This is not news. Many of us in the A/V community over at AVS Forums knew about this a very long time ago. This is why it is important to research a product before purchasing it.
I had the "Black Screen of Death" happen in the past week on two full-patched (and legal) Windows Vista 32-bit machines after recent patches. Both times the display wouldn't come back up. The system did not display anything when access via Microsoft Remote Desktop, VNC, and Dameware Utilites Mini Remote Control--these are all various ways to access a machine remotely. However, the systems was still allowing access to file and printer shares and I could perform remote administration via various utilities and agents but I couldn't get anything to display. I was able to force a safe shutdown and restart remotely. Since then both machines have been fine. I had initially chalked this up to a random Windows error but today's news has led me to reconsider whether this is in fact a bug.
I get really annoyed when people take a holier than thou attitude based on conjecture and anecdotal evidence. This spreads misinformation. The fact that you've been modded up to +4 is well-intentioned but not necessarily deserved. Now I'm not going to shove my degree in your face but I will point you to research articles.
'It is a fundamental principle of journalism that we do not give people outside the newspaper the option of deciding whether or not we should publish a story, whether they be advertisers, politicians or just regular readers,' the e-mail read."
Here's a mission for Slashdot... Google every reporter who signed that e-mail and determine if any of them were in bed with the Bush administration in the run up to the Iraq War. This should clear up whether this is a truly genuine sentiment or just exaggerated outrage.
I've used electronic medical records in both the NHS (UK) and the United States. Cerner is the big player here and it is one of the most ugly, inefficient, and convoluted interfaces I've ever used. It makes some more famous UI messes discussed on Slashdot look line the Mona Lisa. For those of you who don't understand how electronic systems work and why there is so much resistance let me explain how a basic patient encounter works for me:
1. Do a history and physical (H&P) on the patient and record the results on paper. 2. Enter in pertinent information into the computer system about the type of management I want started. 3. Dictate my history and physical for transcription. 4. Wait several hours for the dictation to show up in the EMR. Until which time all other doctors and nurses must refer to my hand written notes. 5. Heaven forbid I have to call in a consultation from cardiology, GI, or some other specialty in the hospital. If I do, then we use our text-based pagers to figure out when the hand-written note has been dropped off because every specialty has to go through steps 1-4. As they follow these patients, they too have to physically recheck the chart since dictated H&Ps and progress notes take time to show up. 6. I can very easily see how a mistake could be made in drug dosing because computers are another step in the way. Plus dosages are selected via a regular dropdown box. All dosages of compounds are rechecked by pharmacy anyway. We can get quite a few calls from pharmacy if something is non-standard or rare.
The EMR is a few extra steps in the management of a patient and does not guarantee that mistakes won't be made. Management plans are checked and rechecked as are drug dosages.
The places where EMR is helpful is getting lab results, radiology results, and study-based information on a computer. However, we have several different systems for viewing different sorts of radiology films that can't be viewed in some types of EMR. Then there is the problem of making sure the COW (computer-on-wheels) we take on rounds has a working battery back and the Cerner database hasn't taken a dive into the deep end. If its all working then it's very helpful that old notes can be looked up without giving medical records a call to haul up a 10 volume chart on a chronic COPD patient we see every other week. Unfortunately, coding for billing is still a pain. The system is so complicated that professional medical coders are needed to maximize profits through proper billing to insurance companies and government agencies.
Another problem not addressed by EMR is the fact that every hospital and practice uses a different system. If I need records from an admission at another hospital then I still have to get a Release of Information form filled out and then hope to god the other hospital can fax over copies of the chart to me. These faxes are huge sometimes, completely disorganized, and at times illegible because notes are hand written. There is no electronic transmission. If I need radiological studies then I better pray the patient or ambulance brought copies on a DVD for us to view. Then we better hope a computer system with sufficient privileges and the right Microsoft Service Pack can run the disk. The NHS system tries to address this but I left long before the system was full operational.
The current crop of EMR systems aren't fitting in with our workflow and our IT teams aren't drawing up a way for us to deal with all the variety of systems we may need to deal with in a streamlined fashion. If a consulting company could come up with a system that worked from point of admission through discharge and follow-up (and billing) of a patient with "it just works" simplicity without forcing me to add tons of different steps then we'd have a reason for EMR. Until then, its just a disaster.
This is one place where a computer alone isn't a solution. We need a solution from start to finish that works with us. A government deadline won't solve this problem. However, if a consulting team made up of a group of doctors, programmers, UI designers, and device integrators/manufacturers got together to attack this problem in an Apple-esque way they'd be billionaires.
Am I the only one that finds is somewhat amusing to see a blog post criticizing the new social media star Twitter of misinforming people?
On another note, blogger Kragen Javier Sitaker, @kragen has written an interesting entry on How False Rumors Can Cost Lives in light of the #swineflu crisis on Twitter by discussing the aftermath of Tuskegee on the African American community. Although I agree with many items on his personal responsibilities list, it seems almost impossible to stop inane comments from taking over any social media site open to the general public. Can we name this phenomenon after me... Hisham's Law?
Disclaimer: IAAJD (I am a junior doctor) but this is NOT medical advice. Please consult your physician for your specific situation.
Vitamin D supplements come in two forms: ergocalciferol and cholecalciferol. Studies suggest that cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) increases serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OH-D) more efficiently than does ergocalciferol (vitamin D2). Milk in the United States has been fortified with vitamin D3 (the natural form made through sunlight) since the 1940. This was mandated and reduced the incidence rate of juvenile rickets by 85% in the United States.
