Problem is, I worked on the electrophysiology floor, which, in equine terms, is where all of the zebras in the hospital were placed
Then you would undoubtedly have had a higher error rate.
Also given what you have posted, you are analysing them to a high degree (which is fair enough) as opposed to what I would call ok for machine interpretation. I don't expect the machine to identify which kind of SVT it is, I'd be happy with it putting a bold faced warning such as "Tachycardia - Please review".
But I'm not expecting the machine to tell me what's wrong anyway, which puts me at odds with the original poster. I just want it to pick up that it needs review. Which I think they do about 95% of the time. (I can't back that with figures, its a pretty subjective analysis). Which, as I have said, isn't really good enough to bet a life on.
And for the record, they're nowhere NEAR 95% accurate. 70% would sound more accurate. And I would know, having been an ECG tech at a the local teaching hospital.
The accuracy of the machines depends on the sample set you give it. If they are highly accurate at picking a "normal" 12 lead as normal, and you feed it mostly normal ecg's, it will give you accurate results. Your exact experience in accuracy depends on the false positive and negative rates for the machine and the population subset you test on.
Michael
Re:My wife the nurse said ...
on
Build Your Own ECG
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Yea, but does it interpret the data. That's one of the big expenses according to her: have the cardiologist examine the data and give his opinion. Since it's all waveform stuff, I wonder how much of that could be automated in the future?
Its possible to automate alot of this stuff. However, its not as simple as it first sounds. I have used alot of ECG's with automatic interpretation, and they mostly get it right nowadays. About 95% of the time. Which isn't really good enough yet to risk your life on.
I think that you will find that eradicating the last few percent of errors will get harder and harder, and who is going to back (and assume liability for) any errors if not trained people - be they medical staff or highly skilled nurses?
I think that by the time that we can have automated diagnosticians, there will be alot of other things in our lives that are far less comples going automatic. Like cars that drive themselves and software computer programmers. But wait, I hear you say, nobody is anywhere near replacing programmers with software - but you think you are going to replace cardiologists?)
For example, if you only rented one movie last month, then this month you would have good rental availability. If you rented a lot last month, then this month you would have crappy rental availability.
So the solution is two accounts, alternating between each on a monthly basis?
That's odd, it's quite different from my experience, particularly with regard to Powerpoint presentations, with which OpenOffice has been a real help.
Then you don't embed video into your powerpoint presentations.
Ok, I know its not really a function of either program, but I do many presentations to audiences a year using video loops which are integral to the talks.
Let's -- forgetting Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 we now have in the wilds and widely used: Windows 95, Windows 95B, Windows 95C, Windows 98, Windows 98se, Windows 98Bse, Windows NT 4.5x, Windows NT 5.x, Windows Me (how many builds?), Windows 2000 Home Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional. The sad thing is that I know I missed many releases.
On the other hand, you compensated for missing releases by making up ones that didn't exist. Windows 2000 does not have a home edition. NT 4.5 is probably NT 4.0, and I didn't know of more than one version of ME. Also, a large number of programs run fine on newer versions of windows.
Windows has problems, but the multiple editions of windows really isn't a big one. And, realistically, the supported base is rapidly moving to win2K/XP, where I suspect it will stick for some time before corporations move to Linux when they have to make their next upgrade.
The equation is simple. Burn more calories than you ingest.
Using the same logic, one can treat kidney failure by drinking less fluid - if you drink only as much fluid as you lose, you cant get fluid retention and swell up (as people in kidney and heart failure tend to do).
But the problem with this "black box" analysis of the human body is that it grossly simplifies the idea of metabolism. The body is alot more complex than this, and people are just starting to realise this. Delete a gene from a mouse, and it gets fat, even on the same caloires of a normal mouse. Or give a human some amphetamines and watch them lose weight.
Point is, we didn't spend thousands of years in evolution without developing tight regulation of our metabolism. Thus the problem with simply dieting - for most people, in the long run, it just doesn't work. Because they are fighting their programming. And telling them to eat less than they burn is as useful as telling someone in heart failure to drink less water.
