Physicians need to start putting computers in exam rooms not because of Google-itis, but because we desperately need to start using electronic medical records.
An extraordinarily low percent of hospitals are using EMRs. Source: study by the New England Journal of Medicine, reported here in the American Medical Association:
Forget Google-itis, how about having a system where if one doctor prescribes a medication, an alert immediately pops up warning the physician that this patient is also taking another medicine that will cause severe reactions if the two are taken together?
Imagine an industry that has extremely high-tech factory production equipment (Advance MRIs, Gamma Knife non-invasive surgical devices), but has the back office operations run entirely on post-it notes and shuffling paper back and forth on shopping carts. Get the systems in there to prevent dumb medical mistakes and improve cost efficiencies. Preventing Google-itis is a small amusing beneficial side effect.
I watched Ellison being interviewed on "Hardball" by Chris Mathews. A key point not mentioned anywhere in this discussion is this big, main one:
The proposal is meant for non-US citizens entering the United States. For US citizens it would not be mandated.
My own speculation here now, why would it be useful? Well, for one, if I recall correctly, 6 out of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were already listed on FBI/CIA watchlists. Yet they entered the country legally, using legal visas, bought airline tickets, did all their activities, and at no time during their daily activities they were flagged against these watchlists. The ID itself is secondary, but the principal goal is to have an efficient way to check a name against a database of suspects
Of course, there would be all sorts of ways your Average Joe Terrorist might go about avoiding these things, including a fake id. But that sort of stuff would have to be considered as part of the design. If this were to be done.
I do not intend this as flamebait or troll, so please bear with me.
Successful Open Source solutions, I think, are general computing applications where the volunteer developers understand the standard requirements of the system in question. Namely, Open Source OS, databases, web servers, email servers, are successful because the developers can all agree on the critical features. They also would tend to agree on what "good solutions" to say, web server functionality, would constitute.
The examples of Lawson and Oracle 11i in question are so called "enterprise applications" or general business applications. Specifically, they discuss Financials & Accounting applications. Let's be clear here, this is not QuickBooks or MS Money level stuff. These are systems designed for "keeping the books" and billing and payments for multi-nationals, conforming to accounting regulations in the EU, Asia, US/North America, and the rest of the world.
My question is, how realistic is it to expect an Open Source solution for a global multinational financial app? Can I really expect the CPAs, international tax experts, the controllers and accountants (who normally make up part of the design team of these financial apps) to join in on the OSS design effort?
What about the other types of "enterprise apps," the manufacturing and resource planning software? The kind of software that, for example, Ford or GM might use to coordinate the sourcing and timing of components from Mexico/Thailand/Detroit? Vendors like SAP (and also Oracle 11i) include these components, designed by programmers, manufacturing shop floor professionals, and "industry expertise." It would be great if someone could prove me wrong, but I doubt Open Source is a viable option in these situations.
It's all a matter of design standards and requirements. Open Source developers know these backwards and forwards for operating systems, web servers, databases, and other general computing tools. When it comes to specialized business apps though, it gets real tricky. The OSS/FS options in these cases are simply not there.
I dunno about this. I think our current society by its very nature has proven that George Orwell was incorrect in this regard. Factually, it's more likely this:
"If leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become stupefied by mindless mass entertainment and extra-large servings of fatty foods; and having done this, they would hang on tightly to the priviledged minority who ensures their continued diet of mind-numbing pop culture and Super-sized SUVs."
Um, unless I'm reading the article incorrectly, this is NOT a genetically modified strain.
Quoth the article:
"We tested a wide range of different varieties that have come available fairly recently which organic farmers have no experience with," he told Reuters.
"At the very last minute we took on a variety that two Scottish enthusiasts gave us which were from Hungary. It really did amazingly well in trials against blight, and it also had the best vigor -- it grew like a weed on a very low-nutrient soil.
These are Hungarian natural varieties. I doubt European organic farmers would be interested in this if it were GM.