Calcitriol is the most active metabolite of vitamin D. It can frequently cause hypercalcemia and/or hypercalciuria, necessitating close monitoring and adjustment of calcium intake and calcitriol dose. Therefore, it isn't recommended that calcitriol be given for vitamin D supplementation in osteoporosis. However, calcitriol or other vitamin D analogs are an important component of therapy for secondary hyperparathyroidism in chronic kidney disease.
Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. The intake at which the dose of vitamin D becomes toxic is not clear. In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences defined the Safe Upper Limit for vitamin D as 2000 IU/day. Newer data however indicate that higher doses are safe at least over a several-month period. Doses as high as 10,000 IU per day for up to five months were not associated with toxicity. It is important to inquire about additional dietary supplements (some of which contain vitamin D) that patients may be taking before prescribing extra vitamin D. Excessive vitamin D, especially combined with calcium supplementation may cause hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria, and kidney stones.
So be careful and only take the amounts listed on your supplement bottles and inquire with your doctor before starting anything. We have a mentality here in the United States that more is better. When it comes to the human body moderation is key.
As a side note, I also don't really understand the significance of Vitamin D's fat solubility making it any more or less dangerous in higher dosages.
I'm an American Muslim who was born and raised here. While I choose to reserve my opinion over the images of the Prophet I do find a lot of the comments on Slashdot to be disappointing. I've been a part of this community since its very inception and have done my best to contribute my expertise to relevant topics. However, its troubling to see that whenever anything Islam-related is posted, there are endless tirades painting my faith with a broad brush of extremism and ignorance.
As I've seen in the past, this sort of post always garners responses such as: "well if you're so level-headed then why aren't you changing the Muslim world?" Unfortunately, all 1+ billion of us are treated as if we're one big happy family. I have no more power to change the world of Islam than I do my own country's domestic and foreign policy beyond the established routes (i.e. voting, debates, etc). We make small but significant gains in our own ways but none of possess earth shattering abilities to make miracles happen. If we--as westerners--are really bastions of knowledge and free thinking then I'd do far more to educated the masses about my religion instead of having it hijacked by both non-Muslim Islamophobes and international extremists.
I will say that discussions littered with such ignorance and hate don't help people like me when we try to open up dialog with members of our religion. As much as people here may call the anti-portraitists relics of the past its very difficult to defend enlightenment and modernism when its laced with veiled Islamophobia [1]. Its even more difficult when people outside of the religion have the audacity to tell Muslims what is and isn't antiquated or kosher. Defining our religion for us wreaks of orientalism and causes even the most moderate to stop listening. I certainly hope I don't get modded or flamed into oblivion because this discussion needs to start somewhere.
[1]: Lets not beat around the bush and call it what it is when 15 century old stereotypes are thrown back in our collective faces even though they may have been debunked already. It even offends me.
The Daily Mail is considered a tabloid rag by many of us who have lived in the UK because they cater to people with a palate for sensationalist headlines and content. The referenced New Scientist article talking about Karim Nayernia's research was published in April of 2007 but The Daily Mail chose to report it many months later. Regardless, since last year there have been few tangible gains in this field. The problem rests in the fact that converted stem cells can achieve the first 2 of 3 stages towards mature sperm development. Even once this is done there is no guarantee the sperm can actually be used in IVF to create a viable/implantable fertilized egg.
The implications of this research are great but rags like The Daily Mail focus on the most provocative uses such as gay/lesbian couples conceiving and auto-reproduction. Before we can approve this research for use in the public we must ascertain whether the manipulations necessary to force conversion of bone marrow stem cells into spermatogonium or the products of these cells potentially introduce undetectable abnormalities within the genetic code. Next, during the process of spermatogenesis chromosomal crossover introduces genetic variability. Without more details in the original article I wonder if one of the failing stages of development involves this important process. Lastly, auto-reproduction is nearly impossible. Every person carries a set of lethal recessive alleles which manifest themselves in incestuous reproductive pairings--hence why most societies have shunned this sort of relationship. This would almost certainly guarantee the fetus would spontaneously abort.
The real application of this research is injecting spermatogonium eggs in women or men who are infertile. This would revolutionize reproductive medicine because it would allow couples to conceive naturally. However, being in the medical field, there are very valid natural reasons why couples may not be able to reproduce (i.e. certain genetic abnormalities) or why fetuses spontaneously abort that we need to decide as a society whether its prudent to interfere. I don't claim to have the answers but I would welcome discussion in this direction so we can make informed choices in the medical breakthroughs we're bound to see in the next few decades.
Incidentally, the New Scientist published a new article today on the matter discussing the implications of this research. Without having a subscription I can't read more but I certainly wouldn't count out fathers just yet. Having a child is only the first part of the equation. Raising an emotionally and psychologically well-adjusted child still necessitates their role--although many single-parents or LGBT couples may argue this point. Anyway, as a community I hope we're a bit more careful of citing sensationalist publications.
Furikup is a beta quality SIP client for the PSP. It's always nice to see the increasing number of devices supporting SIP. Without the luxury of having a PSP to play with Furikup, but having another SIP device (Nokia E61) I can give some recommendations to new users Voice-over-IP (VoIP).
There are a number of free incoming number DID providers. A few examples:
SipNumber provides Iowa State numbers. IPKall provides Washington State Numbers. OrbTalk provides London geographic numbers.
