkups, often bringing doctors to the employees or having a doctor on staff, and many insurance companies still encourage these visits.
If you think insurance companies pass on savings, you are dreaming. It's kind of like Communist China - the boomers worked hard and put their money into a system that was supposed to look after them. Now that they are old, the system is shown to be bankrupt and a fraud form the beginning.
You're a higher risk so you pay more, seems like an insurance company at work to me.
Part of the obesity epidemic is the 60 hour work weeks that have become the norm, while real earning power has declined for most people. It's not like the company is going to give you the time to be healthy, so the pay cut is simply that and nothing more.
MS adopted patents as a defensive strategy (see this 1991 memo from Bill Gates .... [insipid praise of M$] ... The honesty of his stance and clarity of vision is something his critics here should take note of.
I have taken note of M$'s use of patents as a weapon:
Then you can tell me about M$ honesty and their use of patents.
think about a world without patents -- how will any small company prevent an MS/Apple/Google/IBM from using/reverse-engineering/copying/whatever thier work and eroding thier business?
That's a tangent that's intersting but has nothing to do with business method and software patents, which are a novelty from the 1980s. I can easily imagine a better world without them.
Watch in amazement as the power of the Slashcode Engine provides anybody who gives a fuck with a complete history of every word you've ever posted in this forum.
I get a kick out of this sort of thing. Imagine a summer intern at some M$ PR firm having to read and make a report on all 7000+ plus Twitter comments. If you credit me with eris posts, I'm a member of the ten thousand club. Keep reading! You get 15 minutes to crap, 30 minutes for lunch and must be here between 8AM and 8PM to earn your five franks an hour. God, that's got to hurt, but these turds have shown me tremendous lists they thought would embarrass me. They must have read the majority to have found them, and that's just too funny for words.
A silly AC fails to understand free software:
What this is about is politics and fundamental disagreements among various vague factions of what could only be loosely defined as a "community". Don't let that stop you from making an orthogonal point to victoriously declare everything is OK ...
When the software is free, what the authors think about other things does not matter. All that matters is that the authors believe in software freedom and release under a free license like the GPL. Everything else is "orthogonal" and the software goes on. M$ understands this, which is why they declared in their 1998 Halloween memo that free software has long term credibility that they can't match. M$ has worked very hard to encourage and exploit petty differences, but their efforts have all come to nothing. The proof is on my desktop, my laptop, my PDA, in my wifi access point and so on and so forth.
At the same time, M$ has yet to prove that non free software is sustainable. Their little mind games have made them a lot of money, but it has not produced quality software that people want to use.
My AC friend has more fun, I mean "steaming bullcrap":
I'm pretty sure Microsoft have better things to do than troll a Linux website waiting for you to show your face only to - and this is the most horrible part of all - disagree with you?!
I think they have better things to do too. M$ has been trolling news groups forever and their time and money did not show up in Vista. They do seem to have fastened a large part of someone's time to me personally, which is flattering in a way - I'm getting something out of paying the M$ tax after all.
The ultimate goal of their trolling it to use Slashdot and other news groups for their own interests. They praise M$, insult "competitors", crapflood where they can, and harass genuine conversation. They would like to destroy all useful news sources and leave you with M$NBC. It's not really working out for them, but I'm happy to point out the little pieces of their attempted dilution where I see it. This place and others will be much nicer when they are gone.
Keep using free software!
Seems to me Shuttleworth is saying the exact opposite of what this Slashdot editor thinks.
Now, now. EWeek is reporting a success, despite what the expert they asked told them. If Slashdot reported it the other way, people would be screaming that EWeek said no such thing. He does believe that Novel has been harmed:
If there has been any fracture, it was between the community and a few companies that drank M$ patent Kool-Aid (TM, M$ corp 1980).
The "petty schisms" are all silly and the free software world has gone from strength to strength anyway. Free software encourages people to fork and merge, so disagreements are really a strength because the good results are always picked back up.
A ringing endorsement from the usual AC losers:
It's no wonder that even the pro-Linux posters here hate you. You drag them down by association.
As usual, the AC is not "pro-Linux". Asking the AC to understand free software is almost hopeless. Such clueless hatred along with the usual M$ PR drones, who have great memories when it comes to tracking and troubling me, means I must have said something right. Thanks AC!
Your churlish use of "M$" obviates any intelligent conversation we could be having about this.
Ah, so like a M$ rep, using a hypocritical insult to promise what they can't deliver.
Windows XP worked. There is room to improve things under the bonnet quite a lot, but not in terms of features to add. ... what can they do?
They can get out of the way and let users do what they want. There are tons of features in KDE, Gnome and other desktops that you won't find in Windoze. If M$ won't relinquish their death grip on the internals, the least they can allow is people a choice of Window Managers and make it so the user can chose pieces of each without conflict as happens in the free software world. As an example, sometimes I want gedit, sometimes write, sometimes kate, sometimes bluefish, sometimes vi. The difference in sometimes is what I'm doing because each has it's strength is different situations. Text editors, of course, are only the beginning. The only way M$ can really add features that users want is to let people have control of their computers - they need to GPL all of their code. Anything short of that will fail.