Easier said than done. Hospitals are a special situation. By definition, most of the patients in a hospital are sick. You can categorize the types of antibiotic use - empiric, acute directed (known diagnsosis such as urinary track infection), chronic directed (ie. chronic bone infections), and just plain inappropriate. (I just made this up but I think most abx use easily falls into one of these catagories)
When a person first presents ill, the diagnosis is not always obvious and some combination of history, exam, time, labs and imaging is used to narrow the diagnosis. Most of this information is not available immediately so if a person presents rather sick and the differential includes infection, empiric antibiotic coverage is the norm. To a certain degree this is unavoidable unless society decides we are willing to gamble more with peoples lives and health.
The more directed uses, again, are necessary unless we are willing to concede peoples lives and health.
So this leaves the just plain inappropriate. In the hospital this is a relatively small group in my experience (as opposed to the outpatient setting where inappropriate use is extremely common). An additional caveat to this is I work in an academic hospital, the general feeling is that community hospitals are most liberal in bending the rules, so antibiotic abuse maybe more common there. I'm not aware of any data to support that but I'd be surprised if I was wrong.
Anyway, I'm not sure decreasing the use of antibiotics in the hospital setting is the solution to this particular problem. (again, the outpatient setting is a completely different beast)
First, the flu shot is not universally recommended for everyone, but is certainly available to anyone in the US. It is recommended universally in young children and very old because of their high risk as well as those with co morbid conditions such as asthma or diabetes. Health care workers should get it to reduce the risk of spreading it to high risk patients.
Second, the data you referenced only used death as an end point. That is only one of several measures. For every death, the flu causes much more morbidity which is entirely ignored by you. It causes a huge numbers of hospitalizations and ICU stays which are incredibly expensive.
Third, very little money is made in vaccines. Primary care doctors are lucky if they don't loose money on vaccines. How do I know? I am a primary care doctor and its a wash between the cost of storing and purchasing them vs how much we get paid to give them. Manufactures almost have to be begged to make vaccines because there is little financial incentive to do so. Its not uncommon to have shortages occasionally because of this.
Forth, your referencing a radiologist to talk about an infectious disease / epidemiology problem. That's usually a red flag right there. For instance I know an orthopedic surgeon that argues quite well to the uneducated how evolution is genetically impossible. He's a doctor so the uneducated take his word and believe him. Problem is, he's a idiot outside orthopedics and anyone with half an education about genetics would butcher him. Another example would be this is like getting a plumbers opinion on what type of roof to put on your house. Would you do that?
I believe the post you are referring to mentioned a CT scan, not an MRI. While both are imaging techniques, they are quite different in how they work. MRIs are much, much more expensive in general. They require the supercooled magnets and such. A CT is essentially using the same type of radiation as in used in a normal X-RAY to get sliced images. CTs are much faster at acquiring images and the equipment is much cheaper than an MRI. Both of the factors make it much less expensive overall.
Well provigilman (great name, do you sell it or use it?)
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this. I think to some degree academia is somewhat content with grants and making money for any given institution compared to getting hard core difference making results. Much prestige is gained my making a university or hospital money with grants independent of real results.
I think also we are comparing two different things. Human/biologic research is inherently more complicated on multiple levels than say processer/material research. For instance there are far more ethical issues involving biologic/human research than processor design. Don't believe me, try submitting a study to an IRB sometime. Then there is cost, the logistics behind putting together any sort of clinical trial of any significance is insanely expensive. Another is just pure complexity. Biological systems are insanely complex we are just starting to learn and sort out the foundations of how stuff really works down to the molecule and I'm still not sure any one individual while ever be able to fully comprehend how it all works. Many of our discoveries before now were more like, I think this might work, try it out and realized it did or didn't make a difference and hopefully didn't hurt anyone while figuring that out. We're just now starting to have rational, well designed approaches to problems.
