Perhaps the Clinton Administration should have upgraded and done better job to provide our Military with better equipment before handing the next administration the Department of Defense.
GWB had TWO YEARS with a republican controlled congress during which he vetoed precisely ZERO bills to get any equipment he desired requisitioned. The problems we have in Iraq are ones of leadership, not equipment. Even if there were/are equipment problems (which I'm in no way conceding that they are - and understand I have family in Iraq at this moment) then the leadership (Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld) should have realized that and NOT GOTTEN US IN A NEEDLESS WAR.
He also hindered equipment upgrades, and now our soldiers are over in Iraq and Afghanistan using piss poor equipment.
GWB got us into an unnecessary war we've spent nearly a trillion dollars fighting and the quality of the equipment the troops have is Clinton's fault? Hmmm, think that trillion dollars could have been spent differently? Perhaps on equipment for the troops?
Abstaining on a bill that passes is effectively the same as supporting the bill absent some obvious conflict of interest. Since no conflict of interest exists here, McCain effectively supported the bill. If he opposed the bill he could have found a way to be present to vote no on the bill.
Note that the last few times I flew, the planes were pretty much full. Hardly a sign that security regulations have impacted ticket sales all that much.
That has a lot more to do with the number of canceled flights, reduced seat capacity, ticket prices, and overbooking than any impact from security. As onerous as the security theater has become there really isn't a decent substitute for airline travel over long distances so it would have to get REALLY intrusive (think latex gloves) to seriously impact ticket sales volume.
Constant lockups, power cycles, and constantly losing DNS service... It was batshit insane.
Sometimes a firmware update can help. Not always but I do find it worthwhile updating the firmware and it has fixed problems for me in the past.. Having it on a UPS helps too; make sure you shield the data cables as well as the power cables. There are a few linksys units however that simply never seem to work reliably. My father has one. Just can't seem to hold a reliable connection for some reason. Mine on the other hand works damn near flawlessly.
ExxonMobil has gotten fed up with idiot attacks on oil companies, so they're going to spin off their retail business
Evidence? That would be pretty big news and I sure as heck can't find any supporting documentation. Such a spinoff is also nowhere to be found in their financial statements.
Many corporations contribute generously to charities. This makes them less profitable, and as a stockholder, I find this practice reprehensible.
Thank $diety you don't run any companies I'm associated with. You think shareholders are the only ones with a stake in a company? You think companies exist in a vacuum where their actions affect no one but themselves? Pathetic. The primary purpose of a company may be to make a profit but it's a morally bankrupt company that ONLY stands for profit.
Think radiologists. They have no use whatsoever for anything to do with patient care.
You are talking about teleradiology I presume? Most of the time a radiologist isn't going to use a laptop for that. Besides there are all kinds of HIPPA problems with using a laptop. Most of the radiologists I personally know work in a central location with a decent graphical workstation if they are reading digital images. In fact you need a special screen that has been approved for clinical purposes in many locations. A laptop would be of little value to them.
Matters discussed in this press release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.... I think that sums it up nicely.
While you are absolutely correct, that's just a standard bit of boiler-plate required by every company in financial statements so that they can talk about the future. Nothing special about this particular piece of boiler-plate.
Your hourly blood pressure and temperature while you're in ICU, your allergies, your currents meds, and many other things get loaded into Windows systems that work together (or not).
The backend databases for this stuff is pretty much always something much more robust than Windows. We're not talking Windows XP and MS Access here. The front end for the computers used to enter these medical records are frequently Windows based but that's nothing to get worked up over so long as the system administration is competent.
You would be surprised how much medical equipment is connected to the internet.
No I wouldn't be surprised because I see such devices regularly but I'm not worried about it too much either. The medical devices themselves really aren't the problem. The problems hospitals have with internet connectivity and are mostly related to accessing medical records, scheduling and ordering medicines. When the computers that control those go down THEN chaos ensues.
