The linux help for Gnome and KDE is pretty decent, at least as good as Windows.
That may be true, but try to set up an automated payment in GnuCash. There is a formula field that you are supposed to be able to use to calculate the different parts of the transaction. However, there seems to be no documentation on how to create a formula (what internal variables are available, etc) The built in help just says something like "Put your formula here"
I don't think most users are complaining about the documentation of the window manager. They're complaining about the documentation of the "productivity" software that they want to use. -- JimFive
lmao all those evil capital 'R' have ruined days for me, oh how I long to change them to lowercase of all priorities in life. All 3 people in the world are affected by this, come on seriously is that a real big priority?
A less contrived example. Copy all of the pictures from your digital camera to your file system based on the Date and time that they were taken: Year-Month for directory and rename the files to YYYYMMDD-HHMMSSFileName.ext
find/mnt/camera -type f -iname *.jpg -printf {} %AY%Am/%AY$Am%Ad-%AH%AM%AS%f | cp
Now, do I have to look up the man page for find whenever I want to do something like this. Yes. However, once it works I save it in a script and run it when I hook up the camera. I don't know how I would do something like this from a file manager. -- JimFive
Now, how would I build a scheme like that from a GUI? You could argue that it'd be nice to have a GUI tool to configure the netboot server, or build a CD image for me, but ultimately, such a tool is easier to write if it can just add a few commands to a boot script -- and even if such a tool doesn't exist, a half hour of my time to build that system once will pay for itself many times over, when multiplied over a network
Well, here's one way. There was a shell program on MacOS (Pre-X) called MPW. This software had a feature called Commando. You would type in the command you wanted, and then press the commando key. This would pop up a dialog box that allowed you to set all of the options for the command. When you exit the commando box the full commandline is returned to the shell, it is not executed. In addition, the shell was not a normal commandline, it was a text editor. You could highlight any line or set of lines and press the "process command" key (enter, not return) and it would execute the highlighted lines.
So, for your scripted process, you would execute each command individually, once, using the commando gui to build the command lines. Then, once the process was working, you would save off your script, (or leave it available in your default window).
I've often thought it would be a great project to do something like this for the linux commandline. The goal would be to have the commando interface read the output of --help to determine the parameters and build the gui window. This would, of course, require that all of the --help output be standardized. There are a couple alternatives to this, one would be a --commando flag that would give the supported information, another would be to use some sort of external description file to create the gui windows and return back the command line. -- JimFive
1. Instantaneous access. With this comes intuitiveness.
This is really two things. Instantaneous access is impossible, ease of use isn't. As for
Every second wasted is another second lost looking after my patients, and can be crucial in life-threatening situations.
Looking at a paper file doesn't change this.
2. 100% reliable.
Not possible. What you want is "At least as reliable as paper"
3. Comprehensive. The more I can access, the less time I will waste using other systems. I want to know the patient details, ward, BP, pulse, respiratory rate, temperature, oral intake, bowel motions, urinary output, any other parameter we might be measuring (see 4) medication (and all their changes and whether they were given), clinicians notes (both recent and old), clinical letters, allergies, radiology - everything!!!!!!
4. Flexible. Hospitals take in everyone with any complaint, and medicine is pretty much infinitely complex, and continually changing. You would not believe how frustrating it is when a computer system has a pre-defined list of diagnoses from the WHO list, and no way to add your own diagnosis - I used to have to phone up the IT department and ask them to put in a new diagnosis, just so I could write a discharge summary!
These conflict with ease of use/intuitiveness from #1. You can't have comprehensive or flexible and easy to use.
5. Involved in all aspects of patient care. I don't want the system to just give me information - I want to be able to easily input information. I also want to carry out tasks with the system - referrals, requests for investigations etc..
Also not possible to make easy.
The best you can hope for out of an EMR is "better than paper". But, you can only really get that if your formal paper process actually works well. And it almost certainly doesn't. If your personnel followed the formal process to the letter then that process would be easy to computerize. However, what really happens is that the people implementing the process make decisions that aren't formalized all the time. These ad-hoc, one-off, or just undocumented decision making processes are what kill the electronic process. It is nearly impossible to catch all of these exceptions without sitting down and learning the job of each person in the chain. (That doesn't mean the analyst would have to become a doctor, but they would have to become the doctor's scribe for a while.) Even then, the real one-off situations don't come around often enough for them to be captured on schedule.
