The article is slightly wrong. There are plenty of devices that are ingestible (able to be swallowed) but non-digestible (unable to be broken down into smaller parts). Several companies make capsules that take pictures, measure pH, transit time, etc. and are FDA-cleared. This is probably the first one that is electrically powered that is also digestible.
I agree with this, wish I had mod points. We used it heavily in my Master's program in software engineering. You can get feedback on your code in 2 ways - 1) functional improvements, such as faster algorithms or more efficient memory usage, or 2) code hygiene improvements, such as meaningful comments, plugging memory leaks. Option 2 is way more useful in the long run - it applies to all code you write, unlike option 1 that may only apply to a particular domain or OS or application. Also good code hygiene helps avoid many of the bugs that the compiler will never catch - timing errors and race conditions, one-off/fencepost errors, and stuff that generally doesn't appear in testing unless you've run your program for 25 days straight and it then mysteriously crashes.
It is a bit strange, working through the problems in the book because they are so simple, but really the output of the exercises is a checklist of your own personal improvement points.
You should try reading the Liveship Traders trilogy or the Soldier Son trilogy, both by Robin Hobb. Her characters are so realistic, I felt like I was at a dysfunctional dinner with my family. More annoying and unlikeable than Thomas Covenant by a long shot. (However the plots and the books were quite the page-turners. I'm just talking about the likeability of the protagonist.)
It is very, very difficult to become a pharma company. The startup costs are huge, even if you are not spending any money on R&D of new drugs. The business must first register with the FDA, they have to have all sorts of strict quality controls in place, then the drugs must be tested for efficacy and safety and the results approved by the FDA. I work for a small medical device company and it's going to be awhile before we become profitable and the regulations and requirements for drug manufacturers are very similar.
The law only lists the What, it does not explicitly tell you How to implement the regulation. Kind of like the difference between a requirements spec and a design spec. The FDA also does not require you to be compliant to ISO 80001, but they will recognize your compliance certificate as a way to easily prove you are meeting the regulation. Otherwise the FDA will have to do a lot of painful digging around in your files (sans rubber gloves and lubricant) to get the proof they're after.
I'll dupe my reply to this dupe, but only because I have a clue of what I'm talking about.
I work for a medical device manufacturer. We don't make a life-essential device, but all the laws apply to us as well as the manufacturers that make critical devices. The FDA already has the power to examine a manufacturer's source code. When they come in to perform an inspection, the inspectors have the same powers as federal marshals. They can look at anything - just time and resources are the limiting factors. When a device is submitted for FDA clearance, there is a lot of software documentation that has to be included in the application. Our software section is one of the thicker sections in an application. Depending on the level of concern of the device, a manufacturer has to submit all test results, software detailed design, etc. The stuff we have to do during development here is incredible and we're a minor level of concern.
Regulation requires that all designs be periodically, formally reviewed. It requires that the review includes an independent reviewer and that reviewers are just as (if not more) technically competent than the designer. The FDA may not have the resources to review every line of code, but they do have the resources to look at the documentation from the reviews and to look at the documentation listing the qualifications of the reviewers.
Manufacturers are required to conduct risk assessments for their devices and identify any/all reasonably foreseeable hazards and to mitigate those hazards until they are as low as reasonably practicable or the clinical benefit to the patient outweighs the risk. The risk assessment must be conducted by clinical and technical experts. Each mitigation (or fix or change to a line of code) has to be re-evaluated for risk and possible repercussions to the rest of the device. Testing is also quite rigorous and safety and reliability are the top priorities. Our testing takes months. Changes that affect safety may have to be tested in expensive clinical trials on human subjects and the results resubmitted to the FDA for clearance.
Perhaps by having the public look at source code there will be some bugs found. But I'm sure that the bug has already been considered as part of the manufacturer's risk assessment, and any fixes for that bug will not be fast in coming considering the heavyweight nature of the development process.
I work for a medical device manufacturer. We don't make a life-essential device, but all the laws apply to us as well as the manufacturers that make critical devices. The FDA already has the power to examine a manufacturer's source code. When they come in to perform an inspection, the inspectors have the same powers as federal marshals. They can look at anything - just time and resources are the limiting factors. When a device is submitted for FDA clearance, there is a lot of software documentation that has to be included in the application. Our software section is one of the thicker sections in an application. Depending on the level of concern of the device, a manufacturer has to submit all test results, software detailed design, etc. The stuff we have to do during development here is incredible and we're a minor level of concern.
