I hate to resort to definitions, but from Merriam-Webster:
>respect > Etymology: > Middle English, from Latin respectus, literally, act of looking back, from respicere to look back, regard, from > re- + specere to look -- more at spy >Date: > 14th century > >1: a relation or reference to a particular thing or situation 2: an act of giving particular attention : consideration >3 a: high or special regard : esteem > b: the quality or state of being esteemed cplural : expressions of respect or deference >4: particular, detail
Certainly Linux should respect Microsoft by definition 2, as with any strong contender. Zemlin does not appear to use definition 3, which is often what people mean by "respect" in popular usage. I think we could all agree with that.
Yep -- we have a varied audience on Slashdot though, so it is necessary to simplify things a bit. When reading esoterics on kernel hacking, I appreciate a simplified overview. You can't be an expert in every subject.
I was a chemistry major; I have seen an OH peak, and know the range, and am intimately familiar with spectroscopy... The points you raise are well taken -- yes, the local environment would depend somewhat. However, when running a typical IR spec, how much do these things affect the absorbance? Would a typical IR spec vary with lab conditions / if your AC is on/off, or if the room was hot or cold? The human body would actually provide quite a controlled environment (36 to 38 degrees, high humidity) for measurement. Thus ambient temperature would be relatively constant, provided the person can breathe at a consistent rate. I don't think this would affect readings much, and would be very easy to empirically determine.
Acetone itself would not affect it much on the levels that a ketotic person could produce. Again, I said *much*, not theoretically or at all. I think your estimates (one -> six beers) are way off.
The proof is in the data -- none of us can say that the presence of acetone would do this without trying it, and I acknowledge the improbable possibility.
Do you want to see for yourself -- look at the relative contribution to the spectrum:
A low-carb diet (e.g. Atkins diet) can indeed make you "ketotic" and raise your breath acetone level.
From your college chemistry course acetone has a C=O bond, while alcohol is a C-OH bond.
Cheap breathalyzers will use a chemical reaction to detect the alcohol in your breath -- often potassium dichromate (these are the ones that go from red to green with alcohol).
More advanced models (such as the ones the police would use, would use essentially spectroscopy to try to measure the resonant absorbance of the C-OH bond. This would not be fooled by acetone, which has a much different absorbance of the C=O (approximately 1700 cm-1 IIRC). There are also variants of this method.
If you are ever innocent and accused, get a blood test, which really is a quantitative direct measurement and can be confirmed, with very little chance of being fooled.
If you are not innocent, **IN THEORY** the easiest way to lower your reading is to silently hyperventilate prior to blowing. This would prevent equilibration of the alcohol in your bloodstream with the air in your lungs that you just breathed in and out. It is far from perfect, and I would strongly advise to never drive drunk, nor rely on this method.
The system basically has an array of sensors that sit over the patient's back, as they breathe in and out. It then displays an image from the sensors with a grey scale corresponding to the intensity of a given bin of frequencies observed by that sensor (and interpolated from nearby sensors, I presume.) You then get an image versus time of the frequencies in the lung, kind of like listening with your stethoscope in a bunch of different areas at once over many periods of time. It doesn't do any 3d imaging or interpolation.
A few studies exist validating the technique -- great that research like this is going on, but I don't think that I'd personally invest my healthcare dollars in this quite yet!
There seem to have been a rash of health-related stories lately...
I'm a doc, but from the article I have no good idea what this thing does. Sound waves to reconstruct pictures... well, this is called an ultrasound, as somebody already pointed out. Air is a really terrible conductor of ultrasound waves, so usually you'd get a black picture if you just used a u/s probe (that's why they use that goop to do ultrasounds on pregnant women.) True, with a pneumonia, you'd get a denser view, but a regular stethoscope will also tell you that.
Ok, maybe it takes the sounds it hears, and displays a histogram of intensity versus time. Well, this is called a phonocardiogram (phonogram), done for years, and HP and others even has a stethoscope that can do that. http://medgadget.com/archives/2005/05/androscope_i ste.html.
Ok, so maybe it does something more advanced, like using an array of sensors with high temporal (time) resolution with varying assumptions about sound velocity to try to interpolate a sound map of the lungs in space. Thus, low frequency sounds that come from a localized are of the lung could be assigned a color, high frequencies a different color, with the intensity of the color relating to the intensity of the sound... possible.