This may sound silly, but how cool would it be to have some kind of wireless cabling system for connection between all pc devices (like bluetooth) i know its totaly inpracticle, but u could have one of those cool induction charging matts with a motherboard, hard drive, cdrom, etc just sitting on it with no wires! very trippy 8-)
Until your little sister walks in and picks up the hard drive for your web server to make a good doorstop.:)
Besides the active desktop stuff (which was the visible "free" update to W95) there were significant enhancements in Win98...there was siginificant work in filenaming (8.3) problems..
Yes, except that microsoft made its big change in file systems from windows 95a to 95b
95b was the major change, and most people didn't even know that it had happened. Which also meant that when people paid for an upgrade to win 98, it was quite a difference if they were going from 95 or 95a than if they had 95b or 95c
Except that nobody told them that, and marketing didn't have a new "major" release scheduled for 1997. However, it was an essential upgrade as the old fat16 just couldn't do drives over 1GB well, and could not handle over 2GB at all - you had to have multiple partitions (and drive letters) for each 2GB of space. FAT16 plain sucked anyway.
Also, IIRC 95B was when they started to look at USB (although it wasn't really until 98 that it was marketed as such).
btw - I've never seen anything ever be installed into/opt without the user requesting it.
Codeweavers Crossover office. Its at least the default. I can't remember if it asked me or not now - but I wouldn't have chosen/opt for it spontaneously.
Also, if a library is updated (say to fix a security flaw) then you don't want to have to check every single app to see if it uses this library or not.
Thanks for your reply - it does explain why people are reluctant to do this.
I must admit that bug fixes would be an issue, although I don't see that searching your hard drive (or at least the program folders) for every copy of a library would be a problem if you had an updated version. It doesn't take that long to search a hard drive (esp. if indexed, but even if not).
The issue of taking up alot of ram is more of an issue. Of course, that only becomes a problem when the program is running, and even RAM isn't that expensive these days.
I'm ignorant of system architecture, but is there any reason why the code and data portions of shared libraries can't be managed separately? Ie., if you have invoked two identical programs, why not just issue memory twice for the data in the program, but keep one copy of the code? And if the versions are different, well, isnt' that the whole idea of what I am suggesting?
Ok, its probably still a silly idea, but just a thought?
I think the standard unix method is much tidyer overall, but it may be a bit confusing at first to those who are migrating.
Perhaps its just familarity, but the windows system is easier to me. Your stuff goes into the program files directory, the dlls go into windows directory, and your registry gets lots of hard to spot entries.
Its ugly but easy enough to understand.
I cant really understand the unix system, at least on red hat linux, because everone seems to use it differently.
Some things end up in/opt, some in/usr/bin, some in/usr/apps, and so on.
Personally, i would just put everything a program needs into one directory. Yes, even the replicated library code. You want to use lib_some_code.so in your program? Then copy that library also. Sure, it wastes hard drive space. But the alternative seems to be dependency hell.
Windows now has turned full circle, and the OS can track and substitute different dll versions called by different programs. Frankly, it would have been easier if we had never gone there in the first place. I'm not short of space on my hard drives, and few of us are these days, and the problems caused by incompatible versions of the same shared code just dont seem to justify the disk space savings.
Just define your core functions (kernel, x-windowing, or desktop environment). Everything on top of that gets its own copy in the same folder as the main code. You test once on the library that you want to code with, and that is that (hopefully).
New versions of the shared code don't change your program, because your program doen't use the newer versions unless you feel that it needs them and then you recode it at the developer level.
Just my 2c worth, probably too simple a solution to work of course.
Theres no reason to run Windows as an Administrator except in unique circumstances.
Yes, like playing diablo II - read the side of the box if you don't believe me. It only works when run as administrator, and its not the only one.
Given that games would have to be the one area where even linux zealots might conceed windows has a role and a better selection of software (I can see the flame wars starting already:) I'd hardly call that unique.
It certainly bugged the hell out of me - it was one of the reasons that our home network has moved over to linux.
you just need someone who is able to take care of delicate medical high-tech equipment
These sort of people aren't cheap. The equipment isn't cheap. It has to be regularly serviced to ensure its ok. Its not the sort of stuff you stick in a remote place.