The stuff that is working on acutely ill patients is typically overseen directly by medical staff so if something is not working right it normally is noted quickly. Critical devices like IV drips are typically stand alone so a virus is not a significant concern.
They supposedly have a firewall and a VPN, but their IT department is not so bright,...
My experience with hospital IT staff is that the guys who run the overall network and the critical databases are (usually) pretty bright but the monkeys they hire to maintain the PCs and sometimes man the helpdesk are borderline incompetent. It varies greatly from hospital to hospital though. One time I had the IT staff at a hospital I was working in send TWO guys to swap out a SIMM and I had to walk them through it. But the guys who ran the network were usually quite competent - though extremely overworked.
However, you just need one doctor with a laptop that is infected connecting directly to such a machine and mayhem ensues.
Doctors don't carry laptops to work. They would have no use whatsoever for one on any of the wards or for anything to do with patient care. The computers they do need to use for medical records and such are provided for them by the hospital. Plus few medical devices are network connected because there is no reason for them to be.
management supports the users having to much access and total freedom to cause me and the desktop support staff headaches.
I don't know if your company is big enough to have a risk management staff but sometimes an effective tactic is to involve the lawyers. Not in a threatening way but in a "here's how much liability we are looking at thanks to our insecure network" sort of way. There is of supporting information out there. Show them what a BSA audit costs. Start with easy stuff like why you need an email retention policy and see how it goes.
Management may not listen to the techs but they usually listen to the lawyers. The important thing is to make sure everyone knows it is the lawyers who demand compliance and let them play bad cop. They'll grumble but accept it since few people really want to argue with the legal department.
That Natural Gas gets reallocated for used as a transportation fuel. So we use less oil.
Deeply unlikely since there are few passenger vehicles which use NG as a fuel and few plans for any by any significant auto manufacturer. There also is a limited distribution network for vehicle use particularly to rural locations. Let's not even get into the fact that the energy efficiency of NG in vehicles is worse than diesel - though it is cleaner.
Wind power will only find use as a transportation fuel in cars if plug-in hybrids or electric cars make a meaningful dent in the market. Then it simply is one more contributor to the grid.
I know that works for a Hospital (VA), but, most other physicians I know are in their own private practice.
Don't get me wrong, small practices are still quite common - just less so than they once were and the numbers are shrinking. Apparently about 15% of physicians are self employed. The move to larger practices is a relatively recent trend driven largely by increased specialization, lifestyle concerns, and economies of scale.
Well, of course not...if your a Doctor, you're usually working for yourself...
Being married to a physician I can assure you that most doctors do not work for themselves - at least here in the US. Most either work for a hospital or are employed in a group practice. Frequently the group practice is a partnership but not always. In the larger groups the doctor is usually an employee, especially if they have just finished a residency. The volume of paperwork and insurance issues plus lifestyle considerations make it increasingly un-economic to have a solo practice or even a small practice.
Wind energy has some problems. The wind doesn't always blow.
That's true just like the sun doesn't always shine but you are missing a very important fact. What we DO know for a given location anywhere on earth approximately how many days a year the wind will blow and with what average intensity. While you cannot be sure the wind will blow on a given day you can be reasonably sure it will blow. Having lots of turbines can help smooth out the fluctuations. Solar power works the same way - you simply plan based on the average number of sunny days a year in a given location.
This makes planning a fairly straightforward proposition. Almost all the costs are fixed so you simply have to design enough flexibility into the grid to allow for days when the wind deviates significantly from the average. Engineers have known for a long time how to accomplish this.
I do not believe in the slightest that wind energy is going to have a major effect on our dependency on oil.
In the near future I'd certainly agree with this. Wind energy is more likely to displace coal or maybe natural gas in powering the grid - to what extent remains to be seen. For better or worse wind is unlikely to be more than a supplementary power source in the next 20 years.
It sounds great for power plants and other things, but it's the automobile sector we really need to worry about.