Regulation requires that all designs be periodically, formally reviewed. It requires that the review includes an independent reviewer and that reviewers are just as (if not more) technically competent than the designer. The FDA may not have the resources to review every line of code, but they do have the resources to look at the documentation from the reviews and to look at the documentation listing the qualifications of the reviewers.
Manufacturers are required to conduct risk assessments for their devices and identify any/all reasonably foreseeable hazards and to mitigate those hazards until they are as low as reasonably practicable or the clinical benefit to the patient outweighs the risk. The risk assessment must be conducted by clinical and technical experts. Each mitigation (or fix or change to a line of code) has to be re-evaluated for risk and possible repercussions to the rest of the device. Testing is also quite rigorous and safety and reliability are the top priorities. Our testing takes months. Changes that affect safety may have to be tested in expensive clinical trials on human subjects and the results resubmitted to the FDA for clearance.
Perhaps by having the public look at source code there will be some bugs found. But I'm sure that the bug has already been considered as part of the manufacturer's risk assessment, and any fixes for that bug will not be fast in coming considering the heavyweight nature of the development process.
This is a great book about how free-living organisms (like ourselves) have evolved alongside parasitic organisms (like bacteria). I found it interesting that the scientists that the author interviewed all look at free-living organisms not as individuals, but as miniature eco-systems for parasites. Several scientists said "I don't see a mouse (or frog, or fish) anymore, I see a bag of parasites."
A little gruesome, but true.
http://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatures/dp/074320011X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239818586&sr=8-1
Back in college, I worked as a student assistant for the Occupational Therapy dept. at the University at Buffalo. I had to make sure the department's site was handicapped accessible. We used Bobby, which was free back then. It helped catch a lot of easy-to-fix errors. I see that the product is still around, but now they charge for it:
That was a terrible quest! You should not have to have post-mortem knowledge to solve a quest or puzzle in a computer game. It doesn't happen in real life, why should it be acceptable in a game? I think game designers have advanced somewhat in their plot creations since the 80s.
Re:Change your habits, change anything.
on
Preventing RSI?
·
· Score: 1
I second the rec for a mouse alternative. My right wrist was terrible due to a lot of cut & pasting and general mousework. The keyboards with the numeric keypad push the mouse so far out of natural body alignment, it's no wonder I was in pain. I tried switching my mouse to the lefthand side which worked for awhile, but really, a pen and tablet system has worked wonders for me. Fine pointer work (like for Photoshop) is much easier and more precise, too.
I also switched to a split/natural keyboard. Now I don't have any pain in either of my wrists. Although I have lost a lot of strength in my hands and in my grip due to my previous injuries. You definitely want to nip this in the bud before you have to constantly ask for help to open jars!
because last year, it told me my entire Federal tax burden was around $780. I make middle-5 figures. That's less than 2% of my gross income. Woo-hoo!
Unfortunately, I deducted at the single-person rate, so Uncle Sam gave me a whopping refund back. People are always so happy to get their own money back...
So, how did I do it? I am married, with one kid, and a mortgage. My husband is a college student. We maxed out my 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions. Those increase our deductions, lower my net income, and give us tons of tax credits. I love the tax credits!
I don't think a human tax preparer could have done much better.
Shannara? I tell my friends that if you stick Lord of the Rings in a bad photocopier, out comes Shannara. Might as well read the original.
If you are an RPG player, you can practically hear the dice rolling on the table while reading any Weis/Hickman book.:P
I will admit to avidly reading both of these two series. But please don't make the same youthful mistakes I did! Their glaring atrocities can be overlooked if you're young enough. If you're going to buy the first two series of books, the target readers *must* be under 14! Otherwise the books just are too absurd when you're older.
For a good sci-fi read, I recommend the Hyperion and Endymion series by Dan Simmons. Not a lot of adult-only action, plenty of lofty ideas like Love and evolution. And darned good science fiction with the farcaster portals and time travel.
In college, I was on Shattered Kingdoms MUD which was very RP-enforced. My character was a bard, although the closest in-game class available was swashbuckler. Being an A student IRL, I wasn't able to spend a lot of time killing mobs. However my character ended up around 25th level before I left college, and I earned most of my experience and levels from roleplaying.
Now that was cool! I've never heard of another MUD letting people level from roleplaying bonus experience. Especially to the extent that I did.
My church has a list of contents for "flood buckets" which people can donate for relief efforts. I know that you won't be bringing many of these to pass out to families, but perhaps their contents will help you clean up. See print-friendly version here: http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/print/kits/floodbucket.s tm
* 5-gallon bucket with resealable lid
* Bleach (two 1-quart or one 82 oz. bottle.)