Google's Recent acquisition of GrandCentral is a very tempting prospect even though it is not a true SIP provider. You can get a phone number in almost any locale with GrandCentral and forward the number to the above two US-based providers. You may almost register for a Gizmo account and forward directly to it through GrandCentral. Once the Gizmo SIP account is registered to your device it'll ring when called from a regular landline.
The problem with having this many accounts is finding a service which can aggregate your numbers in one place so you don't have dozens of SIP accounts to register in your device. Voxalot is a nice service but they charge $15/year. Another one is PBXES.org but I would stay away from them. They have a notorious reputation of locking accounts and demanding a 50 Euro ransom to regain access. My personal favorite is MySipSwitch. It's free, does SIP aggregation, and allows simple dial-plans to maximize cheap calling over SIP. It's also an open-source project and the developers directly answer questions from the community in the forums.
Coupling this with services like PhoneGnome, it's possible receive calls from all over the world with some very simple guides (link #1, link #2) out there. Go ahead and give it a try. A big congrats to the coders that are bringing SIP functionality to the PSP.
I wholeheartedly agree that the first startup to get profile aggregation and contact management right will solve many power-user's frustrations with multiple profiles. However, I am not sure if this will be the universal killer app that people believe it to be. At this time, myself and many of my friends have profiles on multiple networks but each one caters to a different audience. My LinkedIn profile is for professional contacts, my Facebook is largely for keeping in touch with select college friends and family, and Friendster and Myspace are for everyone else. I don't necessarily want the same level of personal information available on every site. I would however like a way to group each person's multiple profiles under their name and be able to extract relevant contact information for synchronization into my mobile phone via Outlook.
Maybe this idea can be taken further. Is there an open framework where I can create a personal profile on my own server or free hosting service and link to my friends profiles a la Jabber's open model but for the social scene? Could this service provide a comment space, photo sharing, private messaging (via email), and RSS feeds via a shared application API? It seems like this would be very easily to implement if Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, and Bebo decided to open their networks to non-local hosted profiles and take the data from your profile and display it using their service's user interface. SPAM and privacy controls would have to be implemented but it would be as simple as: "If you would like to link your profile into the Facebook network please verify your profile via OpenID/OpenID2, email address, or mobile phone number." Granular privacy controls could be implemented by allowed users to group their friends profiles based on how much they want to share. Facebook has already started doing this.
Until this can occur, profile aggregation will be at the whim and mercy of the "terms of service" of the big walled gardens. As it stands, profile link list sites like My Mashable, ClaimID, Spock, and Rapleaf along with a mechanism to push your data to these services is just a hack. Unfortunately, its the only way to go for now.
You're actually quite wrong here. I am an American who lived in the UK for more than a year. Mobile phones from the big companies are locked in many cases and its not seen as wrong. A trip down to any High Street will yield a few cell phone unlocking shops.
The more expensive handsets, such as my Nokia E61 or my housemate's Nokia N95, were unlocked. Why? Vodafone's contracts are written differently than any US carriers. When I sign up for a cell phone I agree to pay a lump-sum amount of cash in 12, 18, or 24 monthly payments depending on the length of the contract. Incentives increase with the length of the contract. If I cancel the contract at any time, then I must pay the remainder of the sum and forfeit the monthly payment schedule. In this way, Vodafone is already promised a certain amount of cash in exchange for the handset. They don't care if you leave at that point since they've already made the money.
I really find it disturbing that Slashdot heralds Europe as some panacea in the cell world. It's really not as bright and wonderful as you people try to make it out to be. Ultimately these corporate entities are out to make money within a certain set of rules. Cell phone locking, unfortunately, is a fact of life in the UK. When it isn't, its because of the way the contract is written.
I've seen the shift of a lot of non-serious non-real-time discussions to sites such as Facebook. I find this rather irritating because I only get a notification email in my regular Inbox informing me to go check Facebook instead of the message itself. I also can't archive and refer to old messages which may have event information, phone numbers, etc. due to the lack of advanced features on those sites. I understand this method of logging in generates ad revenue for the site, but when I'm on the road I'd like to respond via push-email in my down-time instead of having to find a public wifi access point.
Although I'm sure this will violate Facebook's TOS in some way, an existing project like FreePOPS or a server-side daemon could be modified to fetch messages in my Facebook and Myspace inboxes and move them to my regular email account. Then they could be pushed to my phone and archived in my local email application.
Facebook needs to consider allowing POP/IMAP access to the inbox and only allow messages to be sent to other Facebook members via the same method. Facebook already forces verification of accounts via college email addresses or via mobile phone text messages which helps cut down spam and viruses. This allows a very large white-list of sorts with a global address book. With more businesses becoming present in the Facebook world, legitimate corporate advertising could be allow/blocked simply by altering account privacy settings. I see it as a win-win for Facebook.
These days I have a tendency to create an account as early as I can on new websites, just in case.:)
HAHAHA... I do that as well. It's pretty lame but with places like GrandCentral that went invite only or StanaPhone that closed off new user registrations, I just make an account for the hell of it.
The GP poster needs to be modded up for actually know what s/he is talking about. From the Wiki page on :
In a televised interview on February 9, 2007, Wolf and his attorney, Martin Garbus...
Wolf stated during his portion of the interview via phone from prison that he has offered to allow the judge to review "in camera" the raw footage to determine if there's any applicable evidence within the video and the U.S. Attorney's office refused the offer based on a legal technicality. Wolf also said that the raw video doesn't offer any more applicable evidence of the arson or assault charges.