Processors design and the material research are basic science at its best. You can keep plugging away and until you get a desired result. The worst thing that happens is over costs or delays. Not to mention, processor design is processor design is processor design. chrones disease is not heart attack is not exactly the same as stroke is not the same as kidney stones is not the same as cerebral palsy. That is the number of diseases that fall under medicine or life sciences is huge. If you picked one, put all the brain power and money resources into just one that is spent on processor design and I bet we'd have some kick ass cures for that one disease. But wait, we'd still have thousands to go.
I believe it depends on the type of rechargeable. The nickel cadmium did. Lithium does not.
The problem I've had with all of them is their life span. After a year of regular use, they then to hold a fraction of their original charge. It appears ultracapacitors have a much longer life span. rock on
Absolutely, yet no one has cracked Direct TVs current system that I'm aware of. Just because you can monitor the communication doesn't equal being able to crack.
What about Direct TV? Since they updated to the P4 or higher, I'm not aware of anyone that's cracked their copy-protection/content protection scheme....just some unverified rumors. I haven't checked up on it recently, so I'd be interested to find out if I'm wrong.
The thing is, google started this and I loved them for it. They raised the bar to 1 gig out of nowhere and everyone rejoiced. It was long over due at the time as limits were far too low in general. Now, I'd guess they are reasonable for the vast majority. As long as google 'keeps up' at this point and accommodating its users, I'm not sure this is a bid deal.
I've noticed people doing this, although I can't say I've had it happen on an item I was interested in. If I remember, it is against the terms of service of craigslist to do this. As with the ads I've noticed doing this, I just click on the 'spam' or 'prohibited' tag. I'm not sure there is much else you can do short of contacting CL directly.
Theoretically that could work. Problem is, income does not equal fiscal responsibility and is not as reliable an indicator of long term ability to pay off debt.
You do not necessarily need to be in debt to have a credit history. Using a credit card to make routine purchases and paying it off completely each month is not what I would consider debt. Just because there are people who don't get the system and spend beyond their means, thus ruining their credit, doesn't mean its a flawed system. Personally, I think its more of a failure of families to educate their kids and the education system for failing to focus more of personal finance and math.
That is one possibility, but the people who study these things and have strong incentives (money) to get it right show that the larger credit limit implies improved the likelihood of not defaulting. That's just how it is.
The reality is there are people in this world that have money to invest. Some do it by lending money to others that need money for things....houses, cars, buying dinner, whatever. All investing has a certain amount of risk, including lending. Anyone who invests or lends wants to assess and minimize risk. Some might equate low risk with trust. The reality is that even the most trustworthy people have emergencies or personal disasters that result in the inability to pay off debts. Defaulting on loans is nightmare for lenders usually. Don't believe me? Check out some of the many forums where lenders hang out. It doesn't take many bad choices to result in lost money.
In any case, if anyone needs to get a clue, its you.
Personally, I have more debt than most due to years of schooling in addition to the normal stuff. As much as I hate it, I'm thankful I was able to borrow that money to pay for my education for >8 years and still survive. I do consider most of it more of an investment anyway. Now that I have a real job I also invest and lend. There is such a thing as mutually beneficial situations and hopefully a borrower is doing so to benefit themselves and/or their family.
Your absolutely right about the importance of having a credit history. A short credit history can kill a credit score even without any delinquencies or other negative factors.
I do take issue with the benefit of keeping the credit limit low. A potential lender may see larger limits and take that as a sign that other lenders feel comfortable extending credit to you. This is reflected in how the score is calculated. I use Experian's site regularly because I have free access due to my previous job (employer exposed employee data so they bought us all full access). There is a section where you can modify a number of the factors that affect your credit score and see what your score would be with the modified factors. Raising your limits on your credit cards accounts can improve your score. What will harm your score is having a low total percentage of credit available. For example if you have a balance of $400 on credit cards with a total limit of $500 between your credit cards, you will only have 20% of your credit available. This will negatively affect your credit score. If you have a $10,000 total limit with the same $400 balance, your percent of available credit is close to 100% and your score with be much higher.
