"I fear this test will pick-up "cancers" of questionable significance."
My questions would be more about what types of cancer can be detected, I know there are dozens of forms of Lukaemia alone - not to mention "medical" cancers (Lukeamia being a haematological cancer). Is this kit capable of detecting liquid tumors aswell as solid tumors?
"What impact will such a test have on healthcare costs, if a battery of additional diagnostic tests are used to work-up a "positive" screening test?
Without the development of new treatments I would think that the total cost(not the per patient cost) to the community (more like HMO's in the states, community in.au and large parts of europe) of cancer treatmnents would go up in the short term (as there is a flood of newly diagnosed patients) and the drop (as patients have been treated and are out to maintainence and presumably less new cases are diagnosed). More importantly to cost this would give us a method of mass screening that would give a better indication of the occurance of cancer in the community than we currently have.
If you are interested in the cost of cancer care I can tell you that one of my firends was diagnosed with Lukaemia (Acute Myloid Lukaemia, or AML, to be pecise) in the US. The cost of his induction therapy and 3 consolodation therapies was over $100,000US. I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Lukaemia (ALL), while I don't know the cost of my 2 induction therapies and 6 consolodations I do know the cost of my Bone Marrow Transplant was somewhere upward of $500,000AU. That is for the transplant alone, the cost of nutrient support and the other tratments surrounding my illness probably takes the total to $1.5 million ($AU) in just short of 2 years.
"Assuming individuals test themselves regularly (every 6 months perhaps)."
This is exactly the issue, if people test themselves. I was diagnosed with Accute Lymphoblastic Lukaemia (ALL) in Jan 2003, I hold the record for the highest circulating Lukaemic count in an adult in Queensland(Australia) - I could have been diagnosed sooner had I been tested, the issue is that I didn't think I needed to see a doctor for testing. While tests like this are excelent in providing difinitive results for early detection in a short period of time people need to use them to reduce the risk of people almost dieing(like I did) from various cancers.
Something else worth mentioning is that we currently have no cure for cancers, we in the cancer community can only hope for "long term remission". While remission may last for the rest of your life, in fact you may die from other natural causes, this does not mean you are cured. I, for example, will live with the risk of relapse for the rest of my life. Despite recieving heaps of chemo and a bone marrow transplant.
Actually, the early church hit this one. Jesus was god made jewish man. How are you going to impress a Roman with `god became a Jew' if he doesn't care about that small tribe on the edge of empire. There was a significant shift when they turned from a jewish messianic cult into a catholic one.
Yoe mean there was a "significant shift" when the Emperor Constantine took and interest. Lets face it christianity and catholicism only came to the fore for political reasons. Even the cross was made a christian symbol by Constantine as a way to control and convert romans.
This is the cause of all the bickerring about circumcision and so on -- the greek and roman worlds found snipping bits of their children or themselves barbaric.
So this explains the modern day christians not finding "choping bits off their childeren" barbaric? (have you seen circumcision rates for the 70's and 80's among non-christians)
Lets face it,religion is just social engineering writ large. God, Buddah, the Yowie are all just public relations at this point. People need to get over all this crap, or at least look past it, and get on with living together.
If we ever meet an ET lifeform, and I say if because you need to look at the stats how many and where ET life is, we better bloody well hope we can live with each other or first contact will be the begining of the end for us.
Read a book instead. Or listen to the existing records you might have. Or get an instrument like guitar and learn to play.
How about supporting local music? Say you buy 1 CD per month, use that $30 to go and see a local band. The money will buy your entrance to a gig with the chance to hear two or three bands and a couple of beers.
I have some friends in bands and they do it tough... keep in mind that there are some very good local bands that will never get contracts because their music is not comercial enough.
My website has had around 3800 unique visitors. 16 of them are STILL running at 640x480. 28 of them are STILL running in 8-bit color. Crazy.
Some people are just too lazy to update anything on their machines. I propose that the number one security problem on both lists be changed to "Lazy Users/Sysadmins who never update their systems."
An some of us still like the way things used to be done. I write this on a circa 1995 HP Xterminal. Why? because I like doing things this way, having 3 or 4 terminals throught my house and accessing my machines via them. I have looked for newer terminals, but none have the specifications I would want in terms of RAM and video performance.
