I could not disagree more. Do you work on complex documents or spreadsheets? As a scientist in an analytical lab, I do so all the time. I could work productively from the old user interface because it was easy to get where I needed to go with a minimum of key strokes/clicks. That coupled with a VBA macro recorder made automating tasks reasonably painless. The new Office interface is horribly inefficient. Having to code VBA from scratch (since they removed the macro recorder) is more time consuming. They really screwed up the scatterplot and regression functions. After trying to use if for a year, I still abhor it. That, coupled with the objections from the statistics community concerning the unwillingness/inability of Microsoft to fix some errors and misleading choices in several algorithms has caused me to migrate away from their products to the older (but better maintained), open source tool chain of R / Sweave / LaTeX. Yes, there was a BIG learning curve, but my work is much more modular and reproducible now. And I don't need to pay Microsoft for "improvements" that I don't need and don't want.
I agree with you.
Richard Stallman tells the story of giving his copyright speech/proposal to a group of artists and authors. He was surprised by the reception he received to his proposal to limit the copyright term. He was expecting to get a lot of complaints. Instead, the audience was largely supportive. The biggest surprise was that the authors thought his proposed copyright term was too long. Evidently the publishers hold the copyright and don't do anything with it and then preclude the authors from making derivative works.
You might enjoy the book. To your point - Denninger also shows that the labor participation rate has also dropped steadily. The unemployment rate typically reported does not capture those who have stopped working. One might also note that 60% of households now receive some kind of government subsidy. Not a pretty picture...
It is technically true that the economy has recovered because the GDP measure is terribly flawed. it is defined as:
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports - imports)
Note that no distinction is made for government spending financed by tax revenue and that financed by borrowing. In his book, "Leverage" (p. 81), Karl Denninger has analyzed the official GDP data from the BEA GDP Series and debt from the Treasury's "Debt to the penny" source and has shown that when government deficit spending is removed from GDP, there has been essentially no growth in the past 30 years. This is why most of our wages have grown very slowly. The problem is that we have spent our way into a very deep hole that no matter what we do there will be a massive contraction in nominal GDP - a real depression. This is unavoidable. However, digging a deeper hole with with more debt will only make the eventual pain worse.
What we have here is an economy based on the foolish presumption that we can survive when our income and expenses are two diverging exponential functions. Our expenses have been growing much more rapidly than our income and it has all been financed with debt. This debt was used to fund immediate consumption, not to produce the means of generating more income. This is not sustainable for an individual family and is not sustainable for a nation. We now see both Greece and Italy on the verge of collapse. The US is just as vulnerable. The math says there is no doubt there will be a crash. It is only a matter of "when." We do not have the national political will to have an adult conversation about this and plan and carry out the triage approach to spending that will be required to turn this around. The best an individual can do is get out of personal debt and make preparations to survive a nasty situation.
Random people cannot insert code. Only a trusted few have write access to the git repository.
On the other hand, anyone can clone the git repository (I have one) and work on a formula. Once you come up with a new or improved formula, you can push it to your own cloned repository. Then you submit a "pull" request and one of the "trusted few" review and merge it into the main repository. Seems to me that this is the open source version of "trust, but verify." You can read more about the process here
You can always install anything you want on your own machine using the method I mentioned earlier. It is then your responsibility to know where the source came from and to exercise due diligence.
There is now quite an array of packages available for homebrew. You can browse the available packages by looking at the formula in the git repository
Also, not everything needs be a current package. You can either submit one or you can install anything you can build from source without a formula with the following command
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/foo/1.2 && make && make install && brew link foo
I think it is a bit more complicated than you suggest. I wanted to move from Mandriva to an Ubuntu based distribution. Like you noted, I thought the new Gnome and KDE were a tad bloated and wanted XFCE, so Xubuntu seemed perfect. I installed it and generally like it. However, a lot of the panels that made sysadmin easier seem to be tied to Gnome/KDE. Had trouble setting a system proxy (besides setting environment variables in my shell startup file.) I'd read the Ubuntu documentation and it referred to panels I didn't have. Figured most of it out, but took quite a bit of work. Basically, I'm pretty satisfied with Xubuntu. Looking forward to the next release which is an LTS release. I like to use my system(s) to do work, so want to get out of the 6 month upgrade cycle...
