Where I'm from, aside from the taxes you pay, you only pay a nominal amount for medicines (depending on the medication;.20euro for a 50-pill beta-blocker box,.80 euro for a 28-pill omeprazol box), unless you're retired (in which case you don't pay even that). The hospital stay and everything else is completely free, and most hospital rooms are for 2 persons (there are 4 persons rooms in some pediatric departments, and there are also several one person rooms). At least in my hospital there ARE tv's and free wifi, and patients who aren't on low-calorie, low salt, or diabetic diets don't usually complain about the food. The rest is pretty much the same.
On the downside, you don't get to choose ANY doctor you want (however you get to choose one amongst the ones available at your corresponding primary health center), non-critical procedures and tests have a waiting list (which ranges from same-day for xray or next day for blood lab tests [but due to you needing to have fasted during the night] to 2-3 weeks for an MRI or similar test; and for surgeries [of course all non-critical, like hernias and such] you may have to wait as long as 2 months. If the waiting lists get too large, the system will pay for third party companies to perform the procedures/tests). The emergency rooms are almost invariably overcrowded (>90% with absolutely menial and stupid problems that would be FAR better off (and even faster!) treated by your family doctor (appointment requests are usually given for the same day or for the next day at the worst, while I've heard of people with non-urgent problems in the ER having to wait as much as 12 hours), but nevertheless, critical care is not bad (disclaimer: this is from the physician's POV as I've never had to go to the ER as a patient [touch on wood]).
And some people would consider a con the fact that doctors in the system serve as doctors, not as friends or therapists (well, it depends on the doc, really). They don't frivolously give out unrequired medication (specially antibiotics, psycotropics or opiates), but then again they don't expect people to be stoics (meaning they WILL give people with sleeping problems benzos, and they WILL give powerful painkillers [opiates and such] to people with objective injuries, and the appropriate treatments to neuropatic pains [SSRI's and such], and a long list of etceteras [for those americans fearing in a public option they might only get bare-bones medication]); so people who like to be "pampered" and given half-hour long consults may purchase private insurance (or pay the doctors out-of-pocket, they aren't crazy expensive like they are over there [for a rough estimate, say 40-60 euros for a specialist consult, depending on the specialty {OB-GYN are notorious for being crazy expensive, maybe 100 euros or so}]).
So that is that. In the end people don't give a second thought to their healthcare, and I think that is a good thing. At the very least we don't fear the cost of being ill, and much less the pòssibility of going bankrupt for it. I don't think it's a bad deal.
Doesn't this "or you have a chronic condition" actually furthers his case of how ridiculous insurance is in the US? Is it your fault you have a chronic condition? Isn't the very CONCEPT of insurance that they will take the risk/chance/luck factor out of the equation of your health costs?
I was against this crappy conciliatory bill at first (seeing as it doesn't offer a public option [disclaimer: I'm not american]), but seeing as how it will most likely run insurance companies to the ground in a few months, I'm starting to see that this was the plan all along, to walk slowly towards a public option system (in which, ironically, insurance companies would have a FAR better opportunity for existing/profiting)
but I'm under no illusions that it is the great brotherhood of equality that everybody makes it out to be.
And so you opt to believe what you wish to believe instead of AT LEAST taking into consideration what I'm telling you it is like? I don't even have an illusioned vision of what "they tell us" it is like; I work at a hospital and see how the system works. And it works like I described. the whole
And that law is about as useful to you as the paper it is written on, unless somebody is willing to enforce it to the letter.
is bullshit. I really hope you have no real-life understanding of how it works in your country, because it would worry me if those things really happened. I'm sorry if you think I'm being pedantic or exagerating what goes on, but I'm not (and on the pedantic bit, at least not intentionally). The socialized medicine system is certainly not perfect; that's why different countries have slightly different implementations of it. But that's why there's also PRIVATE medicine, where if you have the dough and wish to part from it, you may do so, and there you will find doctors more inclined to "pamper" you (ie: give you the meds that you request but don't really need, long consult times, no waiting lists, etc).
