I agree with what you're saying. The problem here in the UK is that there sadly isn't such a close dialog between the hospital managers and the doctors. Frequently, financial decisions are made which impact badly on patient care, and often finances, too. I think it's pretty paramount that financial decisions are always taken in the light of the clinical requirements. And vice-versa is true, that clinical decisions are taken with an understanding of the financial costs. It's simply not the case doctors can be left elbow deep in intestines with non-clinical managers taking decisions which will influence patient care.
One example of this is a cost-saving measure implemented at a unnamed hospital, where a decision was made not to ever employ any 'locum' doctors to fill empty positions on the doctor's rota (i.e. due to sick leave, maternity leave, or simple someone leaving their post). What was done instead was to spread the remaining doctors ever-more thinly over the patients. So instead of a ratio of 1:13 (3 doctors on a 40-bedded ward), it could drop to 1:20 if one was not around, and even 1:40. The managers, not being on the ward, and not involved in patient care, were happy that at least those patients had a responsible doctor. The situation on the ward, however, was untenable. Lets just say in an imaginary perfect world, you could have 10 minutes to talk to your doctor everyday, in hospital, and 10 minutes for the doctor to examine you and look at your relevant observations and investigations. Give the doc 5 minutes to document his findings and plan in the notes and then 10minutes to do the jobs required for you for that day. God forbid you are unwell, and need a cannula, a chest drain, and more than one review that day, but even then, if that doctor worked from 9-5pm without a lunch break or loo break, the doc could see 13 patients. What this means of course is that the care provided when the ratio is 1:20 or even 1:40 is awful, resulting in delayed discharges, deaths that shouldn't have happened, substandard care, and overall a huge cost for the hospital in terms of patient beds and litigation.
When the managers lose touch with the doctors, this is what ends up happening.
Would you like to tell me who, apart from doctors, understand what 'good' treatment actually is? It's not about skill with a scalpel, it's about being ultimately responsible for the welfare of your patient, and therefore understanding clearly where all of the impediments to this happening occurs.
At our hospital we have a 'ring-fenced bed', which is a bed kept empty on a haematological unit, save only for haematological emergencies requiring chemotherapy. Unless the manager understands why a patient with acute leukaemia is a medical emergency and can only managed in one (or two) places in the hospital, then actually, it's the physicians who are best placed to manage the ward in this way.
An Office suite is needed for witing letters, handover lists, running audits, preparing and giving presentations etc..., but they aren't used that often in hospital by the clinical staff.
Also, at most hospitals, a lot of the clinical software (i.e. for dictated letters or letters stored electronically) is integrated with microsoft office.
This is great news, and I hope it works out for them.
I'd be interested it getting involved, as a Haematology SpR and an interest in open-source and open-standards. I imagined the NHS would be the perfect poster-child for an open-source project funded by the government to create a hospital system, possibly running on linux (if not the terminals, then at least the backend), which could then be used possibly by others in developing countries. It would then be modular, and updateable, and wouldn't result in the NHS relying on one piece of proprietary software, the owner of which would have a monopoly on future service contracts.
I didn't know that - but I was so outraged that I told them I was cancelling my direct debit, and moving house, and they could ring me if they had a problem with that.
(I didn't move house because of it - that just happened to coincide).
BT is a bit overpriced, but I found their service ok. I'll never go back to them after I unwittingly signed up to a self-renewing contract (I didn't even know such a thing was possible), and when it came to ending my 12 month contract with them, they told me that I hadn't given them 1 month notice prior to the end of the 12 months, and therefore they had contracted me into another 12 months. If I wanted to leave I would have to pay the entirety of the line rental for that year (nearly £200).
I'm currently on Virgin fibreoptic, and while the figures look great when you go to a broadband test website, for some reason the real-world usage is nothing like this. Streaming (especially youtube and bbc iplayer) is pretty bad, and seems to hang on a regular basis. It is much worse at peak times. And I know it can be done better having previously used superjanet 6 on university campus several years ago.
I'll probably look to moving to talktalk next - they seem well-priced and are apparently pretty quick too.
It might not be common knowledge that blood test 'normal ranges' (i.e. the range in which the quantity measured is said to be normal) were determined by taking thousands of healthy volunteers and performing the test - but creating the range based on the middle 95% of normal values. Therefore, even before we started testing people, we deemed 1 in 20 healthy people to be 'abnormal'.