Upgrading hardware and upgrading software are two different things. I keep all my software up-to-date because I know that there are always new exploits being discovered, that doesn't mean that I want go out and by a monitor/video card that will do 1600x1400 in 6 trillion colours.
I personally separate my mailing list mail into one folder per list and spam into a spam folder. Everything else just sits in my "inbox" making it easier to find.
I use procmail to filter all my mail on arrival, it means I can prioritise what I want to read.
When talking to people about opensource options, almost never for a desktop, I always put it like this:
"You are not paying for the operating system or the software that runs on it, like you would do with a windows based solution. what you are paying for is my time to install and configure your system and/or develop specific solutions for you."
This way of approaching things makes it a little bit clearer for them, they know that if they go with a windows solution they will still probably need to pay for configuration and/or development on top of Windows(XP/NT/??) and lets say SQL Server and IIS.
I think the larger issue when it comes to vendor support has to do with the sheer number of businesses that use Windows and do not use the support that is there. Most organisation get their IT support not from the software vendor (often the only role they play is selling their product) but from a contractor or staff member.
I would like to point out that I am talking about the operating system here, idividual pieces of software that run under that OS may need varying levels of support, however the writer talk about the operating system (what he includes in that is unclea). It is possible to get support for some open source software from the company or group that writes and maintains it (eg. MySQL), at a cost.
This is a nice idea, but for it to work the SMTP protocol would need to be re-written.
If we are to to take this lenght then why not just re-engineer the protocol so that only "trusted mail hosts" can transmit mail from one place to another, similar to the workings of DNS. By adding this level of security we could identify the actual individuals spamming and revoke their email privilages, it easier than taxing and works across national boundries.
beacuase lets get real about internat taxing, the only way for it to work is by international treaty and then we deal with who collects - and keeps - the "tax" (I think the obvious would be the ISP, in which case they can waive it if they feel the need). The reality is that not _all_places that exist would sign and some places would become spam havens.
If we are serious about ridding ourselves of the plaugue-o-spam we need to take a look at how we transport email from one place to another and then think of ways to tighten the loop so that people cannot just open a connection and send an million plus messagages wihtout identifying themselves fully.
How does that apply when it comes to loss of sales due to another persons dodgy business practices?
i.e. Sales of my product drop by $50K because your business engages in some sort of illegal practice.
I don't think that what the RIAA is doing is right - heck it's not even just the RIAA that are doing this, the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) is making noise here in.au - however I don't think that your solution is one that is workable.
Apple records did more than put out The Beatles albums in the US. Apple was The Beatles.
Although it went bust in the early seventies the Beatles had a whole empire built on the Apple name, a clothing store in London was one feature. I am sure nobody forgets that the last time The Beatles performed as a groups was on the roof of the apple building in Saville Row.
There is a/8 that is maily distributed in china (sometimes reffered to a chi-net) that groups such as the US military and some ISP's filter because of excessive attacks and spaming. The problem being that some sections of that/8 are issued in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, people allocated with numbers in this range sometimes have problems communicating with people that have US based or hosted services.
The issue is that if you are blocking something as big as a/8 then you want to know for sure the status of that entire address space, and check it regularly.
Sounds more like it should be called incompetence. A drug dealer is a criminal, an ISP probably doesn't even know what's going on.
I may be a little bit under read when it comes to the law, but here in australia I was under the impression that ignorance is no excuse. In fact I was under the impression that this was the attitude of courts world wide, can't image a court going "ahhh well you didn't know murder was a crime. Off you go then, and don't do it again.".
And drug dealers aren't criminals everywhere in the world:) hell they are legitimate business people in holland:)
Not in Australia. They charge per megabyte at Australian ISPs so it's in their interest to see more traffic...
This is not entirely true. It is in the interest of an ISP to have their customers dowload alot if they charge per MB. It is also in the interest of said ISPs to limit the amount they bring down from their upstream connections (normally through large cacheing proxies - mine used to save me on average 30-40 % when I was in the ISP business). Most ISPs in australia actually charge on a time basis, some have statred to add data allowances to their plans and yes, they do charge per MB if you go over.
At the end of the day the biggest expense an Australian ISP has is data, it is damn expensive unless you spend a whole smeglod of cash with your provider.