Let me take a rational and logical explanation to you as to why you are a clueless moron.
Are you aware of the logical concept called Occam's Razor?
Since you seem to spouting off irrational paranoid crap, I assume you have not a clue what Occam's Razor is, I will explain. Put in most simple terms for dumbasses like you, "If you have two theories which both explain the observed facts then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along."
Fer crying out loud, you nitwit, a plane has been hijacked by a bunch of fundamentalist extremists. Why ignore the gigantic pile of facts before your face and speculate on byzantine theories involving the silent conspiracy of millions just to please your paranoid mind?
What's wrong with that is simple. You have just proven that a group of people (the terrorists) can easily accomplish their political ends by murdering at random thousands of civilians.
So therefore, violence and murder are truly effective means to an end. Since what you're saying, American and the world of secular free thinking (yes, that includes American-hating socialists and progressives -- yes the Taliban/bin Laden ESPECIALLY hates the free-thinking secular types) should just roll over now.
If you advocate giving in to violence, why shouldn't they give into US? If violence should get results, why shouldn't OUR violence get results?
So what would you expect bin Laden to do? Surrender to us Americans?
What's wrong with surrendering?
Really, what's wrong with that? All that it would take is to have a few suicide bombers and pilots decide to not kill several thousand people. Is it really so vital that Extremist Fundamental Islam defend its right to kill good, decent family folks in other countries with bombs and airplanes, just to ensure that they can pray to Allah five times a day and wrap their women in sackcloths without being disturbed by us?
Black Oil? This is either the precursor to Black Goo Alien Virus from X-Files, or the "polymimetic alloy" of the T-1000. Or an unholy combination straight out of a geek science fiction nightmare?
The "why" is simple: massive debt. Like all other telecom companies that are floundering at the moment (Lucent, for example), @Home took on massive amounts of debt to build out their infrastructure. In theory, they would have taken on the debt, used the money up front to build out their network and infrastructure, and then acquire subscribers quickly enough to make the debt payments.
But it wasn't enough. I believe the immediate crisis has to do with a $100 million convertible bond issue whereby a clause states that if their stock price fell below $1 per share, the entire $100 million became immediately due. An analogous situation would be, that somehow in your home mortgage contract, if your house were assessed below a certain value, say $200,000, your ENTIRE mortgage of $150K would be due IMMEDIATELY.
@Home finds itself in a situation akin to an individual homeowner having to cough up $150K in cash by next Friday. Not doable. Only option is bankrupcy, no matter that you have a good programming job at some company. Unless you got $150K cash, (or $100M in @Home's case), you're screwed.
Actually, before someone calls me on it, I believe @Home actually has about $180M in cash; it's just that with all their operating needs, $80M would not be enough.
So when the "Information Wants To Be Free" concept clashes with the concept of "Personal Privacy," including the right to keep your very identity private, which concept wins?
Are we saying that the "Information Wants To Be Free" includes my personal medical information? My personal legal information (the status of divorce proceedings should be public???) My consumer habits/profile information should also be free?
I think this is one of those "free as in beer" distinctions that we have to draw. The "Information" that wants to be free are ideas, methods, processes, software, things that Slashdotters believe should not be patented or owned, but shared by all. My doctor/lawyer/marketing information should NOT be part of this "information"
So getting back to the initial thread, lawyers who decide to defend our individual liberties and rights to privacy do deserve the "White Hat" moniker. Attorney/Client priviledge should have nothing to do with this.