As for me being in an accident that somehow requires a heart at the same time as the prime minister... I really can't say, I have never witnessed such a case... I have witnessed less soap-opera-y cases where one patient is rich and powerful (to the degree of being in a private hospital instead of the public one) and "normal" citizen; but since the one who decides who gets what is the national transplants commitee, (which is in another city entirely; they don't even interact with the patients, so I don't see how they'd be swayed one way or another), only the organ-specific criteria matters in the end.
I don't know whether the laws over there (I'm european) are so screwed up that doctors would actually get to choose wheter to harvest someone's organs or not, but I really hope you've got it all completely wrong.
In my country, the law says that EVERYONE is an organ donor unless you actively opt-out. Families do get to refuse, I think. But the point is no doctors' god complex will have ANYTHING to do with it (I'm a doctor BTW, you insensitive clod!).
And even on the RARE cases that fall in a legal grey area, the hospital's ethics commitee will be summoned to discuss the matter and come up with the best possible solution for all parties involved. I don't know wether there a single doctor has the legal power to make such decisions (and if they do, wether they actually use that power), but that kind of worries me.
Needless to say, with everyone being a potential donor, we aren't nearly as organ-lacking over here are you seem to be over there.
By the way, the organs waiting list system over here IS strictly rational, taking into consideration every possible little thing you could ever think of. So when a person who drank his way up to almost death get a new liver, you can be absolutely sure that he didn't deprive a "more deserving" person of a liver. Again, this might also be possible due to there being more organs available.
I don't know the answer to your question, but I made myself the same question when I was in the market for one (tablet pc, wanted a mouse and keyboard that could connect wirelessly without having to use a specialized dongle).
In the end I ended up hitting ebay and seeing the numerous no-brand chinese mice they had. I figured for less than 10 bucks, I had nothing to lose. So I selected one with my requirements (5 buttons, on/off switch [for travelling]), being able to use AAA batteries, and to have a mini-usb charging jack [so that I wouldn't need to take extra/propietary/rare charging cables with me).
It arrived, and I have to say it's great: It looks sleek, super comfortable, 4 dpi settings (not that that's super useful), a charge lasts for several weeks (and I don't turn it off via the switch when I'm at home), it charges in a couple of hours (and allows me to use it while charging), the pairing is deadbeat simple (doesn't need a pincode, apparently it's a new bluetooth 2.1 thing), and when it goes into deep sleep (after a half an hour of not using it or so), it takes +/- half a second to establish the connection when you wake it up (by pressing any button) using ubuntu, don't know if it would be different in windows.
So it really makes me wonder: why would I pay $60 (or more) to logitech or some other brand for something that the chinese got really really right and are charging a fraction of it for?
From this mouse I can only draw the conclusions that either the chinese are using the same chipsets they put into big brand mice, or the bluetooth standard has really gotten so good that devices just work the way they should...
And to be perfectly honest (anal) about it, you CAN turn on "offline mode" in google docs so that you can access your files offline and create new ones.
So, on the contrary to most people here, I don't quite disagree with the "online" side of it, but rather, with the "Google" side of it.
Sure, probably everyone on/. has a Google account, but most normal people don't. My granny certainly doesn't (she has hotmail like most of the "vanilla" computer users out there), and she just bought her second netbook. Why should she be forced to create an account with some company to be able to use the office suite?
I do agree with the people here who were suggesting abiword, if hdd space and cpu power REALLY were the reason Oo got shafted.
This will just hurt Ubuntu
Yup, same thing here in Spain...
What I wonder is what do these people who speak against this sort of progress (National Healthcare, pre-filled tax sheets, etc) think about Europe (or the rest of the industrialized world, for that matter)?
Well, for me the easiest of routes was tu ultimately buy a tablet pc.
I know you must be a poor student (like me), but bear with me.
eBay is your friend. When I had such a dilemma (except not with equations because I'm a med student), I looked around for a solution and finally figured I could make with and old (2003 old) tablet pc. The kind that are tiny because they don't even have a keyboard. I ended up buying a Motion Computing M1300, for around $100, and honestly, it's the best purchase (computer-wise, and price/usefullness) I've ever made. Of course it came without even a pen, charger, HDD or battery, but all of these things, plus a mini USB bluetooth adapter and a bluetooth folding keyboard AND 1.5 GB of ram placed the whole thing at a little less than $200. And it's just a dream for taking notes, I loaded Ubuntu on it, and notes save to either some weird XML format that takes no space at all or slightly bigger PDF files (with a program called Xournal). I've never had the need to do this, but I guess you could also OCR the whole thing and make it searchable.