All Australians are now required to be running some kind of approved adult filter (as the ISP's didn't want to have to filter themselves).
This is not entirely true, it is on the ISP to make available an adult filter (either as a download or in whatever form). ISP's in.au walk a very fine line, you really want to be common carrier and not do things like touch ppls files or monitor their net usage as it opens a virtual pandoras box.
As for enforcement, when the Digital Agenda Bill *shudder* was passed it was handed to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) for enforcement - and they don't really understand the industry or the bill and so enforcement is next to nill (apart from the odd "We have had a complaint about site X.com that you host. take it down while we review it" shite). There are more worrying things in that particular bill (which deals in part in copyright in a digital environ) like the section which effectivly makes all caches (squid and otherwise) illegal.
I was so concerned about IT and government, particularly on a legeslative front, that I joined a major political party (although this was not my only reason for joining) to try and have some influence in this area - and at least in Queensland I am having some success, people in the party know a little more than they did before and are willing to listen and learn (the ones who aren't totally scared of the tech area anyway). I think that more people of our persuasion need to join political organisation of whatever persuasion we feel more comfortable with if we ever expect to see things change, lobby groups can only be so successful for the rest of the way we need tobe inside and driving the policies of the political parties in this area if we are to see decent IT legeslation. And I belive that this is a case that is not isolated to Australia, Brits need to be joining the Tory party and Labour, Americans need to join the Democrats and Republicans, we all need to become more proactive and less reactive if legeslation like this is to be defeated.
I know my voice is going to get lost in the cacophony of voices here but I'll try anyway.
I'm a unionist here in Australia, althought the Astralian Services Union - Clerical Division claims to cover IT workers I have seen no evidence of this. The closest thing I have to a unian is EPESMA.
I truly believe the IT industry need a union, this industry is not just the high paid programmers from IBM or any large other company. There are alot of unscrupulous people out there running small ISP's or consulting firms that take young kids with skills but no industry experience or quals and exploit them, I know I've been there. These people need to be represented, they need someone who can tell them what they deserve under the award or legislation that covers them and who can stand up to the employer on their behalf (negotiating for things you should be given under law is intimidating). The only way to do this is with a union and people in the high paying jobs should show some solidarity with their fellow techs and join the union so that it can afford to provide services to those who need them most.
And to those of you who say "the unions have never done anything for me" ot "the unions have passed their used by date" I say this: did you enjoy that weekend? or the paid vacation? or getting home after only 8 hours of work? what about your the health and saftey in your workplace? theses are all things that the union won for the workers of the world, so show some respect or give up everythign that the union has done for you and work 6 and a half days a week, 12-16 hours a day for ten thousand dollars a year with no holidays, apalling working conditions and no recourse against unfair treatment by an employer.
If it's reflective on such a wide range of frequencies, that means that the amount of multiplexing data compression you can do is huge. True, if you can fit more frequencies into a single fibre with less interference there is room for more data and/or faster transfer via multiplexing.
One of these fibers might be able to carry a hundred times more data then any current fiber, for instance, just by having sub-bands that use different light frequencies. Not only that but it also stands to make fibre cheaper (if the cable itself isn't too exxy) due to the reduced need for repeater stations, at the moment the loss of signal strength is a major issue. I really hope that stuff like this takes off, it means cheaper, faster access at home.
Well in actual fact the Australian Constiution has no Bill of Rights at all, any "rights" enjoyed by Aussie citizens is under international treaties signed by the government which the constiution staes are legally binding on all citizens.
The Australian legislation reffered to, an internet censorship bill passed to get a vote from an independant senator for the liberal GST bill, does not require the ISP to block anything, it doesn't even provide for lists of "off limits" or "illegal" sites. The policing of it was handed over to the Australian Broadcasting Authority who set in action a series of "guidelines" for service providers. Basically it means two things:
Responsibility for the ISP is to have software like "net nanny" available for customers.
To take down any offending material within 24 hours.
What determines offensive material is covered in the broadcasting code of practice and the take down notices are only issued after public complaint.
In short the legislation is ineffective, it doesn't stop anyone looking at porn or other "offensive" material, all it means is you can't host that stuff in machines in this country. Effectivly it took a large amount of money from Australian web hosting firms as porn providers took the material to the US or Asia or Europe.
