That's commonly called a "watchdog" and is used quite a lot in embedded systems. I've even implemented one on a PC. It interfaces with a bit of custom hardware that can reset the PC in case the watchdog software also goes astray.
You wouldn't have to patent before testing, just keep your information incredible secret
"Incredible" indeed.
Clinical tests need to be made on thousands of patients so it would very easy for a competitor to get hold of a sample. A bit of reverse engineering (now, where did put that gas chromatograph?) and they will have a pretty good idea of what the active component is. The competitor can then initiate their own testing program. Depending on how much they changed things, they can block original developer's patent either by taking out their own patent or through prior art.
wouldn't be nicer if all that money would be spent on R&D?
The $200 million, I mentioned are R&D costs. And no, there is no such thing as a free market when it comes to drugs. If a drug gets nixed by the authorities (FDA in the US), it cannot be sold. And since FDA has a very good reputation, many countries base their decisions on what FDA says so essentially that means $200 million down the drain. And those money must come from somewhere. If the drug companies aren't allowed to make a profit, either the tax-payers must pay or we don't get any new drugs. Is that what you want? I think not.
No one can get a drug to market in 3 years. There is nowhere near enough time to determine whether it actually works let alone find out if it has any harmful side effects.
Many moons ago I worked for a drug company for ten months. So let me explain how the process works:
A drug company gets an idea for a new drug. They do some initial tests and take out the patent. They have to patent early because it is impossible to keep things secret once the drug goes into trials.
At first the drug is tested on animals. However, as was discovered in Great Britain, that is no insurance that it will work properly in humans.
So the tests on humans are absolutely necessary. They also have to be performed for long enough to see if there are any side effects.
Another problem is how to produce the drug in large quantities. Scaling up production of complex chemicals is not a trivial problem.
All this testing etc. etc. takes somewhere between 10 and 15 years and may take longer if the tests do not give a conclusive result. Since a patent only lasts 25 years, that leaves not that much time to recap the expense let alone make a profit.
All together this means that developing a new drug, from idea to market costs roughly $200 million. And if a drug fails late in the test cycle, the drug company can just wave goodbye to the money spent on it.
So to me it is perfectly understandable that a drug company wants to recap its expenses.
The very nature of our plurality system ("one man, one vote," winner take all) will inevitably lead to a two-party system
Please explain why this has not happened in Western Europe. The only Western European country, that has anything resembling a two-party system is Great Britain (they have two big parties and a much smaller third party). All other Western European countries have multi-party systems with no signs of them going away.
The language of business people ine general and CPAs in particular is money.
Calculate how much a a security breach will cost them, both in direct costs (e.g. work needed to get back on track) and derived costs (e.g. lost business because customers leave) for several scenarios of different severity and present these numbers to management.
Everyone has been sitting at their desk rockin, jamming, or groovin to their favorite tunes. You are in a trance, getting work done
Unless this state is something that happens to you unexpectedly, it should be a simple thing to turn your mobile phone off. That's what I do. If people calling really want to talk to me, they will leave a message such that I can call them back.
No need to buy new headphones when the foampads crumble to dust, get them here or at your well-stocked hi-fi dealer's
I live in Denmark so the former option is unfortunately not viable. But yesterday I finally got around to going to the one dealer in Copenhagen that sells new foampads. For about a tenth of the price of a new set of PortaPros I now have a set that is as good as new. Joy!:-)
Event driven probably also means multithreaded, right? If so, here are a few pieces of advice for what to do when designing your program:
Protect shared data. Make sure that data shared between threads is protected such that only one thread at a time has access.
... and make the time this access occurs as short as possible.
Protect shared resources.
... but know thy deadlocks. Be absolutely sure that two threads do not get in a state where each thread waits for a resource that the other thread holds.
I second that. The only downside is that the foampads wear out. I'm on my second set of Portapros because I couldn't get a new set of foampads for the first set when they wore out.