The main opportunity I see here is with plug-in-hybrids and electric cars. Those can be powered with a variety of fuels besides simply oil derivatives - including wind. This is where wind will make whatever dent it is going to make. But it's not clear just how much of a reduction is possible. Besides just the consumption of gasoline/diesel fuel, oil is used in nearly everything we manufacture (plastics, lubricants, etc) so the need for it will be slow to change.
ExxonMobil doesn't consider itself to be an oil company. As the parent suggests, ExxonMobil is in the energy business.
All the major oil companies started giving lip service to this about 20 years ago in response to a fairly famous critique of the industry. It's mostly talk however. If you look at ExxonMobil's last annual statement on page 19 it says "Fossil fuels are expected to continue to provide about 80% of energy in 2030". That does not sound much like a company that expects to be a big player in any other kind of energy any time soon.
...but the presenter claimed that ExxonMobil is the second largest holder of mineral rights to uranium ore in the world.
I'm deeply dubious of this claim. One would expect to find some mention of it in the footnotes of their financial statements as it would be a material asset. While it's possible I've overlooked something I can find no mention of such mineral rights in their 2007 financial statements or annual report.
Personally...I'll never work for free ever again. Salaried pay is a rip-off.
That depends entirely on the salary. In many cases you are quite correct but not always. Once you climb up towards management, hourly pay generally is no longer an option. Plus in some professions (ex. doctors or investment bankers) hourly pay is simply not going to be an option on the table. Fortunately the pay and bonuses (should) make up for it so long as you don't mind the hours. Whether the hours vs. pay trade-off is worth it is an exercise left for the reader.
Please. At least the Executive branch has term limits.
Only the President. That's the important one to be sure but I've always wondered if term limits shouldn't go further down the food chain. There is no term limit for the Vice-President or any cabinet level position. Cabinet level positions are sometimes held for more than one administration. For example Cheney and Rumsfeld served in the Ford and Bush administrations. Rumsfeld also served in the Nixon administration and Cheney served in the Bush Sr administration. Furthermore lower level bureaucrats often stick around for multiple administrations.
Personally, I'd like to see a new Constitutional Ammendment that every 8 to 16 years, the nation as a whole votes on all the congress critters and senators as an aggregate group, Yes / No. And if they get a "NO" then they (the aggregate whole lot) can never run for any office ever again (not even honorary town dog catcher), and lose whatever pension they might have coming.
Exactly who is going to enact such vindictive and short sighted legislation? That would be a great way to further expand the power of the executive branch so maybe Emperor Bush would be in favor. Darth Cheney would certainly approve.
Really, I think we already have enough cowardly, pandering, and/or dogmatic leadership as it is. Realistic term limits (say 12 years max in either branch of congress) would substantially accomplish your goals. Not that I expect those to ever get into law either.
Of course most lawmakers, lawyers, judges, politicians, and law enforcement officers have little to no clue how the internet or even most technology works. There are exceptions of course but for the most part technology isn't inherently interesting to them. Likewise, despite what many slashdotters think, most readers of this forum don't know much about the law or law enforcement. Ignorance results in bad judgments which is why it's important to have good policy and educate as much as possible both on the technology and the law.
Well, why don't a group of us get together and make something better... Making a better site is the easy part tho, letting people know about it is the really hard part. An auction site without many listings won't attract buyers, and one without many buyers won't attract sellers.
Amazon.com and Yahoo already tried and failed miserably to make competing auction sites. If they failed with all their IT talent and capital the odds of anyone else succeeding are pretty slim. Network effects keep eBay as a de-facto monopoly. Buyers go where the sellers are and vice versa even if the marketplace (eBay) is less than ideal.
The only company I could possibly see making a dent in eBay would be Google but that would be a long shot and I doubt they really want the business. I think eBay is going to have a lot of liability issues due to all the fraud and fake/stolen merchandise.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see things getting better. Craigslist auction anyone?
You do know that eBay owns a stake in Craigslist of over 20% of outstanding shares? Craigslist will not get you away from eBay.
Perhaps the Clinton Administration should have upgraded and done better job to provide our Military with better equipment before handing the next administration the Department of Defense.