It sounds like a witch hunt and you sound just like another poster who needs a good whack with a clue stick.
I agree that the biggest problem in Windows is the drivers. Mainly AC97 audio and nVidia are the main culprits. I fixed a lot of my Vista woes by installing the latest Realtek AC97 drivers. I'm still waiting on proper video drivers. Which generic C-Media sound driver are you using?
As a Vista beta tester, I've personally reported the file copying bug at least half a dozen times. That, along with the crap UAC prompts, seems to be the least of my troubles. When do people start harping on about Vista's extremely poor video and sound-playback performance? On older systems, the move to VMR for all video playback severely decreases playback performance. For example, on a Dell M60 latop with a Centrino 2.0Ghz (single-core) CPU, 2 gigs of ram, 7200 RPM EIDE hard drive, and a nVidia Quadro 700 Go w/ 128meg video card I can playback raw HDTV without a hiccup. In Vista, the same playback drops nearly half the frames regardless of the various decoding codecs used. Disabling Aero leaves the problem in the same situation. Disabling sound (AC'97 sound) lets a few less frames to be dropped. This is not an isolated problem but exists on many machines.
This problem is a lot bigger than just file operations. I really have to wonder why anyone is going to bother with Vista for anything expect the lastest/fastest consumer/gamer machines. I'm sticking to XP and my next laptop will be an Apple Mac Book Pro. I'll vote with my dollars, thanks.
For years I've been waiting for the FlipStart to debut but it hasn't yet. I'm a current owner of a JVC 7310, OQO, and Sony UX series. I would have not bought any of those had the FlipState been available. Last I recall checking the website in early/mid-2004. No dice yet. What does Mr. Allen thing will come of this now? Chalk this one up as more vaporware.
Has anyone bothered to do some fact/typo checking before posting this stuff?
Microsoft's offering was one of four suites which failed to detect all malware. The others were G-Data AntiVirusKit 2007 v.17.0.6353, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.1i and Norman Virus Control 5.90.
See, I run McAfee VirusScan Enterprise on Desktops and Servers here without problems. The latest version in the 8.0 line is 8.0i patch 15. The Vista-compatible version is 8.5i which also works on Windows XP. There is no version 8.1i that I know of. Obviously this doesn't change the message that McAfee didn't earn the seal but I've never had problems with the VirusScan Enterprise line. To be frank, I've never encountered a single infection or uncontrolled virus problem on our network.
Plus, who honestly uses just *one* virus scanner on the perimeter of their Microsoft Server-system based network? I certainly don't. For example, Exchange 2003 server on the perimeter runs software from GFI which has three separate virus scanning engines. This coupled with application executable hash-based protection offered in BlackICE takes care of the rest of the problems at the desktop/server level. It's the price we pay for using MS software.
Surprisingly enough, I would agree with what you have to say. I've been living in the UK for the last 7 months and Apple products aren't the hip-thing here. Sony seems to be all the rage for just about everything consumer electronic-y.
Just thought that you guys might wanna know that Microsoft has came up with an article on removing WGA.
As covered in a blog posting by Ed Bott, the KB article Microsoft gave is a rush job and will confuse non-techies that may attempt it. He provides corrections but Microsoft is (at best) silly to have not had a third party verify the instructions.
Also realize that contrary to the warning in the Microsoft KB article, if you choose not to install the WGA notifications "update" or remove it, Microsoft Update will force you to run another WGA test before granting you access to their Windows Update website. They won't even allow access to critical updates through the web interface in my testing with the web-based (ActiveX?) test. From what I understand, the access to the promised critical updates are only provided with their built-in update provider which has been responsible for all the WGA notification auto-installs. In other words, you can't win either way.
As it stands, I've disable auto updates from System Properties->Updates and disabled the "security center" service from Control Panel->Admin Tasks->Services so it doesn't bother me about disabled auto-updates anymore. I have multiple Dell machines with OEM installations of Windows XP so I'm not concerned about failing WGA but I am concerned about all the reported crashes involving WGA across forums and blog around the internet and the private information sent to Microsoft.
Playing support-geek for family and friends only gets tougher with this stupid anti-piracy program. I'm disabling auto-updates and security center on every system while deleting WGA. Instead, once a month I ask my friends and family to run AutoPatcher on their systems for all critical and optional updates. I've told them that they may not be able to use WGA protected software such as Windows Defender, IE7 Beta, or WMP11 and any other Microsoft download. All of them don't care for that stuff as they have better freeware or open-source alternatives. So far so good.
Before anyone chimes in and says that people should switch to Linux, I'd say I agree in theory but not in reality. Educational software, scanner and digital camera software utilities, unique features presented in official IM clients such as VoIP and picture sharing, many Photoshop features, easy movie editors a la Roxio and Premiere, and desktop publishing software (i.e. Pagemaker) are not available for Linux nor do these people care to learn anything new after years of experience in many cases. For now there are workarounds and people will use them. If Microsoft implements a kill switch and starts nuking WGA-less but legal installations then many of these people will probably trash their computers and buy Apple before going to Linux.
Lastly, this doesn't hurt pirates one bit. Within hours the latest WGA crack is available and it works or people just disable auto-updates and go towards AutoPatcher. For protected apps, crackedcopies are available. So who loses? The general public who follows all the rules. I'm glad someone filed the lawsuit and I hope people will sign up as parties when the chance is given.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not news. Many of us in the A/V community over at AVS Forums knew about this a very long time ago. This is why it is important to research a product before purchasing it.
