Um, I'm a doctor. It amazes me that people do not care about how these marvelous machines work, namely the human body, but they don't. They just keep using them without paying attention to them or keeping them in good shape and then wonder why they break down.
Creepy when you think about it, but it pays the bills : )
-- JSt
Impressive to read that folks are developing a digital listening device for the chest of children to aid in the diagnosis of pneumonia. But what isn't shared here is that listening (or "auscultation") is quite inaccurate for the diagnosis of pneumonia when done by expert humans called doctors. Maybe a machine could do better, I don't know. But just aspiring to be as good as a human doctor's ears is not good enough.
--JSt
I'm confused. DAvid Pogue says all the time that Siri IS the speech recognition of Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Can someone explain?
I know the travails of the poor owners and developers of the original Dragon. I am a faithful and happy Dragon Naturally Speaking medical since 1999. I just want to understand whether Siri is or isn't Nuance's Dragon. And if so, why would Nuance put out a "rival", to quote the title of the OP here.
-- Josh
don't get your hopes up. A pint of Ben & Jerry's in front of your screen is the same number of calories and the same impact on obesity whether you eat it at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon.
I wouldn't be surprised, though, if biological clock research paid off elsewhere in human health (insomnia, jet lag, sleep messed up by depression, etc.)
-- Josh
Careful. Though you may have the permission from the authors to redistribute their works, they may not legally be able to give you such permission. See the rules for journal Cell, one of these Elsevier publications, under "Copyright" section:
Yes, you are correct. Intellectual property rights are often transferred from authors/investigators to the publisher with submission. And that's what I'm choosing to ignore. The medical literature is written purposely to share and spread information so that physicians everywhere can improve the care of patients.
--JSt
Fan-freakin-tastic! I detest Elsevier and Wolters-Kluwer and other publishers/purveyors of medical literature. They put everything behind extremely expensive paywalls. I get around them by using my university's institutional subscription access, but still it's a PIA. Whenever anyone on my online listservs without access asks for an article, I play librarian and get it for them for free. I once asked Wolters-Kluwer for permission to cite research findings from a medical article in a free medical app I wrote. They wanted $795. I reiterated that the work I am doing is free and educational. They relented "just this once". I now never ask again for permission from large publishers who unfortunately hold the intellectual property rights to much medical literature (instead of the study authors themselves, oddly). I always ask permission from authors and researchers, but no longer from publishers, as they just want to monetize and gouge. Don't need that.
-- JSt
But I want to save your life with a medicine today. You want me to harvest some genetic material, engineer it into a mouse embryo or germ cell, wait for said mouse to grow to maturity, then hit it with my prospective medicine, and see if it proves safe. You the patient will be long dead by then.
Advancements in medicine seem so cool when they are merely theoretical. Let me know when it actually happens and is ready for prime time use in my busy general practice.
Best,
--JSt (MD)
Until speech recognition software is PERFECT, then we're all gonna need a keyboard to do much more than consume media on a computing device. So for the time being Dell is right. I'd vastly rather have my laptop because I can do sooooooo much with it. My iPad is limited by lack of keyboard to compose real text, and my iPhone is limited by small screen and lack of keyboard.
It is true that most who previously used PC's to consume media did so because there weren't alternatives. Now that there are alternatives, the tablets have a niche. But the usefulness of the PC, particularly the laptop, isn't going away for a long time, I think.
-- Josh
Oh, you're killin' me. I miss my wonderful Palm PDA's. Well, I don't actually miss them because I still have them. My Treo 650 is my backup's backup cellphone. They simply worked really well, did everything I wanted back then.
--JSt
When it's time for you to go, it's time for you to go. When it's time for me to go, I'm going out kicking and screaming with every bionic body part science has to offer. I don't care if it's "Natural" to die. I'm going to do my very best not to..
You are obviously a youngster. When you reach 60 or 70 years old, you will have seen illness, suffering, some recoveries, much misery, and death in your friends, your parents, perhaps your siblings, hopefully not your children. You'll have a totally different opinion about what your goals are and what you do and don't want done to achieve them both in life and in death.
We doctors don't have to wait decades to see this play out in life to learn it ourselves. We deal with it every day.
You'll see. Be patient, remain open-minded.
-- Josh (M.D.)
Sorry you got the shaft.
But you just gotta trust that real soon, this knucklehead will have to do some computer work on his own and his incompetence will become obvious to all. You may be long gone and unable to swoop back in, save the day, and get the position. But he'll crash and burn and get his comeuppance for sure. And you are probably better off not being paired with a guy who is incompetent and could only slow you down and perhaps make you look bad if your assignments together are riddled with errors.