You have to indent the code anyway and since the indentation change already says "new block", the brace is redundant, and therefore should not be emphasized
No, you don't. In C and languages derived from it, the compiler couldn't care less about indentation. It cares only about braces. The following code snippets will yield the exact same result even though the indentation is wildly different (underscores added to get at least some form indentation (damn you, Slashcode)):
// Snippet A if( test ) { _ ExecuteThis( something ); _ ExecuteThat( something_else ); }
// Snippet B if( test ){ ExecuteThis( something ); ExecuteThat( something_else ); }
// Snippet C if( test ){ ExecuteThis( something ); ExecuteThat( something_else ); }
whereas these two snippets will produce different results even though the indentation is the same:
// Snippet D if( test ){ _ ExecuteThis( something ); _ ExecuteThat( something_else ); }
// Snippet E if( test ) _ ExecuteThis( something ); _ ExecuteThat( something_else );
Using indentation to look for code blocks is courting disaster - unless you use Python, of course:-)
Okay, high-brow litterature it isn't but I still enjoy Rick Cook's Wizard series. The main character is a geek that gets transported to a parallel world where magic works and computers don't. He is like a fish on land until he figures out how to program magic. From there the fun begins. Also, the references to programming and computers are mostly correct.
I've been following Atkins diet for a while and it worked until I reached a line that my body refuses to cross
This is a known phenomenon and is usually called a plateau. It happens with any kind of diet if you keep at it long enough. Simply keep going and eventually you will start losing weight again.
I've lost 19 kilos using Atkins so I'd like to add a few comments:
Not all fruits are equally good when it comes to Atkins. Generally any kind of berries are OK, melon too if you don't overdo it but be careful with the rest.
For snacks, I find that nuts or a bit of hard cheese suits me best. No, I too couldn't eat butter:-)
Add potatoes and carrots to the list of bad carbohydrates.
My wife, who is a doctor, tells me that the latest research indicates that you don't need to drink up to 3 liters a day.
Yep, persistence is the key. If you start eating like you did before you went on a diet, you will put on weight again. Been there, done that.
Some people (including me) experience leg cramps when on an Atkins diet. I find that an extra intake of magnesium helps.
I'll second that. Luckily it was bundled with my Pocket PC (a Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 600) but if/when I buy another PPC, I will gladly shell out the money for a copy of PI.
Great list, a few of which are on my "A Pocket PC is useless without them"-list (Pocket Informant and WisBar Advance to be specific). I do have a couple of additions:
TimeTTracker - keeps track of how much time I use on my clients. This program pays not only for itself but also for the PDA, the GPS'es and all other software and hardware I've bought for use with my PDA.
nPOPw - freeware email-client that can delete mail from the POP3 server without going through ActiveSync. Essential for reading mail on the road.
TomTom Navigator 3 - GPS navigation with voice prompts and automatic re-routing if you take a wrong turn.
ev41 - HP 41-CX calculator clone. Greatest calculator ever:-)
Pocket Plan - Microsoft Project compatible planning if you don't use the fancy stuff
Slashdot Mirror
That's commonly called a "watchdog" and is used quite a lot in embedded systems. I've even implemented one on a PC. It interfaces with a bit of custom hardware that can reset the PC in case the watchdog software also goes astray.
It is creating a good accurate design, capturing all the requirements accurately and ensuring the end user's expectations are correct
...all of which are impossible to do until after the project has finished. For further enlightenment, please see A Rational Design Process: How and why to fake it (PDF) by David L. Parnas, especially section II.
"Incredible" indeed.
Clinical tests need to be made on thousands of patients so it would very easy for a competitor to get hold of a sample. A bit of reverse engineering (now, where did put that gas chromatograph?) and they will have a pretty good idea of what the active component is. The competitor can then initiate their own testing program. Depending on how much they changed things, they can block original developer's patent either by taking out their own patent or through prior art.