Yup... I prefer that system. I'm glad the site hasn't changed much in all these years.
I had the "Black Screen of Death" happen in the past week on two full-patched (and legal) Windows Vista 32-bit machines after recent patches. Both times the display wouldn't come back up. The system did not display anything when access via Microsoft Remote Desktop, VNC, and Dameware Utilites Mini Remote Control--these are all various ways to access a machine remotely. However, the systems was still allowing access to file and printer shares and I could perform remote administration via various utilities and agents but I couldn't get anything to display. I was able to force a safe shutdown and restart remotely. Since then both machines have been fine. I had initially chalked this up to a random Windows error but today's news has led me to reconsider whether this is in fact a bug.
I get really annoyed when people take a holier than thou attitude based on conjecture and anecdotal evidence. This spreads misinformation. The fact that you've been modded up to +4 is well-intentioned but not necessarily deserved. Now I'm not going to shove my degree in your face but I will point you to research articles.
Proteolytic and lipolytic responses to starvation.
Energy metabolism in feasting and fasting.
Get off my 25k user-ID lawn.
Here's a mission for Slashdot... Google every reporter who signed that e-mail and determine if any of them were in bed with the Bush administration in the run up to the Iraq War. This should clear up whether this is a truly genuine sentiment or just exaggerated outrage.
I've used electronic medical records in both the NHS (UK) and the United States. Cerner is the big player here and it is one of the most ugly, inefficient, and convoluted interfaces I've ever used. It makes some more famous UI messes discussed on Slashdot look line the Mona Lisa. For those of you who don't understand how electronic systems work and why there is so much resistance let me explain how a basic patient encounter works for me:
1. Do a history and physical (H&P) on the patient and record the results on paper.
2. Enter in pertinent information into the computer system about the type of management I want started.
3. Dictate my history and physical for transcription.
4. Wait several hours for the dictation to show up in the EMR. Until which time all other doctors and nurses must refer to my hand written notes.
5. Heaven forbid I have to call in a consultation from cardiology, GI, or some other specialty in the hospital. If I do, then we use our text-based pagers to figure out when the hand-written note has been dropped off because every specialty has to go through steps 1-4. As they follow these patients, they too have to physically recheck the chart since dictated H&Ps and progress notes take time to show up.
6. I can very easily see how a mistake could be made in drug dosing because computers are another step in the way. Plus dosages are selected via a regular dropdown box. All dosages of compounds are rechecked by pharmacy anyway. We can get quite a few calls from pharmacy if something is non-standard or rare.
The EMR is a few extra steps in the management of a patient and does not guarantee that mistakes won't be made. Management plans are checked and rechecked as are drug dosages.
The places where EMR is helpful is getting lab results, radiology results, and study-based information on a computer. However, we have several different systems for viewing different sorts of radiology films that can't be viewed in some types of EMR. Then there is the problem of making sure the COW (computer-on-wheels) we take on rounds has a working battery back and the Cerner database hasn't taken a dive into the deep end. If its all working then it's very helpful that old notes can be looked up without giving medical records a call to haul up a 10 volume chart on a chronic COPD patient we see every other week. Unfortunately, coding for billing is still a pain. The system is so complicated that professional medical coders are needed to maximize profits through proper billing to insurance companies and government agencies.
Another problem not addressed by EMR is the fact that every hospital and practice uses a different system. If I need records from an admission at another hospital then I still have to get a Release of Information form filled out and then hope to god the other hospital can fax over copies of the chart to me. These faxes are huge sometimes, completely disorganized, and at times illegible because notes are hand written. There is no electronic transmission. If I need radiological studies then I better pray the patient or ambulance brought copies on a DVD for us to view. Then we better hope a computer system with sufficient privileges and the right Microsoft Service Pack can run the disk. The NHS system tries to address this but I left long before the system was full operational.
The current crop of EMR systems aren't fitting in with our workflow and our IT teams aren't drawing up a way for us to deal with all the variety of systems we may need to deal with in a streamlined fashion. If a consulting company could come up with a system that worked from point of admission through discharge and follow-up (and billing) of a patient with "it just works" simplicity without forcing me to add tons of different steps then we'd have a reason for EMR. Until then, its just a disaster.
This is one place where a computer alone isn't a solution. We need a solution from start to finish that works with us. A government deadline won't solve this problem. However, if a consulting team made up of a group of doctors, programmers, UI designers, and device integrators/manufacturers got together to attack this problem in an Apple-esque way they'd be billionaires.
Am I the only one that finds is somewhat amusing to see a blog post criticizing the new social media star Twitter of misinforming people?
On another note, blogger Kragen Javier Sitaker, @kragen has written an interesting entry on How False Rumors Can Cost Lives in light of the #swineflu crisis on Twitter by discussing the aftermath of Tuskegee on the African American community. Although I agree with many items on his personal responsibilities list, it seems almost impossible to stop inane comments from taking over any social media site open to the general public. Can we name this phenomenon after me... Hisham's Law?
Disclaimer: IAAJD (I am a junior doctor) but this is NOT medical advice. Please consult your physician for your specific situation.
Vitamin D supplements come in two forms: ergocalciferol and cholecalciferol. Studies suggest that cholecalciferol (vitamin D3) increases serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OH-D) more efficiently than does ergocalciferol (vitamin D2). Milk in the United States has been fortified with vitamin D3 (the natural form made through sunlight) since the 1940. This was mandated and reduced the incidence rate of juvenile rickets by 85% in the United States.