Counting on my fingers, we do a minimum of 22 blood tests on patients admitted to our hospital. Statistically, even if you are well (though that is unlikely given you presented to the hospital, and were assessed and deemed unwell enough to be admitted) at least 1 of these blood results should be abnormal. And I haven't even started on your ECG, radiograph, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturations, respiratory rate, temperature etc etc etc. And if just one CT scan were performed, that looks at so many metrics, that several are bound to be abnormal to some degree (so called 'benign incidentalomas').
Part of being a good physician is knowing what abnormal results are significant, and what are red herrings. Ignoring a result is a difficult thing to do in medicine (the article has some good reasons why) and takes a good knowledge of the context, as well as plenty of experience, to be confidently able to say 'that is a red-herring'.
I disagree with the writer suggesting that thresholds should simply be raised. This is a stupid and dangerous way of dealing with this problem! The problem isn't how _far_ above threshold the value is, but whether it is or it isn't. Raising the threshold does not eliminate false-positive results, but will undoubtedly result in false-negative results. Tests in medicine are assessed to measure their 'positive predictive value' (see wikipedia), which, simply put, is about choosing a threshold that will find a balance between limiting false-positives, and limiting false-negatives. Instead of blanket raising of thresholds, doctors should be basing their decisions on the _evidence base_ - i.e. research done looking at how patients with these values fare with and without treatment. Only then will we know whether what we are doing is helpful or not.
The writer is writing in a public journal, and I think it is dangerous of him to suggest that some people don't really need treatment for diabetes - a condition that is hard enough to demonstrate to patients the dangerous long-term consequences. I wonder how many people reading this article have decided 'I don't really have diabetes - this person says so! And I thought I felt well, too!' and chucked their meds out the window. And yet, there is very strong research and evidence that shows that people diagnosed with diabetes (whatever their blood sugar) do much better if their blood pressure and glucose levels are kept below certain levels. And by 'doing much better' I mean, have less heart attacks, less strokes, go blind less, have less kidney failure, have less neuropathy and die less. All these things are real-world problems which damage peoples health. We are not just treating a number! (but we only know this from the evidence).
The other side to this argument is social. Here in the U.K. we are proud of having a largely non-private system. With all the cost and time pressures on the NHS, it means that we don't investigate or treat unless we feel it would benefit the patient. If an NHS doctor in the U.K. says you have a health problem, it's something you should probably listen up to, because he is not paid to do that. Of course some would argue that the flip-side is that patients may not get investigated or treated enough, which may be balanced somewhat by the law courts. I'm not saying it's good that doctors say 'well because this person has come in with a,b and c, and even though I don't think it is 'x', we can't justify in a law court not doing investigation 'y', but it does provide a counter balance.
Doctors should try to good, be very careful not to do harm, and base their decisions on rational arguments backed up by evidence. (the article's suggestion of simply raising the thresholds is idiotic)
How has it been nearly 20 years and yet nothing has touched this machine with regards to form-factor, keyboard quality, OS responsiveness and sophistication of PIM applications?
I was at a conference recently watching a fantastic speaker who spent his life's work on elucidating the pathogenesis of antiphosholipid syndrome, and next to me was someone attempting to take notes on an ipad. Clearly somewhere in her distant memory were ideas of happiness and bliss, of form and function coalescing on the future of technology that would be her companion for the conference. The reality was somewhat different. The 20 wpm typing speed was particularly hampered by the visual presentations, which frequently interrupted her fervered hunt and pecking of the keys and word suggestions. I dare say all the effort involved precluded any understanding of the speaker, but I can't besure of this. I can be sure that it proved finally to all who noticed that data input will never be a strong talent of a tablet.
I think Ubuntu 10.04 is a pretty stable desktop, but what is going to happen in 2013 when support runs out for it? I just don't see businesses moving the desktop over to unity or gnome 3.
TFA seems only to prove that Apple is not 'tracking your every move' in the literal sense, they are just 'tracking your every move within the accuracy a phone on standby is able to, aggregated to a weekly basis'. Oh, well that's ok, if it's that inaccurate, surely my privacy isn't threatened! The writer is an apologist for Apple - after all, why end it with 'well if that argument didn't convince, someone else is doing it too! If everyone's doing it, it must be right!' (majorly paraphased).
People are also concluding that this data isn't 'phoned home'. But I don't believe they have the sourcecode for the software on their iphone, and if they did, that they have looked through it.
And as for the parent - your 'cell'phone provider needs to know where you are in order to supply your 'cell'. Not saying that justifies them keeping a record of it, but on the other hand, your bank has a record of all the transactions you have made involving your bank account. I'm not sure what justification a cellphone maker has to record your whereabouts.