So is this poece of legislation which targets individual sites and limits what people can do on the net (not to mention the taxation dollars it is taking from governments as its citizens gamble in foreign lands)?
Is it just me and my paranoia or is the idea of hooking a toy into a net connection just a scary idea? To me it just sounds like on ebig breach waiting to happen.
On the other hand I don't like the look of that ruling re broadband, if we ever hope to see high speed net access become affordable here in.au we need to see companies sharing hardware. This country is just too big with such a sparse populace to support on company one network.
I agree that linux has a fair way to go before becomeing a serious competitor to Solaris, although in general the thing that makes a Sun E450 better than a PIII farm is the high performance hardware. This is something that Sun and DEC(god rest its soul) have had for years, I would even hasten to say go for a PPC architecture over an x86 box. So you see the problem is not simply the one of the kernel but also the underly architecture of the chipset. People tend to think of linux as just x86 project and it isn't just that anymore, you can get PPC, Sparc, Alpha, ARM... the list just goes on.
Slashdot Mirror
"I fear this test will pick-up "cancers" of questionable significance."
My questions would be more about what types of cancer can be detected, I know there are dozens of forms of Lukaemia alone - not to mention "medical" cancers (Lukeamia being a haematological cancer). Is this kit capable of detecting liquid tumors aswell as solid tumors?
"What impact will such a test have on healthcare costs, if a battery of additional diagnostic tests are used to work-up a "positive" screening test?
Without the development of new treatments I would think that the total cost(not the per patient cost) to the community (more like HMO's in the states, community in .au and large parts of europe) of cancer treatmnents would go up in the short term (as there is a flood of newly diagnosed patients) and the drop (as patients have been treated and are out to maintainence and presumably less new cases are diagnosed). More importantly to cost this would give us a method of mass screening that would give a better indication of the occurance of cancer in the community than we currently have.
If you are interested in the cost of cancer care I can tell you that one of my firends was diagnosed with Lukaemia (Acute Myloid Lukaemia, or AML, to be pecise) in the US. The cost of his induction therapy and 3 consolodation therapies was over $100,000US. I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Lukaemia (ALL), while I don't know the cost of my 2 induction therapies and 6 consolodations I do know the cost of my Bone Marrow Transplant was somewhere upward of $500,000AU. That is for the transplant alone, the cost of nutrient support and the other tratments surrounding my illness probably takes the total to $1.5 million ($AU) in just short of 2 years.
"Assuming individuals test themselves regularly (every 6 months perhaps)."
This is exactly the issue, if people test themselves. I was diagnosed with Accute Lymphoblastic Lukaemia (ALL) in Jan 2003, I hold the record for the highest circulating Lukaemic count in an adult in Queensland(Australia) - I could have been diagnosed sooner had I been tested, the issue is that I didn't think I needed to see a doctor for testing. While tests like this are excelent in providing difinitive results for early detection in a short period of time people need to use them to reduce the risk of people almost dieing(like I did) from various cancers.
Something else worth mentioning is that we currently have no cure for cancers, we in the cancer community can only hope for "long term remission". While remission may last for the rest of your life, in fact you may die from other natural causes, this does not mean you are cured. I, for example, will live with the risk of relapse for the rest of my life. Despite recieving heaps of chemo and a bone marrow transplant.
Now here's a hoopy frood that really knows where his towel is.
Yoe mean there was a "significant shift" when the Emperor Constantine took and interest. Lets face it christianity and catholicism only came to the fore for political reasons. Even the cross was made a christian symbol by Constantine as a way to control and convert romans.
This is the cause of all the bickerring about circumcision and so on -- the greek and roman worlds found snipping bits of their children or themselves barbaric.
So this explains the modern day christians not finding "choping bits off their childeren" barbaric? (have you seen circumcision rates for the 70's and 80's among non-christians)
Lets face it,religion is just social engineering writ large. God, Buddah, the Yowie are all just public relations at this point. People need to get over all this crap, or at least look past it, and get on with living together.
If we ever meet an ET lifeform, and I say if because you need to look at the stats how many and where ET life is, we better bloody well hope we can live with each other or first contact will be the begining of the end for us.