Holy Crap. I had not realized this, but Cringely says:
"Now what makes the next year especially scary for data security is the pending arrival of Window XP, an operating system that will come loaded on millions of PCs, each one ready out-of-the-box to be a zombie machine. The problem is that for competitive reasons, the home version of Windows XP has to be able to run programs written for Windows 95, 98, and ME. Windows 2000 can't reliably do that and it has the same core as Windows XP. The only way Microsoft was able to manage this backward compatibility was by disabling a very important security feature. Windows XP will be the first home OS from Microsoft to have full raw TCP/IP socket support (just like Windows 2000), but without Win2000's root-level security. Windows XP runs EVERYTHING at root, which means every program (and even the trojans hidden within that program) has full access to all Windows services, including more advanced network services than ever before. Where Windows ME is generally limited to UDP- and ICMP-flooding, for example, Windows XP can jump straight to the main event -- http flooding at port 80.
This combination of full socket support (more protocols with which to do damage) and root level access is really, really scary."
Other symptoms of prima donna syndrome include an obsessive desire for control, the
attitude that the world revolves around them, and the conviction that the regular rules donâ(TM)t apply to them.
So, Bill Gates got to where he is by never growing out of it?
Here in the San Francisco / Peninsula / Bay Area, for example, there are several main commuting routes like hwy 101, 280, 880, 680, not to mention the three main bridges. (Bay Bridge, San Mateo, and Dumbarton). Once you're on one of these routes, it's virtually impossible to re-configure your route without adding another hour or so to your commute.
I mean, if I were on the Dumbarton Bridge, zipping along at 50 mph, and I get the "10-car pileup ahead, traffic dead stop" message, what are my options?
IMHO the best option is just to kick back and relax to your favorite CD or radio station. Listen to a good audiobook. The time is already burned on the commute, best to just use it for entertainment.
This is a pure example of why you would be missing a gigantic portion of the "Truth," whatever that may be, if your knowledge of the world relies on purely U.S. media coverage.
Obviously, if you go purely by the news, you'd expect China and Taiwan to be two armed camps, with China ready destroy Taiwan at a moment's notice. The reality is that there are two worlds at play here: the political realm, and the global capitalism realm.
Tensions are high in the politial world. There are those in Taiwan who wish to assert their political independence, and those in China who wish to quash those self-deterministic yearnings with brute force. This is the world you read about in the US, the Falun Gong crackdown, human rights abuses, Taiwan's request for Aegis cruisers and Patriot missiles, Taiwan's assertion for independence, and all the screaming and yelling between the ROC and the PRC
In the other realm, opposing the forces of identity politics are the forces of corporate capitalism. The practical and business-like Communist officials in China and enterprising business class in Taiwan have billions of US$ at stake to come together economically, all for the benefit of bringing cheap consumer and electronic products to the world. Instead of war, China has an overwhelming interest in attracting billions of $ of investment capital to build high tech industries, and Taiwanese corporations have billions of $ at stake in maintaining their cheap supply chain. Why do you think you can get your >gigahertz K7 and P4 motherboards so cheap? Cheap Chinese labor, outsourced by Taiwanese firms.
The "Truth" is the precarious balance, the razor's edge, in the conflict between these two forces. Currently, the forces of global capitalism is winning. The powers that Be on both sides of the Taiwan Straights seems to feel that it's in their mutual interest to get rich together, than to kill each other. And thank goodness for the current situation, because the lives of my family is at stake.
Businesspeople in Taiwan regularly commute to China the way Silicon Valley businesspeople commute to Austin, TX. New graduates from Taiwan engineering schools seek jobs in China. Average families have uncles and grandparents living in China while sisters and brothers are living in Taiwan. This is the reality for many, many people such as myself, whose families extend from the U.S., China, and Taiwan altogether.
But the truth is that many in Taiwan do have a legitimate wish for independence. Theirs is a valid, though for now a minority voice. Taiwan has a democratic system, so when this minority voice is heard, China, which does not understand such a system, gets overly riled up and starts rattling sabers. Eventually things settle down when the majority in Taiwan, who just wants to go about their business and try to recover from the current high-tech recession, starts to assert itself and try to calm things down.