Agreed. I have similar experience and finally replaced my Mandriva 2010 system with Xubuntu for the reasons you mention. Not thrilled with the bloat in the new versions of Gnome and KDE, so Xubuntu and Xfce seemed like a reasonable path. Satisfied so far...
I largely agree. I prefer homebrew to MacPorts because
1. The concept of a "cellar" that can have many versions of a package that can easily be symbolically linked (or unlinked) into/usr/local/bin (and lib)
2. Only duplicating key system supplied resources when there is a compelling reason to do so - i.e. a key package won't build otherwise. Keeping some of these "cellar only" lets one sym link them into/usr/local/... to build the troublesome package and then unlink to get them out of the path. The troublesome package can still find the libraries in the "cellar."
I have had many fewer problems with homebrew than macPorts. YMMV...
Nah, the colleges and universities know exactly what they are doing. With cheap student loans with government guarantees, anybody with a pulse can borrow money to pay tuition. The schools fleece these "marks" with an array of remedial courses that are paid for with debt, enriching the school but don't count toward a degree. As long as the school gets money, they are happy. Take them as many times as necessary to pass. The school gets paid each time. The school can get more government funding in the form of grants by highlighting programs to help whatever underprivileged group is in vogue at the moment w/o regard for aptitude or performance.
Sadly, it is the students that get royally screwed. Higher education costs have increased more rapidly than health care costs. Students come out with a boat load of debt and job prospects that make it hard to pay it off. Then they read the fine print and realize this debt is not discharged in bankruptcy and is "the gift that keeps on giving." But hey, the bankers, the school, the profs, the textbook publishers all got paid the inflated fees. Too bad the gullible student got left holding the bag... BTW - where ARE all those jobs in STEM? They are increasingly outsourced to the third world where labor is cheaper or to people brought in on H1B visas and paid at the low end of the spectrum here...
The parent asked if I was "concerned or disgusted" over this. I think Gen. Sherman got it right when he said, "War is hell." We desire to avoid it if possible, but prosecute it to the best of our ability when forced to. It is foolish to believe that everybody in the world wants to live as good neighbors, sitting around a camp fire together singing "We are the world." There are malevolent people out there who see nothing wrong with hijacking airplanes and flying them into large buildings filled with innocent people to prove a point. Don't forget that is why we have been in Afghanistan for the last 10 years. The jihadists do not want to just "live and let live." It seems like each week I read about another young person who has sacrificed his or her life to protect our freedom. My own son is now deployed (though happily at a logistics center supporting those on the front lines.) So when I read about the possibility of tools that will let us take out these malevolent folks without the death of our troops - I celebrate.
The glove box is pretty pricey. Getting those to have sufficiently low oxygen content takes a bit of work. She made the manipulations look easy. Experienced people usually do. As one who has doe his share of work in a glove box, let me tell you that it takes a lot of practice to get to that point. The instruments used to characterize the dots are also pretty expensive. I have looked at my share in the transmission electron microscope...
Wish I had mod points... You got that exactly right. Here in the US, the politicians could not resist the clamor to repeal the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 that made that distinction between commercial and investment banks. Set us on the road to the mess we have now...
As someone who has been paying school taxes for the past 30 yrs that have increased much faster than my salary, I can honestly say I think it is time to focus more on return on investment from my tax dollars. If a student will not at least try their best to do the work and behave sufficiently to not distract others, I don't want to pay to indulge them any longer. If their parents want to pay to waste this money, fine. I'm fed up. If I don't produce, my company will fire me and they really don't care if I like it. It is time for these over-indulged kids to get an introduction to the real world.