* 5 scouring pads
* 7 Sponges
* 1 scrub brush
* 18 cleaning towels (reusable wipes)
* Liquid laundry detergent (two 25 oz. or one 50 oz. bottle)
* 1 household cleaner, 12-16 oz. bottle
* Disinfectant dish soap, 16-28 oz. bottle
* 50 clothes pins
* Clothes line (two 50 ft. or one 100 ft.)
* 5 dust masks
* 2 pair latex gloves
* 1 pair work gloves
* 24-bag roll of heavy-duty trash bags, 33-45 gallon (remove roll from box before placing in bucket)
* 1 Insect repellant spray, 6-14 oz. can (If aerosol, cans must have protective caps.)
* 1 Air freshener, 8 or 9 oz. can (If aerosol, cans must have protective caps.)
As a kid, I loved The City, especially because there were so many places that you could *not* go, because those areas were to be in another installment of the game. And The Dungeon was even more fun, with actual quests and alignment.
They were supposed to turn it into a MMORPG, but that died around 1999, I think. So, that series had a total of 4 or 5 planned games that were cancelled. This must hold a record somewhere in game history.
The music in the game was the best to come out of my Apple IIc's tinny speakers...
Actually, I think a lot of us here know exactly what someone means when they say "It smells like gamers in here."
And I am a gamer. I have bittersweet memories of my college days spent in the gaming club's tiny closet-like office with 12 other people playing card games, and how there was a palpable temperature difference if you stood in the doorway. And of the strange aromatic ambience in the Student Union after my university's 3-day gaming convention.
They say that smells evoke the strongest memories...:)
"The quest for Ken" is a bit of a word-play. According to the online Merriam Webster dictionary, ken is "the range of perception, understanding, or knowledge."
Slashdot Mirror
The article is slightly wrong. There are plenty of devices that are ingestible (able to be swallowed) but non-digestible (unable to be broken down into smaller parts). Several companies make capsules that take pictures, measure pH, transit time, etc. and are FDA-cleared. This is probably the first one that is electrically powered that is also digestible.
Maybe carry a lot of your stuff on you or hidden. Like these clothes with multitudes of pockets. http://www.scottevest.com/
I agree with this, wish I had mod points. We used it heavily in my Master's program in software engineering. You can get feedback on your code in 2 ways - 1) functional improvements, such as faster algorithms or more efficient memory usage, or 2) code hygiene improvements, such as meaningful comments, plugging memory leaks. Option 2 is way more useful in the long run - it applies to all code you write, unlike option 1 that may only apply to a particular domain or OS or application. Also good code hygiene helps avoid many of the bugs that the compiler will never catch - timing errors and race conditions, one-off/fencepost errors, and stuff that generally doesn't appear in testing unless you've run your program for 25 days straight and it then mysteriously crashes.
It is a bit strange, working through the problems in the book because they are so simple, but really the output of the exercises is a checklist of your own personal improvement points.
You should try reading the Liveship Traders trilogy or the Soldier Son trilogy, both by Robin Hobb. Her characters are so realistic, I felt like I was at a dysfunctional dinner with my family. More annoying and unlikeable than Thomas Covenant by a long shot. (However the plots and the books were quite the page-turners. I'm just talking about the likeability of the protagonist.)
It is very, very difficult to become a pharma company. The startup costs are huge, even if you are not spending any money on R&D of new drugs. The business must first register with the FDA, they have to have all sorts of strict quality controls in place, then the drugs must be tested for efficacy and safety and the results approved by the FDA. I work for a small medical device company and it's going to be awhile before we become profitable and the regulations and requirements for drug manufacturers are very similar.
I heard on the Rush Limbaugh show that it'll be good when we learn what dolphins know until they leak the location of Osama bin Laden's grave.
The law only lists the What, it does not explicitly tell you How to implement the regulation. Kind of like the difference between a requirements spec and a design spec. The FDA also does not require you to be compliant to ISO 80001, but they will recognize your compliance certificate as a way to easily prove you are meeting the regulation. Otherwise the FDA will have to do a lot of painful digging around in your files (sans rubber gloves and lubricant) to get the proof they're after.
I find it ironic that saccharin is an artificial sweetener but reacts with bitter-sensing cells. I always knew saccharin had a weird after-taste.
I'll dupe my reply to this dupe, but only because I have a clue of what I'm talking about.