Move on, trust karma, good things come to those with skill, dedication, and patience. A rude kick-in-the-pants awaits the doofus you helped do his work.
Good luck!
--Josh
Give them the product you wrote.
Yes, you won't get paid. You knew that ahead of time so you should not ask. If you do, you are likely to be told no, and that'll just disappoint you. Don't ask for disappiontment.
However, you will be compensated in many ways which make implementation of your product worthwhile.
Your employer will love you for your creativity and dedication to the organization's mission. You'd be paid in respect.
Your employer will now find you indispensable to administer/maintain the product. You'd be paid in job security.
Your team will love you for making a product which makes their work easier. You'll be paid by increased productivity from your employees, you'll be paid by increased dedication by your employees, and increased loyalty by your employees to you. That's loyalty to you personally. That could pay off in so many ways down the road.
Your resume will look awesome, which will pay you in more opportunities down the road if/when you move on and seek work elsewhere.
Your resume will make you look generous (even if that's not a major facet of your personality at work or elsewhere), and that's an attractive feature.
You'll pay yourself in satisfaction with work and contributions well done. Don't underestimate that. (nice doodle on this at RSA Animate here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u6XAPnuFjJc)
-- Josh
Really marvelous post. Values and truth-telling are not only themselves productive, but espousing values and practicing truth-telling (artfully, constructively, well-timed, etc.) sets the example so that others feel able to do so as well. And the opposite is true. If the organization learns that being a yes-man and concealing critiques and valuing turf/power over actual goals in your mission, then that makes it harder for any one participant to do right with values and truth telling.
Lots of cynical folks here, so it's nice to see a good balance, thought I'd point it out.
Best,
--JS
It's nice that you have the humility and curiosity to ask these questions and acknowledge that your new role will require different skills than you've used thus far in your career.
How did you decide to make this decision, especially given that it seems outside of your comfort zone? In general terms, tell us about your company (big, small, sector) and what it needs from its tech team. Did you seek the job or did it fall to you when someone else left? And if you sought the position knowing it was outside of your regular skillset, why did you seek it and how did you think you would handle the issues you raised in your questions? What prep have you done?
--JS
Boy, my experience is quite different. I think the iPad2 is great for reading.
I like real books and audiobooks when I'm running or driving. Never thought of reading a book on a screen, but decided to give it a try. What a pleasure. The screen is great with good resolution and contrast, the page turning is quick and elegant. The device itself is lightweight and comfortable for holding.
The iPad just does a lot of things well. Great for media consumption. Not so good for producing anything like email, but no worse than iPhone.
I have no idea whether Amazon's Fire will turn out well.
-- Josh
Not a joke. XP SP2. I'd send you a screenshot but that would violate HIPAA. Fines for violating HIPAA (the keep-patient-info-confidential law) start at $50,000, so I'm gonna choose not to!
-- Josh
I'm a doctor. We use Motion LE1700 tablet PC's running Windows XP SP2 (no joke) for our EMR (electronic medical record). I saw a physician colleague running our EMR on his iPad2 and thought "wow". At first I didn't care. Then I thought of two ways that I could really take advantage of running EMR on my iPad2. So I asked our IT dept. They've always said, "we are happy to help you connect to the EMR on your home computer", but now I learn that they meant Wintel or Mac home PC, not iPad.
I really have NO idea what you folks mean when you talk about some dividing line between "consumer tech" and "business tech". So go ahead, brow-beat-up the new guy, explain it to me!
-- Josh
PS FWIW, same organization has custom written an iOS app and given free iPod Touches to physicians to access hospital patient care data, so it's not like the organization does not realize the opportunities in leveraging personal "consumer" tech for business purposes.
I still have my HP 12c and HP 15. If you check eBay you'll see that HP's nearly indestructible RPN (reverse polish notation) calculators go for a pretty penny.
I use my HP 15 RPN calculator for balancing my checkbook and any other math/arithmetic stuff. My iPhone has several apps for this, but few have RPN, and none have buttons that I can feel (glass not so good with small calculator buttons). I'll never give up my HP calculator, I love it.