Back in 1989, San Francisco and the Bay Area suffered a serious earthquake during the World Series. All the major news network found a SINGLE HOUSE on fire and setup their cameras in front of it. So if you watched the TV news from the East Coast, you thought the entire city of SF was on fire. This is the same thing here. We here in the U.S. is focusing on the fire and smoke, while in the background, the real story is how close the daily lives of millions of people are getting intertwined.
Here is a link that I dug up attempting to quantify Taiwanese capital investment in China. It's a bit old but if you google the subject "Taiwanese investment in China" you can quickly see how inmense the economic ties are.
Here is a NY Times article discussing the internal debate in Taiwan on the subject of independence / integration
The Taiwan / China / U.S. story is one of the most important and complicated issues to the world today. It's imperative that you listen to all aspects of this, not just to one single interested party. There are many, many stakeholders, and not all is what it appears to be.
Slashdot Mirror
Physicians need to start putting computers in exam rooms not because of Google-itis, but because we desperately need to start using electronic medical records.
An extraordinarily low percent of hospitals are using EMRs. Source: study by the New England Journal of Medicine, reported here in the American Medical Association:
http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2009/04/06/gvsc0406.htm
Forget Google-itis, how about having a system where if one doctor prescribes a medication, an alert immediately pops up warning the physician that this patient is also taking another medicine that will cause severe reactions if the two are taken together?
Imagine an industry that has extremely high-tech factory production equipment (Advance MRIs, Gamma Knife non-invasive surgical devices), but has the back office operations run entirely on post-it notes and shuffling paper back and forth on shopping carts. Get the systems in there to prevent dumb medical mistakes and improve cost efficiencies. Preventing Google-itis is a small amusing beneficial side effect.
Ben
Grace Hopper is ranked Rear Admiral Grace Hopper in the US Navy; the guided missile destroyer USS Hopper (DDG-70) is named after her.
http://www.hopper.navy.mil/Page.htm
Ben
The proposal is meant for non-US citizens entering the United States. For US citizens it would not be mandated.
My own speculation here now, why would it be useful? Well, for one, if I recall correctly, 6 out of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were already listed on FBI/CIA watchlists. Yet they entered the country legally, using legal visas, bought airline tickets, did all their activities, and at no time during their daily activities they were flagged against these watchlists. The ID itself is secondary, but the principal goal is to have an efficient way to check a name against a database of suspects
Of course, there would be all sorts of ways your Average Joe Terrorist might go about avoiding these things, including a fake id. But that sort of stuff would have to be considered as part of the design. If this were to be done.
Benbox
Successful Open Source solutions, I think, are general computing applications where the volunteer developers understand the standard requirements of the system in question. Namely, Open Source OS, databases, web servers, email servers, are successful because the developers can all agree on the critical features. They also would tend to agree on what "good solutions" to say, web server functionality, would constitute.
The examples of Lawson and Oracle 11i in question are so called "enterprise applications" or general business applications. Specifically, they discuss Financials & Accounting applications. Let's be clear here, this is not QuickBooks or MS Money level stuff. These are systems designed for "keeping the books" and billing and payments for multi-nationals, conforming to accounting regulations in the EU, Asia, US/North America, and the rest of the world.
My question is, how realistic is it to expect an Open Source solution for a global multinational financial app? Can I really expect the CPAs, international tax experts, the controllers and accountants (who normally make up part of the design team of these financial apps) to join in on the OSS design effort?
What about the other types of "enterprise apps," the manufacturing and resource planning software? The kind of software that, for example, Ford or GM might use to coordinate the sourcing and timing of components from Mexico/Thailand/Detroit? Vendors like SAP (and also Oracle 11i) include these components, designed by programmers, manufacturing shop floor professionals, and "industry expertise." It would be great if someone could prove me wrong, but I doubt Open Source is a viable option in these situations.
It's all a matter of design standards and requirements. Open Source developers know these backwards and forwards for operating systems, web servers, databases, and other general computing tools. When it comes to specialized business apps though, it gets real tricky. The OSS/FS options in these cases are simply not there.