Did anyone else have to do a double take on the author of this article. The more I read, the more I'm thinking it can't be Dvorak right? This is pretty sensible. Rechecked the author when I was done and said, "huh"
This whole concept of authentication and WGA is flawed. It adds too many points of failure that in the end hurts legitimate users. Why should we be punished for MS's piracy problems.
For me it started with XP. Since I can no longer interchange parts in and out of my computer without worrying about setting off the authentication, I've worked hard to get my myself and my family off Windows. I'm the computer dork in the family and if I can't trouble shoot stuff without worrying about this kind of stuff it sort of kills the fun in building your own machines.
I'm not surprised this is happening and I won't be surprised when this stuff continues to happen in the future. Please get rid of these awful 'features' Microsoft
I think the summary is very misleading. IIRC, google did not refuse to bid on the spectrum if the four conditions weren't met. They did promise to bid the reserve of the auction if their four conditions were met. Thus, if all the conditions are not met, google is not obliged to bid the reserve of the auction. That in no way means they won't bid or are out of the auction. I would assume they have every intention bidding.
The sig is a way of trying to express my disdain for people to lazy to read linked articles but who still try and take part in a discussion of said article.
I'd hazard a guess that message you are trying to convey is not that same as what you are actually acomplishing. Might want to reassess the message/method.
I believe biodiesel is use like gasoline, its pumped to a compression chamber and ingited. I would imagine these fuel cells rely on a simple electrochemical reaction at close to room temperature. An entirely different set of circumstances.
Offhand, sugars are water soluable, relatively small molecules and probably easy to harness for their energy (the fuel mixture will readily mix to keep the remaining sugar moledules exposed to whatever catalyst and other molecules it is reacting with). Because they're simple molecules, there probably is only one major reaction required to split the sugars and obtain energy.
Fats are not water soluable, more complex chemically and thicker in general. I would think coming up with a stable reaction for the entire amount of fat in the tank would be difficult since they are not water soluable (you would need to mix them in a lipophilic solution) and they are thicker. I would imagine they would be more diffult to handle, especially if the idea is to make they reusable.
Then again, it been awhile since I've done any chemisty. Sounds like an interesting concept.
As stated above MRSA stands for methacillin resistant staphylcoccus arueus. In the United States, this is actually a misnomer since just about every lab uses oxacillin to test for resistance, so its technically ORSA. In either case, MRSA or ORSA, denotes resistance of staph to our most potent beta-lactum type of antibiotics (in other words, derivatives of penicillin).
MRSA or ORSA can vary in their sensitivity to non beta-lactum antibiotics. For instance, in many parts of the US, MRSA is sensitive to Clindamycin, but in others it is not.
So the short answer is, yes, different strains of MRSA can vary in their sensitivity to an antibiotic that is not related to a penicillin. MRSA, however, is universally resistant to all penicillin types of antibiotics, including the penicillin cousins, the cephlosporins.
Its interesting to hear your perspective. Obviously our patient populations are quite different. I practice in the US, so our access to vanc and linezolid is taken for granted. Its usually the chronically ill type of individuals who get sick from gram negatives and we probably have a higher percentage of those - geriatric, nursing home, cystic fibrosis, chemothearpy and bone marrow transplant type of patients.
Of course we have a large number of patients who frequently get gram positive infections because of chronic indwelling central cathaters - usually the dialysis patients (Gram postive infections in the US are becoming much more common actually because our dialysis population is exploding with all the diabetes, obesity and hypertension.) I can't imagine how you can manage without linezolid or vanc for in hospital types of patients. Isn't vanc generic by now? Obviously, linezolid is ungodly expensive. I would have thought vanc would be as accessable as any other IV medication. Is your MRSA not bactrim, clinda or floroquinolone sensitive. At least where I live, our MRSA is almost universally sensitive to Clinda and Bactrim and often to flouros.
E. coli is not, and has never been the problem - gram negative bacilli are fairly easy to deal with - we have loads of antibiotic families for them
If I had to choose between a gram negative and gram positive infection, I'd choose the gram negative.