Hospitals have that kind of personnel anyway.
Big hospitals do. Small hospitals don't.
The actual point is that there are very peculiar operations that only a few surgeons in the world are able and willing to perform; e.g. the seperation of twins conjoined at their head
Right. And you think they perform solo? That you can just use any old scrub nurse to get this sort of equipment to work? That you can use any old anaesthetist to separate conjoined twins? That the twins can then just be dumped in any old hospital that probably doesn't even have an intensive care unit of any standard?
Now compare flying them around from continent to continent to having them stay at home, where they could still be able to do the same job.
You are still going to have to fly the rest of the team, so why not fly the surgeon too?
I work in this sort of environment, day in, day out. Its more than just the surgeon. Its a whole team, plus alot of technology. Most of which the people tend to forget happens. Half the time these sorts of places don't even have the equipment to make the diagnosis, never mind fix the problem.
Being that I am currently living on a tiny island in the middle of the East China Sea, I would love to have the comfort of knowing a critical operation could be done on me within hours as opposed to the days it would take to either get me to the doctor or vice versa
This will not happen, but not for the reason you think.
If you think it through, you will realise that there are far more surgeons than robotic technicians. You might get away without the surgeon at one end, but who is going to fix the robot, or the internet connection? At this stage, robots, computers and networks generally die in operation far more often than their human equivalents.
Which means that the support crews are going to be huge.
In fact, it will be cheaper to fly the surgeon to a tiny island in the east china sea than to fly in the robotics. No to mention that you are going to keep the operating rooms equipped with stuff to do every complex operation that can be done?
This sort of thing may happen one day, but by then we will have robots doing much simpler tasks all the time; including things like driving taxi's around town, cleaning up your house and seeking election to another term of government.
Final take - experienced surgeons and teams are cheaper and more portable than this sort of technology, and its going to be a long time before that changes.
It means that if you want to add 50 to a number, you can choose to do (+50) or (-(-50)). They both take up the same amount of space and do the same thing.
Same space? How? Or is this just an illistratrive example?
Written this way, the negative subtraction takes up more space. But represented intenally in machine code, its the same:
x+ +50 x- -50
Because in most computers you would do a signed addition, the number (50) has to be expressed as +50 internally, it takes the same space as its negative equivalent (-50)
When we write things down in english, we tend to drop leading +signs, but you can't get away from the fact that encoding the sign of a number in binary takes up as much space whether the number is positive or negative.
In an industry where the technology doubles every 18 months, for a language to last 30 years is an accomplishment.
If longevity of a language means much, then both Cobol and BASIC (Darmouth '66) must be even more fantastic.
Seriously, C is a powerful language, but I think its longevity relates more to the difficulty in porting legacy code than as a triumph in itself
Michael
Re:so if two objects are traveling toward the same
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E ~ mc^2
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· Score: 2
Funny that you open your post with "30 + 30 isn't 60" and your tagline is making fun of "50 + 1 - 1 isn't 50":)
You see, the karma you have - k - can never exceed 50. Its pretty much the same with light. Because ordinary human brains have alot of trouble understanding karma, Cmdr Taco has hidden the underlying relavistic changes in our k by simply describing it. The maths of karma are simply too complex for most geeks to understand, and they just end getting confused.
On a side note, the underlying theme of this thread is that one should never try and explain qantum mechanics when drunk after new year. It just doesn't work.
Despite lots of scientific research by the AAP and a few other groups, there's been no evidence whatsoever that the pain is processed by a baby the sameI've yet to meet anyone *credible* who had it done at birth and remembers it. way we do, nor is there any evidence that it causes any harm.
Actually, there is little evidence that pain in adults causes harm. Or in dogs either. By harm I mean things like shortened lifespan or other illness. On the other hand, grown adults will complain if you circumcise them while they are awake. Newborns are too weak to complain.
General anaesthetics are extremely dangerous and expensive to administer on babies.