I work for a medical device manufacturer. We don't make a life-essential device, but all the laws apply to us as well as the manufacturers that make critical devices. The FDA already has the power to examine a manufacturer's source code. When they come in to perform an inspection, the inspectors have the same powers as federal marshals. They can look at anything - just time and resources are the limiting factors. When a device is submitted for FDA clearance, there is a lot of software documentation that has to be included in the application. Our software section is one of the thicker sections in an application. Depending on the level of concern of the device, a manufacturer has to submit all test results, software detailed design, etc. The stuff we have to do during development here is incredible and we're a minor level of concern.
Regulation requires that all designs be periodically, formally reviewed. It requires that the review includes an independent reviewer and that reviewers are just as (if not more) technically competent than the designer. The FDA may not have the resources to review every line of code, but they do have the resources to look at the documentation from the reviews and to look at the documentation listing the qualifications of the reviewers.
Manufacturers are required to conduct risk assessments for their devices and identify any/all reasonably foreseeable hazards and to mitigate those hazards until they are as low as reasonably practicable or the clinical benefit to the patient outweighs the risk. The risk assessment must be conducted by clinical and technical experts. Each mitigation (or fix or change to a line of code) has to be re-evaluated for risk and possible repercussions to the rest of the device. Testing is also quite rigorous and safety and reliability are the top priorities. Our testing takes months. Changes that affect safety may have to be tested in expensive clinical trials on human subjects and the results resubmitted to the FDA for clearance.
Perhaps by having the public look at source code there will be some bugs found. But I'm sure that the bug has already been considered as part of the manufacturer's risk assessment, and any fixes for that bug will not be fast in coming considering the heavyweight nature of the development process.
I work for a medical device manufacturer. We don't make a life-essential device, but all the laws apply to us as well as the manufacturers that make critical devices. The FDA already has the power to examine a manufacturer's source code. When they come in to perform an inspection, the inspectors have the same powers as federal marshals. They can look at anything - just time and resources are the limiting factors. When a device is submitted for FDA clearance, there is a lot of software documentation that has to be included in the application. Our software section is one of the thicker sections in an application. Depending on the level of concern of the device, a manufacturer has to submit all test results, software detailed design, etc. The stuff we have to do during development here is incredible and we're a minor level of concern.
Regulation requires that all designs be periodically, formally reviewed. It requires that the review includes an independent reviewer and that reviewers are just as (if not more) technically competent than the designer. The FDA may not have the resources to review every line of code, but they do have the resources to look at the documentation from the reviews and to look at the documentation listing the qualifications of the reviewers.
Manufacturers are required to conduct risk assessments for their devices and identify any/all reasonably foreseeable hazards and to mitigate those hazards until they are as low as reasonably practicable or the clinical benefit to the patient outweighs the risk. The risk assessment must be conducted by clinical and technical experts. Each mitigation (or fix or change to a line of code) has to be re-evaluated for risk and possible repercussions to the rest of the device. Testing is also quite rigorous and safety and reliability are the top priorities. Our testing takes months. Changes that affect safety may have to be tested in expensive clinical trials on human subjects and the results resubmitted to the FDA for clearance.
Perhaps by having the public look at source code there will be some bugs found. But I'm sure that the bug has already been considered as part of the manufacturer's risk assessment, and any fixes for that bug will not be fast in coming considering the heavyweight nature of the development process.
Socrates' last words were: "I drank WHAT?!"
This is a great book about how free-living organisms (like ourselves) have evolved alongside parasitic organisms (like bacteria). I found it interesting that the scientists that the author interviewed all look at free-living organisms not as individuals, but as miniature eco-systems for parasites. Several scientists said "I don't see a mouse (or frog, or fish) anymore, I see a bag of parasites." A little gruesome, but true. http://www.amazon.com/Parasite-Rex-Bizarre-Dangerous-Creatures/dp/074320011X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239818586&sr=8-1
Back in college, I worked as a student assistant for the Occupational Therapy dept. at the University at Buffalo. I had to make sure the department's site was handicapped accessible. We used Bobby, which was free back then. It helped catch a lot of easy-to-fix errors. I see that the product is still around, but now they charge for it:
b ilitytesting/default.aspx
http://www.watchfire.com/products/desktop/accessi
That was a terrible quest! You should not have to have post-mortem knowledge to solve a quest or puzzle in a computer game. It doesn't happen in real life, why should it be acceptable in a game? I think game designers have advanced somewhat in their plot creations since the 80s.