How about supporting local music? Say you buy 1 CD per month, use that $30 to go and see a local band. The money will buy your entrance to a gig with the chance to hear two or three bands and a couple of beers.
I have some friends in bands and they do it tough ... keep in mind that there are some very good local bands that will never get contracts because their music is not comercial enough.
Some people are just too lazy to update anything on their machines. I propose that the number one security problem on both lists be changed to "Lazy Users/Sysadmins who never update their systems."
An some of us still like the way things used to be done. I write this on a circa 1995 HP Xterminal. Why? because I like doing things this way, having 3 or 4 terminals throught my house and accessing my machines via them. I have looked for newer terminals, but none have the specifications I would want in terms of RAM and video performance.
Upgrading hardware and upgrading software are two different things. I keep all my software up-to-date because I know that there are always new exploits being discovered, that doesn't mean that I want go out and by a monitor/video card that will do 1600x1400 in 6 trillion colours.
I personally separate my mailing list mail into one folder per list and spam into a spam folder. Everything else just sits in my "inbox" making it easier to find.
I use procmail to filter all my mail on arrival, it means I can prioritise what I want to read.
"You are not paying for the operating system or the software that runs on it, like you would do with a windows based solution. what you are paying for is my time to install and configure your system and/or develop specific solutions for you."
This way of approaching things makes it a little bit clearer for them, they know that if they go with a windows solution they will still probably need to pay for configuration and/or development on top of Windows(XP/NT/??) and lets say SQL Server and IIS.
I would like to point out that I am talking about the operating system here, idividual pieces of software that run under that OS may need varying levels of support, however the writer talk about the operating system (what he includes in that is unclea). It is possible to get support for some open source software from the company or group that writes and maintains it (eg. MySQL), at a cost.
If we are to to take this lenght then why not just re-engineer the protocol so that only "trusted mail hosts" can transmit mail from one place to another, similar to the workings of DNS. By adding this level of security we could identify the actual individuals spamming and revoke their email privilages, it easier than taxing and works across national boundries.
beacuase lets get real about internat taxing, the only way for it to work is by international treaty and then we deal with who collects - and keeps - the "tax" (I think the obvious would be the ISP, in which case they can waive it if they feel the need). The reality is that not _all_places that exist would sign and some places would become spam havens.
If we are serious about ridding ourselves of the plaugue-o-spam we need to take a look at how we transport email from one place to another and then think of ways to tighten the loop so that people cannot just open a connection and send an million plus messagages wihtout identifying themselves fully.
i.e. Sales of my product drop by $50K because your business engages in some sort of illegal practice.
I don't think that what the RIAA is doing is right - heck it's not even just the RIAA that are doing this, the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) is making noise here in .au - however I don't think that your solution is one that is workable.
Although it went bust in the early seventies the Beatles had a whole empire built on the Apple name, a clothing store in London was one feature. I am sure nobody forgets that the last time The Beatles performed as a groups was on the roof of the apple building in Saville Row.
The issue is that if you are blocking something as big as a /8 then you want to know for sure the status of that entire address space, and check it regularly.
I may be a little bit under read when it comes to the law, but here in australia I was under the impression that ignorance is no excuse. In fact I was under the impression that this was the attitude of courts world wide, can't image a court going "ahhh well you didn't know murder was a crime. Off you go then, and don't do it again.".
And drug dealers aren't criminals everywhere in the world :) hell they are legitimate business people in holland :)
This is not entirely true. It is in the interest of an ISP to have their customers dowload alot if they charge per MB. It is also in the interest of said ISPs to limit the amount they bring down from their upstream connections (normally through large cacheing proxies - mine used to save me on average 30-40 % when I was in the ISP business). Most ISPs in australia actually charge on a time basis, some have statred to add data allowances to their plans and yes, they do charge per MB if you go over.
At the end of the day the biggest expense an Australian ISP has is data, it is damn expensive unless you spend a whole smeglod of cash with your provider.
This is not entirely true, it is on the ISP to make available an adult filter (either as a download or in whatever form). ISP's in
As for enforcement, when the Digital Agenda Bill *shudder* was passed it was handed to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) for enforcement - and they don't really understand the industry or the bill and so enforcement is next to nill (apart from the odd "We have had a complaint about site X.com that you host. take it down while we review it" shite). There are more worrying things in that particular bill (which deals in part in copyright in a digital environ) like the section which effectivly makes all caches (squid and otherwise) illegal.