Look, thats just rubbish. And yes, IAAA. General anaesthesia carries risk but the mortality from anaesthesia is currently halving every 10 years due to technology improvements. The vast majority of neonates survive anaesthesia. Its important to realise that in most cases (I'm not talking about circumcision alone here) its the surgery and the original illness that are the main risks, and that the anaesthetic risks are ususally a small ticket item in comparison.
I've yet to meet anyone *credible* who had it done at birth and remembers it. You could say the same about paediatric heart surgery - Most children don't remember this either. Are you suggesting that this doesn't need an anaesthetic either?
The infant brain is most certainly functional already at birth, and even before.
I didn't say it wasn't functional - clearly it is. If your brain doesn't function, you don't breathe, for a start.
However, it isn't organised. Large areas of it are unassigned to any specific function, and indeed will reassign to new functions in a way that an older brain cannot. For example, removing an entire cortex may not cause a hemiplegia (paralysis in half the body) if done early enough in life. Yet in an adult the effects of this are profound.
So many of the neurons that relate to higher functions aren't even assigned as such. This should come as no surprise to anyone that actually interacts with newborn children and infants. They don't really know how to do much.
In addition, the brain is not structurally complete. An example of this is the blood brain barrier which separates the adult brain from the circulation isn't fully functional until after the first year of life. Likewise myelination of nerve sheaths isn't even near completion until after 2 years of age.
While you may remember down to age 2, its pretty hard to order things chronologically until much late r in life.
While some people may (or certainly say they can) remember down to childbirth, the fact that so many jewish men don't remember circumcision says to me that most people don't remember things at birth, even if painful or traumatic - remembering that circumcision has been going alot longer than anaesthesia.
In truth, the brain really isn't that functional at that age. Doesn't mean that it isn't working, just that its not functioning as a cohesive organ.
Also, as an aside voluntary recall of past events probably requires some verbal skills to associate with those events. Memories from ages before people can speak meaningfully (ie, age less than two) are going to be hard to spontaneously recall - "I'm thinking back to living in my first house" - because to initiate this sort of recollection is a verbal/logic driven action. If you have a memory going back before you could speak much won't have any words associated with it. You might recall them by association with non verbal events, however.
I mean, I realize sometimes the academic ESTABLISHMENT can be closeminded, but if something has merit, there are usually a FEW academics who will go out on a limb and pursue it to the point that they demonstrate sufficiently interesting results to build a broader base of interest.
This isn't always the case. In the areas I know about (medical sciences) I've seen amazing amounts of close mindedness. The man who discovered Helicobacter - the bug that causes duodenal ulcers - was laughed out of town (Perth, Australia) and took him 10 years to get close to wide ranging acceptance. And this was for something that you can see down a microscope - the establishment just didn't believe it was there.
The same sort of thing has happened in physical sciences - look at how long it took the big bang theory to be accepted.
What often happens, even when the evidence is compelling, is that a new generation of people have to enter the establishment for this to be accepted. Its generational change for most new concepts.
The sun is supposed to burn out in 5 billion years, I believe.
We probably have about 1 billion years of habitable life on the planet (we have already had about 4 billion years of habitable life on the planet) The sun will go on a few billion years longer than that, of course
In Europe, the telcos use SMS as a cash cow - it's unregulated (regulatory regimes were built in the age of analogue comms) and they rip you off. And it's already taxed (VAT) - it's time the companies charge a more realistic price (15 cents a text message is a typical price today).
Yes, its crazy. You already have user pays in almost every country where the phone system is taxed. In fact, I can't think of a single country where SMS is tax free.
Sometimes there is a case for additional taxes (eg., alcohol, cigarettes) on social grounds, but I don't see that here.
Its more like another way to make more money. The problem here is that this sort of double taxation is very inefficient. Similar to toll booths. You already pay taxes on your petrol, so paying again at a toll isn't sensible - you should just really pay more in petrol excise if you want better roads (after all, you dont get more user pays than petrol for car use). Likewise, it would make more sense to tax the total phone bill than just one component such as sms.
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Problem is, I worked on the electrophysiology floor, which, in equine terms, is where all of the zebras in the hospital were placed
Then you would undoubtedly have had a higher error rate.