The things is, this sounds like somebody written by a businessman (not surprising, given the journal) and not somebody with medical knowledge.
From TFA: "Doctors often disagree about what they hear..."
Yes, but what you really care about is disagreeing about the diagnosis. It's rare, given all the tools currently available (CT scan, chest xray, good ol' fashioned stethoscope, what the patient tells you). I'm just not sure how this tool would help.
From TFA: "Kushnir has long criticized overuse of radiation among doctors."
Ooohh, hold on there... A chest x-ray is about equivalent radiation to 3 days on the beach, or a couple-hour flight (due to cosmic rays.) You don't see airline stewardesses with a lot of cancer. A CAT scan is considerably more radiation, though.
I'd like to sit down to a presentation / demonstration of the technology, but I doubt that this guy would get time in our hospital, as they seem more focused on taking the company public and making big bucks. I like to read about new technology in reputable medical journals, not Businessweek.
P.S. Last time I wrote to defend HP, people called me a corporate shill. This will show them!:p Man, some slahsdot posts can be pretty poor.
Will give you the benefit of the doubt and respond (I'm new here) -- a good defense against astroturfing would be to look at the poster's record of posting, and if they are a real person, not some corporate shill or reporter. I haven't posted too much, but I assure you I'm a real person, not a paid HP representative. If you generally hate "the man" or anybody in a position of any power, I'm sorry... however, to appeal to your rationality I would point out that corporations can *help* people. I mean, the keyboard on which you are typing was made by a corporation. Your computer was too, and its processor. If you wanted a CPU made by noncommercial hippies, it would cost *more*, and would suck. OTOH, I'm not a corporate whore, and totally agree with the excesses of corporate greed and tendency toward exploitation once they get to a position of dominance -- however, that is why you intellectually analyze each position, as we did with this response from HP.
I don't believe all corporate defenses are justified, or agree with them -- I agree with HP's response, in this specific case. No, I don't own any HP stock, nor am I affiliated with them in any way.
> That's EXACTLY what a shill would say. Shill!
See above. You are silly, and didn't address any concerns, just attacked me. I won't reply.
> So doctor, what's your take on closing the lid before flushing? I've heard that leaving it open when flushing can spray tons of fecal matter around. I prefer to close it when I'm done anyways, but it's always good to be informed.
Yes, would advise shutting it if you are concerned. There is probably a fine mist of crappy particles in every bathroom if you look hard enough. However, you must separate what is gross from what can make you sick. Every time you smell your little brother's noisy bum, you are breathing in something that was in his butt. Gross? Yes. Make you sick? Not at all, if you are healthy.
>OT, I know, but does that mean that someone who's living in a city could start to suffer respiratory problems (like asthma) despite no previous symptoms as a direct result of all the crap they're breathing in?
Yup -- inner city kids have a much higher prevalence of asthma; however, a lot of studies show that it is mostly moldy indoor conditions rather than generalized smog / particles in the city. Smog knows neither ghetto nor 5th avenue apartment, so all city-dwellers should be affected equally, but some groups will have more asthma, thought to be indoor chronic exposure.
>For perspective -- how does normal-use printer dust compare with everyday household dust? how about farm dust, such as one might breathe during a long day plowing the fields or baling hay?
Farm dust is bad, and tends to be higher exposure than household dust. For these particles that are not black, indigestible (by macrophages) particles, allergic reaction and inflammation in the lung tends to give the problem. There is something called "Farmer's lung." Wikipedia is not good on this topic, so here you go. http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/diseases/farmers_lu ng.html
>Thanks, Doc! A well-worded comment from someone who can probably spell "ridiculous" and "definitely! >by the way, totally off topic, but love your UID =)
You're welcome. Happy to provide on my (rare) day off.:)
All right, as one of Slashdot's numerous physician-readers, I'll chime in...
As your intuition tells you, breathing stuff inside your lungs is, in general, quite bad. Your lung has numerous defense mechanisms that will swallow up inhaled gunk, known as macrophages, and to some degree destroy it. This system can be easily overwhelmed, and particles that are not able to be degraded by the macrophage essentially stay in the cell forever. This occurs after chronic and relatively large volume exposure, typically over many years, as common in coal miners.