Only on the zeroth order. Each individual engages the senses differently (as the rest of your post actually suggests.) Some are more visual - we need to see an image or a graph. For me, this was especially important for three-dimensional concepts. Software helps me here... Others respond better to a hands on (kinesthetic) approach. The image doesn't cut it for them, but assembling a model makes the connection. Others respond more strongly to auditory cues. As the parent noted, each student needs to understand how they learn and structure their own learning. I think the key to success is for the student to take ownership of the process and the outcome.
I have used Keynote and especially like the presenter view. Find it far superior to PowerPoint.
I have also used the beamer class for LaTeX (from the TeX Live distribution), using R for data analysis that needed to be included. I have also used Inkscape to draw SVG graphics to be included - typically as PDF (saved as EPS, converted to compressed PDF using epstopdf.) This latter approach has the advantage of being completely Open Source. All the packages are well-supported and have active user communities that answer well-posed questions. This is not a WYSIWG approach, but can make a good presentation. The approach follows Donald Knuth's planned workflow: the author concentrates on the content of the presentation and leaves the typesetting to the computer. The software encourages a well-structured presentation.
As others have noted, any presentation software can be used thoughtlessly (without regard for the audience) to make a horrible presentation. I admit that I am drawn to Knuth's approach of concentration my efforts on what I want to communicate to my audience and trying to give them a good return on their investment of their time and to let the software help to help achieve that goal./PP
The school districts and universities compensate faculty and a fraction of the revenue they pay for text books would pay for the compensation required to write the books and a support staff to help with figures. Books are revised more frequently than needed to get the revenue from a new edition rather than because of the need for new material at the level of most courses that have textbooks. The taxpayers (for school districts) and college students pay for much they don't need because of this racket. That said, the life of electronic devices may be really short in the hands of students. I always thought the solution would be to distribute PDF copies of all the texts on USB sticks and print out the pages they need for the day on grayscale high speed copiers. The students could mark up the copies and keep them in notebooks and use the PDFs at home. Inexpensive, recycled PCs would be sufficient to help low income students...
Sounds like the error the music publishers made in the early days of digital music. Look how Apple and iTunes changed that with reasonable fees. The fees charged for scientific articles are ridiculous. The big publishing houses reap tremendous profit for what? The authors submit electronic copies with publication-ready figures and all the information required to generate a BibTeX citation. Referees are volunteers. Print editions are fast becoming dinosaurs... PDFs are much easier to file...
Here's a novel solution: give away the PDFs and get revenue via advertising: Put ads for equipment/reagents/services on the download page.
You miss the point. The change is a royal pain for all affected and does very little if any good for energy savings. I agree with the others who say pick one and stick with it. Arizona has it right. The rest of the states in the USA should join AZ.
You make some good points. I would like to build on one of them. Might I suggest that there is a middle ground on your point #2 that I believe would cover the most people and permit freedom of choice. As one with libertarian leanings I prefer this. We could say "Care is not free. To be covered under our social contract you MUST purchase insurance. The math forces the conclusion that we simply cannot provide all care to all people without regard for the ability to pay. By having a large pool of people purchasing insurance, we can provide the most care to the most people."
We will do our part to make premiums affordable for the lowest income section of our population. Still, this will force them to make some hard choices. They still need to pay their part to insure that their needs are met. In a free society, people need to be able to "opt out." Opting out has consequences - if you choose this and then need care, it is on a cash basis, or no care. Free people must take the consequences, good or bad, of their decisions. If you don't have insurance or the cash, you don't get the care and die. It was your willing choice.