Benbox
"If leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become stupefied by mindless mass entertainment and extra-large servings of fatty foods; and having done this, they would hang on tightly to the priviledged minority who ensures their continued diet of mind-numbing pop culture and Super-sized SUVs."
Quoth the article:
"We tested a wide range of different varieties that have come available fairly recently which organic farmers have no experience with," he told Reuters.
"At the very last minute we took on a variety that two Scottish enthusiasts gave us which were from Hungary. It really did amazingly well in trials against blight, and it also had the best vigor -- it grew like a weed on a very low-nutrient soil.
These are Hungarian natural varieties. I doubt European organic farmers would be interested in this if it were GM.
Benbox
Are you aware of the logical concept called Occam's Razor?
Since you seem to spouting off irrational paranoid crap, I assume you have not a clue what Occam's Razor is, I will explain. Put in most simple terms for dumbasses like you, "If you have two theories which both explain the observed facts then you should use the simplest until more evidence comes along."
Go read this
Fer crying out loud, you nitwit, a plane has been hijacked by a bunch of fundamentalist extremists. Why ignore the gigantic pile of facts before your face and speculate on byzantine theories involving the silent conspiracy of millions just to please your paranoid mind?
So therefore, violence and murder are truly effective means to an end. Since what you're saying, American and the world of secular free thinking (yes, that includes American-hating socialists and progressives -- yes the Taliban/bin Laden ESPECIALLY hates the free-thinking secular types) should just roll over now.
If you advocate giving in to violence, why shouldn't they give into US? If violence should get results, why shouldn't OUR violence get results?
So what would you expect bin Laden to do? Surrender to us Americans?
What's wrong with surrendering?
Really, what's wrong with that? All that it would take is to have a few suicide bombers and pilots decide to not kill several thousand people. Is it really so vital that Extremist Fundamental Islam defend its right to kill good, decent family folks in other countries with bombs and airplanes, just to ensure that they can pray to Allah five times a day and wrap their women in sackcloths without being disturbed by us?
Ahhhhhhhh!!!! Run away!!!!!
But it wasn't enough. I believe the immediate crisis has to do with a $100 million convertible bond issue whereby a clause states that if their stock price fell below $1 per share, the entire $100 million became immediately due. An analogous situation would be, that somehow in your home mortgage contract, if your house were assessed below a certain value, say $200,000, your ENTIRE mortgage of $150K would be due IMMEDIATELY.
@Home finds itself in a situation akin to an individual homeowner having to cough up $150K in cash by next Friday. Not doable. Only option is bankrupcy, no matter that you have a good programming job at some company. Unless you got $150K cash, (or $100M in @Home's case), you're screwed.
Actually, before someone calls me on it, I believe @Home actually has about $180M in cash; it's just that with all their operating needs, $80M would not be enough.
Benbox
Are we saying that the "Information Wants To Be Free" includes my personal medical information? My personal legal information (the status of divorce proceedings should be public???) My consumer habits/profile information should also be free?
I think this is one of those "free as in beer" distinctions that we have to draw. The "Information" that wants to be free are ideas, methods, processes, software, things that Slashdotters believe should not be patented or owned, but shared by all. My doctor/lawyer/marketing information should NOT be part of this "information"
So getting back to the initial thread, lawyers who decide to defend our individual liberties and rights to privacy do deserve the "White Hat" moniker. Attorney/Client priviledge should have nothing to do with this.
Benbox
"Now what makes the next year especially scary for data security is the pending arrival of Window XP, an operating system that will come loaded on millions of PCs, each one ready out-of-the-box to be a zombie machine. The problem is that for competitive reasons, the home version of Windows XP has to be able to run programs written for Windows 95, 98, and ME. Windows 2000 can't reliably do that and it has the same core as Windows XP. The only way Microsoft was able to manage this backward compatibility was by disabling a very important security feature. Windows XP will be the first home OS from Microsoft to have full raw TCP/IP socket support (just like Windows 2000), but without Win2000's root-level security. Windows XP runs EVERYTHING at root, which means every program (and even the trojans hidden within that program) has full access to all Windows services, including more advanced network services than ever before. Where Windows ME is generally limited to UDP- and ICMP-flooding, for example, Windows XP can jump straight to the main event -- http flooding at port 80.