When you do your human dissections in medical school it is easy to tell the lungs of a smoker on gross examination, which have numerous black dots from macrophage-ingested carbon fragments. Even city-dwellers will have these particles. Breathing in coal particles gives something called Anthracosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracosis which can cause numerous problems later on if severe. Breathing in asbestos particles and silica dust also gives similar problems, and can even increase risk of some cancers (mesothelioma) although this is, relatively speaking, quite overblown (smoking is orders of magnitude worse for you than transient asbestos exposure.)
Reading through HP's statement (I'm new here), I feel it is actually well worded and reasonable. Walking past your laser printer is fine. We would all be suffering if it were a health risk. There is not a large amount of aerosol created by normal printer operation under normal conditions, and nanoparticles fine enough to be lobbed long distances (across the entire office) are typically breathed in and out and not lodged in the lungs.
In summary, avoid breathing in any huge ball of black powder. Don't take out the printer cartridge, shake, and sniff, three times per day. Stop smoking. Finally, always take sensationalist research with a grain of salt (not several grains of toner.)
This is well in keeping with Apple's philosophy of often breaking convention for "minimalism," which has simply been met with mixed success.
iMac -- made the "minimalist" move of omitting the floppy. I remember thinking at the time back in the late 90's this would create a data island, and being quite uncomfortable with the decision -- today, most would feel this was a smart move, and the ubiquitous USB drive has replaced the clunky floppy. Overall, a success.
Mouse -- keeps on pushing the minimalist single button. I detest this, and know many people (linux, mac, and pc users) that feel the same. Another button simply adds to the functionality -- I right click several hundred times per day, and don't want combo presses or holding down to approximate this. Overall, I view this as a bad move.
iPhone -- we'll see the verdict regarding this. I, for one, would appreciate a "hang up" button as I tend to push this a million times when I want to hang up... it is nice to have a solid feeling as you wait for the UI to respond. With a softkey, did you really hit it? Did the UI register it? You don't know without watching the screen. I view this as a bit extreme, but we will see if people complain. Buttons have their place when well-implemented.
Can you imagine getting on a "soft-key" elevator? I think it would be cool at first, then really annoying.
I'm happy that Apple pushes technology like this, but only in ways that force adoption of a better technology.
> I'd be interested to debate the ideas, point by point.
Yes, but I wrote a new book that claims that debate is better off without logic. Early debating pioneers such as Kant and Aristotle imposed their logic background on the field, and this has hobbled debate ever since. I reject the idea of convincing arguments as a good way to resolve any conflict.
3 billion base pairs in the entire human DNA sequence (give or take). Each base pair can be A, C, T, or G. (look at wikipedia or biology text for details.) Thus, each base pair can be represented by a 2 bit number (00 01 11 or 10).
Thus, 3 x 10^9 base pairs * 2 bits / base pair = 6 x 10^9 bits = 6 billion bits * 1 byte / 8 bits =.75 billion bytes =.75 GB = 750 MB.
A standard DVD holds 4.3 GB, so you could fit almost 6 full humans on a DVD. Of course, this doesn't count compression (which would be astoundingly effective given repetition and patterns in DNA sequences) nor the fact you could just encode the delta as much DNA is conserved. In fact, very little DNA varies between humans, so I'd bet you could quite deterministically encode a human in as little as 100 MB if you had a "standard human DNA sequence" for reference.
Of course, you would need some magical method to reconstruct this DNA and put it into an egg at the right timing, which would likely form an approximation of the identical twin of a person. The technology for this is not here yet. Also, this does not encode any of the proteins / apparatus / mother that is needed to go from DNA in egg to functioning human.
802.x frequencies generally don't cause any problem if they stay in the frequency range, but at extremely close proximity any RF source would give significant power to frequencies outside this range and could contribute to noise seen by the device...
In fact, Guidant released a defibrillator/pacer awhile back that programmed wirelessly, I believe in the 802.11 spectrum.
This opens up a whole realm of bad possibilities, to your ambitious neighbor kid reprogramming your device to accidental interference. Of course, the engineers prepared for this -- one must initiate programming with a wand / frequency outside 802.11, which only has a range of 2 inches. Thus, there can be no drive-by hacking of the device. This wireless device is not used much (in fact, I've never seen one outside the research setting) as the wireless convenience of programming was still regarded as a security / safety risk and did not really add too much utility...