-- Josh
Slashdot Mirror
Um, I'm a doctor. It amazes me that people do not care about how these marvelous machines work, namely the human body, but they don't. They just keep using them without paying attention to them or keeping them in good shape and then wonder why they break down. Creepy when you think about it, but it pays the bills : ) -- JSt
No, never ethical, never appropriate. Leave drugs, their costs, their risks, their side effects, to those who have diseases. --JSt
Impressive to read that folks are developing a digital listening device for the chest of children to aid in the diagnosis of pneumonia. But what isn't shared here is that listening (or "auscultation") is quite inaccurate for the diagnosis of pneumonia when done by expert humans called doctors. Maybe a machine could do better, I don't know. But just aspiring to be as good as a human doctor's ears is not good enough. --JSt
I'm confused. DAvid Pogue says all the time that Siri IS the speech recognition of Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Can someone explain? I know the travails of the poor owners and developers of the original Dragon. I am a faithful and happy Dragon Naturally Speaking medical since 1999. I just want to understand whether Siri is or isn't Nuance's Dragon. And if so, why would Nuance put out a "rival", to quote the title of the OP here. -- Josh
don't get your hopes up. A pint of Ben & Jerry's in front of your screen is the same number of calories and the same impact on obesity whether you eat it at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if biological clock research paid off elsewhere in human health (insomnia, jet lag, sleep messed up by depression, etc.) -- Josh
webOS. Pretty soon you'll have to Google that in order to remember what it meant. Too little too late. --Josh (former Palm developer)
Further, his novel patent-pending sensor proved to be 28 times faster, 28 times less expensive and over 100 times more sensitive than current tests.
Um, sorry, but there is no current test. There is no screening test for pancreatic cancer. --Joshua Steinberg MD
Careful. Though you may have the permission from the authors to redistribute their works, they may not legally be able to give you such permission. See the rules for journal Cell, one of these Elsevier publications, under "Copyright" section:
Yes, you are correct. Intellectual property rights are often transferred from authors/investigators to the publisher with submission. And that's what I'm choosing to ignore. The medical literature is written purposely to share and spread information so that physicians everywhere can improve the care of patients. --JSt
Fan-freakin-tastic! I detest Elsevier and Wolters-Kluwer and other publishers/purveyors of medical literature. They put everything behind extremely expensive paywalls. I get around them by using my university's institutional subscription access, but still it's a PIA. Whenever anyone on my online listservs without access asks for an article, I play librarian and get it for them for free. I once asked Wolters-Kluwer for permission to cite research findings from a medical article in a free medical app I wrote. They wanted $795. I reiterated that the work I am doing is free and educational. They relented "just this once". I now never ask again for permission from large publishers who unfortunately hold the intellectual property rights to much medical literature (instead of the study authors themselves, oddly). I always ask permission from authors and researchers, but no longer from publishers, as they just want to monetize and gouge. Don't need that. -- JSt
But I want to save your life with a medicine today. You want me to harvest some genetic material, engineer it into a mouse embryo or germ cell, wait for said mouse to grow to maturity, then hit it with my prospective medicine, and see if it proves safe. You the patient will be long dead by then. Advancements in medicine seem so cool when they are merely theoretical. Let me know when it actually happens and is ready for prime time use in my busy general practice. Best, --JSt (MD)
Until speech recognition software is PERFECT, then we're all gonna need a keyboard to do much more than consume media on a computing device. So for the time being Dell is right. I'd vastly rather have my laptop because I can do sooooooo much with it. My iPad is limited by lack of keyboard to compose real text, and my iPhone is limited by small screen and lack of keyboard. It is true that most who previously used PC's to consume media did so because there weren't alternatives. Now that there are alternatives, the tablets have a niche. But the usefulness of the PC, particularly the laptop, isn't going away for a long time, I think. -- Josh
Look at this "iPhone like" color Palm from 2001.
Oh, you're killin' me. I miss my wonderful Palm PDA's. Well, I don't actually miss them because I still have them. My Treo 650 is my backup's backup cellphone. They simply worked really well, did everything I wanted back then. --JSt
I am actually laughing out loud, being a dedicated HP 12c and 15c owner myself. Since LOL no longer conveys it, I felt like typing it out. -- Josh
When it's time for you to go, it's time for you to go. When it's time for me to go, I'm going out kicking and screaming with every bionic body part science has to offer. I don't care if it's "Natural" to die. I'm going to do my very best not to..
You are obviously a youngster. When you reach 60 or 70 years old, you will have seen illness, suffering, some recoveries, much misery, and death in your friends, your parents, perhaps your siblings, hopefully not your children. You'll have a totally different opinion about what your goals are and what you do and don't want done to achieve them both in life and in death. We doctors don't have to wait decades to see this play out in life to learn it ourselves. We deal with it every day. You'll see. Be patient, remain open-minded. -- Josh (M.D.)