And that doesn't even count trying to create a record that is transferrable between entities with completely different informational needs.
When I was implementing ERP systems it was practically a natural law that if the paper system doesn't work then the the electronic system wouldn't either. Now that I'm working in a hospital, I haven't seen anything that changes that. -- JimFive
That's something I've always wondered about - at what point do we stop saying "you chose to do X and will take the consequences" and start saying "you have a disorder which caused you to do X and cannot be held accountable"
Why are those the options? Just because someone has a disorder doesn't mean society can't impose consequences. What about: "you have a disorder which caused you to do X and we will do Y to ensure you can never do it again." Y ranging from: imposing cure to death penalty. Someone having a disorder causing them to do harm is WORSE than someone doing harm from their own will. I don't need to be protected from the guy who killed his wife's lover. I need to be protected from the nutcase who kills arbitrary people. -- JimFive
SCOTUS threw out his conviction because the cops violated his 4th amendment rights.
I would think that the use of electricity usage data should play out the same way, but who knows!
I think you're wrong because the information is in the hands of a third party. The cops can just go ask for it and they might get it. While I think the 4th amendment should extend to personal effects that are held by third parties I don't think the courts have agreed with me.
-- JimFive
If this was: www.didmichelleobamagangbangacollegefootballteamandgetpregnant.org people would be furious with the decision that it was legal.
I think the question would then be: Is this a parody? In the case of Glenn Beck, the site portrayed a style of presentation that Glenn Beck has used publicly on his show, with alterations to achieve the desired effect - practically the definition of parody. Has Michelle Obama publicly presented anything that is being parodied by your example? Not that I know of.
This style of argument occurs all the time. In fact you are using it yourself by substituting your outrageous url in place of the equally outrageous url that the legal case was about. -- JimFive
What is the overhead in keeping your raw file in an arbitrary order so that
offset += sizeof(record);
returns anything meaningful.
Relational tables are not ordered. But even apart from that, if all you are doing is iterating through your records then why are you using a database at all? The power of SQL is in performing actions on a set of results, e.g. UPDATE Employees
SET Salary = Salary * 1.1
WHERE Department = 'IT'
When you start treating the relational table as an ordered file you lose most (all?) of the benefit of the relational model.
Finally, MS-SQL does compile and cache SQL code so if you're not constantly building all new, ad-hoc statements you benefit from that. In almost all cases, you are not smarter than the built in optimizer.
-- JimFive
Not really sure what the outside temperature matters. ...
It could be 62f outside, and 90f in my office due to the PCs in it, I expect the system to deal with that regardless of outside temp.
If it's 62 outside and 90 in your office then you can open a vent and turn on a fan. If it's 85 outside you need the air conditioner. -- JimFive
That's what money is -- a convenient way of exchanging limited resources...When the money represents nothing, we may as well be pretending that we have infinite resources at our disposal, at which point one wonders why we're bothering with money at all.
Sort of. Money is (also) a representation of your labor, not just of your goods. Money (in the US) doesn't represent nothing, it represents the effort the laborers add to the economy. While that effort is intangible it isn't "nothing". The money supply is backed by the efforts of the people using that money. Ideally, the money supply should expand such that every product/service produced could be purchased. However, our numbers aren't quite that accurate and it is better to have a little extra money than not enough money so we aim for a small, but measurable amount of inflation.
I also want to mention that gold is also a "fiat" currency. It only has value as money if the parties to the trade declare that it has that value. -- JimFive
agreed... it creates the same potential problems as 'antibacterial' soap.
It does not. Dead virus vaccines, such as the flu shot, do not encourage the creation of resistant viruses. This is because the vaccine affects the body's immune response not the virus. Antibacterial soap, on the other hand, does encourage the creation of resistant bacteria by killing the weak bacteria and letting the strong survive. -- JimFive
Should a Canon scanner be able to spoof as an HP device then tell you to go to the HP website and download their scanner software?