In the end, it's not a gaming computer, but it's definitely smaller and lightner than my normal laptop, the hell of a lot more useful (bigger screen AND faster processor, believe it or not) than a netbook, and ends up costing way less than either of them.
All of this was a little over 2 years ago, so I'd imagine with a little luck and patience you might be able to score a similar deal for an even lower price.
my 2 cents (and actually one of the few posts that actually try to address your question directly)
Sure you can make laws (almost) as clear as technical documents. In civil law systems (which according to wikipedia is the most prevalent one in the world) the outcome of a trial isn't up to a bunch of manipulable people (jury) or to a potentially corrupt judge. The laws are written as explicitly as possible and in most cases, it's pretty clear what the outcome in any lawsuit should be.
Not saying it's a perfect system, but common law isn't the only (and arguably even the better) system out there, and laws CAN be pretty straightforward. Inferring the system is as it is because it couldn't possibly be done any better (or making up excuses for it) is precisely the reason common law prevailed in aglophone countries even though it shouldn't have when written law was introduced into the system.
What I don't understand is why you think Apple should sell you precisely what you want in the way you want it.
So, buy or don't buy, jailbreak or don't jailbreak, but don't claim Apple is being unfair just because you find them inconvenient.
The thing is, one of Apple's marketing gimmicks for the iPhone isn't the phone itself but also the "possibilities" than having an app market brings, when supposedly every app a developer could imagine would be made available via that market (I can understand the no-porn policy, but only barely). But when they start denying apps because they are "redudant" (meaning competing) with their own apps, because they provide a functionality that competes with that of the carrier's (again understandable, but just barely), or because they support a technology that isn't objectionable, competing or anything like that, but that Apple SIMPLY does not like; then I have a problem with them, and had I been stupid enough to fall for the "future possibilities" tidbit of their marketing campaigns, I would certainly feel ripped off. And hence the need for an awareness "get the fact" campaign for Apple products.
Someone suggested above that they make it clear in their ads that apps are subject to a completely arbitrary acceptance process before being made available, and I don't think it's a bad idea. If they did that, they'd get some respect from me, and I for one, would stop complaining about their ill-marketed products which I don't own.
Actually this is the first thing that came to my mind. See, when the body receives a hormone it produces internally at an equal or higher dose than it normally produces it, the gland that produces it is ordered to stop doing so and in time, it tends to attrophy (sp?).
This is true for corticoids (hence the reason you can't stop taking them at once, your adrenals won't be able to start again immediatly), and anabolizing steroids (for their testosterone-like properties the leydig cells in the testes are no longer required to produce testosterone and diminish in size and number, and this causes their balls to shrink).
From the 6 month period it takes them to get back to normal sperm count it seems a similar thing is happening here (sperm require a microclimate of high concentration testosterone in the testes in order to be produced, and that's partly the reason these shots work).
I wouldn't mind at all to get a shot once a month if my gf got sick of the pill, or it caused her side-effects or (gasp!) it lowered her libido, but if my balls are going to shrink I don't think it'd be such an easy decision.
Every 2nd year med student knows the external administration of testosterone will hamper the production of sperm but I just always assumed it wasn't used for that application because of the ball-shrinkage problem.
Anyone got a link to the actual trial?
That's not entirely correct. You DO create antibodies against parasites, they're just not super effective against them. And they're actually a different kind of antibodies; whereas for virii and bacteria you creage IgG, for parasites you create (mostly) IgE, and secrete a little IgA in the mucoses to help prevent the parasites from attaching themselves to the lining of the whatever mucose they're invading.
Well, sure, but given how cheap solar cells are nowadays, aside from design costs I don't think adding a solar cell would add up to more than 5 bucks or something like that. For the few times that this feature might be useful it might actually not be such a bad idea...
But really, in other to make a "greener" phone they NEED to start designing these things with longer userful live's in mind. 18 months average is awfully small. The laptop I'm writing this on is going to be six years soon, why couldn't my phone do that? They need to make the hardware more durable and the batteries' lives too (a-la OLPC).