GWB had TWO YEARS with a republican controlled congress during which he vetoed precisely ZERO bills to get any equipment he desired requisitioned. The problems we have in Iraq are ones of leadership, not equipment. Even if there were/are equipment problems (which I'm in no way conceding that they are - and understand I have family in Iraq at this moment) then the leadership (Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld) should have realized that and NOT GOTTEN US IN A NEEDLESS WAR.
He also hindered equipment upgrades, and now our soldiers are over in Iraq and Afghanistan using piss poor equipment.
GWB got us into an unnecessary war we've spent nearly a trillion dollars fighting and the quality of the equipment the troops have is Clinton's fault? Hmmm, think that trillion dollars could have been spent differently? Perhaps on equipment for the troops?
McCain abstained.
Abstaining on a bill that passes is effectively the same as supporting the bill absent some obvious conflict of interest. Since no conflict of interest exists here, McCain effectively supported the bill. If he opposed the bill he could have found a way to be present to vote no on the bill.
Note that the last few times I flew, the planes were pretty much full. Hardly a sign that security regulations have impacted ticket sales all that much.
That has a lot more to do with the number of canceled flights, reduced seat capacity, ticket prices, and overbooking than any impact from security. As onerous as the security theater has become there really isn't a decent substitute for airline travel over long distances so it would have to get REALLY intrusive (think latex gloves) to seriously impact ticket sales volume.
Constant lockups, power cycles, and constantly losing DNS service... It was batshit insane.
Sometimes a firmware update can help. Not always but I do find it worthwhile updating the firmware and it has fixed problems for me in the past.. Having it on a UPS helps too; make sure you shield the data cables as well as the power cables. There are a few linksys units however that simply never seem to work reliably. My father has one. Just can't seem to hold a reliable connection for some reason. Mine on the other hand works damn near flawlessly.
ExxonMobil has gotten fed up with idiot attacks on oil companies, so they're going to spin off their retail business
Evidence? That would be pretty big news and I sure as heck can't find any supporting documentation. Such a spinoff is also nowhere to be found in their financial statements.
Many corporations contribute generously to charities. This makes them less profitable, and as a stockholder, I find this practice reprehensible.
Thank $diety you don't run any companies I'm associated with. You think shareholders are the only ones with a stake in a company? You think companies exist in a vacuum where their actions affect no one but themselves? Pathetic. The primary purpose of a company may be to make a profit but it's a morally bankrupt company that ONLY stands for profit.
Think radiologists. They have no use whatsoever for anything to do with patient care.
You are talking about teleradiology I presume? Most of the time a radiologist isn't going to use a laptop for that. Besides there are all kinds of HIPPA problems with using a laptop. Most of the radiologists I personally know work in a central location with a decent graphical workstation if they are reading digital images. In fact you need a special screen that has been approved for clinical purposes in many locations. A laptop would be of little value to them.
Matters discussed in this press release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. ... I think that sums it up nicely.
While you are absolutely correct, that's just a standard bit of boiler-plate required by every company in financial statements so that they can talk about the future. Nothing special about this particular piece of boiler-plate.
Your hourly blood pressure and temperature while you're in ICU, your allergies, your currents meds, and many other things get loaded into Windows systems that work together (or not).
The backend databases for this stuff is pretty much always something much more robust than Windows. We're not talking Windows XP and MS Access here. The front end for the computers used to enter these medical records are frequently Windows based but that's nothing to get worked up over so long as the system administration is competent.
You would be surprised how much medical equipment is connected to the internet.
No I wouldn't be surprised because I see such devices regularly but I'm not worried about it too much either. The medical devices themselves really aren't the problem. The problems hospitals have with internet connectivity and are mostly related to accessing medical records, scheduling and ordering medicines. When the computers that control those go down THEN chaos ensues.
The stuff that is working on acutely ill patients is typically overseen directly by medical staff so if something is not working right it normally is noted quickly. Critical devices like IV drips are typically stand alone so a virus is not a significant concern.