Also given what you have posted, you are analysing them to a high degree (which is fair enough) as opposed to what I would call ok for machine interpretation. I don't expect the machine to identify which kind of SVT it is, I'd be happy with it putting a bold faced warning such as "Tachycardia - Please review".
But I'm not expecting the machine to tell me what's wrong anyway, which puts me at odds with the original poster. I just want it to pick up that it needs review. Which I think they do about 95% of the time. (I can't back that with figures, its a pretty subjective analysis). Which, as I have said, isn't really good enough to bet a life on.
Michael
And for the record, they're nowhere NEAR 95% accurate. 70% would sound more accurate. And I would know, having been an ECG tech at a the local teaching hospital.
The accuracy of the machines depends on the sample set you give it. If they are highly accurate at picking a "normal" 12 lead as normal, and you feed it mostly normal ecg's, it will give you accurate results. Your exact experience in accuracy depends on the false positive and negative rates for the machine and the population subset you test on.
Michael
Yea, but does it interpret the data. That's one of the big expenses according to her: have the cardiologist examine the data and give his opinion. Since it's all waveform stuff, I wonder how much of that could be automated in the future?
Its possible to automate alot of this stuff. However, its not as simple as it first sounds. I have used alot of ECG's with automatic interpretation, and they mostly get it right nowadays. About 95% of the time. Which isn't really good enough yet to risk your life on.
I think that you will find that eradicating the last few percent of errors will get harder and harder, and who is going to back (and assume liability for) any errors if not trained people - be they medical staff or highly skilled nurses?
I think that by the time that we can have automated diagnosticians, there will be alot of other things in our lives that are far less comples going automatic. Like cars that drive themselves and software computer programmers. But wait, I hear you say, nobody is anywhere near replacing programmers with software - but you think you are going to replace cardiologists?)
Just my 2c worth.
Michael
For example, if you only rented one movie last month, then this month you would have good rental availability. If you rented a lot last month, then this month you would have crappy rental availability.
So the solution is two accounts, alternating between each on a monthly basis?
Michael
That's odd, it's quite different from my experience, particularly with regard to Powerpoint presentations, with which OpenOffice has been a real help.
Then you don't embed video into your powerpoint presentations.
Ok, I know its not really a function of either program, but I do many presentations to audiences a year using video loops which are integral to the talks.
This just fails under open office.
Michael
Maybe I can't use bleeding-edge hardware, etc. but my servers *never* go down, unless I issue "shutdown -h now.
I presume that you include a reset button in the "bleeding-edge hardware" category
Michael
Let's -- forgetting Windows 3.1 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 we now have in the wilds and widely used: Windows 95, Windows 95B, Windows 95C, Windows 98, Windows 98se, Windows 98Bse, Windows NT 4.5x, Windows NT 5.x, Windows Me (how many builds?), Windows 2000 Home Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional. The sad thing is that I know I missed many releases.
On the other hand, you compensated for missing releases by making up ones that didn't exist. Windows 2000 does not have a home edition. NT 4.5 is probably NT 4.0, and I didn't know of more than one version of ME. Also, a large number of programs run fine on newer versions of windows.
Windows has problems, but the multiple editions of windows really isn't a big one. And, realistically, the supported base is rapidly moving to win2K/XP, where I suspect it will stick for some time before corporations move to Linux when they have to make their next upgrade.
Michale
The equation is simple. Burn more calories than you ingest.
Using the same logic, one can treat kidney failure by drinking less fluid - if you drink only as much fluid as you lose, you cant get fluid retention and swell up (as people in kidney and heart failure tend to do).
But the problem with this "black box" analysis of the human body is that it grossly simplifies the idea of metabolism. The body is alot more complex than this, and people are just starting to realise this. Delete a gene from a mouse, and it gets fat, even on the same caloires of a normal mouse. Or give a human some amphetamines and watch them lose weight.
Point is, we didn't spend thousands of years in evolution without developing tight regulation of our metabolism. Thus the problem with simply dieting - for most people, in the long run, it just doesn't work. Because they are fighting their programming. And telling them to eat less than they burn is as useful as telling someone in heart failure to drink less water.