What problem does Gnome 3 solve?
on
GNOME 3 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I am all for rethinking the desktop paradigm, but I'm not sure whether Gnome 3 is a complete rethink or a desperate attempt to break out of the Windows 95 mould (which I think most linux users, given the popularity of mint and pclinuxos, would grudgingly admit is a sensible way of organising a desktop).
When I moved from Win XP to Gnome 2, I appreciated the rapid access the upper and lower bars gave me to applications, places, open applications, control of access, desktop, shortcuts, other panels and a full calendar - something that greatly improved productivity. Gone were the days of clicking on the same spot in the lower left, and then trying to manoeuvre your mouse around the nested menu upon menu just to find the setting or application you were after, which often led to the mouse losing focus and frustration all round. I feel like Gnome 3 is a step back in this regard, channelling almost all operations through the same spot in the corner could create exactly the same sort of inefficiency and bottleneck.
When I can get Gnome 3 to work properly on my setup, and give it a go for a decent period of time, maybe I'll change my mind. But I think it's more likely I'll find the answer to my own question, and realise that the problem is Linux struggling to clearly define it's niche and uniqueness between Mac OS X and Windows 7.
It isn't just that - the university I attended allowed direct access to a number of expensive journals from their network - opening this up via a wifi router would not only infringe copyright, but also compromise the security of the university network.
Yes - this is the case in the large organisation I work for - we share terminals briefly for looking up data, and sometimes search the web. It isn't time-worthwhile to go through changing the default search engine to google, although I still do it every now and then.
Having read a lot of the bizarre analogies above ('onion skins' 'car engines') I feel that most people haven't got the point that OEM manufacturers are _not_ selling their laptops without _3rd party_ software. There is an argument that the only people who would wish to purchase such a laptop would be a minority of linux users - i.e. around 1%, and therefore it would be a logistical cost not worth bearing. I might buy this argument if manufacturers provided laptops in a one-size-fits all strategy, but given a geek, like me, can choose between 5 ranges of laptop from Lenovo, with around three options each for RAM, processor, graphics cpu, hard drive size, wireless connectivity, screen resolution and type of windows installation, then don't try and tell me that it would be difficult or costly in anyway to sell a plain unformatted hard drive without without a license. If I can decline bluetooth, why can't I decline Windows?
The only aspect of the law suit that doesn't make sense is Why Microsoft? Why not sue lenovo? Unless this guy has some evidence to show that Microsoft are using anti-competitive strategies to maintain their marketshare, I don't imagine it will be successful.
Which is a shame, and means we'll have to wait for the EU to step in.
* Drafting, rendering, and animation (still one of the only domains exclusively populated by 'real' desktops running Windows)
Sure about that? A medium-sized animation special effects studio in London, Soho, uses exclusively Linux boxes running Maya. And from what I understand, the rendering farms tend to run linux as well.
Absolutely. In medicine, if the patient can't understand the risks and benefits of what you putting them through, they cannot consent to it. If only software, parking regulations, legally binding agreements etc etc took the same attitude, those of us who cannot afford to pay a lawyer to read everything before we sign it, will be able to not be caught by these people.
These recent events have shown how reliant we are, in the West, on American companies which do not necessarily hold the same values as us. Unless you want to return to living in a cage, boycotting both VISA and Mastercard is simply not an option, and the same goes to some extent to using paypal. It's surely not a good idea that the American government have such power over money transactions of all countries in the West.
I wonder if this will be recognised by governments in the West, and a new form of electronic transfer be supported as an alternative, as the article mentions, or whether this will blow over and we'll find ourselves in a similar position in the future, but it could involve an entire country that displeases the US government rather just a small organisation.
Agreed - A fresh install of Win XP is pretty amazingly snappy, but just a week or two down the line this isn't the case anymore. I've found ubuntu to remain at a moderate amount of snappiness for longer. WinXP after 6 months was largely unuseable on my old Pentium M 1.3Ghz.
Ok, call me gullible or ignorant - but is that actually true?
I did remember my old Amiga used to crash in amusing ways, as one element of the graphics or audio would go, leaving the rest of the system carrying on as if that didn't matter!
Slashdot Mirror
But mass travelling AT the speed of light would be!