I am a cardiologist (a lot of electrophysiologists are interested in devices, electronics, and are quite computer-savvy!)
msuave: Yes, a pacemaker or defibrillator is essentially inside a faraday cage already. They are generally titanium or steel encased, and designed to resist most radiation fields that are encountered in everyday life. However, faraday cages are not perfect, and the pacemaker has to have leads come out to thread into the heart. Just as you can use your cellphone inside a metal plane (also a faraday cage), some degree of radiation will be seen by the pacemaker electronics. In general, these devices are programmed by placing a wand over the device which essentially communicates by RF to the internal device -- if it was a perfect cage, it couldn't even be reprogrammed except by physically accessing the device (e.g. minor surgery.)
AC: Agreed regarding the sensationalism. Our practice tells EVERY pacemaker and defib recipient a list of things they should and shouldn't do. We counsel patients to hold their cellphone in their RIGHT hand and only crunch it between their right shoulder and ear, as almost all pacemakers are implanted on the left side. In general microwaves are ok, and patients are given a letter and card for the airport, where they can be wanded. Quite clearly, if somebody puts another RF emitting device RIGHT ON TOP of the implant, it could cause some interference. No, this is not unique to ipods. Again, if you actually talk to grandpa, I'm sure he knows this, especially if he was implanted by us.:) This "research" is quite ridiculous.
Finally, agreed regarding the description of the findings -- if it is just interrupting transmission of data to the programmer, this is a lot less dangerous than scrambling the internal signal seen by the pacemaker. The pacemakers are designed to recognize noise, again for the expected interference as noted above, and can handle this using many filters (e.g. something at 60 Hz is probably NOT coming from your body.)
Slashdot Mirror
I hate to resort to definitions, but from Merriam-Webster:
>respect
> Etymology:
> Middle English, from Latin respectus, literally, act of looking back, from respicere to look back, regard, from
> re- + specere to look -- more at spy
>Date:
> 14th century
>
>1: a relation or reference to a particular thing or situation 2: an act of giving particular attention : consideration
>3 a: high or special regard : esteem
> b: the quality or state of being esteemed cplural : expressions of respect or deference
>4: particular, detail
Certainly Linux should respect Microsoft by definition 2, as with any strong contender. Zemlin does not appear to use definition 3, which is often what people mean by "respect" in popular usage. I think we could all agree with that.
>So far we're on target for Dr. Feynman's predictions. :-/
:p
i n_title_1/102-8483475-6626520?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DE R&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0DEGJCHMSYY456CDH27K&pf _rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=278240301&pf_rd_i=507846
Quite unfortunately for us and NASA, when he announced these, we all assumed he was joking!
http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0393316041/ref=s9_as
Seriously though, it's a great book. Well worth the read for any self-respecting nerd.
Yep -- we have a varied audience on Slashdot though, so it is necessary to simplify things a bit. When reading esoterics on kernel hacking, I appreciate a simplified overview. You can't be an expert in every subject.
n frared/oxygen.html
I was a chemistry major; I have seen an OH peak, and know the range, and am intimately familiar with spectroscopy... The points you raise are well taken -- yes, the local environment would depend somewhat. However, when running a typical IR spec, how much do these things affect the absorbance? Would a typical IR spec vary with lab conditions / if your AC is on/off, or if the room was hot or cold? The human body would actually provide quite a controlled environment (36 to 38 degrees, high humidity) for measurement. Thus ambient temperature would be relatively constant, provided the person can breathe at a consistent rate. I don't think this would affect readings much, and would be very easy to empirically determine.
Acetone itself would not affect it much on the levels that a ketotic person could produce. Again, I said *much*, not theoretically or at all. I think your estimates (one -> six beers) are way off.
The proof is in the data -- none of us can say that the presence of acetone would do this without trying it, and I acknowledge the improbable possibility.
Do you want to see for yourself -- look at the relative contribution to the spectrum:
http://www.bluffton.edu/~bergerd/classes/CEM222/I
That is why if you are truly innocent, demand a (unfortunately invasive) blood test and put the issue to rest.
A low-carb diet (e.g. Atkins diet) can indeed make you "ketotic" and raise your breath acetone level.
e vels_produce_inaccurate_Breathalyzer_results
From your college chemistry course acetone has a C=O bond, while alcohol is a C-OH bond.
Cheap breathalyzers will use a chemical reaction to detect the alcohol in your breath -- often potassium dichromate (these are the ones that go from red to green with alcohol).