My 2c
Michael
This may sound silly, but how cool would it be to have some kind of wireless cabling system for connection between all pc devices (like bluetooth) i know its totaly inpracticle, but u could have one of those cool induction charging matts with a motherboard, hard drive, cdrom, etc just sitting on it with no wires! very trippy 8-)
:)
Until your little sister walks in and picks up the hard drive for your web server to make a good doorstop.
Michael
Besides the active desktop stuff (which was the visible "free" update to W95) there were significant enhancements in Win98...there was siginificant work in filenaming (8.3) problems..
Yes, except that microsoft made its big change in file systems from windows 95a to 95b
95b was the major change, and most people didn't even know that it had happened. Which also meant that when people paid for an upgrade to win 98, it was quite a difference if they were going from 95 or 95a than if they had 95b or 95c
Except that nobody told them that, and marketing didn't have a new "major" release scheduled for 1997. However, it was an essential upgrade as the old fat16 just couldn't do drives over 1GB well, and could not handle over 2GB at all - you had to have multiple partitions (and drive letters) for each 2GB of space. FAT16 plain sucked anyway.
Also, IIRC 95B was when they started to look at USB (although it wasn't really until 98 that it was marketed as such).
Michael
btw - I've never seen anything ever be installed into /opt without the user requesting it.
/opt for it spontaneously.
Codeweavers Crossover office. Its at least the default. I can't remember if it asked me or not now - but I wouldn't have chosen
Michael
Also, if a library is updated (say to fix a security flaw) then you don't want to have to check every single app to see if it uses this library or not.
Thanks for your reply - it does explain why people are reluctant to do this.
I must admit that bug fixes would be an issue, although I don't see that searching your hard drive (or at least the program folders) for every copy of a library would be a problem if you had an updated version. It doesn't take that long to search a hard drive (esp. if indexed, but even if not).
The issue of taking up alot of ram is more of an issue. Of course, that only becomes a problem when the program is running, and even RAM isn't that expensive these days.
I'm ignorant of system architecture, but is there any reason why the code and data portions of shared libraries can't be managed separately? Ie., if you have invoked two identical programs, why not just issue memory twice for the data in the program, but keep one copy of the code? And if the versions are different, well, isnt' that the whole idea of what I am suggesting?
Ok, its probably still a silly idea, but just a thought?
Michael
I think the standard unix method is much tidyer overall, but it may be a bit confusing at first to those who are migrating.
/opt, some in /usr/bin, some in /usr/apps, and so on.
Perhaps its just familarity, but the windows system is easier to me. Your stuff goes into the program files directory, the dlls go into windows directory, and your registry gets lots of hard to spot entries.
Its ugly but easy enough to understand.
I cant really understand the unix system, at least on red hat linux, because everone seems to use it differently.
Some things end up in
Personally, i would just put everything a program needs into one directory. Yes, even the replicated library code. You want to use lib_some_code.so in your program? Then copy that library also. Sure, it wastes hard drive space. But the alternative seems to be dependency hell.
Windows now has turned full circle, and the OS can track and substitute different dll versions called by different programs. Frankly, it would have been easier if we had never gone there in the first place. I'm not short of space on my hard drives, and few of us are these days, and the problems caused by incompatible versions of the same shared code just dont seem to justify the disk space savings.
Just define your core functions (kernel, x-windowing, or desktop environment). Everything on top of that gets its own copy in the same folder as the main code. You test once on the library that you want to code with, and that is that (hopefully).
New versions of the shared code don't change your program, because your program doen't use the newer versions unless you feel that it needs them and then you recode it at the developer level.
Just my 2c worth, probably too simple a solution to work of course.
Michael
Theres no reason to run Windows as an Administrator except in unique circumstances.
:) I'd hardly call that unique.
Yes, like playing diablo II - read the side of the box if you don't believe me. It only works when run as administrator, and its not the only one.
Given that games would have to be the one area where even linux zealots might conceed windows has a role and a better selection of software (I can see the flame wars starting already
It certainly bugged the hell out of me - it was one of the reasons that our home network has moved over to linux.