In the good ole days this happened all the time with sound cards and network cards. It was also not terribly uncommon to use an Apple driver to create postscript files. -- JimFive
First, assuming this is high school and voluntary, find out what the physics teacher's lesson plan is (or, alternatively, history if they do any sort of tech history). Try, where possible, to make your projects relate to what they are learning there. If they are learning ballistic motion, make catapults or pea cannons, let them experiment with different forms of propulsion. If they are doing electricity, build a generator flashlight.
My ideal would be to have a different project each week, with maybe a couple of two-week projects at the end. For example, the flashlight, Day 1 would be wrapping the coil and showing that it can light up an LED while you shake a magnet through it. Day 2 would be storing that electricity using capacitance and Day 3 would be making a case to hold it, preferable out of something like a clear plastic bottle. Ending up with everyone having a flashlight, that they built, to take home.
I like the idea of designing and building a model rocket -- no plans or kits -- but try to push that by the administration.
I don't like the ideas of trying to throw in project management or communications or customer service that have been suggested. If I signed up for a DIY Tech Seminar and I didn't get to build cool stuff it would piss me off.
Even though I'm a programmer I wouldn't suggest going with programming, not even a programmable robot system. Perhaps a bump and turn turtle if you wanted robotics. -- JimFive
Actually, I'm positing a third factor (a congenital defect) that causes both an increase in the likelihood of a winter birth and an increase in health problems later in life. -- JimFive
I didn't say it isn't possible to strategically vote in a Range Voting system. And I didn't say that Range Voting eliminates strategic voting. I said that Range Voting alleviates (read: reduces) the problem of strategic voting. So, if you undervalue your second choice in the hopes of giving your first choice a better chance, doesn't that just more accurately reflect your desires for the election? Thus it isn't a strategic vote, it's a desirous vote. -- JimFive
And you appeared to have severely understood the purpose of an education. It's not trade school or massively subsidizing foreign monopolies but exposing students to a variety of possibilities and giving them a start for a life other than being a corporate whore.
That may be what you think the purpose of an education is. I suspect that those whose business it is to provide an educatin to the masses have a different opinion. -- JimFive
b) the baby's increased risk of health and education problems causes him or her to be born in the winter (clearly ridiculous)
I don't think that this possibility can be dismissed as easily as you would like. It is entirely possible that congenital problems with the fetus, in combination with the stress that cold weather puts on the mother, leads to an increase in premature births in the winter months. This effect, if it exists, would push a certain number of births that would have occurred in the spring, back into the winter months and those births that moved would be precisely those at risk for health problems.
N.B. I'm not actually saying this is true, I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't be so quick to discard the "clearly ridiculous" option out of hand. -- JimFive
Sure, in an unattainably perfect world with perfect election systems, this would be true. However, one most note that its impossible to have a single-winner voting system where more than two candidates stand for election where strategic voting is not rewarded if voting actually matters at all.
Range Voting seems to alleviate the problem of strategic voting.
-- JimFive
If you don't watch your three year old constantly, you are NOT a good parent
This is crap. While a three year old does need near continuous monitoring, it doesn't need absolute constant montoring. If you can't leave your 3 year old in the back yard long enough for you to grab the ball out of the garage then you have other problems.
If my parents had been watching a little more closely when I was seven, I wouldn't have fallen off the swingset and broken both of my arms.
Sure you would have, they just would have seen it happen. -- JimFive
Slashdot Mirror
Hey I know, let's start with:
...
...
man man
-k Equivalent to apropos
So maybe: man -k burn
--
JimFive
That may be true, but try to set up an automated payment in GnuCash. There is a formula field that you are supposed to be able to use to calculate the different parts of the transaction. However, there seems to be no documentation on how to create a formula (what internal variables are available, etc) The built in help just says something like "Put your formula here"
I don't think most users are complaining about the documentation of the window manager. They're complaining about the documentation of the "productivity" software that they want to use.