The $200 million, I mentioned are R&D costs. And no, there is no such thing as a free market when it comes to drugs. If a drug gets nixed by the authorities (FDA in the US), it cannot be sold. And since FDA has a very good reputation, many countries base their decisions on what FDA says so essentially that means $200 million down the drain. And those money must come from somewhere. If the drug companies aren't allowed to make a profit, either the tax-payers must pay or we don't get any new drugs. Is that what you want? I think not.
No one can get a drug to market in 3 years. There is nowhere near enough time to determine whether it actually works let alone find out if it has any harmful side effects.
- A drug company gets an idea for a new drug. They do some initial tests and take out the patent. They have to patent early because it is impossible to keep things secret once the drug goes into trials.
- At first the drug is tested on animals. However, as was discovered in Great Britain, that is no insurance that it will work properly in humans.
- So the tests on humans are absolutely necessary. They also have to be performed for long enough to see if there are any side effects.
- Another problem is how to produce the drug in large quantities. Scaling up production of complex chemicals is not a trivial problem.
- All this testing etc. etc. takes somewhere between 10 and 15 years and may take longer if the tests do not give a conclusive result. Since a patent only lasts 25 years, that leaves not that much time to recap the expense let alone make a profit.
- All together this means that developing a new drug, from idea to market costs roughly $200 million. And if a drug fails late in the test cycle, the drug company can just wave goodbye to the money spent on it.
So to me it is perfectly understandable that a drug company wants to recap its expenses.Yes and no. Both do the same thing - but only cars always do it in the same way.
Please explain why this has not happened in Western Europe. The only Western European country, that has anything resembling a two-party system is Great Britain (they have two big parties and a much smaller third party). All other Western European countries have multi-party systems with no signs of them going away.
Calculate how much a a security breach will cost them, both in direct costs (e.g. work needed to get back on track) and derived costs (e.g. lost business because customers leave) for several scenarios of different severity and present these numbers to management.
No, but the banks fear they will lose money and to them that's worse than any kind of terrorism you can imagine.
Unless this state is something that happens to you unexpectedly, it should be a simple thing to turn your mobile phone off. That's what I do. If people calling really want to talk to me, they will leave a message such that I can call them back.
I live in Denmark so the former option is unfortunately not viable. But yesterday I finally got around to going to the one dealer in Copenhagen that sells new foampads. For about a tenth of the price of a new set of PortaPros I now have a set that is as good as new. Joy! :-)
I second that. The only downside is that the foampads wear out. I'm on my second set of Portapros because I couldn't get a new set of foampads for the first set when they wore out.
(for a concealed weapon permit, if you're curious)
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
No further comments...
Or you could get him the IE Tab extension for Firefox.
Unfortunately, there is a staggering number of people who think they know their chosen deity but in fact are religious.
No, you don't. In C and languages derived from it, the compiler couldn't care less about indentation. It cares only about braces. The following code snippets will yield the exact same result even though the indentation is wildly different (underscores added to get at least some form indentation (damn you, Slashcode)):
whereas these two snippets will produce different results even though the indentation is the same:Using indentation to look for code blocks is courting disaster - unless you use Python, of courseOkay, high-brow litterature it isn't but I still enjoy Rick Cook's Wizard series. The main character is a geek that gets transported to a parallel world where magic works and computers don't. He is like a fish on land until he figures out how to program magic. From there the fun begins. Also, the references to programming and computers are mostly correct.
Did you use the other two gates for anything?
This is a known phenomenon and is usually called a plateau. It happens with any kind of diet if you keep at it long enough. Simply keep going and eventually you will start losing weight again.
I've lost 19 kilos using Atkins so I'd like to add a few comments:
The solution to that problem is to remove people from the process. Now, if we could get the program to de-allocate memory automatically.
Oh, wait...
Pros:
- Integrates nicely with the browser
- All bookmarks are kept in a single file that is easily transferred between PCs
- Keeps track of logins and and associated passwords. Not terribly secure but very convenient.
Cons:I'll second that. Luckily it was bundled with my Pocket PC (a Fujitsu-Siemens Pocket LOOX 600) but if/when I buy another PPC, I will gladly shell out the money for a copy of PI.