More advanced models (such as the ones the police would use, would use essentially spectroscopy to try to measure the resonant absorbance of the C-OH bond. This would not be fooled by acetone, which has a much different absorbance of the C=O (approximately 1700 cm-1 IIRC). There are also variants of this method.
If you are ever innocent and accused, get a blood test, which really is a quantitative direct measurement and can be confirmed, with very little chance of being fooled.
If you are not innocent, **IN THEORY** the easiest way to lower your reading is to silently hyperventilate prior to blowing. This would prevent equilibration of the alcohol in your bloodstream with the air in your lungs that you just breathed in and out. It is far from perfect, and I would strongly advise to never drive drunk, nor rely on this method.
Additional references: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Could_elevated_ketone_l
Ok, more on the technique of VRI (Vibration Response Imaging)
l ogy/article-11.html
Here is the best description I could find that is freely available (not in a protected journal.) http://www.ctsnet.org/sections/thoracic/newtechno
The system basically has an array of sensors that sit over the patient's back, as they breathe in and out. It then displays an image from the sensors with a grey scale corresponding to the intensity of a given bin of frequencies observed by that sensor (and interpolated from nearby sensors, I presume.) You then get an image versus time of the frequencies in the lung, kind of like listening with your stethoscope in a bunch of different areas at once over many periods of time. It doesn't do any 3d imaging or interpolation.
A few studies exist validating the technique -- great that research like this is going on, but I don't think that I'd personally invest my healthcare dollars in this quite yet!
There seem to have been a rash of health-related stories lately...
i ste.html.
:p Man, some slahsdot posts can be pretty poor.
I'm a doc, but from the article I have no good idea what this thing does. Sound waves to reconstruct pictures... well, this is called an ultrasound, as somebody already pointed out. Air is a really terrible conductor of ultrasound waves, so usually you'd get a black picture if you just used a u/s probe (that's why they use that goop to do ultrasounds on pregnant women.) True, with a pneumonia, you'd get a denser view, but a regular stethoscope will also tell you that.
Ok, maybe it takes the sounds it hears, and displays a histogram of intensity versus time. Well, this is called a phonocardiogram (phonogram), done for years, and HP and others even has a stethoscope that can do that. http://medgadget.com/archives/2005/05/androscope_
Ok, so maybe it does something more advanced, like using an array of sensors with high temporal (time) resolution with varying assumptions about sound velocity to try to interpolate a sound map of the lungs in space. Thus, low frequency sounds that come from a localized are of the lung could be assigned a color, high frequencies a different color, with the intensity of the color relating to the intensity of the sound... possible.
The things is, this sounds like somebody written by a businessman (not surprising, given the journal) and not somebody with medical knowledge.
From TFA: "Doctors often disagree about what they hear..."
Yes, but what you really care about is disagreeing about the diagnosis. It's rare, given all the tools currently available (CT scan, chest xray, good ol' fashioned stethoscope, what the patient tells you). I'm just not sure how this tool would help.
From TFA: "Kushnir has long criticized overuse of radiation among doctors."
Ooohh, hold on there... A chest x-ray is about equivalent radiation to 3 days on the beach, or a couple-hour flight (due to cosmic rays.) You don't see airline stewardesses with a lot of cancer. A CAT scan is considerably more radiation, though.
I'd like to sit down to a presentation / demonstration of the technology, but I doubt that this guy would get time in our hospital, as they seem more focused on taking the company public and making big bucks. I like to read about new technology in reputable medical journals, not Businessweek.
P.S. Last time I wrote to defend HP, people called me a corporate shill. This will show them!
Ok, have a few minutes so I'll post again.
u ng.html
:)
> Thanks for astroturfing though...
Will give you the benefit of the doubt and respond (I'm new here) -- a good defense against astroturfing would be to look at the poster's record of posting, and if they are a real person, not some corporate shill or reporter. I haven't posted too much, but I assure you I'm a real person, not a paid HP representative. If you generally hate "the man" or anybody in a position of any power, I'm sorry... however, to appeal to your rationality I would point out that corporations can *help* people. I mean, the keyboard on which you are typing was made by a corporation. Your computer was too, and its processor. If you wanted a CPU made by noncommercial hippies, it would cost *more*, and would suck. OTOH, I'm not a corporate whore, and totally agree with the excesses of corporate greed and tendency toward exploitation once they get to a position of dominance -- however, that is why you intellectually analyze each position, as we did with this response from HP.