--
JimFive
A less contrived example. Copy all of the pictures from your digital camera to your file system based on the Date and time that they were taken: Year-Month for directory and rename the files to YYYYMMDD-HHMMSSFileName.ext
/mnt/camera -type f -iname *.jpg -printf {} %AY%Am/%AY$Am%Ad-%AH%AM%AS%f | cp
Now, do I have to look up the man page for find whenever I want to do something like this. Yes. However, once it works I save it in a script and run it when I hook up the camera. I don't know how I would do something like this from a file manager.
find
--
JimFive
Well, here's one way. There was a shell program on MacOS (Pre-X) called MPW. This software had a feature called Commando. You would type in the command you wanted, and then press the commando key. This would pop up a dialog box that allowed you to set all of the options for the command. When you exit the commando box the full commandline is returned to the shell, it is not executed. In addition, the shell was not a normal commandline, it was a text editor. You could highlight any line or set of lines and press the "process command" key (enter, not return) and it would execute the highlighted lines.
So, for your scripted process, you would execute each command individually, once, using the commando gui to build the command lines. Then, once the process was working, you would save off your script, (or leave it available in your default window).
I've often thought it would be a great project to do something like this for the linux commandline. The goal would be to have the commando interface read the output of --help to determine the parameters and build the gui window. This would, of course, require that all of the --help output be standardized. There are a couple alternatives to this, one would be a --commando flag that would give the supported information, another would be to use some sort of external description file to create the gui windows and return back the command line.
--
JimFive
This is really two things. Instantaneous access is impossible, ease of use isn't. As for
Looking at a paper file doesn't change this.
Not possible. What you want is "At least as reliable as paper"
These conflict with ease of use/intuitiveness from #1. You can't have comprehensive or flexible and easy to use.
Also not possible to make easy.
The best you can hope for out of an EMR is "better than paper". But, you can only really get that if your formal paper process actually works well. And it almost certainly doesn't. If your personnel followed the formal process to the letter then that process would be easy to computerize. However, what really happens is that the people implementing the process make decisions that aren't formalized all the time. These ad-hoc, one-off, or just undocumented decision making processes are what kill the electronic process. It is nearly impossible to catch all of these exceptions without sitting down and learning the job of each person in the chain. (That doesn't mean the analyst would have to become a doctor, but they would have to become the doctor's scribe for a while.) Even then, the real one-off situations don't come around often enough for them to be captured on schedule.
And that doesn't even count trying to create a record that is transferrable between entities with completely different informational needs.
When I was implementing ERP systems it was practically a natural law that if the paper system doesn't work then the the electronic system wouldn't either. Now that I'm working in a hospital, I haven't seen anything that changes that.
--
JimFive
Why are those the options? Just because someone has a disorder doesn't mean society can't impose consequences. What about: "you have a disorder which caused you to do X and we will do Y to ensure you can never do it again." Y ranging from: imposing cure to death penalty. Someone having a disorder causing them to do harm is WORSE than someone doing harm from their own will. I don't need to be protected from the guy who killed his wife's lover. I need to be protected from the nutcase who kills arbitrary people.
--
JimFive
atalk and smb?
Don't use atalk. Use NFS or similar.
--
JimFive
I think you're wrong because the information is in the hands of a third party. The cops can just go ask for it and they might get it. While I think the 4th amendment should extend to personal effects that are held by third parties I don't think the courts have agreed with me.
--
JimFive
I think the question would then be: Is this a parody? In the case of Glenn Beck, the site portrayed a style of presentation that Glenn Beck has used publicly on his show, with alterations to achieve the desired effect - practically the definition of parody. Has Michelle Obama publicly presented anything that is being parodied by your example? Not that I know of.
This style of argument occurs all the time. In fact you are using it yourself by substituting your outrageous url in place of the equally outrageous url that the legal case was about.
--
JimFive
What is the overhead in keeping your raw file in an arbitrary order so that
offset += sizeof(record);
returns anything meaningful.
Relational tables are not ordered. But even apart from that, if all you are doing is iterating through your records then why are you using a database at all? The power of SQL is in performing actions on a set of results, e.g.
UPDATE Employees
SET Salary = Salary * 1.1
WHERE Department = 'IT'
When you start treating the relational table as an ordered file you lose most (all?) of the benefit of the relational model.
Finally, MS-SQL does compile and cache SQL code so if you're not constantly building all new, ad-hoc statements you benefit from that. In almost all cases, you are not smarter than the built in optimizer.