I'm a physician and my friend who is an infectious disease doc happened to be next to me when I read your comment. We both aggreed, this comment is just plain wrong. I'm not sure where to start. Its wrong on many levels mostly because its just too simplistic. My time is limited unfortunatly, so I'm going to be brief. Gram negative infections are common and they can be serious, especially if they make there way into the blood. There are a number of highly resistant gram negative bacteria that are incredably difficult to treat as they are pan-resistant in some cases to every antibiotic avaiable so combinations have to be used for any effectiveness. It is not uncommon to do synergy studies for gram negative bacteria so that we can find combinations of antibiotics that will work because one will not. I personally have never heard of (nor has my friend) needing synergy studies in a gram positives bacteria - please correct me if we are wrong. Every gram positive I've treated or heard of has been at least susceptible to one antibiotic, either vanc or linezolid, usually both. Of course, gram positive infections can be very serious, but so are gram negative infections. I'm not sure at all where you are coming from in your statement. I apologize for the brevity...I wish I had more time.
The encrypted connections would not have prevented this, because the IP address would still be known which is all they need to track you. If your sharing the file, they can still down load it from you.
Freenet would work. Using an anonymous proxy can work provided you can trust the proxy not to reveal your true IP address (relakks comes to mind, they've been in the news lately). Usenet works. There are many other ways as well, those just come to mind.
I live in the US and while I've not received any letters, I have on more that one occasion received a call from my ISP about complaints they've received from the RIAA or MPAA regarding files shared from my IP. It is not so much different than receiving a letter and it gave me an opportunity to correct the problem. It makes me wonder what sort of decision making process is used to figure who is sued in the US vs who gets a courteous nudge on the shoulder to knock if off (or change your behaviors to not get caught).
Slashdot Mirror
Easier said than done. Hospitals are a special situation. By definition, most of the patients in a hospital are sick. You can categorize the types of antibiotic use - empiric, acute directed (known diagnsosis such as urinary track infection), chronic directed (ie. chronic bone infections), and just plain inappropriate. (I just made this up but I think most abx use easily falls into one of these catagories)
When a person first presents ill, the diagnosis is not always obvious and some combination of history, exam, time, labs and imaging is used to narrow the diagnosis. Most of this information is not available immediately so if a person presents rather sick and the differential includes infection, empiric antibiotic coverage is the norm. To a certain degree this is unavoidable unless society decides we are willing to gamble more with peoples lives and health.
The more directed uses, again, are necessary unless we are willing to concede peoples lives and health.
So this leaves the just plain inappropriate. In the hospital this is a relatively small group in my experience (as opposed to the outpatient setting where inappropriate use is extremely common). An additional caveat to this is I work in an academic hospital, the general feeling is that community hospitals are most liberal in bending the rules, so antibiotic abuse maybe more common there. I'm not aware of any data to support that but I'd be surprised if I was wrong.
Anyway, I'm not sure decreasing the use of antibiotics in the hospital setting is the solution to this particular problem. (again, the outpatient setting is a completely different beast)
First, the flu shot is not universally recommended for everyone, but is certainly available to anyone in the US. It is recommended universally in young children and very old because of their high risk as well as those with co morbid conditions such as asthma or diabetes. Health care workers should get it to reduce the risk of spreading it to high risk patients.
Second, the data you referenced only used death as an end point. That is only one of several measures. For every death, the flu causes much more morbidity which is entirely ignored by you. It causes a huge numbers of hospitalizations and ICU stays which are incredibly expensive.
Third, very little money is made in vaccines. Primary care doctors are lucky if they don't loose money on vaccines. How do I know? I am a primary care doctor and its a wash between the cost of storing and purchasing them vs how much we get paid to give them. Manufactures almost have to be begged to make vaccines because there is little financial incentive to do so. Its not uncommon to have shortages occasionally because of this.
