The assertion here that policies driving availability are somehow decoupled from decisions about patient care seems...optimistic. But quite possible.
Here in Sweden (the perfectly socialized nanny-state) we have several systems where the.gov pays different kind of co-ops and private firms the same kind of money their own schools and hospitals get, on a per student/course and patient/treatment basis, respectively. They stipulate a set of rules for the operators, like basic curriculums and so on, but otherwise leave them pretty much alone. It seems to work well.
So well in fact, that the debate is not about.gov control over schools and health care, but if it's reasonable for private contractors to reap nice profits when they manage to run better schools cheaper than the government can. Personally, I think that we'd be better served by a debate about why the.gov's schools are so expensive to run and where the money is going (the answer is probably the same for a.gov school as for any large.org - there are too many entrenched middlemen).
Oh, and touching on the work after retirement issue; you're free to keep working as an old age pensioner, but if you make "too much" money in that job, your pension goes down. Seems reasonable to me, I dunno what goes on in Germany.
As noise is what limits the low end of the range of CCDs, this means we would have to improve the dynamic range of the CCDs. No, not really. If you could dynamically vary ISO from 100 to 1600 (which my Pentax K10D does statically) you'd get a 16-fold increase in the effective dynamic range from a single exposure that you'd need several exposures to get now. As you'd only bump up the ISO in the dark areas (and lower it in the bright areas), the noise would not be as prevalent as if you'd taken a single ISO 1600 shot today. And actually, the K10D has a low-budget way of doing this already - you can take up to 9 exposures and either add or average them in-camera, giving you a single low-noise, high sensitivity image. But this technique requires a tripod and stationary subject as it will take several seconds to aquire the images. It can also be done in PP, of course. But doing this on-the-fly off the sensor, in one exposure, would enable much more uses for it.
The sensors are already quite sensitive enough to capture HDR, they're just not flexible enough to do it in a single exposure - yet. Besides, physics have started getting in the way of getting more sensitive sensors as the photosites can't get much smaller and still capture enough photons to overcome the noise. You'd need larger sensors (impractical for the current mounts and lenses) and/or lower resolution (impractical for marketing purposes, but one of the main reasons I also have a six-megapixel 200-3200 ISO Pentax K110D).
Better, simpler, cheaper, and far more available results would be produced by improving the dynamic range of conventional single-CCD cameras. Or just change the ISO on the fly, while doing the read-out from the sensor.
If that were true shouldn't we have a work of shakespeare proportion by now? Oh, we do. All the words are here, they are just in the wrong order and generally hidden among the garbage.
I save in ODT for my own use, PDF or RTF for sending out, depending on if they need to edit anything or not.
The rationale for using RTF instead of DOC goes something like this: I figure that if Microsoft first invents a format and then tries to bury it with all their might, it's probably a great format.
The Nobel Prize in Economics is NOT a real Nobel, and is awarded by the socialist Swedish central bank. I'll let the IP-hugging mumbo-jumbo in your post slide, but The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was given the task to select the Economics Prize Laureates starting in 1969. The central bank just comes up with the cash, they do not select the winners.
So, if the Nobel committees can so blow this prize, going back to giving it to the dictator Yasser Arafat, do the other prizes have meaning? Are they better vetted than the Peace Prize? How and Why? Because the peace prize is awarded by Norwegians, the others are all awarded by Swedes. http://nobelprize.org/prize_awarders/
Ironically, the labels are to blame for this effect not being much bigger. Looking at their sales figures, it's easy to conclude that the Napster model for social file-sharing was a lot better at recommending (and generating sales of) new music than the anonymous protocols we have now. To be able to browse someone's entire catalog of music after having found one song you were looking for and to chat with the person lead me to discover a lot of new music, that I bought. After the RIAA shut down Napster, I have only bought independent music. Partly as a boycott, but mainly because I simply don't find much new music anymore. Radio plays much the same crap (since the labels pay them to) so that source of inspiration has also dried up. And yeah, I don't file-share anymore either. It's just not as fun as it was with Napster.
if your only evidence for this is that you asked some file sharers and they told you so. Well, first of all, this is not just a few interviews. This is a multi-year, EU-sponsored research project done at the most prestigious technically-oriented university in Sweden. You might conclude that they actually do know about response bias and how to correct for it, especially as they also factored in actual sales figures and their numbers all jive with other studies, with different methodologies. For the lazy, here's a pretty exhaustive summary (and critique) of some of the more known studies so far: http://www.rufuspollock.org/economics/p2p_summary.html
But then again, if you just want to sit around and make-up stuff to believe instead of actually reading up on some of all the research that's being done, be my guest. Hey, why don't you start a church?
it's pretty obvious that a substantial amount of damage is being done This is not true. It may seem obvious, but then again, it may seem obvious that the earth is flat.