--
JimFive
If it's 62 outside and 90 in your office then you can open a vent and turn on a fan. If it's 85 outside you need the air conditioner.
--
JimFive
. FTFY, I couldn't stand it any more.
--
JimFive
Where does the extra 9 dollars come from?
--
JimFive
Sort of. Money is (also) a representation of your labor, not just of your goods. Money (in the US) doesn't represent nothing, it represents the effort the laborers add to the economy. While that effort is intangible it isn't "nothing". The money supply is backed by the efforts of the people using that money. Ideally, the money supply should expand such that every product/service produced could be purchased. However, our numbers aren't quite that accurate and it is better to have a little extra money than not enough money so we aim for a small, but measurable amount of inflation.
I also want to mention that gold is also a "fiat" currency. It only has value as money if the parties to the trade declare that it has that value.
--
JimFive
It does not. Dead virus vaccines, such as the flu shot, do not encourage the creation of resistant viruses. This is because the vaccine affects the body's immune response not the virus. Antibacterial soap, on the other hand, does encourage the creation of resistant bacteria by killing the weak bacteria and letting the strong survive.
--
JimFive
In the good ole days this happened all the time with sound cards and network cards. It was also not terribly uncommon to use an Apple driver to create postscript files.
--
JimFive
Doesn't that only tell us that Thompson was sane for an hour or so on some particular date.
--
JimFive
First, assuming this is high school and voluntary, find out what the physics teacher's lesson plan is (or, alternatively, history if they do any sort of tech history). Try, where possible, to make your projects relate to what they are learning there. If they are learning ballistic motion, make catapults or pea cannons, let them experiment with different forms of propulsion. If they are doing electricity, build a generator flashlight.
My ideal would be to have a different project each week, with maybe a couple of two-week projects at the end. For example, the flashlight, Day 1 would be wrapping the coil and showing that it can light up an LED while you shake a magnet through it. Day 2 would be storing that electricity using capacitance and Day 3 would be making a case to hold it, preferable out of something like a clear plastic bottle. Ending up with everyone having a flashlight, that they built, to take home.
I like the idea of designing and building a model rocket -- no plans or kits -- but try to push that by the administration.
I don't like the ideas of trying to throw in project management or communications or customer service that have been suggested. If I signed up for a DIY Tech Seminar and I didn't get to build cool stuff it would piss me off.
Even though I'm a programmer I wouldn't suggest going with programming, not even a programmable robot system. Perhaps a bump and turn turtle if you wanted robotics.
--
JimFive
Actually, I'm positing a third factor (a congenital defect) that causes both an increase in the likelihood of a winter birth and an increase in health problems later in life.
--
JimFive
I didn't say it isn't possible to strategically vote in a Range Voting system. And I didn't say that Range Voting eliminates strategic voting. I said that Range Voting alleviates (read: reduces) the problem of strategic voting. So, if you undervalue your second choice in the hopes of giving your first choice a better chance, doesn't that just more accurately reflect your desires for the election? Thus it isn't a strategic vote, it's a desirous vote.
--
JimFive
That may be what you think the purpose of an education is. I suspect that those whose business it is to provide an educatin to the masses have a different opinion.
--
JimFive
I don't think that this possibility can be dismissed as easily as you would like. It is entirely possible that congenital problems with the fetus, in combination with the stress that cold weather puts on the mother, leads to an increase in premature births in the winter months. This effect, if it exists, would push a certain number of births that would have occurred in the spring, back into the winter months and those births that moved would be precisely those at risk for health problems.
N.B. I'm not actually saying this is true, I'm just pointing out that you shouldn't be so quick to discard the "clearly ridiculous" option out of hand.
--
JimFive
Except for the lack of a comma after Colorless.
--
JimFive
Range Voting seems to alleviate the problem of strategic voting.
--
JimFive
This is crap. While a three year old does need near continuous monitoring, it doesn't need absolute constant montoring. If you can't leave your 3 year old in the back yard long enough for you to grab the ball out of the garage then you have other problems.
Sure you would have, they just would have seen it happen.
--
JimFive