Calcitriol is the most active metabolite of vitamin D. It can frequently cause hypercalcemia and/or hypercalciuria, necessitating close monitoring and adjustment of calcium intake and calcitriol dose. Therefore, it isn't recommended that calcitriol be given for vitamin D supplementation in osteoporosis. However, calcitriol or other vitamin D analogs are an important component of therapy for secondary hyperparathyroidism in chronic kidney disease.
Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. The intake at which the dose of vitamin D becomes toxic is not clear. In 1997, the National Academy of Sciences defined the Safe Upper Limit for vitamin D as 2000 IU/day. Newer data however indicate that higher doses are safe at least over a several-month period. Doses as high as 10,000 IU per day for up to five months were not associated with toxicity. It is important to inquire about additional dietary supplements (some of which contain vitamin D) that patients may be taking before prescribing extra vitamin D. Excessive vitamin D, especially combined with calcium supplementation may cause hypercalcemia, hypercalciuria, and kidney stones.
So be careful and only take the amounts listed on your supplement bottles and inquire with your doctor before starting anything. We have a mentality here in the United States that more is better. When it comes to the human body moderation is key.
As a side note, I also don't really understand the significance of Vitamin D's fat solubility making it any more or less dangerous in higher dosages.
I'm an American Muslim who was born and raised here. While I choose to reserve my opinion over the images of the Prophet I do find a lot of the comments on Slashdot to be disappointing. I've been a part of this community since its very inception and have done my best to contribute my expertise to relevant topics. However, its troubling to see that whenever anything Islam-related is posted, there are endless tirades painting my faith with a broad brush of extremism and ignorance.
As I've seen in the past, this sort of post always garners responses such as: "well if you're so level-headed then why aren't you changing the Muslim world?" Unfortunately, all 1+ billion of us are treated as if we're one big happy family. I have no more power to change the world of Islam than I do my own country's domestic and foreign policy beyond the established routes (i.e. voting, debates, etc). We make small but significant gains in our own ways but none of possess earth shattering abilities to make miracles happen. If we--as westerners--are really bastions of knowledge and free thinking then I'd do far more to educated the masses about my religion instead of having it hijacked by both non-Muslim Islamophobes and international extremists.
I will say that discussions littered with such ignorance and hate don't help people like me when we try to open up dialog with members of our religion. As much as people here may call the anti-portraitists relics of the past its very difficult to defend enlightenment and modernism when its laced with veiled Islamophobia [1]. Its even more difficult when people outside of the religion have the audacity to tell Muslims what is and isn't antiquated or kosher. Defining our religion for us wreaks of orientalism and causes even the most moderate to stop listening. I certainly hope I don't get modded or flamed into oblivion because this discussion needs to start somewhere.
[1]: Lets not beat around the bush and call it what it is when 15 century old stereotypes are thrown back in our collective faces even though they may have been debunked already. It even offends me.
The Daily Mail is considered a tabloid rag by many of us who have lived in the UK because they cater to people with a palate for sensationalist headlines and content. The referenced New Scientist article talking about Karim Nayernia's research was published in April of 2007 but The Daily Mail chose to report it many months later. Regardless, since last year there have been few tangible gains in this field. The problem rests in the fact that converted stem cells can achieve the first 2 of 3 stages towards mature sperm development. Even once this is done there is no guarantee the sperm can actually be used in IVF to create a viable/implantable fertilized egg.
The implications of this research are great but rags like The Daily Mail focus on the most provocative uses such as gay/lesbian couples conceiving and auto-reproduction. Before we can approve this research for use in the public we must ascertain whether the manipulations necessary to force conversion of bone marrow stem cells into spermatogonium or the products of these cells potentially introduce undetectable abnormalities within the genetic code. Next, during the process of spermatogenesis chromosomal crossover introduces genetic variability. Without more details in the original article I wonder if one of the failing stages of development involves this important process. Lastly, auto-reproduction is nearly impossible. Every person carries a set of lethal recessive alleles which manifest themselves in incestuous reproductive pairings--hence why most societies have shunned this sort of relationship. This would almost certainly guarantee the fetus would spontaneously abort.
The real application of this research is injecting spermatogonium eggs in women or men who are infertile. This would revolutionize reproductive medicine because it would allow couples to conceive naturally. However, being in the medical field, there are very valid natural reasons why couples may not be able to reproduce (i.e. certain genetic abnormalities) or why fetuses spontaneously abort that we need to decide as a society whether its prudent to interfere. I don't claim to have the answers but I would welcome discussion in this direction so we can make informed choices in the medical breakthroughs we're bound to see in the next few decades.
Incidentally, the New Scientist published a new article today on the matter discussing the implications of this research. Without having a subscription I can't read more but I certainly wouldn't count out fathers just yet. Having a child is only the first part of the equation. Raising an emotionally and psychologically well-adjusted child still necessitates their role--although many single-parents or LGBT couples may argue this point. Anyway, as a community I hope we're a bit more careful of citing sensationalist publications.
Furikup is a beta quality SIP client for the PSP. It's always nice to see the increasing number of devices supporting SIP. Without the luxury of having a PSP to play with Furikup, but having another SIP device (Nokia E61) I can give some recommendations to new users Voice-over-IP (VoIP).
There are a number of free incoming number DID providers. A few examples:
SipNumber provides Iowa State numbers.
IPKall provides Washington State Numbers.
OrbTalk provides London geographic numbers.