I second the rec for a mouse alternative. My right wrist was terrible due to a lot of cut & pasting and general mousework. The keyboards with the numeric keypad push the mouse so far out of natural body alignment, it's no wonder I was in pain. I tried switching my mouse to the lefthand side which worked for awhile, but really, a pen and tablet system has worked wonders for me. Fine pointer work (like for Photoshop) is much easier and more precise, too.
I also switched to a split/natural keyboard. Now I don't have any pain in either of my wrists. Although I have lost a lot of strength in my hands and in my grip due to my previous injuries. You definitely want to nip this in the bud before you have to constantly ask for help to open jars!
Wouldn't the original article link normally be posted in a Slashback?
Here is a review of the watch from The Gadgeteer website:
w atch
http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/sleeptracker_
She said it didn't really work well and the watch itself is quite bulky.
because last year, it told me my entire Federal tax burden was around $780. I make middle-5 figures. That's less than 2% of my gross income. Woo-hoo!
Unfortunately, I deducted at the single-person rate, so Uncle Sam gave me a whopping refund back. People are always so happy to get their own money back...
So, how did I do it? I am married, with one kid, and a mortgage. My husband is a college student. We maxed out my 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions. Those increase our deductions, lower my net income, and give us tons of tax credits. I love the tax credits!
I don't think a human tax preparer could have done much better.
Shannara? I tell my friends that if you stick Lord of the Rings in a bad photocopier, out comes Shannara. Might as well read the original.
:P
If you are an RPG player, you can practically hear the dice rolling on the table while reading any Weis/Hickman book.
I will admit to avidly reading both of these two series. But please don't make the same youthful mistakes I did! Their glaring atrocities can be overlooked if you're young enough. If you're going to buy the first two series of books, the target readers *must* be under 14! Otherwise the books just are too absurd when you're older.
For a good sci-fi read, I recommend the Hyperion and Endymion series by Dan Simmons. Not a lot of adult-only action, plenty of lofty ideas like Love and evolution. And darned good science fiction with the farcaster portals and time travel.
In college, I was on Shattered Kingdoms MUD which was very RP-enforced. My character was a bard, although the closest in-game class available was swashbuckler. Being an A student IRL, I wasn't able to spend a lot of time killing mobs. However my character ended up around 25th level before I left college, and I earned most of my experience and levels from roleplaying.
Now that was cool! I've never heard of another MUD letting people level from roleplaying bonus experience. Especially to the extent that I did.
My church has a list of contents for "flood buckets" which people can donate for relief efforts. I know that you won't be bringing many of these to pass out to families, but perhaps their contents will help you clean up. See print-friendly version here: http://gbgm-umc.org/umcor/print/kits/floodbucket.s tm
* 5-gallon bucket with resealable lid
* Bleach (two 1-quart or one 82 oz. bottle.)
* 5 scouring pads
* 7 Sponges
* 1 scrub brush
* 18 cleaning towels (reusable wipes)
* Liquid laundry detergent (two 25 oz. or one 50 oz. bottle)
* 1 household cleaner, 12-16 oz. bottle
* Disinfectant dish soap, 16-28 oz. bottle
* 50 clothes pins
* Clothes line (two 50 ft. or one 100 ft.)
* 5 dust masks
* 2 pair latex gloves
* 1 pair work gloves
* 24-bag roll of heavy-duty trash bags, 33-45 gallon (remove roll from box before placing in bucket)
* 1 Insect repellant spray, 6-14 oz. can (If aerosol, cans must have protective caps.)
* 1 Air freshener, 8 or 9 oz. can (If aerosol, cans must have protective caps.)
As a kid, I loved The City, especially because there were so many places that you could *not* go, because those areas were to be in another installment of the game. And The Dungeon was even more fun, with actual quests and alignment. They were supposed to turn it into a MMORPG, but that died around 1999, I think. So, that series had a total of 4 or 5 planned games that were cancelled. This must hold a record somewhere in game history. The music in the game was the best to come out of my Apple IIc's tinny speakers...
Actually, I think a lot of us here know exactly what someone means when they say "It smells like gamers in here."
:)
And I am a gamer. I have bittersweet memories of my college days spent in the gaming club's tiny closet-like office with 12 other people playing card games, and how there was a palpable temperature difference if you stood in the doorway. And of the strange aromatic ambience in the Student Union after my university's 3-day gaming convention.
They say that smells evoke the strongest memories...
They dubbed him "Shorn" after his coat was clipped in the washing-drying-sweater-knitting machine.
"The quest for Ken" is a bit of a word-play. According to the online Merriam Webster dictionary, ken is "the range of perception, understanding, or knowledge."
Ha ha ha! Alex Trebek kills me!