THEN would we be making a positive (or at least less negative) impact on earth.
I've always wondered about the peculiar way in which americans regard autism. Over here in europe it is tought (and taught) as children's psychosis, and treated as such. This news would be roughly equivalent to trying to prove (or even propose!) that schizophrenia is caused by adult vaccinations. Sure, there are developmental theories about chemicals which might possibly alter brain development, but even THOSE theories suggest the effect has to be caused during intrauterine life. And nobody would even dare to put one of those theories'place above plain and simple genetic predisposition.
Could anyone in the field help me understand why are these very unlikely theories about autism causes the source of oh so many studies and debates? Does the public not understand very well the disease? Do american psychyatrists see it as something other than children's psycosis or even a very similar schizophrenia?
I'm going to have to disagree completely with you. I've only owned 2 drives, but these were CHEAP-ass drives gotten off eBy from chinese sellers who apparently take them off the assembly line or something (no other explanation why they are so cheap). Anyways, even tho they aren't the greatest performers speedwise (4MB/s write 6 read). They are tough. Like, surviving getting machine washed tough. Like being carried around everywhere with me for 2 years (with all kinds of little accidents and crushings) tough. But of course, this particular drive I'm talking about (a 2GB) has a metallic (aluminium?) housing, so that might help too. I'm sorry but you seem to have had the worst possible luck with drives and that is that. Either that or you pick those encased in soft plastics.
Agreed. Last month I got off ebay a Motion Computing M1300. With a new battery and all it was all a little over $200. A little extra ram, an Ubuntu installation later, and bam, this thing blows all of them right out of the water. Except for the nice screen and the battery of course, but that's to be expected. I am not tied to some proprietary system to sync it up, and am able to browse the web with whatever browser I choose. I too used palms as e-book readers back in the day, so this is really an improvement. And comics... In portrait mode, at fullscreen, nothing beats this thing.
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Where I'm from, aside from the taxes you pay, you only pay a nominal amount for medicines (depending on the medication; .20euro for a 50-pill beta-blocker box, .80 euro for a 28-pill omeprazol box), unless you're retired (in which case you don't pay even that). The hospital stay and everything else is completely free, and most hospital rooms are for 2 persons (there are 4 persons rooms in some pediatric departments, and there are also several one person rooms). At least in my hospital there ARE tv's and free wifi, and patients who aren't on low-calorie, low salt, or diabetic diets don't usually complain about the food. The rest is pretty much the same.
On the downside, you don't get to choose ANY doctor you want (however you get to choose one amongst the ones available at your corresponding primary health center), non-critical procedures and tests have a waiting list (which ranges from same-day for xray or next day for blood lab tests [but due to you needing to have fasted during the night] to 2-3 weeks for an MRI or similar test; and for surgeries [of course all non-critical, like hernias and such] you may have to wait as long as 2 months. If the waiting lists get too large, the system will pay for third party companies to perform the procedures/tests). The emergency rooms are almost invariably overcrowded (>90% with absolutely menial and stupid problems that would be FAR better off (and even faster!) treated by your family doctor (appointment requests are usually given for the same day or for the next day at the worst, while I've heard of people with non-urgent problems in the ER having to wait as much as 12 hours), but nevertheless, critical care is not bad (disclaimer: this is from the physician's POV as I've never had to go to the ER as a patient [touch on wood]).
And some people would consider a con the fact that doctors in the system serve as doctors, not as friends or therapists (well, it depends on the doc, really). They don't frivolously give out unrequired medication (specially antibiotics, psycotropics or opiates), but then again they don't expect people to be stoics (meaning they WILL give people with sleeping problems benzos, and they WILL give powerful painkillers [opiates and such] to people with objective injuries, and the appropriate treatments to neuropatic pains [SSRI's and such], and a long list of etceteras [for those americans fearing in a public option they might only get bare-bones medication]); so people who like to be "pampered" and given half-hour long consults may purchase private insurance (or pay the doctors out-of-pocket, they aren't crazy expensive like they are over there [for a rough estimate, say 40-60 euros for a specialist consult, depending on the specialty {OB-GYN are notorious for being crazy expensive, maybe 100 euros or so}]).