Google's Recent acquisition of GrandCentral is a very tempting prospect even though it is not a true SIP provider. You can get a phone number in almost any locale with GrandCentral and forward the number to the above two US-based providers. You may almost register for a Gizmo account and forward directly to it through GrandCentral. Once the Gizmo SIP account is registered to your device it'll ring when called from a regular landline.
The problem with having this many accounts is finding a service which can aggregate your numbers in one place so you don't have dozens of SIP accounts to register in your device. Voxalot is a nice service but they charge $15/year. Another one is PBXES.org but I would stay away from them. They have a notorious reputation of locking accounts and demanding a 50 Euro ransom to regain access. My personal favorite is MySipSwitch. It's free, does SIP aggregation, and allows simple dial-plans to maximize cheap calling over SIP. It's also an open-source project and the developers directly answer questions from the community in the forums.
Coupling this with services like PhoneGnome, it's possible receive calls from all over the world with some very simple guides (link #1, link #2) out there. Go ahead and give it a try. A big congrats to the coders that are bringing SIP functionality to the PSP.
I wholeheartedly agree that the first startup to get profile aggregation and contact management right will solve many power-user's frustrations with multiple profiles. However, I am not sure if this will be the universal killer app that people believe it to be. At this time, myself and many of my friends have profiles on multiple networks but each one caters to a different audience. My LinkedIn profile is for professional contacts, my Facebook is largely for keeping in touch with select college friends and family, and Friendster and Myspace are for everyone else. I don't necessarily want the same level of personal information available on every site. I would however like a way to group each person's multiple profiles under their name and be able to extract relevant contact information for synchronization into my mobile phone via Outlook.
Maybe this idea can be taken further. Is there an open framework where I can create a personal profile on my own server or free hosting service and link to my friends profiles a la Jabber's open model but for the social scene? Could this service provide a comment space, photo sharing, private messaging (via email), and RSS feeds via a shared application API? It seems like this would be very easily to implement if Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, and Bebo decided to open their networks to non-local hosted profiles and take the data from your profile and display it using their service's user interface. SPAM and privacy controls would have to be implemented but it would be as simple as: "If you would like to link your profile into the Facebook network please verify your profile via OpenID/OpenID2, email address, or mobile phone number." Granular privacy controls could be implemented by allowed users to group their friends profiles based on how much they want to share. Facebook has already started doing this.
Until this can occur, profile aggregation will be at the whim and mercy of the "terms of service" of the big walled gardens. As it stands, profile link list sites like My Mashable, ClaimID, Spock, and Rapleaf along with a mechanism to push your data to these services is just a hack. Unfortunately, its the only way to go for now.
You're actually quite wrong here. I am an American who lived in the UK for more than a year. Mobile phones from the big companies are locked in many cases and its not seen as wrong. A trip down to any High Street will yield a few cell phone unlocking shops.
The more expensive handsets, such as my Nokia E61 or my housemate's Nokia N95, were unlocked. Why? Vodafone's contracts are written differently than any US carriers. When I sign up for a cell phone I agree to pay a lump-sum amount of cash in 12, 18, or 24 monthly payments depending on the length of the contract. Incentives increase with the length of the contract. If I cancel the contract at any time, then I must pay the remainder of the sum and forfeit the monthly payment schedule. In this way, Vodafone is already promised a certain amount of cash in exchange for the handset. They don't care if you leave at that point since they've already made the money.
I really find it disturbing that Slashdot heralds Europe as some panacea in the cell world. It's really not as bright and wonderful as you people try to make it out to be. Ultimately these corporate entities are out to make money within a certain set of rules. Cell phone locking, unfortunately, is a fact of life in the UK. When it isn't, its because of the way the contract is written.
I've seen the shift of a lot of non-serious non-real-time discussions to sites such as Facebook. I find this rather irritating because I only get a notification email in my regular Inbox informing me to go check Facebook instead of the message itself. I also can't archive and refer to old messages which may have event information, phone numbers, etc. due to the lack of advanced features on those sites. I understand this method of logging in generates ad revenue for the site, but when I'm on the road I'd like to respond via push-email in my down-time instead of having to find a public wifi access point.
Although I'm sure this will violate Facebook's TOS in some way, an existing project like FreePOPS or a server-side daemon could be modified to fetch messages in my Facebook and Myspace inboxes and move them to my regular email account. Then they could be pushed to my phone and archived in my local email application.
Facebook needs to consider allowing POP/IMAP access to the inbox and only allow messages to be sent to other Facebook members via the same method. Facebook already forces verification of accounts via college email addresses or via mobile phone text messages which helps cut down spam and viruses. This allows a very large white-list of sorts with a global address book. With more businesses becoming present in the Facebook world, legitimate corporate advertising could be allow/blocked simply by altering account privacy settings. I see it as a win-win for Facebook.
Low ID Roll call!!!
I figured this was necessary to get all the old chaps from the CnD days out.
Don't hold my high ID against me. I waited until the last minute to sign up for an account.
These days I have a tendency to create an account as early as I can on new websites, just in case. :)
HAHAHA... I do that as well. It's pretty lame but with places like GrandCentral that went invite only or StanaPhone that closed off new user registrations, I just make an account for the hell of it.
That's probably why I never bothered making an ID until much later. Bah...
The GP poster needs to be modded up for actually know what s/he is talking about. From the Wiki page on :
In a televised interview on February 9, 2007, Wolf and his attorney, Martin Garbus...