They supposedly have a firewall and a VPN, but their IT department is not so bright,...
My experience with hospital IT staff is that the guys who run the overall network and the critical databases are (usually) pretty bright but the monkeys they hire to maintain the PCs and sometimes man the helpdesk are borderline incompetent. It varies greatly from hospital to hospital though. One time I had the IT staff at a hospital I was working in send TWO guys to swap out a SIMM and I had to walk them through it. But the guys who ran the network were usually quite competent - though extremely overworked.
However, you just need one doctor with a laptop that is infected connecting directly to such a machine and mayhem ensues.
Doctors don't carry laptops to work. They would have no use whatsoever for one on any of the wards or for anything to do with patient care. The computers they do need to use for medical records and such are provided for them by the hospital. Plus few medical devices are network connected because there is no reason for them to be.
management supports the users having to much access and total freedom to cause me and the desktop support staff headaches.
I don't know if your company is big enough to have a risk management staff but sometimes an effective tactic is to involve the lawyers. Not in a threatening way but in a "here's how much liability we are looking at thanks to our insecure network" sort of way. There is of supporting information out there. Show them what a BSA audit costs. Start with easy stuff like why you need an email retention policy and see how it goes.
Management may not listen to the techs but they usually listen to the lawyers. The important thing is to make sure everyone knows it is the lawyers who demand compliance and let them play bad cop. They'll grumble but accept it since few people really want to argue with the legal department.
That Natural Gas gets reallocated for used as a transportation fuel. So we use less oil.
Deeply unlikely since there are few passenger vehicles which use NG as a fuel and few plans for any by any significant auto manufacturer. There also is a limited distribution network for vehicle use particularly to rural locations. Let's not even get into the fact that the energy efficiency of NG in vehicles is worse than diesel - though it is cleaner.
Wind power will only find use as a transportation fuel in cars if plug-in hybrids or electric cars make a meaningful dent in the market. Then it simply is one more contributor to the grid.
Interesting...what part of the US do you live in?
Midwest.
I know that works for a Hospital (VA), but, most other physicians I know are in their own private practice.
Don't get me wrong, small practices are still quite common - just less so than they once were and the numbers are shrinking. Apparently about 15% of physicians are self employed. The move to larger practices is a relatively recent trend driven largely by increased specialization, lifestyle concerns, and economies of scale.
Well, of course not...if your a Doctor, you're usually working for yourself...
Being married to a physician I can assure you that most doctors do not work for themselves - at least here in the US. Most either work for a hospital or are employed in a group practice. Frequently the group practice is a partnership but not always. In the larger groups the doctor is usually an employee, especially if they have just finished a residency. The volume of paperwork and insurance issues plus lifestyle considerations make it increasingly un-economic to have a solo practice or even a small practice.
Wind energy has some problems. The wind doesn't always blow.
That's true just like the sun doesn't always shine but you are missing a very important fact. What we DO know for a given location anywhere on earth approximately how many days a year the wind will blow and with what average intensity. While you cannot be sure the wind will blow on a given day you can be reasonably sure it will blow. Having lots of turbines can help smooth out the fluctuations. Solar power works the same way - you simply plan based on the average number of sunny days a year in a given location.
This makes planning a fairly straightforward proposition. Almost all the costs are fixed so you simply have to design enough flexibility into the grid to allow for days when the wind deviates significantly from the average. Engineers have known for a long time how to accomplish this.
I do not believe in the slightest that wind energy is going to have a major effect on our dependency on oil.
In the near future I'd certainly agree with this. Wind energy is more likely to displace coal or maybe natural gas in powering the grid - to what extent remains to be seen. For better or worse wind is unlikely to be more than a supplementary power source in the next 20 years.
It sounds great for power plants and other things, but it's the automobile sector we really need to worry about.