So that is that. In the end people don't give a second thought to their healthcare, and I think that is a good thing. At the very least we don't fear the cost of being ill, and much less the pòssibility of going bankrupt for it. I don't think it's a bad deal.
Doesn't this "or you have a chronic condition" actually furthers his case of how ridiculous insurance is in the US? Is it your fault you have a chronic condition? Isn't the very CONCEPT of insurance that they will take the risk/chance/luck factor out of the equation of your health costs? I was against this crappy conciliatory bill at first (seeing as it doesn't offer a public option [disclaimer: I'm not american]), but seeing as how it will most likely run insurance companies to the ground in a few months, I'm starting to see that this was the plan all along, to walk slowly towards a public option system (in which, ironically, insurance companies would have a FAR better opportunity for existing/profiting)
but I'm under no illusions that it is the great brotherhood of equality that everybody makes it out to be.
And so you opt to believe what you wish to believe instead of AT LEAST taking into consideration what I'm telling you it is like? I don't even have an illusioned vision of what "they tell us" it is like; I work at a hospital and see how the system works. And it works like I described. the whole
And that law is about as useful to you as the paper it is written on, unless somebody is willing to enforce it to the letter.
is bullshit. I really hope you have no real-life understanding of how it works in your country, because it would worry me if those things really happened. I'm sorry if you think I'm being pedantic or exagerating what goes on, but I'm not (and on the pedantic bit, at least not intentionally). The socialized medicine system is certainly not perfect; that's why different countries have slightly different implementations of it. But that's why there's also PRIVATE medicine, where if you have the dough and wish to part from it, you may do so, and there you will find doctors more inclined to "pamper" you (ie: give you the meds that you request but don't really need, long consult times, no waiting lists, etc). As for me being in an accident that somehow requires a heart at the same time as the prime minister... I really can't say, I have never witnessed such a case... I have witnessed less soap-opera-y cases where one patient is rich and powerful (to the degree of being in a private hospital instead of the public one) and "normal" citizen; but since the one who decides who gets what is the national transplants commitee, (which is in another city entirely; they don't even interact with the patients, so I don't see how they'd be swayed one way or another), only the organ-specific criteria matters in the end.
I don't know whether the laws over there (I'm european) are so screwed up that doctors would actually get to choose wheter to harvest someone's organs or not, but I really hope you've got it all completely wrong. In my country, the law says that EVERYONE is an organ donor unless you actively opt-out. Families do get to refuse, I think. But the point is no doctors' god complex will have ANYTHING to do with it (I'm a doctor BTW, you insensitive clod!). And even on the RARE cases that fall in a legal grey area, the hospital's ethics commitee will be summoned to discuss the matter and come up with the best possible solution for all parties involved. I don't know wether there a single doctor has the legal power to make such decisions (and if they do, wether they actually use that power), but that kind of worries me. Needless to say, with everyone being a potential donor, we aren't nearly as organ-lacking over here are you seem to be over there. By the way, the organs waiting list system over here IS strictly rational, taking into consideration every possible little thing you could ever think of. So when a person who drank his way up to almost death get a new liver, you can be absolutely sure that he didn't deprive a "more deserving" person of a liver. Again, this might also be possible due to there being more organs available.
I don't know the answer to your question, but I made myself the same question when I was in the market for one (tablet pc, wanted a mouse and keyboard that could connect wirelessly without having to use a specialized dongle). In the end I ended up hitting ebay and seeing the numerous no-brand chinese mice they had. I figured for less than 10 bucks, I had nothing to lose. So I selected one with my requirements (5 buttons, on/off switch [for travelling]), being able to use AAA batteries, and to have a mini-usb charging jack [so that I wouldn't need to take extra/propietary/rare charging cables with me). It arrived, and I have to say it's great: It looks sleek, super comfortable, 4 dpi settings (not that that's super useful), a charge lasts for several weeks (and I don't turn it off via the switch when I'm at home), it charges in a couple of hours (and allows me to use it while charging), the pairing is deadbeat simple (doesn't need a pincode, apparently it's a new bluetooth 2.1 thing), and when it goes into deep sleep (after a half an hour of not using it or so), it takes +/- half a second to establish the connection when you wake it up (by pressing any button) using ubuntu, don't know if it would be different in windows. So it really makes me wonder: why would I pay $60 (or more) to logitech or some other brand for something that the chinese got really really right and are charging a fraction of it for? From this mouse I can only draw the conclusions that either the chinese are using the same chipsets they put into big brand mice, or the bluetooth standard has really gotten so good that devices just work the way they should...