What we have found, after analysing the course of events and interviewing the file
sharers, is that downloading and file sharing of music more has a positive than a negative
effect on music sales. The music interest is promoted. New music and new artists are
discovered.
I made an April's Fool press release back in '96 about the ability to scan Post-It notes by holding them up to the screen. Finally, science catches up with my bold vision!
BTW, that's prior art and I hereby grant everyone unlimited non-exclusive licences to my ground-breaking invention. Have fun.
Not sure what the secret service one was (and we'll probably never find out). I remember most of it. Someone issued a death threat to the President of the US and the Secret Service had it removed. In its stead was a post from Jamie explaining the situation, in red. I tried finding it just now, searching for "secret service assassinate president jamie" in a few different varieties, but no luck. My Google-fu must be waning, or the post's "gone missing"...
I was going to ask about that. I remember the Secret Service post (can't find it now, though), but had managed to miss the DMCA one.
Oh and CmdrTaco, it seems the post you link to from the Scientology story has gone missing: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=274&sid=01&tid=88
What record labels are finally learning is that just because they can steal No, as soon as the record labels get a chance to steal from the artists, they will.
Here, again, people can run into trouble -- what if the original author don't have a copy of the work? Fortunately, it's probably available on the Pirate Bay.
Slashdot Mirror
Here in Sweden (the perfectly socialized nanny-state) we have several systems where the
So well in fact, that the debate is not about
Oh, and touching on the work after retirement issue; you're free to keep working as an old age pensioner, but if you make "too much" money in that job, your pension goes down. Seems reasonable to me, I dunno what goes on in Germany.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up!
I don't really know why, it's just an urge I got when I read your post.
The sensors are already quite sensitive enough to capture HDR, they're just not flexible enough to do it in a single exposure - yet. Besides, physics have started getting in the way of getting more sensitive sensors as the photosites can't get much smaller and still capture enough photons to overcome the noise. You'd need larger sensors (impractical for the current mounts and lenses) and/or lower resolution (impractical for marketing purposes, but one of the main reasons I also have a six-megapixel 200-3200 ISO Pentax K110D).
Nah.
...and 22 Acacia Avenue being an Iron Maiden song.
Of course, I'd rather translate it as "where there is no police, there is no speed limit".
I save in ODT for my own use, PDF or RTF for sending out, depending on if they need to edit anything or not. The rationale for using RTF instead of DOC goes something like this: I figure that if Microsoft first invents a format and then tries to bury it with all their might, it's probably a great format.
Ironically, the labels are to blame for this effect not being much bigger. Looking at their sales figures, it's easy to conclude that the Napster model for social file-sharing was a lot better at recommending (and generating sales of) new music than the anonymous protocols we have now. To be able to browse someone's entire catalog of music after having found one song you were looking for and to chat with the person lead me to discover a lot of new music, that I bought. After the RIAA shut down Napster, I have only bought independent music. Partly as a boycott, but mainly because I simply don't find much new music anymore. Radio plays much the same crap (since the labels pay them to) so that source of inspiration has also dried up. And yeah, I don't file-share anymore either. It's just not as fun as it was with Napster.
But then again, if you just want to sit around and make-up stuff to believe instead of actually reading up on some of all the research that's being done, be my guest. Hey, why don't you start a church?
I made an April's Fool press release back in '96 about the ability to scan Post-It notes by holding them up to the screen. Finally, science catches up with my bold vision!
BTW, that's prior art and I hereby grant everyone unlimited non-exclusive licences to my ground-breaking invention. Have fun.
Better read this first: http://www.talktothevet.com/faqvetcareer.HTM
I was going to ask about that. I remember the Secret Service post (can't find it now, though), but had managed to miss the DMCA one. Oh and CmdrTaco, it seems the post you link to from the Scientology story has gone missing: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=274&sid=01&tid=88