Wolf stated during his portion of the interview via phone from prison that he has offered to allow the judge to review "in camera" the raw footage to determine if there's any applicable evidence within the video and the U.S. Attorney's office refused the offer based on a legal technicality. Wolf also said that the raw video doesn't offer any more applicable evidence of the arson or assault charges.
It sounds like a witch hunt and you sound just like another poster who needs a good whack with a clue stick.
I agree that the biggest problem in Windows is the drivers. Mainly AC97 audio and nVidia are the main culprits. I fixed a lot of my Vista woes by installing the latest Realtek AC97 drivers. I'm still waiting on proper video drivers. Which generic C-Media sound driver are you using?
As a Vista beta tester, I've personally reported the file copying bug at least half a dozen times. That, along with the crap UAC prompts, seems to be the least of my troubles. When do people start harping on about Vista's extremely poor video and sound-playback performance? On older systems, the move to VMR for all video playback severely decreases playback performance. For example, on a Dell M60 latop with a Centrino 2.0Ghz (single-core) CPU, 2 gigs of ram, 7200 RPM EIDE hard drive, and a nVidia Quadro 700 Go w/ 128meg video card I can playback raw HDTV without a hiccup. In Vista, the same playback drops nearly half the frames regardless of the various decoding codecs used. Disabling Aero leaves the problem in the same situation. Disabling sound (AC'97 sound) lets a few less frames to be dropped. This is not an isolated problem but exists on many machines.
This problem is a lot bigger than just file operations. I really have to wonder why anyone is going to bother with Vista for anything expect the lastest/fastest consumer/gamer machines. I'm sticking to XP and my next laptop will be an Apple Mac Book Pro. I'll vote with my dollars, thanks.
For years I've been waiting for the FlipStart to debut but it hasn't yet. I'm a current owner of a JVC 7310, OQO, and Sony UX series. I would have not bought any of those had the FlipState been available. Last I recall checking the website in early/mid-2004. No dice yet. What does Mr. Allen thing will come of this now? Chalk this one up as more vaporware.
Has anyone bothered to do some fact/typo checking before posting this stuff?
Microsoft's offering was one of four suites which failed to detect all malware. The others were G-Data AntiVirusKit 2007 v.17.0.6353, McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.1i and Norman Virus Control 5.90.
See, I run McAfee VirusScan Enterprise on Desktops and Servers here without problems. The latest version in the 8.0 line is 8.0i patch 15. The Vista-compatible version is 8.5i which also works on Windows XP. There is no version 8.1i that I know of. Obviously this doesn't change the message that McAfee didn't earn the seal but I've never had problems with the VirusScan Enterprise line. To be frank, I've never encountered a single infection or uncontrolled virus problem on our network.
Plus, who honestly uses just *one* virus scanner on the perimeter of their Microsoft Server-system based network? I certainly don't. For example, Exchange 2003 server on the perimeter runs software from GFI which has three separate virus scanning engines. This coupled with application executable hash-based protection offered in BlackICE takes care of the rest of the problems at the desktop/server level. It's the price we pay for using MS software.
Surprisingly enough, I would agree with what you have to say. I've been living in the UK for the last 7 months and Apple products aren't the hip-thing here. Sony seems to be all the rage for just about everything consumer electronic-y.
As covered in a blog posting by Ed Bott, the KB article Microsoft gave is a rush job and will confuse non-techies that may attempt it. He provides corrections but Microsoft is (at best) silly to have not had a third party verify the instructions.
Also realize that contrary to the warning in the Microsoft KB article, if you choose not to install the WGA notifications "update" or remove it, Microsoft Update will force you to run another WGA test before granting you access to their Windows Update website. They won't even allow access to critical updates through the web interface in my testing with the web-based (ActiveX?) test. From what I understand, the access to the promised critical updates are only provided with their built-in update provider which has been responsible for all the WGA notification auto-installs. In other words, you can't win either way.
As it stands, I've disable auto updates from System Properties->Updates and disabled the "security center" service from Control Panel->Admin Tasks->Services so it doesn't bother me about disabled auto-updates anymore. I have multiple Dell machines with OEM installations of Windows XP so I'm not concerned about failing WGA but I am concerned about all the reported crashes involving WGA across forums and blog around the internet and the private information sent to Microsoft.
Playing support-geek for family and friends only gets tougher with this stupid anti-piracy program. I'm disabling auto-updates and security center on every system while deleting WGA. Instead, once a month I ask my friends and family to run AutoPatcher on their systems for all critical and optional updates. I've told them that they may not be able to use WGA protected software such as Windows Defender, IE7 Beta, or WMP11 and any other Microsoft download. All of them don't care for that stuff as they have better freeware or open-source alternatives. So far so good.
Before anyone chimes in and says that people should switch to Linux, I'd say I agree in theory but not in reality. Educational software, scanner and digital camera software utilities, unique features presented in official IM clients such as VoIP and picture sharing, many Photoshop features, easy movie editors a la Roxio and Premiere, and desktop publishing software (i.e. Pagemaker) are not available for Linux nor do these people care to learn anything new after years of experience in many cases. For now there are workarounds and people will use them. If Microsoft implements a kill switch and starts nuking WGA-less but legal installations then many of these people will probably trash their computers and buy Apple before going to Linux.
Lastly, this doesn't hurt pirates one bit. Within hours the latest WGA crack is available and it works or people just disable auto-updates and go towards AutoPatcher. For protected apps, cracked copies are available. So who loses? The general public who follows all the rules. I'm glad someone filed the lawsuit and I hope people will sign up as parties when the chance is given.