And to be perfectly honest (anal) about it, you CAN turn on "offline mode" in google docs so that you can access your files offline and create new ones. So, on the contrary to most people here, I don't quite disagree with the "online" side of it, but rather, with the "Google" side of it. Sure, probably everyone on /. has a Google account, but most normal people don't. My granny certainly doesn't (she has hotmail like most of the "vanilla" computer users out there), and she just bought her second netbook. Why should she be forced to create an account with some company to be able to use the office suite?
I do agree with the people here who were suggesting abiword, if hdd space and cpu power REALLY were the reason Oo got shafted.
This will just hurt Ubuntu
Yup, same thing here in Spain... What I wonder is what do these people who speak against this sort of progress (National Healthcare, pre-filled tax sheets, etc) think about Europe (or the rest of the industrialized world, for that matter)?
Well, for me the easiest of routes was tu ultimately buy a tablet pc. I know you must be a poor student (like me), but bear with me. eBay is your friend. When I had such a dilemma (except not with equations because I'm a med student), I looked around for a solution and finally figured I could make with and old (2003 old) tablet pc. The kind that are tiny because they don't even have a keyboard. I ended up buying a Motion Computing M1300, for around $100, and honestly, it's the best purchase (computer-wise, and price/usefullness) I've ever made. Of course it came without even a pen, charger, HDD or battery, but all of these things, plus a mini USB bluetooth adapter and a bluetooth folding keyboard AND 1.5 GB of ram placed the whole thing at a little less than $200. And it's just a dream for taking notes, I loaded Ubuntu on it, and notes save to either some weird XML format that takes no space at all or slightly bigger PDF files (with a program called Xournal). I've never had the need to do this, but I guess you could also OCR the whole thing and make it searchable. In the end, it's not a gaming computer, but it's definitely smaller and lightner than my normal laptop, the hell of a lot more useful (bigger screen AND faster processor, believe it or not) than a netbook, and ends up costing way less than either of them. All of this was a little over 2 years ago, so I'd imagine with a little luck and patience you might be able to score a similar deal for an even lower price. my 2 cents (and actually one of the few posts that actually try to address your question directly)
Sure you can make laws (almost) as clear as technical documents. In civil law systems (which according to wikipedia is the most prevalent one in the world) the outcome of a trial isn't up to a bunch of manipulable people (jury) or to a potentially corrupt judge. The laws are written as explicitly as possible and in most cases, it's pretty clear what the outcome in any lawsuit should be. Not saying it's a perfect system, but common law isn't the only (and arguably even the better) system out there, and laws CAN be pretty straightforward. Inferring the system is as it is because it couldn't possibly be done any better (or making up excuses for it) is precisely the reason common law prevailed in aglophone countries even though it shouldn't have when written law was introduced into the system.
What I don't understand is why you think Apple should sell you precisely what you want in the way you want it.
So, buy or don't buy, jailbreak or don't jailbreak, but don't claim Apple is being unfair just because you find them inconvenient.
The thing is, one of Apple's marketing gimmicks for the iPhone isn't the phone itself but also the "possibilities" than having an app market brings, when supposedly every app a developer could imagine would be made available via that market (I can understand the no-porn policy, but only barely). But when they start denying apps because they are "redudant" (meaning competing) with their own apps, because they provide a functionality that competes with that of the carrier's (again understandable, but just barely), or because they support a technology that isn't objectionable, competing or anything like that, but that Apple SIMPLY does not like; then I have a problem with them, and had I been stupid enough to fall for the "future possibilities" tidbit of their marketing campaigns, I would certainly feel ripped off. And hence the need for an awareness "get the fact" campaign for Apple products. Someone suggested above that they make it clear in their ads that apps are subject to a completely arbitrary acceptance process before being made available, and I don't think it's a bad idea. If they did that, they'd get some respect from me, and I for one, would stop complaining about their ill-marketed products which I don't own.