I was so concerned about IT and government, particularly on a legeslative front, that I joined a major political party (although this was not my only reason for joining) to try and have some influence in this area - and at least in Queensland I am having some success, people in the party know a little more than they did before and are willing to listen and learn (the ones who aren't totally scared of the tech area anyway). I think that more people of our persuasion need to join political organisation of whatever persuasion we feel more comfortable with if we ever expect to see things change, lobby groups can only be so successful for the rest of the way we need tobe inside and driving the policies of the political parties in this area if we are to see decent IT legeslation. And I belive that this is a case that is not isolated to Australia, Brits need to be joining the Tory party and Labour, Americans need to join the Democrats and Republicans, we all need to become more proactive and less reactive if legeslation like this is to be defeated.
I know my voice is going to get lost in the cacophony of voices here but I'll try anyway.
I'm a unionist here in Australia, althought the Astralian Services Union - Clerical Division claims to cover IT workers I have seen no evidence of this. The closest thing I have to a unian is EPESMA.
I truly believe the IT industry need a union, this industry is not just the high paid programmers from IBM or any large other company. There are alot of unscrupulous people out there running small ISP's or consulting firms that take young kids with skills but no industry experience or quals and exploit them, I know I've been there. These people need to be represented, they need someone who can tell them what they deserve under the award or legislation that covers them and who can stand up to the employer on their behalf (negotiating for things you should be given under law is intimidating). The only way to do this is with a union and people in the high paying jobs should show some solidarity with their fellow techs and join the union so that it can afford to provide services to those who need them most.
And to those of you who say "the unions have never done anything for me" ot "the unions have passed their used by date" I say this: did you enjoy that weekend? or the paid vacation? or getting home after only 8 hours of work? what about your the health and saftey in your workplace? theses are all things that the union won for the workers of the world, so show some respect or give up everythign that the union has done for you and work 6 and a half days a week, 12-16 hours a day for ten thousand dollars a year with no holidays, apalling working conditions and no recourse against unfair treatment by an employer.
True, if you can fit more frequencies into a single fibre with less interference there is room for more data and/or faster transfer via multiplexing.
One of these fibers might be able to carry a hundred times more data then any current fiber, for instance, just by having sub-bands that use different light frequencies.
Not only that but it also stands to make fibre cheaper (if the cable itself isn't too exxy) due to the reduced need for repeater stations, at the moment the loss of signal strength is a major issue. I really hope that stuff like this takes off, it means cheaper, faster access at home.
Well in actual fact the Australian Constiution has no Bill of Rights at all, any "rights" enjoyed by Aussie citizens is under international treaties signed by the government which the constiution staes are legally binding on all citizens.
What determines offensive material is covered in the broadcasting code of practice and the take down notices are only issued after public complaint.
In short the legislation is ineffective, it doesn't stop anyone looking at porn or other "offensive" material, all it means is you can't host that stuff in machines in this country. Effectivly it took a large amount of money from Australian web hosting firms as porn providers took the material to the US or Asia or Europe.
So is this poece of legislation which targets individual sites and limits what people can do on the net (not to mention the taxation dollars it is taking from governments as its citizens gamble in foreign lands)?
... to connect a toy to the net?
.au we need to see companies sharing hardware. This country is just too big with such a sparse populace to support on company one network.
Is it just me and my paranoia or is the idea of hooking a toy into a net connection just a scary idea? To me it just sounds like on ebig breach waiting to happen.
On the other hand I don't like the look of that ruling re broadband, if we ever hope to see high speed net access become affordable here in
I agree that linux has a fair way to go before becomeing a serious competitor to Solaris, although in general the thing that makes a Sun E450 better than a PIII farm is the high performance hardware. This is something that Sun and DEC(god rest its soul) have had for years, I would even hasten to say go for a PPC architecture over an x86 box. So you see the problem is not simply the one of the kernel but also the underly architecture of the chipset. People tend to think of linux as just x86 project and it isn't just that anymore, you can get PPC, Sparc, Alpha, ARM... the list just goes on.