Even so, if we all pay into an insurance pool we still can't afford to provide all care to all people. The math tells us that the cost of care is growing much more rapidly than our production. These are diverging exponential functions and are simply not sustainable. Our technology is growing faster than our ability to pay for it. There will have to be some sort of triage. Because it is a pooled system, those responsible for managing our collective funds must have a seat at the table. They represent our interest of making certain that public funds do the most good for the most people. Sarah Palin did the nation a great disservice by poisoning the national debate calling this process "death panels." That turned a national conversation that we needed to have into a national food fight. Yes, these decisions have life and death consequences. So do many others we have without rancor. Death is a part of life. We need to make certain that each person is able to face it with dignity and is treated with great compassion. However, end of life care is typically very expensive and often either futile or creates more (expensive) suffering with little potential for recovery. In those instances, compassionate, humane hospice care is warranted. These decisions are typically difficult for the patient and family. Unless the patient and family is paying the cost of the care, a sad fact of life is that those responsible for the fund need a seat at the table. During those discussions about ourselves our our loved ones we likely won't like what the accountants tell us. That is OK. We still need to listen and realize that our rights and needs are not the only ones that need to be considered when someone else is paying. Not liking to hear this does not make it untrue or unnecessary.
Setting up database software is easy; designing a proper database for a given research project takes much more thought and often quite a bit of experimentation evaluating prototypes. That said, it is a good exercise for a research scientist because it helps to see the interrelationships/dependencies between the variables in the data set.
Beginners often design a system that is far too complicated and needs far more "care and feeding" than the project warrants. Been there done that don't want to do it again.
As others have mentioned, I like to keep things simple. While one can store large binary objects in a database, I prefer to store the key descriptors and conditions ( with electron microscope images it is key instrument, specimen, and project information) in the database along with a directory path (or a way to create it) to the large image data sets.
The real question the research scientist needs to tackle is the use cases they have for the database. What queries do they need to make and what should those queries return. Again, in my experience, the database project can take on a life of its own and consume many more resources than the value it delivers. The most successful cases I have seen involved close collaboration between patient database designers/administrators and principal investigators.
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I could not disagree more. Do you work on complex documents or spreadsheets? As a scientist in an analytical lab, I do so all the time. I could work productively from the old user interface because it was easy to get where I needed to go with a minimum of key strokes/clicks. That coupled with a VBA macro recorder made automating tasks reasonably painless. The new Office interface is horribly inefficient. Having to code VBA from scratch (since they removed the macro recorder) is more time consuming. They really screwed up the scatterplot and regression functions. After trying to use if for a year, I still abhor it. That, coupled with the objections from the statistics community concerning the unwillingness/inability of Microsoft to fix some errors and misleading choices in several algorithms has caused me to migrate away from their products to the older (but better maintained), open source tool chain of R / Sweave / LaTeX. Yes, there was a BIG learning curve, but my work is much more modular and reproducible now. And I don't need to pay Microsoft for "improvements" that I don't need and don't want.
I agree with you. Richard Stallman tells the story of giving his copyright speech/proposal to a group of artists and authors. He was surprised by the reception he received to his proposal to limit the copyright term. He was expecting to get a lot of complaints. Instead, the audience was largely supportive. The biggest surprise was that the authors thought his proposed copyright term was too long. Evidently the publishers hold the copyright and don't do anything with it and then preclude the authors from making derivative works.
You might enjoy the book. To your point - Denninger also shows that the labor participation rate has also dropped steadily. The unemployment rate typically reported does not capture those who have stopped working. One might also note that 60% of households now receive some kind of government subsidy. Not a pretty picture...
It is technically true that the economy has recovered because the GDP measure is terribly flawed. it is defined as:
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports - imports)
Note that no distinction is made for government spending financed by tax revenue and that financed by borrowing. In his book, "Leverage" (p. 81), Karl Denninger has analyzed the official GDP data from the BEA GDP Series and debt from the Treasury's "Debt to the penny" source and has shown that when government deficit spending is removed from GDP, there has been essentially no growth in the past 30 years. This is why most of our wages have grown very slowly. The problem is that we have spent our way into a very deep hole that no matter what we do there will be a massive contraction in nominal GDP - a real depression. This is unavoidable. However, digging a deeper hole with with more debt will only make the eventual pain worse.