I don't believe all corporate defenses are justified, or agree with them -- I agree with HP's response, in this specific case. No, I don't own any HP stock, nor am I affiliated with them in any way.
> That's EXACTLY what a shill would say. Shill!
See above. You are silly, and didn't address any concerns, just attacked me. I won't reply.
> So doctor, what's your take on closing the lid before flushing? I've heard that leaving it open when flushing can spray tons of fecal matter around. I prefer to close it when I'm done anyways, but it's always good to be informed.
Yes, would advise shutting it if you are concerned. There is probably a fine mist of crappy particles in every bathroom if you look hard enough. However, you must separate what is gross from what can make you sick. Every time you smell your little brother's noisy bum, you are breathing in something that was in his butt. Gross? Yes. Make you sick? Not at all, if you are healthy.
>OT, I know, but does that mean that someone who's living in a city could start to suffer respiratory problems (like asthma) despite no previous symptoms as a direct result of all the crap they're breathing in?
Yup -- inner city kids have a much higher prevalence of asthma; however, a lot of studies show that it is mostly moldy indoor conditions rather than generalized smog / particles in the city. Smog knows neither ghetto nor 5th avenue apartment, so all city-dwellers should be affected equally, but some groups will have more asthma, thought to be indoor chronic exposure.
>For perspective -- how does normal-use printer dust compare with everyday household dust? how about farm dust, such as one might breathe during a long day plowing the fields or baling hay?
Farm dust is bad, and tends to be higher exposure than household dust. For these particles that are not black, indigestible (by macrophages) particles, allergic reaction and inflammation in the lung tends to give the problem. There is something called "Farmer's lung." Wikipedia is not good on this topic, so here you go. http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/diseases/farmers_l
>Thanks, Doc! A well-worded comment from someone who can probably spell "ridiculous" and "definitely!
>by the way, totally off topic, but love your UID =)
You're welcome. Happy to provide on my (rare) day off.
All right, as one of Slashdot's numerous physician-readers, I'll chime in...
As your intuition tells you, breathing stuff inside your lungs is, in general, quite bad. Your lung has numerous defense mechanisms that will swallow up inhaled gunk, known as macrophages, and to some degree destroy it. This system can be easily overwhelmed, and particles that are not able to be degraded by the macrophage essentially stay in the cell forever. This occurs after chronic and relatively large volume exposure, typically over many years, as common in coal miners.
When you do your human dissections in medical school it is easy to tell the lungs of a smoker on gross examination, which have numerous black dots from macrophage-ingested carbon fragments. Even city-dwellers will have these particles. Breathing in coal particles gives something called Anthracosis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracosis which can cause numerous problems later on if severe. Breathing in asbestos particles and silica dust also gives similar problems, and can even increase risk of some cancers (mesothelioma) although this is, relatively speaking, quite overblown (smoking is orders of magnitude worse for you than transient asbestos exposure.)
Reading through HP's statement (I'm new here), I feel it is actually well worded and reasonable. Walking past your laser printer is fine. We would all be suffering if it were a health risk. There is not a large amount of aerosol created by normal printer operation under normal conditions, and nanoparticles fine enough to be lobbed long distances (across the entire office) are typically breathed in and out and not lodged in the lungs.
In summary, avoid breathing in any huge ball of black powder. Don't take out the printer cartridge, shake, and sniff, three times per day. Stop smoking. Finally, always take sensationalist research with a grain of salt (not several grains of toner.)
This is well in keeping with Apple's philosophy of often breaking convention for "minimalism," which has simply been met with mixed success.
iMac -- made the "minimalist" move of omitting the floppy. I remember thinking at the time back in the late 90's this would create a data island, and being quite uncomfortable with the decision -- today, most would feel this was a smart move, and the ubiquitous USB drive has replaced the clunky floppy. Overall, a success.
Mouse -- keeps on pushing the minimalist single button. I detest this, and know many people (linux, mac, and pc users) that feel the same. Another button simply adds to the functionality -- I right click several hundred times per day, and don't want combo presses or holding down to approximate this. Overall, I view this as a bad move.
iPhone -- we'll see the verdict regarding this. I, for one, would appreciate a "hang up" button as I tend to push this a million times when I want to hang up... it is nice to have a solid feeling as you wait for the UI to respond. With a softkey, did you really hit it? Did the UI register it? You don't know without watching the screen. I view this as a bit extreme, but we will see if people complain. Buttons have their place when well-implemented.