I agree with what you're saying. The problem here in the UK is that there sadly isn't such a close dialog between the hospital managers and the doctors. Frequently, financial decisions are made which impact badly on patient care, and often finances, too. I think it's pretty paramount that financial decisions are always taken in the light of the clinical requirements. And vice-versa is true, that clinical decisions are taken with an understanding of the financial costs. It's simply not the case doctors can be left elbow deep in intestines with non-clinical managers taking decisions which will influence patient care.
One example of this is a cost-saving measure implemented at a unnamed hospital, where a decision was made not to ever employ any 'locum' doctors to fill empty positions on the doctor's rota (i.e. due to sick leave, maternity leave, or simple someone leaving their post). What was done instead was to spread the remaining doctors ever-more thinly over the patients. So instead of a ratio of 1:13 (3 doctors on a 40-bedded ward), it could drop to 1:20 if one was not around, and even 1:40. The managers, not being on the ward, and not involved in patient care, were happy that at least those patients had a responsible doctor. The situation on the ward, however, was untenable. Lets just say in an imaginary perfect world, you could have 10 minutes to talk to your doctor everyday, in hospital, and 10 minutes for the doctor to examine you and look at your relevant observations and investigations. Give the doc 5 minutes to document his findings and plan in the notes and then 10minutes to do the jobs required for you for that day. God forbid you are unwell, and need a cannula, a chest drain, and more than one review that day, but even then, if that doctor worked from 9-5pm without a lunch break or loo break, the doc could see 13 patients. What this means of course is that the care provided when the ratio is 1:20 or even 1:40 is awful, resulting in delayed discharges, deaths that shouldn't have happened, substandard care, and overall a huge cost for the hospital in terms of patient beds and litigation.
When the managers lose touch with the doctors, this is what ends up happening.
Would you like to tell me who, apart from doctors, understand what 'good' treatment actually is? It's not about skill with a scalpel, it's about being ultimately responsible for the welfare of your patient, and therefore understanding clearly where all of the impediments to this happening occurs.
At our hospital we have a 'ring-fenced bed', which is a bed kept empty on a haematological unit, save only for haematological emergencies requiring chemotherapy. Unless the manager understands why a patient with acute leukaemia is a medical emergency and can only managed in one (or two) places in the hospital, then actually, it's the physicians who are best placed to manage the ward in this way.
An Office suite is needed for witing letters, handover lists, running audits, preparing and giving presentations etc..., but they aren't used that often in hospital by the clinical staff.
Also, at most hospitals, a lot of the clinical software (i.e. for dictated letters or letters stored electronically) is integrated with microsoft office.
This is great news, and I hope it works out for them.
If you could just implement a identifying credentials into these locks...
toool.nl/images/f/f3/Abloypart2.pdf (PDF)
I'd be interested it getting involved, as a Haematology SpR and an interest in open-source and open-standards. I imagined the NHS would be the perfect poster-child for an open-source project funded by the government to create a hospital system, possibly running on linux (if not the terminals, then at least the backend), which could then be used possibly by others in developing countries. It would then be modular, and updateable, and wouldn't result in the NHS relying on one piece of proprietary software, the owner of which would have a monopoly on future service contracts.
Do get in touch!
Duncan.
I didn't know that - but I was so outraged that I told them I was cancelling my direct debit, and moving house, and they could ring me if they had a problem with that.
(I didn't move house because of it - that just happened to coincide).
BT is a bit overpriced, but I found their service ok. I'll never go back to them after I unwittingly signed up to a self-renewing contract (I didn't even know such a thing was possible), and when it came to ending my 12 month contract with them, they told me that I hadn't given them 1 month notice prior to the end of the 12 months, and therefore they had contracted me into another 12 months. If I wanted to leave I would have to pay the entirety of the line rental for that year (nearly £200).
I'm currently on Virgin fibreoptic, and while the figures look great when you go to a broadband test website, for some reason the real-world usage is nothing like this. Streaming (especially youtube and bbc iplayer) is pretty bad, and seems to hang on a regular basis. It is much worse at peak times. And I know it can be done better having previously used superjanet 6 on university campus several years ago.
I'll probably look to moving to talktalk next - they seem well-priced and are apparently pretty quick too.
It might not be common knowledge that blood test 'normal ranges' (i.e. the range in which the quantity measured is said to be normal) were determined by taking thousands of healthy volunteers and performing the test - but creating the range based on the middle 95% of normal values. Therefore, even before we started testing people, we deemed 1 in 20 healthy people to be 'abnormal'.