What we have here is an economy based on the foolish presumption that we can survive when our income and expenses are two diverging exponential functions. Our expenses have been growing much more rapidly than our income and it has all been financed with debt. This debt was used to fund immediate consumption, not to produce the means of generating more income. This is not sustainable for an individual family and is not sustainable for a nation. We now see both Greece and Italy on the verge of collapse. The US is just as vulnerable. The math says there is no doubt there will be a crash. It is only a matter of "when." We do not have the national political will to have an adult conversation about this and plan and carry out the triage approach to spending that will be required to turn this around. The best an individual can do is get out of personal debt and make preparations to survive a nasty situation.
Random people cannot insert code. Only a trusted few have write access to the git repository.
On the other hand, anyone can clone the git repository (I have one) and work on a formula. Once you come up with a new or improved formula, you can push it to your own cloned repository. Then you submit a "pull" request and one of the "trusted few" review and merge it into the main repository. Seems to me that this is the open source version of "trust, but verify." You can read more about the process here
You can always install anything you want on your own machine using the method I mentioned earlier. It is then your responsibility to know where the source came from and to exercise due diligence.
There is now quite an array of packages available for homebrew. You can browse the available packages by looking at the formula in the git repository
Also, not everything needs be a current package. You can either submit one or you can install anything you can build from source without a formula with the following command
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/foo/1.2 && make && make install && brew link foo
I think it is a bit more complicated than you suggest. I wanted to move from Mandriva to an Ubuntu based distribution. Like you noted, I thought the new Gnome and KDE were a tad bloated and wanted XFCE, so Xubuntu seemed perfect. I installed it and generally like it. However, a lot of the panels that made sysadmin easier seem to be tied to Gnome/KDE. Had trouble setting a system proxy (besides setting environment variables in my shell startup file.) I'd read the Ubuntu documentation and it referred to panels I didn't have. Figured most of it out, but took quite a bit of work. Basically, I'm pretty satisfied with Xubuntu. Looking forward to the next release which is an LTS release. I like to use my system(s) to do work, so want to get out of the 6 month upgrade cycle...
Agreed. I have similar experience and finally replaced my Mandriva 2010 system with Xubuntu for the reasons you mention. Not thrilled with the bloat in the new versions of Gnome and KDE, so Xubuntu and Xfce seemed like a reasonable path. Satisfied so far...
I largely agree. I prefer homebrew to MacPorts because
1. The concept of a "cellar" that can have many versions of a package that can easily be symbolically linked (or unlinked) into /usr/local/bin (and lib)
2. Only duplicating key system supplied resources when there is a compelling reason to do so - i.e. a key package won't build otherwise. Keeping some of these "cellar only" lets one sym link them into /usr/local/... to build the troublesome package and then unlink to get them out of the path. The troublesome package can still find the libraries in the "cellar."
I have had many fewer problems with homebrew than macPorts. YMMV...
Nah, the colleges and universities know exactly what they are doing. With cheap student loans with government guarantees, anybody with a pulse can borrow money to pay tuition. The schools fleece these "marks" with an array of remedial courses that are paid for with debt, enriching the school but don't count toward a degree. As long as the school gets money, they are happy. Take them as many times as necessary to pass. The school gets paid each time. The school can get more government funding in the form of grants by highlighting programs to help whatever underprivileged group is in vogue at the moment w/o regard for aptitude or performance.
Sadly, it is the students that get royally screwed. Higher education costs have increased more rapidly than health care costs. Students come out with a boat load of debt and job prospects that make it hard to pay it off. Then they read the fine print and realize this debt is not discharged in bankruptcy and is "the gift that keeps on giving." But hey, the bankers, the school, the profs, the textbook publishers all got paid the inflated fees. Too bad the gullible student got left holding the bag... BTW - where ARE all those jobs in STEM? They are increasingly outsourced to the third world where labor is cheaper or to people brought in on H1B visas and paid at the low end of the spectrum here...