Can you imagine getting on a "soft-key" elevator? I think it would be cool at first, then really annoying.
I'm happy that Apple pushes technology like this, but only in ways that force adoption of a better technology.
Ah well, we can all "vote with our wallet..."
Yes, but I wrote a new book that claims that debate is better off without logic. Early debating pioneers such as Kant and Aristotle imposed their logic background on the field, and this has hobbled debate ever since. I reject the idea of convincing arguments as a good way to resolve any conflict.
I've often thought about this (I'm a doctor...)
.75 billion bytes = .75 GB = 750 MB.
By my calculations:
3 billion base pairs in the entire human DNA sequence (give or take). Each base pair can be A, C, T, or G. (look at wikipedia or biology text for details.) Thus, each base pair can be represented by a 2 bit number (00 01 11 or 10).
Thus, 3 x 10^9 base pairs * 2 bits / base pair = 6 x 10^9 bits = 6 billion bits * 1 byte / 8 bits =
A standard DVD holds 4.3 GB, so you could fit almost 6 full humans on a DVD. Of course, this doesn't count compression (which would be astoundingly effective given repetition and patterns in DNA sequences) nor the fact you could just encode the delta as much DNA is conserved. In fact, very little DNA varies between humans, so I'd bet you could quite deterministically encode a human in as little as 100 MB if you had a "standard human DNA sequence" for reference.
Of course, you would need some magical method to reconstruct this DNA and put it into an egg at the right timing, which would likely form an approximation of the identical twin of a person. The technology for this is not here yet. Also, this does not encode any of the proteins / apparatus / mother that is needed to go from DNA in egg to functioning human.
Still, it is interesting to think about!
802.x frequencies generally don't cause any problem if they stay in the frequency range, but at extremely close proximity any RF source would give significant power to frequencies outside this range and could contribute to noise seen by the device...
0 570.shtml
In fact, Guidant released a defibrillator/pacer awhile back that programmed wirelessly, I believe in the 802.11 spectrum.
http://www.guidant.com/news/500/web_release/nr_00
This opens up a whole realm of bad possibilities, to your ambitious neighbor kid reprogramming your device to accidental interference. Of course, the engineers prepared for this -- one must initiate programming with a wand / frequency outside 802.11, which only has a range of 2 inches. Thus, there can be no drive-by hacking of the device. This wireless device is not used much (in fact, I've never seen one outside the research setting) as the wireless convenience of programming was still regarded as a security / safety risk and did not really add too much utility...
msuave: Yes, a pacemaker or defibrillator is essentially inside a faraday cage already. They are generally titanium or steel encased, and designed to resist most radiation fields that are encountered in everyday life. However, faraday cages are not perfect, and the pacemaker has to have leads come out to thread into the heart. Just as you can use your cellphone inside a metal plane (also a faraday cage), some degree of radiation will be seen by the pacemaker electronics. In general, these devices are programmed by placing a wand over the device which essentially communicates by RF to the internal device -- if it was a perfect cage, it couldn't even be reprogrammed except by physically accessing the device (e.g. minor surgery.)
AC: Agreed regarding the sensationalism. Our practice tells EVERY pacemaker and defib recipient a list of things they should and shouldn't do. We counsel patients to hold their cellphone in their RIGHT hand and only crunch it between their right shoulder and ear, as almost all pacemakers are implanted on the left side. In general microwaves are ok, and patients are given a letter and card for the airport, where they can be wanded. Quite clearly, if somebody puts another RF emitting device RIGHT ON TOP of the implant, it could cause some interference. No, this is not unique to ipods. Again, if you actually talk to grandpa, I'm sure he knows this, especially if he was implanted by us. :) This "research" is quite ridiculous.
Finally, agreed regarding the description of the findings -- if it is just interrupting transmission of data to the programmer, this is a lot less dangerous than scrambling the internal signal seen by the pacemaker. The pacemakers are designed to recognize noise, again for the expected interference as noted above, and can handle this using many filters (e.g. something at 60 Hz is probably NOT coming from your body.)
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Vetran slashdotter, ID #101.
Wait, UIDs are not in binary?