Michael
you just need someone who is able to take care of delicate medical high-tech equipment
These sort of people aren't cheap. The equipment isn't cheap. It has to be regularly serviced to ensure its ok. Its not the sort of stuff you stick in a remote place.
Hospitals have that kind of personnel anyway.
Big hospitals do. Small hospitals don't.
The actual point is that there are very peculiar operations that only a few surgeons in the world are able and willing to perform; e.g. the seperation of twins conjoined at their head
Right. And you think they perform solo? That you can just use any old scrub nurse to get this sort of equipment to work? That you can use any old anaesthetist to separate conjoined twins? That the twins can then just be dumped in any old hospital that probably doesn't even have an intensive care unit of any standard?
Now compare flying them around from continent to continent to having them stay at home, where they could still be able to do the same job.
You are still going to have to fly the rest of the team, so why not fly the surgeon too?
I work in this sort of environment, day in, day out. Its more than just the surgeon. Its a whole team, plus alot of technology. Most of which the people tend to forget happens. Half the time these sorts of places don't even have the equipment to make the diagnosis, never mind fix the problem.
Michael
Being that I am currently living on a tiny island in the middle of the East China Sea, I would love to have the comfort of knowing a critical operation could be done on me within hours as opposed to the days it would take to either get me to the doctor or vice versa
This will not happen, but not for the reason you think.
If you think it through, you will realise that there are far more surgeons than robotic technicians. You might get away without the surgeon at one end, but who is going to fix the robot, or the internet connection? At this stage, robots, computers and networks generally die in operation far more often than their human equivalents.
Which means that the support crews are going to be huge.
In fact, it will be cheaper to fly the surgeon to a tiny island in the east china sea than to fly in the robotics. No to mention that you are going to keep the operating rooms equipped with stuff to do every complex operation that can be done?
This sort of thing may happen one day, but by then we will have robots doing much simpler tasks all the time; including things like driving taxi's around town, cleaning up your house and seeking election to another term of government.
Final take - experienced surgeons and teams are cheaper and more portable than this sort of technology, and its going to be a long time before that changes.
Michael
It means that if you want to add 50 to a number, you can choose to do (+50) or (-(-50)). They both take up the same amount of space and do the same thing.
Same space? How? Or is this just an illistratrive example?
Written this way, the negative subtraction takes up more space. But represented intenally in machine code, its the same:
x+ +50
x- -50
Because in most computers you would do a signed addition, the number (50) has to be expressed as +50 internally, it takes the same space as its negative equivalent (-50)
When we write things down in english, we tend to drop leading +signs, but you can't get away from the fact that encoding the sign of a number in binary takes up as much space whether the number is positive or negative.
Michael
In an industry where the technology doubles every 18 months, for a language to last 30 years is an accomplishment.
If longevity of a language means much, then both Cobol and BASIC (Darmouth '66) must be even more fantastic.
Seriously, C is a powerful language, but I think its longevity relates more to the difficulty in porting legacy code than as a triumph in itself
Michael
Funny that you open your post with "30 + 30 isn't 60" and your tagline is making fun of "50 + 1 - 1 isn't 50" :)
You see, the karma you have - k - can never exceed 50. Its pretty much the same with light. Because ordinary human brains have alot of trouble understanding karma, Cmdr Taco has hidden the underlying relavistic changes in our k by simply describing it. The maths of karma are simply too complex for most geeks to understand, and they just end getting confused.
On a side note, the underlying theme of this thread is that one should never try and explain qantum mechanics when drunk after new year. It just doesn't work.
Michael
Ok, I have to bite on some of these:
Despite lots of scientific research by the AAP and a few other groups, there's been no evidence whatsoever that the pain is processed by a baby the sameI've yet to meet anyone *credible* who had it done at birth and remembers it. way we do, nor is there any evidence that it causes any harm.
Actually, there is little evidence that pain in adults causes harm. Or in dogs either. By harm I mean things like shortened lifespan or other illness. On the other hand, grown adults will complain if you circumcise them while they are awake. Newborns are too weak to complain.
General anaesthetics are extremely dangerous and expensive to administer on babies.