The main opportunity I see here is with plug-in-hybrids and electric cars. Those can be powered with a variety of fuels besides simply oil derivatives - including wind. This is where wind will make whatever dent it is going to make. But it's not clear just how much of a reduction is possible. Besides just the consumption of gasoline/diesel fuel, oil is used in nearly everything we manufacture (plastics, lubricants, etc) so the need for it will be slow to change.
ExxonMobil doesn't consider itself to be an oil company. As the parent suggests, ExxonMobil is in the energy business.
All the major oil companies started giving lip service to this about 20 years ago in response to a fairly famous critique of the industry. It's mostly talk however. If you look at ExxonMobil's last annual statement on page 19 it says "Fossil fuels are expected to continue to provide about 80% of energy in 2030". That does not sound much like a company that expects to be a big player in any other kind of energy any time soon.
...but the presenter claimed that ExxonMobil is the second largest holder of mineral rights to uranium ore in the world.
I'm deeply dubious of this claim. One would expect to find some mention of it in the footnotes of their financial statements as it would be a material asset. While it's possible I've overlooked something I can find no mention of such mineral rights in their 2007 financial statements or annual report.
Personally...I'll never work for free ever again. Salaried pay is a rip-off.
That depends entirely on the salary. In many cases you are quite correct but not always. Once you climb up towards management, hourly pay generally is no longer an option. Plus in some professions (ex. doctors or investment bankers) hourly pay is simply not going to be an option on the table. Fortunately the pay and bonuses (should) make up for it so long as you don't mind the hours. Whether the hours vs. pay trade-off is worth it is an exercise left for the reader.
Please. At least the Executive branch has term limits.
Only the President. That's the important one to be sure but I've always wondered if term limits shouldn't go further down the food chain. There is no term limit for the Vice-President or any cabinet level position. Cabinet level positions are sometimes held for more than one administration. For example Cheney and Rumsfeld served in the Ford and Bush administrations. Rumsfeld also served in the Nixon administration and Cheney served in the Bush Sr administration. Furthermore lower level bureaucrats often stick around for multiple administrations.
Personally, I'd like to see a new Constitutional Ammendment that every 8 to 16 years, the nation as a whole votes on all the congress critters and senators as an aggregate group, Yes / No. And if they get a "NO" then they (the aggregate whole lot) can never run for any office ever again (not even honorary town dog catcher), and lose whatever pension they might have coming.
Exactly who is going to enact such vindictive and short sighted legislation? That would be a great way to further expand the power of the executive branch so maybe Emperor Bush would be in favor. Darth Cheney would certainly approve.
Really, I think we already have enough cowardly, pandering, and/or dogmatic leadership as it is. Realistic term limits (say 12 years max in either branch of congress) would substantially accomplish your goals. Not that I expect those to ever get into law either.
FUCK?! Do the people that make laws have absolutely ANY idea how the internet works and is used?
That's a big fat negative there Red Rider.
Of course most lawmakers, lawyers, judges, politicians, and law enforcement officers have little to no clue how the internet or even most technology works. There are exceptions of course but for the most part technology isn't inherently interesting to them. Likewise, despite what many slashdotters think, most readers of this forum don't know much about the law or law enforcement. Ignorance results in bad judgments which is why it's important to have good policy and educate as much as possible both on the technology and the law.
Why is there no competing online fleamarket to eBay?
Network effects plain and simple. Buyers go where the sellers are and sellers go where the buyers are.
Well, why don't a group of us get together and make something better... Making a better site is the easy part tho, letting people know about it is the really hard part. An auction site without many listings won't attract buyers, and one without many buyers won't attract sellers.
Amazon.com and Yahoo already tried and failed miserably to make competing auction sites. If they failed with all their IT talent and capital the odds of anyone else succeeding are pretty slim. Network effects keep eBay as a de-facto monopoly. Buyers go where the sellers are and vice versa even if the marketplace (eBay) is less than ideal.
The only company I could possibly see making a dent in eBay would be Google but that would be a long shot and I doubt they really want the business. I think eBay is going to have a lot of liability issues due to all the fraud and fake/stolen merchandise.