This combination of full socket support (more protocols with which to do damage) and root level access is really, really scary."
On every single Windows machine. Ay caramba.
So, Bill Gates got to where he is by never growing out of it?
Benbox
I mean, if I were on the Dumbarton Bridge, zipping along at 50 mph, and I get the "10-car pileup ahead, traffic dead stop" message, what are my options?
IMHO the best option is just to kick back and relax to your favorite CD or radio station. Listen to a good audiobook. The time is already burned on the commute, best to just use it for entertainment.
Benbox
Obviously, if you go purely by the news, you'd expect China and Taiwan to be two armed camps, with China ready destroy Taiwan at a moment's notice. The reality is that there are two worlds at play here: the political realm, and the global capitalism realm.
Tensions are high in the politial world. There are those in Taiwan who wish to assert their political independence, and those in China who wish to quash those self-deterministic yearnings with brute force. This is the world you read about in the US, the Falun Gong crackdown, human rights abuses, Taiwan's request for Aegis cruisers and Patriot missiles, Taiwan's assertion for independence, and all the screaming and yelling between the ROC and the PRC
In the other realm, opposing the forces of identity politics are the forces of corporate capitalism. The practical and business-like Communist officials in China and enterprising business class in Taiwan have billions of US$ at stake to come together economically, all for the benefit of bringing cheap consumer and electronic products to the world. Instead of war, China has an overwhelming interest in attracting billions of $ of investment capital to build high tech industries, and Taiwanese corporations have billions of $ at stake in maintaining their cheap supply chain. Why do you think you can get your >gigahertz K7 and P4 motherboards so cheap? Cheap Chinese labor, outsourced by Taiwanese firms.
The "Truth" is the precarious balance, the razor's edge, in the conflict between these two forces. Currently, the forces of global capitalism is winning. The powers that Be on both sides of the Taiwan Straights seems to feel that it's in their mutual interest to get rich together, than to kill each other. And thank goodness for the current situation, because the lives of my family is at stake.
Businesspeople in Taiwan regularly commute to China the way Silicon Valley businesspeople commute to Austin, TX. New graduates from Taiwan engineering schools seek jobs in China. Average families have uncles and grandparents living in China while sisters and brothers are living in Taiwan. This is the reality for many, many people such as myself, whose families extend from the U.S., China, and Taiwan altogether.
But the truth is that many in Taiwan do have a legitimate wish for independence. Theirs is a valid, though for now a minority voice. Taiwan has a democratic system, so when this minority voice is heard, China, which does not understand such a system, gets overly riled up and starts rattling sabers. Eventually things settle down when the majority in Taiwan, who just wants to go about their business and try to recover from the current high-tech recession, starts to assert itself and try to calm things down.
Back in 1989, San Francisco and the Bay Area suffered a serious earthquake during the World Series. All the major news network found a SINGLE HOUSE on fire and setup their cameras in front of it. So if you watched the TV news from the East Coast, you thought the entire city of SF was on fire. This is the same thing here. We here in the U.S. is focusing on the fire and smoke, while in the background, the real story is how close the daily lives of millions of people are getting intertwined.
Here is a link that I dug up attempting to quantify Taiwanese capital investment in China. It's a bit old but if you google the subject "Taiwanese investment in China" you can quickly see how inmense the economic ties are.
Here is a NY Times article discussing the internal debate in Taiwan on the subject of independence / integration
The Taiwan / China / U.S. story is one of the most important and complicated issues to the world today. It's imperative that you listen to all aspects of this, not just to one single interested party. There are many, many stakeholders, and not all is what it appears to be.
Benbox