The parent asked if I was "concerned or disgusted" over this. I think Gen. Sherman got it right when he said, "War is hell." We desire to avoid it if possible, but prosecute it to the best of our ability when forced to. It is foolish to believe that everybody in the world wants to live as good neighbors, sitting around a camp fire together singing "We are the world." There are malevolent people out there who see nothing wrong with hijacking airplanes and flying them into large buildings filled with innocent people to prove a point. Don't forget that is why we have been in Afghanistan for the last 10 years. The jihadists do not want to just "live and let live." It seems like each week I read about another young person who has sacrificed his or her life to protect our freedom. My own son is now deployed (though happily at a logistics center supporting those on the front lines.) So when I read about the possibility of tools that will let us take out these malevolent folks without the death of our troops - I celebrate.
The glove box is pretty pricey. Getting those to have sufficiently low oxygen content takes a bit of work. She made the manipulations look easy. Experienced people usually do. As one who has doe his share of work in a glove box, let me tell you that it takes a lot of practice to get to that point. The instruments used to characterize the dots are also pretty expensive. I have looked at my share in the transmission electron microscope...
Wish I had mod points... You got that exactly right. Here in the US, the politicians could not resist the clamor to repeal the Glass–Steagall Act of 1933 that made that distinction between commercial and investment banks. Set us on the road to the mess we have now...
As someone who has been paying school taxes for the past 30 yrs that have increased much faster than my salary, I can honestly say I think it is time to focus more on return on investment from my tax dollars. If a student will not at least try their best to do the work and behave sufficiently to not distract others, I don't want to pay to indulge them any longer. If their parents want to pay to waste this money, fine. I'm fed up. If I don't produce, my company will fire me and they really don't care if I like it. It is time for these over-indulged kids to get an introduction to the real world.
"people learn the same way"
Only on the zeroth order. Each individual engages the senses differently (as the rest of your post actually suggests.) Some are more visual - we need to see an image or a graph. For me, this was especially important for three-dimensional concepts. Software helps me here... Others respond better to a hands on (kinesthetic) approach. The image doesn't cut it for them, but assembling a model makes the connection. Others respond more strongly to auditory cues. As the parent noted, each student needs to understand how they learn and structure their own learning. I think the key to success is for the student to take ownership of the process and the outcome.
Pretty good description of the environment in a large corporation too...
"No they dont. it is ASSUMED and not written out clearly."
Have you looked at common marriage vows lately? My vows and the vows at most weddings I have attended included the line "forsaking all others..."
I have used Keynote and especially like the presenter view. Find it far superior to PowerPoint.
I have also used the beamer class for LaTeX (from the TeX Live distribution), using R for data analysis that needed to be included. I have also used Inkscape to draw SVG graphics to be included - typically as PDF (saved as EPS, converted to compressed PDF using epstopdf.) This latter approach has the advantage of being completely Open Source. All the packages are well-supported and have active user communities that answer well-posed questions. This is not a WYSIWG approach, but can make a good presentation. The approach follows Donald Knuth's planned workflow: the author concentrates on the content of the presentation and leaves the typesetting to the computer. The software encourages a well-structured presentation.
As others have noted, any presentation software can be used thoughtlessly (without regard for the audience) to make a horrible presentation. I admit that I am drawn to Knuth's approach of concentration my efforts on what I want to communicate to my audience and trying to give them a good return on their investment of their time and to let the software help to help achieve that goal./PP
The school districts and universities compensate faculty and a fraction of the revenue they pay for text books would pay for the compensation required to write the books and a support staff to help with figures. Books are revised more frequently than needed to get the revenue from a new edition rather than because of the need for new material at the level of most courses that have textbooks. The taxpayers (for school districts) and college students pay for much they don't need because of this racket. That said, the life of electronic devices may be really short in the hands of students. I always thought the solution would be to distribute PDF copies of all the texts on USB sticks and print out the pages they need for the day on grayscale high speed copiers. The students could mark up the copies and keep them in notebooks and use the PDFs at home. Inexpensive, recycled PCs would be sufficient to help low income students...