Counting on my fingers, we do a minimum of 22 blood tests on patients admitted to our hospital. Statistically, even if you are well (though that is unlikely given you presented to the hospital, and were assessed and deemed unwell enough to be admitted) at least 1 of these blood results should be abnormal. And I haven't even started on your ECG, radiograph, blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturations, respiratory rate, temperature etc etc etc. And if just one CT scan were performed, that looks at so many metrics, that several are bound to be abnormal to some degree (so called 'benign incidentalomas').
Part of being a good physician is knowing what abnormal results are significant, and what are red herrings. Ignoring a result is a difficult thing to do in medicine (the article has some good reasons why) and takes a good knowledge of the context, as well as plenty of experience, to be confidently able to say 'that is a red-herring'.
I disagree with the writer suggesting that thresholds should simply be raised. This is a stupid and dangerous way of dealing with this problem! The problem isn't how _far_ above threshold the value is, but whether it is or it isn't. Raising the threshold does not eliminate false-positive results, but will undoubtedly result in false-negative results. Tests in medicine are assessed to measure their 'positive predictive value' (see wikipedia), which, simply put, is about choosing a threshold that will find a balance between limiting false-positives, and limiting false-negatives. Instead of blanket raising of thresholds, doctors should be basing their decisions on the _evidence base_ - i.e. research done looking at how patients with these values fare with and without treatment. Only then will we know whether what we are doing is helpful or not.
The writer is writing in a public journal, and I think it is dangerous of him to suggest that some people don't really need treatment for diabetes - a condition that is hard enough to demonstrate to patients the dangerous long-term consequences. I wonder how many people reading this article have decided 'I don't really have diabetes - this person says so! And I thought I felt well, too!' and chucked their meds out the window. And yet, there is very strong research and evidence that shows that people diagnosed with diabetes (whatever their blood sugar) do much better if their blood pressure and glucose levels are kept below certain levels. And by 'doing much better' I mean, have less heart attacks, less strokes, go blind less, have less kidney failure, have less neuropathy and die less. All these things are real-world problems which damage peoples health. We are not just treating a number! (but we only know this from the evidence).
The other side to this argument is social. Here in the U.K. we are proud of having a largely non-private system. With all the cost and time pressures on the NHS, it means that we don't investigate or treat unless we feel it would benefit the patient. If an NHS doctor in the U.K. says you have a health problem, it's something you should probably listen up to, because he is not paid to do that. Of course some would argue that the flip-side is that patients may not get investigated or treated enough, which may be balanced somewhat by the law courts. I'm not saying it's good that doctors say 'well because this person has come in with a,b and c, and even though I don't think it is 'x', we can't justify in a law court not doing investigation 'y', but it does provide a counter balance.
Doctors should try to good, be very careful not to do harm, and base their decisions on rational arguments backed up by evidence.
(the article's suggestion of simply raising the thresholds is idiotic)
...My Psion Series 3a...
How has it been nearly 20 years and yet nothing has touched this machine with regards to form-factor, keyboard quality, OS responsiveness and sophistication of PIM applications?
I was at a conference recently watching a fantastic speaker who spent his life's work on elucidating the pathogenesis of antiphosholipid syndrome, and next to me was someone attempting to take notes on an ipad. Clearly somewhere in her distant memory were ideas of happiness and bliss, of form and function coalescing on the future of technology that would be her companion for the conference. The reality was somewhat different. The 20 wpm typing speed was particularly hampered by the visual presentations, which frequently interrupted her fervered hunt and pecking of the keys and word suggestions. I dare say all the effort involved precluded any understanding of the speaker, but I can't besure of this. I can be sure that it proved finally to all who noticed that data input will never be a strong talent of a tablet.
Hear hear
I think Ubuntu 10.04 is a pretty stable desktop, but what is going to happen in 2013 when support runs out for it? I just don't see businesses moving the desktop over to unity or gnome 3.
D
TFA seems only to prove that Apple is not 'tracking your every move' in the literal sense, they are just 'tracking your every move within the accuracy a phone on standby is able to, aggregated to a weekly basis'. Oh, well that's ok, if it's that inaccurate, surely my privacy isn't threatened! The writer is an apologist for Apple - after all, why end it with 'well if that argument didn't convince, someone else is doing it too! If everyone's doing it, it must be right!' (majorly paraphased).
People are also concluding that this data isn't 'phoned home'. But I don't believe they have the sourcecode for the software on their iphone, and if they did, that they have looked through it.
And as for the parent - your 'cell'phone provider needs to know where you are in order to supply your 'cell'. Not saying that justifies them keeping a record of it, but on the other hand, your bank has a record of all the transactions you have made involving your bank account. I'm not sure what justification a cellphone maker has to record your whereabouts.