Forth, your referencing a radiologist to talk about an infectious disease / epidemiology problem. That's usually a red flag right there. For instance I know an orthopedic surgeon that argues quite well to the uneducated how evolution is genetically impossible. He's a doctor so the uneducated take his word and believe him. Problem is, he's a idiot outside orthopedics and anyone with half an education about genetics would butcher him. Another example would be this is like getting a plumbers opinion on what type of roof to put on your house. Would you do that?
I believe the post you are referring to mentioned a CT scan, not an MRI. While both are imaging techniques, they are quite different in how they work. MRIs are much, much more expensive in general. They require the supercooled magnets and such. A CT is essentially using the same type of radiation as in used in a normal X-RAY to get sliced images. CTs are much faster at acquiring images and the equipment is much cheaper than an MRI. Both of the factors make it much less expensive overall.
Well provigilman (great name, do you sell it or use it?)
Anyway, I have mixed feelings about this. I think to some degree academia is somewhat content with grants and making money for any given institution compared to getting hard core difference making results. Much prestige is gained my making a university or hospital money with grants independent of real results.
I think also we are comparing two different things. Human/biologic research is inherently more complicated on multiple levels than say processer/material research. For instance there are far more ethical issues involving biologic/human research than processor design. Don't believe me, try submitting a study to an IRB sometime. Then there is cost, the logistics behind putting together any sort of clinical trial of any significance is insanely expensive. Another is just pure complexity. Biological systems are insanely complex we are just starting to learn and sort out the foundations of how stuff really works down to the molecule and I'm still not sure any one individual while ever be able to fully comprehend how it all works. Many of our discoveries before now were more like, I think this might work, try it out and realized it did or didn't make a difference and hopefully didn't hurt anyone while figuring that out. We're just now starting to have rational, well designed approaches to problems.
Processors design and the material research are basic science at its best. You can keep plugging away and until you get a desired result. The worst thing that happens is over costs or delays. Not to mention, processor design is processor design is processor design. chrones disease is not heart attack is not exactly the same as stroke is not the same as kidney stones is not the same as cerebral palsy. That is the number of diseases that fall under medicine or life sciences is huge. If you picked one, put all the brain power and money resources into just one that is spent on processor design and I bet we'd have some kick ass cures for that one disease. But wait, we'd still have thousands to go.
I believe it depends on the type of rechargeable. The nickel cadmium did. Lithium does not.
The problem I've had with all of them is their life span. After a year of regular use, they then to hold a fraction of their original charge. It appears ultracapacitors have a much longer life span. rock on
Absolutely, yet no one has cracked Direct TVs current system that I'm aware of. Just because you can monitor the communication doesn't equal being able to crack.
What about Direct TV? Since they updated to the P4 or higher, I'm not aware of anyone that's cracked their copy-protection/content protection scheme....just some unverified rumors. I haven't checked up on it recently, so I'd be interested to find out if I'm wrong.
I'm not sure many people care anyway.
The thing is, google started this and I loved them for it. They raised the bar to 1 gig out of nowhere and everyone rejoiced. It was long over due at the time as limits were far too low in general. Now, I'd guess they are reasonable for the vast majority. As long as google 'keeps up' at this point and accommodating its users, I'm not sure this is a bid deal.
I've noticed people doing this, although I can't say I've had it happen on an item I was interested in. If I remember, it is against the terms of service of craigslist to do this. As with the ads I've noticed doing this, I just click on the 'spam' or 'prohibited' tag. I'm not sure there is much else you can do short of contacting CL directly.
Theoretically that could work. Problem is, income does not equal fiscal responsibility and is not as reliable an indicator of long term ability to pay off debt.
You do not necessarily need to be in debt to have a credit history. Using a credit card to make routine purchases and paying it off completely each month is not what I would consider debt. Just because there are people who don't get the system and spend beyond their means, thus ruining their credit, doesn't mean its a flawed system. Personally, I think its more of a failure of families to educate their kids and the education system for failing to focus more of personal finance and math.