Actually this is the first thing that came to my mind. See, when the body receives a hormone it produces internally at an equal or higher dose than it normally produces it, the gland that produces it is ordered to stop doing so and in time, it tends to attrophy (sp?). This is true for corticoids (hence the reason you can't stop taking them at once, your adrenals won't be able to start again immediatly), and anabolizing steroids (for their testosterone-like properties the leydig cells in the testes are no longer required to produce testosterone and diminish in size and number, and this causes their balls to shrink). From the 6 month period it takes them to get back to normal sperm count it seems a similar thing is happening here (sperm require a microclimate of high concentration testosterone in the testes in order to be produced, and that's partly the reason these shots work). I wouldn't mind at all to get a shot once a month if my gf got sick of the pill, or it caused her side-effects or (gasp!) it lowered her libido, but if my balls are going to shrink I don't think it'd be such an easy decision. Every 2nd year med student knows the external administration of testosterone will hamper the production of sperm but I just always assumed it wasn't used for that application because of the ball-shrinkage problem. Anyone got a link to the actual trial?
Absolutely agreed.
That's not entirely correct. You DO create antibodies against parasites, they're just not super effective against them. And they're actually a different kind of antibodies; whereas for virii and bacteria you creage IgG, for parasites you create (mostly) IgE, and secrete a little IgA in the mucoses to help prevent the parasites from attaching themselves to the lining of the whatever mucose they're invading.
Take a look at the new La Fonera 2.0. It is intended exactly for that kind of thing. And it costs less. www.fon.com
Most of these can be achieved with a modded (to add a battery pack, sd card reader and whatnot) La Fonera.
With a cheap-ass usb-ethernet adapter (or several) you'd get something pretty useful.
Well, sure, but given how cheap solar cells are nowadays, aside from design costs I don't think adding a solar cell would add up to more than 5 bucks or something like that. For the few times that this feature might be useful it might actually not be such a bad idea... But really, in other to make a "greener" phone they NEED to start designing these things with longer userful live's in mind. 18 months average is awfully small. The laptop I'm writing this on is going to be six years soon, why couldn't my phone do that? They need to make the hardware more durable and the batteries' lives too (a-la OLPC). THEN would we be making a positive (or at least less negative) impact on earth.
I've always wondered about the peculiar way in which americans regard autism. Over here in europe it is tought (and taught) as children's psychosis, and treated as such. This news would be roughly equivalent to trying to prove (or even propose!) that schizophrenia is caused by adult vaccinations. Sure, there are developmental theories about chemicals which might possibly alter brain development, but even THOSE theories suggest the effect has to be caused during intrauterine life. And nobody would even dare to put one of those theories'place above plain and simple genetic predisposition. Could anyone in the field help me understand why are these very unlikely theories about autism causes the source of oh so many studies and debates? Does the public not understand very well the disease? Do american psychyatrists see it as something other than children's psycosis or even a very similar schizophrenia?
The easiest way to go for these kinds of projects seems to be google docs. Have you tried it?
I'm going to have to disagree completely with you. I've only owned 2 drives, but these were CHEAP-ass drives gotten off eBy from chinese sellers who apparently take them off the assembly line or something (no other explanation why they are so cheap). Anyways, even tho they aren't the greatest performers speedwise (4MB/s write 6 read). They are tough. Like, surviving getting machine washed tough. Like being carried around everywhere with me for 2 years (with all kinds of little accidents and crushings) tough. But of course, this particular drive I'm talking about (a 2GB) has a metallic (aluminium?) housing, so that might help too. I'm sorry but you seem to have had the worst possible luck with drives and that is that. Either that or you pick those encased in soft plastics.
Ah, most of us prefer to act as if the third (and fourth!) movie never actually happened.
Agreed. Last month I got off ebay a Motion Computing M1300. With a new battery and all it was all a little over $200. A little extra ram, an Ubuntu installation later, and bam, this thing blows all of them right out of the water. Except for the nice screen and the battery of course, but that's to be expected. I am not tied to some proprietary system to sync it up, and am able to browse the web with whatever browser I choose. I too used palms as e-book readers back in the day, so this is really an improvement. And comics... In portrait mode, at fullscreen, nothing beats this thing.
Like periodic torrents of the whole thing? That wouldn't take too much... actually it wouldn't even have to be done by wikipedia at all.