Look, thats just rubbish. And yes, IAAA. General anaesthesia carries risk but the mortality from anaesthesia is currently halving every 10 years due to technology improvements. The vast majority of neonates survive anaesthesia. Its important to realise that in most cases (I'm not talking about circumcision alone here) its the surgery and the original illness that are the main risks, and that the anaesthetic risks are ususally a small ticket item in comparison.
I've yet to meet anyone *credible* who had it done at birth and remembers it.
You could say the same about paediatric heart surgery - Most children don't remember this either. Are you suggesting that this doesn't need an anaesthetic either?
Michael
The infant brain is most certainly functional already at birth, and even before.
I didn't say it wasn't functional - clearly it is. If your brain doesn't function, you don't breathe, for a start.
However, it isn't organised. Large areas of it are unassigned to any specific function, and indeed will reassign to new functions in a way that an older brain cannot. For example, removing an entire cortex may not cause a hemiplegia (paralysis in half the body) if done early enough in life. Yet in an adult the effects of this are profound.
So many of the neurons that relate to higher functions aren't even assigned as such. This should come as no surprise to anyone that actually interacts with newborn children and infants. They don't really know how to do much.
In addition, the brain is not structurally complete. An example of this is the blood brain barrier which separates the adult brain from the circulation isn't fully functional until after the first year of life. Likewise myelination of nerve sheaths isn't even near completion until after 2 years of age.
Michael
My 2c worth:
While you may remember down to age 2, its pretty hard to order things chronologically until much late r in life.
While some people may (or certainly say they can) remember down to childbirth, the fact that so many jewish men don't remember circumcision says to me that most people don't remember things at birth, even if painful or traumatic - remembering that circumcision has been going alot longer than anaesthesia.
In truth, the brain really isn't that functional at that age. Doesn't mean that it isn't working, just that its not functioning as a cohesive organ.
Also, as an aside voluntary recall of past events probably requires some verbal skills to associate with those events. Memories from ages before people can speak meaningfully (ie, age less than two) are going to be hard to spontaneously recall - "I'm thinking back to living in my first house" - because to initiate this sort of recollection is a verbal/logic driven action. If you have a memory going back before you could speak much won't have any words associated with it. You might recall them by association with non verbal events, however.
Michael
I mean, I realize sometimes the academic ESTABLISHMENT can be closeminded, but if something has merit, there are usually a FEW academics who will go out on a limb and pursue it to the point that they demonstrate sufficiently interesting results to build a broader base of interest.
This isn't always the case. In the areas I know about (medical sciences) I've seen amazing amounts of close mindedness. The man who discovered Helicobacter - the bug that causes duodenal ulcers - was laughed out of town (Perth, Australia) and took him 10 years to get close to wide ranging acceptance. And this was for something that you can see down a microscope - the establishment just didn't believe it was there.
The same sort of thing has happened in physical sciences - look at how long it took the big bang theory to be accepted.
What often happens, even when the evidence is compelling, is that a new generation of people have to enter the establishment for this to be accepted. Its generational change for most new concepts.
Michael
The sun is supposed to burn out in 5 billion years, I believe.
We probably have about 1 billion years of habitable life on the planet (we have already had about 4 billion years of habitable life on the planet) The sun will go on a few billion years longer than that, of course
Michael
In Europe, the telcos use SMS as a cash cow - it's unregulated (regulatory regimes were built in the age of analogue comms) and they rip you off. And it's already taxed (VAT) - it's time the companies charge a more realistic price (15 cents a text message is a typical price today).
Yes, its crazy. You already have user pays in almost every country where the phone system is taxed. In fact, I can't think of a single country where SMS is tax free.
Sometimes there is a case for additional taxes (eg., alcohol, cigarettes) on social grounds, but I don't see that here.
Its more like another way to make more money. The problem here is that this sort of double taxation is very inefficient. Similar to toll booths. You already pay taxes on your petrol, so paying again at a toll isn't sensible - you should just really pay more in petrol excise if you want better roads (after all, you dont get more user pays than petrol for car use). Likewise, it would make more sense to tax the total phone bill than just one component such as sms.
My 2c worth,
Michael