That is one possibility, but the people who study these things and have strong incentives (money) to get it right show that the larger credit limit implies improved the likelihood of not defaulting. That's just how it is.
Wow.
The reality is there are people in this world that have money to invest. Some do it by lending money to others that need money for things....houses, cars, buying dinner, whatever. All investing has a certain amount of risk, including lending. Anyone who invests or lends wants to assess and minimize risk. Some might equate low risk with trust. The reality is that even the most trustworthy people have emergencies or personal disasters that result in the inability to pay off debts. Defaulting on loans is nightmare for lenders usually. Don't believe me? Check out some of the many forums where lenders hang out. It doesn't take many bad choices to result in lost money.
In any case, if anyone needs to get a clue, its you.
Personally, I have more debt than most due to years of schooling in addition to the normal stuff. As much as I hate it, I'm thankful I was able to borrow that money to pay for my education for >8 years and still survive. I do consider most of it more of an investment anyway. Now that I have a real job I also invest and lend. There is such a thing as mutually beneficial situations and hopefully a borrower is doing so to benefit themselves and/or their family.
Your absolutely right about the importance of having a credit history. A short credit history can kill a credit score even without any delinquencies or other negative factors.
I do take issue with the benefit of keeping the credit limit low. A potential lender may see larger limits and take that as a sign that other lenders feel comfortable extending credit to you. This is reflected in how the score is calculated. I use Experian's site regularly because I have free access due to my previous job (employer exposed employee data so they bought us all full access). There is a section where you can modify a number of the factors that affect your credit score and see what your score would be with the modified factors. Raising your limits on your credit cards accounts can improve your score. What will harm your score is having a low total percentage of credit available. For example if you have a balance of $400 on credit cards with a total limit of $500 between your credit cards, you will only have 20% of your credit available. This will negatively affect your credit score. If you have a $10,000 total limit with the same $400 balance, your percent of available credit is close to 100% and your score with be much higher.
Did anyone else have to do a double take on the author of this article. The more I read, the more I'm thinking it can't be Dvorak right? This is pretty sensible. Rechecked the author when I was done and said, "huh"
This whole concept of authentication and WGA is flawed. It adds too many points of failure that in the end hurts legitimate users. Why should we be punished for MS's piracy problems.
For me it started with XP. Since I can no longer interchange parts in and out of my computer without worrying about setting off the authentication, I've worked hard to get my myself and my family off Windows. I'm the computer dork in the family and if I can't trouble shoot stuff without worrying about this kind of stuff it sort of kills the fun in building your own machines.
I'm not surprised this is happening and I won't be surprised when this stuff continues to happen in the future. Please get rid of these awful 'features' Microsoft
I think the summary is very misleading. IIRC, google did not refuse to bid on the spectrum if the four conditions weren't met. They did promise to bid the reserve of the auction if their four conditions were met. Thus, if all the conditions are not met, google is not obliged to bid the reserve of the auction. That in no way means they won't bid or are out of the auction. I would assume they have every intention bidding.
The sig is a way of trying to express my disdain for people to lazy to read linked articles but who still try and take part in a discussion of said article.
I'd hazard a guess that message you are trying to convey is not that same as what you are actually acomplishing. Might want to reassess the message/method.
I believe biodiesel is use like gasoline, its pumped to a compression chamber and ingited. I would imagine these fuel cells rely on a simple electrochemical reaction at close to room temperature. An entirely different set of circumstances.
Offhand, sugars are water soluable, relatively small molecules and probably easy to harness for their energy (the fuel mixture will readily mix to keep the remaining sugar moledules exposed to whatever catalyst and other molecules it is reacting with). Because they're simple molecules, there probably is only one major reaction required to split the sugars and obtain energy.
Fats are not water soluable, more complex chemically and thicker in general. I would think coming up with a stable reaction for the entire amount of fat in the tank would be difficult since they are not water soluable (you would need to mix them in a lipophilic solution) and they are thicker. I would imagine they would be more diffult to handle, especially if the idea is to make they reusable.