Sorry you got the shaft. But you just gotta trust that real soon, this knucklehead will have to do some computer work on his own and his incompetence will become obvious to all. You may be long gone and unable to swoop back in, save the day, and get the position. But he'll crash and burn and get his comeuppance for sure. And you are probably better off not being paired with a guy who is incompetent and could only slow you down and perhaps make you look bad if your assignments together are riddled with errors. Move on, trust karma, good things come to those with skill, dedication, and patience. A rude kick-in-the-pants awaits the doofus you helped do his work. Good luck! --Josh
Give them the product you wrote. Yes, you won't get paid. You knew that ahead of time so you should not ask. If you do, you are likely to be told no, and that'll just disappoint you. Don't ask for disappiontment. However, you will be compensated in many ways which make implementation of your product worthwhile. Your employer will love you for your creativity and dedication to the organization's mission. You'd be paid in respect. Your employer will now find you indispensable to administer/maintain the product. You'd be paid in job security. Your team will love you for making a product which makes their work easier. You'll be paid by increased productivity from your employees, you'll be paid by increased dedication by your employees, and increased loyalty by your employees to you. That's loyalty to you personally. That could pay off in so many ways down the road. Your resume will look awesome, which will pay you in more opportunities down the road if/when you move on and seek work elsewhere. Your resume will make you look generous (even if that's not a major facet of your personality at work or elsewhere), and that's an attractive feature. You'll pay yourself in satisfaction with work and contributions well done. Don't underestimate that. (nice doodle on this at RSA Animate here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u6XAPnuFjJc) -- Josh
Two really great analogies, thanks so much for the images. I think I have to wash my hands after touching the keyboard to reply to this... --JSt
Really marvelous post. Values and truth-telling are not only themselves productive, but espousing values and practicing truth-telling (artfully, constructively, well-timed, etc.) sets the example so that others feel able to do so as well. And the opposite is true. If the organization learns that being a yes-man and concealing critiques and valuing turf/power over actual goals in your mission, then that makes it harder for any one participant to do right with values and truth telling. Lots of cynical folks here, so it's nice to see a good balance, thought I'd point it out. Best, --JS
It's nice that you have the humility and curiosity to ask these questions and acknowledge that your new role will require different skills than you've used thus far in your career. How did you decide to make this decision, especially given that it seems outside of your comfort zone? In general terms, tell us about your company (big, small, sector) and what it needs from its tech team. Did you seek the job or did it fall to you when someone else left? And if you sought the position knowing it was outside of your regular skillset, why did you seek it and how did you think you would handle the issues you raised in your questions? What prep have you done? --JS
Because I have a soul that I'm not willing to compromise in order to treat other human beings as a source of revenue?
Nice! +1
Boy, my experience is quite different. I think the iPad2 is great for reading. I like real books and audiobooks when I'm running or driving. Never thought of reading a book on a screen, but decided to give it a try. What a pleasure. The screen is great with good resolution and contrast, the page turning is quick and elegant. The device itself is lightweight and comfortable for holding. The iPad just does a lot of things well. Great for media consumption. Not so good for producing anything like email, but no worse than iPhone. I have no idea whether Amazon's Fire will turn out well. -- Josh
via VPN
Not a joke. XP SP2. I'd send you a screenshot but that would violate HIPAA. Fines for violating HIPAA (the keep-patient-info-confidential law) start at $50,000, so I'm gonna choose not to! -- Josh
I'm a doctor. We use Motion LE1700 tablet PC's running Windows XP SP2 (no joke) for our EMR (electronic medical record). I saw a physician colleague running our EMR on his iPad2 and thought "wow". At first I didn't care. Then I thought of two ways that I could really take advantage of running EMR on my iPad2. So I asked our IT dept. They've always said, "we are happy to help you connect to the EMR on your home computer", but now I learn that they meant Wintel or Mac home PC, not iPad. I really have NO idea what you folks mean when you talk about some dividing line between "consumer tech" and "business tech". So go ahead, brow-beat-up the new guy, explain it to me! -- Josh PS FWIW, same organization has custom written an iOS app and given free iPod Touches to physicians to access hospital patient care data, so it's not like the organization does not realize the opportunities in leveraging personal "consumer" tech for business purposes.
I still have my HP 12c and HP 15. If you check eBay you'll see that HP's nearly indestructible RPN (reverse polish notation) calculators go for a pretty penny. I use my HP 15 RPN calculator for balancing my checkbook and any other math/arithmetic stuff. My iPhone has several apps for this, but few have RPN, and none have buttons that I can feel (glass not so good with small calculator buttons). I'll never give up my HP calculator, I love it. -- Josh