I am all for rethinking the desktop paradigm, but I'm not sure whether Gnome 3 is a complete rethink or a desperate attempt to break out of the Windows 95 mould (which I think most linux users, given the popularity of mint and pclinuxos, would grudgingly admit is a sensible way of organising a desktop).
When I moved from Win XP to Gnome 2, I appreciated the rapid access the upper and lower bars gave me to applications, places, open applications, control of access, desktop, shortcuts, other panels and a full calendar - something that greatly improved productivity. Gone were the days of clicking on the same spot in the lower left, and then trying to manoeuvre your mouse around the nested menu upon menu just to find the setting or application you were after, which often led to the mouse losing focus and frustration all round. I feel like Gnome 3 is a step back in this regard, channelling almost all operations through the same spot in the corner could create exactly the same sort of inefficiency and bottleneck.
When I can get Gnome 3 to work properly on my setup, and give it a go for a decent period of time, maybe I'll change my mind. But I think it's more likely I'll find the answer to my own question, and realise that the problem is Linux struggling to clearly define it's niche and uniqueness between Mac OS X and Windows 7.
It isn't just that - the university I attended allowed direct access to a number of expensive journals from their network - opening this up via a wifi router would not only infringe copyright, but also compromise the security of the university network.
Yes - this is the case in the large organisation I work for - we share terminals briefly for looking up data, and sometimes search the web. It isn't time-worthwhile to go through changing the default search engine to google, although I still do it every now and then.
I have seen people 'bing' for 'google'
D
I also wondered about this - maybe its something to do with the informal arrangement between the US and Sweden that he leaked before.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8202745/WikiLeaks-Swedish-government-hid-anti-terror-operations-with-America-from-Parliament.html
(sorry for linking to telegraph - came up first on google and I'm lazy!)
D
Having read a lot of the bizarre analogies above ('onion skins' 'car engines') I feel that most people haven't got the point that OEM manufacturers are _not_ selling their laptops without _3rd party_ software. There is an argument that the only people who would wish to purchase such a laptop would be a minority of linux users - i.e. around 1%, and therefore it would be a logistical cost not worth bearing. I might buy this argument if manufacturers provided laptops in a one-size-fits all strategy, but given a geek, like me, can choose between 5 ranges of laptop from Lenovo, with around three options each for RAM, processor, graphics cpu, hard drive size, wireless connectivity, screen resolution and type of windows installation, then don't try and tell me that it would be difficult or costly in anyway to sell a plain unformatted hard drive without without a license. If I can decline bluetooth, why can't I decline Windows?
The only aspect of the law suit that doesn't make sense is Why Microsoft? Why not sue lenovo? Unless this guy has some evidence to show that Microsoft are using anti-competitive strategies to maintain their marketshare, I don't imagine it will be successful.
Which is a shame, and means we'll have to wait for the EU to step in.
* Drafting, rendering, and animation (still one of the only domains exclusively populated by 'real' desktops running Windows)
Sure about that? A medium-sized animation special effects studio in London, Soho, uses exclusively Linux boxes running Maya. And from what I understand, the rendering farms tend to run linux as well.
Absolutely. In medicine, if the patient can't understand the risks and benefits of what you putting them through, they cannot consent to it. If only software, parking regulations, legally binding agreements etc etc took the same attitude, those of us who cannot afford to pay a lawyer to read everything before we sign it, will be able to not be caught by these people.
Garbage in, Garbage out.
These recent events have shown how reliant we are, in the West, on American companies which do not necessarily hold the same values as us. Unless you want to return to living in a cage, boycotting both VISA and Mastercard is simply not an option, and the same goes to some extent to using paypal. It's surely not a good idea that the American government have such power over money transactions of all countries in the West.
I wonder if this will be recognised by governments in the West, and a new form of electronic transfer be supported as an alternative, as the article mentions, or whether this will blow over and we'll find ourselves in a similar position in the future, but it could involve an entire country that displeases the US government rather just a small organisation.
Agreed - A fresh install of Win XP is pretty amazingly snappy, but just a week or two down the line this isn't the case anymore. I've found ubuntu to remain at a moderate amount of snappiness for longer. WinXP after 6 months was largely unuseable on my old Pentium M 1.3Ghz.
Ok, call me gullible or ignorant - but is that actually true?
I did remember my old Amiga used to crash in amusing ways, as one element of the graphics or audio would go, leaving the rest of the system carrying on as if that didn't matter!
D