Then again, it been awhile since I've done any chemisty. Sounds like an interesting concept.
Way to go SLU (graduated from med school there)!
As stated above MRSA stands for methacillin resistant staphylcoccus arueus. In the United States, this is actually a misnomer since just about every lab uses oxacillin to test for resistance, so its technically ORSA. In either case, MRSA or ORSA, denotes resistance of staph to our most potent beta-lactum type of antibiotics (in other words, derivatives of penicillin).
MRSA or ORSA can vary in their sensitivity to non beta-lactum antibiotics. For instance, in many parts of the US, MRSA is sensitive to Clindamycin, but in others it is not.
So the short answer is, yes, different strains of MRSA can vary in their sensitivity to an antibiotic that is not related to a penicillin. MRSA, however, is universally resistant to all penicillin types of antibiotics, including the penicillin cousins, the cephlosporins.
Its interesting to hear your perspective. Obviously our patient populations are quite different. I practice in the US, so our access to vanc and linezolid is taken for granted. Its usually the chronically ill type of individuals who get sick from gram negatives and we probably have a higher percentage of those - geriatric, nursing home, cystic fibrosis, chemothearpy and bone marrow transplant type of patients.
Of course we have a large number of patients who frequently get gram positive infections because of chronic indwelling central cathaters - usually the dialysis patients (Gram postive infections in the US are becoming much more common actually because our dialysis population is exploding with all the diabetes, obesity and hypertension.) I can't imagine how you can manage without linezolid or vanc for in hospital types of patients. Isn't vanc generic by now? Obviously, linezolid is ungodly expensive. I would have thought vanc would be as accessable as any other IV medication. Is your MRSA not bactrim, clinda or floroquinolone sensitive. At least where I live, our MRSA is almost universally sensitive to Clinda and Bactrim and often to flouros.
E. coli is not, and has never been the problem - gram negative bacilli are fairly easy to deal with - we have loads of antibiotic families for them
If I had to choose between a gram negative and gram positive infection, I'd choose the gram negative.
I'm a physician and my friend who is an infectious disease doc happened to be next to me when I read your comment. We both aggreed, this comment is just plain wrong. I'm not sure where to start. Its wrong on many levels mostly because its just too simplistic. My time is limited unfortunatly, so I'm going to be brief. Gram negative infections are common and they can be serious, especially if they make there way into the blood. There are a number of highly resistant gram negative bacteria that are incredably difficult to treat as they are pan-resistant in some cases to every antibiotic avaiable so combinations have to be used for any effectiveness. It is not uncommon to do synergy studies for gram negative bacteria so that we can find combinations of antibiotics that will work because one will not. I personally have never heard of (nor has my friend) needing synergy studies in a gram positives bacteria - please correct me if we are wrong. Every gram positive I've treated or heard of has been at least susceptible to one antibiotic, either vanc or linezolid, usually both. Of course, gram positive infections can be very serious, but so are gram negative infections. I'm not sure at all where you are coming from in your statement. I apologize for the brevity...I wish I had more time.
Quote from the article: "Lee and Teresa Sipple spent $1,200 mounting three video cameras and a radar speed unit outside their home".
I'm assuming the article is accurate. A radar speed unit sounds like a radar gun to me.
The encrypted connections would not have prevented this, because the IP address would still be known which is all they need to track you. If your sharing the file, they can still down load it from you.
Freenet would work. Using an anonymous proxy can work provided you can trust the proxy not to reveal your true IP address (relakks comes to mind, they've been in the news lately). Usenet works. There are many other ways as well, those just come to mind.
I live in the US and while I've not received any letters, I have on more that one occasion received a call from my ISP about complaints they've received from the RIAA or MPAA regarding files shared from my IP. It is not so much different than receiving a letter and it gave me an opportunity to correct the problem. It makes me wonder what sort of decision making process is used to figure who is sued in the US vs who gets a courteous nudge on the shoulder to knock if off (or change your behaviors to not get caught).