Sounds like the error the music publishers made in the early days of digital music. Look how Apple and iTunes changed that with reasonable fees. The fees charged for scientific articles are ridiculous. The big publishing houses reap tremendous profit for what? The authors submit electronic copies with publication-ready figures and all the information required to generate a BibTeX citation. Referees are volunteers. Print editions are fast becoming dinosaurs... PDFs are much easier to file... Here's a novel solution: give away the PDFs and get revenue via advertising: Put ads for equipment/reagents/services on the download page.
Great way to verify fuel quality :).
Tell me where you found this mythical creature, the "reasonable manager."
You miss the point. The change is a royal pain for all affected and does very little if any good for energy savings. I agree with the others who say pick one and stick with it. Arizona has it right. The rest of the states in the USA should join AZ.
You make some good points. I would like to build on one of them. Might I suggest that there is a middle ground on your point #2 that I believe would cover the most people and permit freedom of choice. As one with libertarian leanings I prefer this. We could say "Care is not free. To be covered under our social contract you MUST purchase insurance. The math forces the conclusion that we simply cannot provide all care to all people without regard for the ability to pay. By having a large pool of people purchasing insurance, we can provide the most care to the most people."
We will do our part to make premiums affordable for the lowest income section of our population. Still, this will force them to make some hard choices. They still need to pay their part to insure that their needs are met. In a free society, people need to be able to "opt out." Opting out has consequences - if you choose this and then need care, it is on a cash basis, or no care. Free people must take the consequences, good or bad, of their decisions. If you don't have insurance or the cash, you don't get the care and die. It was your willing choice.
Even so, if we all pay into an insurance pool we still can't afford to provide all care to all people. The math tells us that the cost of care is growing much more rapidly than our production. These are diverging exponential functions and are simply not sustainable. Our technology is growing faster than our ability to pay for it. There will have to be some sort of triage. Because it is a pooled system, those responsible for managing our collective funds must have a seat at the table. They represent our interest of making certain that public funds do the most good for the most people. Sarah Palin did the nation a great disservice by poisoning the national debate calling this process "death panels." That turned a national conversation that we needed to have into a national food fight. Yes, these decisions have life and death consequences. So do many others we have without rancor. Death is a part of life. We need to make certain that each person is able to face it with dignity and is treated with great compassion. However, end of life care is typically very expensive and often either futile or creates more (expensive) suffering with little potential for recovery. In those instances, compassionate, humane hospice care is warranted. These decisions are typically difficult for the patient and family. Unless the patient and family is paying the cost of the care, a sad fact of life is that those responsible for the fund need a seat at the table. During those discussions about ourselves our our loved ones we likely won't like what the accountants tell us. That is OK. We still need to listen and realize that our rights and needs are not the only ones that need to be considered when someone else is paying. Not liking to hear this does not make it untrue or unnecessary.
Setting up database software is easy; designing a proper database for a given research project takes much more thought and often quite a bit of experimentation evaluating prototypes. That said, it is a good exercise for a research scientist because it helps to see the interrelationships/dependencies between the variables in the data set. Beginners often design a system that is far too complicated and needs far more "care and feeding" than the project warrants. Been there done that don't want to do it again. As others have mentioned, I like to keep things simple. While one can store large binary objects in a database, I prefer to store the key descriptors and conditions ( with electron microscope images it is key instrument, specimen, and project information) in the database along with a directory path (or a way to create it) to the large image data sets. The real question the research scientist needs to tackle is the use cases they have for the database. What queries do they need to make and what should those queries return. Again, in my experience, the database project can take on a life of its own and consume many more resources than the value it delivers. The most successful cases I have seen involved close collaboration between patient database designers/administrators and principal investigators.