Yup, the spine can cause similar symptoms. A herniated disc can pinch a nerve as it exits the spine. Also, the muscles of your neck and the first rib can pinch nerves as they traverse the neck on the way to the arm. This is called "Thoracic Outlet Syndrome", and it is actually pretty uncommon. It used to be "common" because doctors did not yet realize that the symptoms were related to a problem in the wrist, so they frequently misdiagnosed (and operated upon) the problem as thoracic outlet syndrome. Needless to say, the results were less than good. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome was not yet on the map at the time. With a modern understanding of these entities, and with tools such as EMG/NCV, these etiologies should rarely be confused.
If you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Chiropractic (spine popping) is very unlikely to help at all, since the problem lies in the wrist. If you have certain types of neck pain, then it can sometimes help, but you must also consider that, like any other medical procedure, it is not without risk. I have personally treated people who have suffered paralysis (fracture) and stroke (vertebral and carotid artery dissection) after chiropractic manipulation of the neck. Just make sure that you are formally diagnosed (including EMG/NCV) with a specific problem before you undergo any medical procedure that carries risk. Chiropractic has a place where appropriate, but I do not recommend using it for carpal tunnel syndrome since it will be all risk and no benefit.
The stuff below is one of my posts from a previous slashdot thread:
Is there a doctor out there (or anyone, for that matter) who can describe the symptoms of CTS?
Yes, as a neurosurgeon, I see a fair number of patients who suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome, some of which eventually have surgery.
The simplest way to conceptualize carpal tunnel syndrome is to think about it as a problem of proportions: The median nerve must pass through the carpal tunnel in order to reach the hand. If the carpal tunnel is too small (for any number of reasons) or the median nerve is swollen or enlarged (again, many possible causes), then you may develop the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, since the median nerve is essentially being "pinched" as it passes through the carpal tunnel. Nerves really do not like to be pinched!
There are many possible contributing factors which can lead to such a situation, some of which can be improved with medications of behavior modification, and other which cannot.
Some Contributing Factors
You were born with a small carpal tunnel (congenital) and are predisposed to the syndrome. Sorry!
Pregnancy - hormonal changes in the mother lead to widespread changes in the tissues of the bodies, many of which are quite noticeable. CTS often results, but usually improves or resolves after delivery. Some women on oral contraceptives will develop CTS for similar reasons.
Hypothyroidism
Major Wrist Trauma - i.e. wrist fracture. The geometry of the carpal tunnel can be unfavorably altered by the fracture.
Repeated Minor Trauma - also known increasingly as Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) for those of you who are buzz-word compliant. Repetitive minor trauma to the median nerve/carpal tunnel complex may lead to a swollen nerve and secondary inflammation that causes thickening of tissues. This is a fairly straightforward concept that is really just common sense. Joggers with bad technique will wear out their knees, pitchers with bad techniqe will wear out their shoulders or elbows, etc. Why does hacker X get CTS when he types just like hacker Y, who doesn't get it. Answer: Hacker X may have other factors at play (smaller carpal tunnel, more active inflammatory response to minor injury, etc.) other than the repetitive strain that predispose him to CTS. Hacker Y may type with bad techniqe all his like and never get CTS because he does not have enough other contributing factors to develop a pinched median nerve. Then again, some people smoke like a chimney and never get lung cancer.
Rhematoid (and other types of) Arthritis - excessive inflammation leads to thickened tissues and a tight carpal tunnel.
Acromegaly (Giantism)- excessive growth hormone leads to thicked tissues.
Certain types of tendonitis - inflammation
Sarcoidosis - another inflammatory condition
Diabetes - nerves are more sensitive than in non-diabetics
Renal Failure
Others..
Symptoms
Pain
Numbness
Weakness
Clumsy HandSince it is the median nerve that is affected, the pain and numbness will follow the course of the median nerve. Although there is variability, this usually means the "thumb side" of the hand - the thumb, index, and middle finger - and to a variable degree the ring finger. The pain and numbness are usually exacerbated (made worse) by certain activities. Sometimes the pain and numbness are constant. Often, patients will wake up in the middle of the night with pain when their unsupervised wrist gets into a bad position. Weakness in the grip or thumb may occur, especially the abductor pollicus brevis (a thumb muscle). When weakness and numbness are combined, your hand's feedback and execution are off, and you may experience clumsiness. You might find yourself dropping things that you thought you had a good grip on. In advanced cases, the muscles of the hand become atrophied, which can be disabling. Atrophy of the thenar eminence (the "mound" of muscle between the base of your thumb and your wrist) is characteristic of advanced disease. You do not want to let it get to that point, since a full recorvery is unlikely despite any treatment when atrophy exists.
Diagnosis
Examine for weakness, numbness, atrophy
Tinel's sign - tap the middle of your wrist a few times. Did you reproduce your pain or get a painful shock in your fingers?
Phalen's sign - push the back of your hands together so that your wrists are forcibly flexed. Hold that position for a minute or two. If your pain is reproduced, the sign is positive.
EMG/NCV - electrical tests of nerve and muslce. Prolonged motor or sensory latencies are suggestive (delayed transmission due to abnormally slow conduction though the pinched portion of the nerve). In advanced cases, you may see "dennervation potentials".
Treatments
Behavior modification - this is where the RSI stuff fits in. Sometimes this is sufficient to turn the tide, other times not.
Anti-inflammatory medications - most causes of CTS lead to at least some degree of inflammation, which can lead to thickened tissues when it goes on in a chronic fashion.
Wrist Splints - helps prevent motion of the wrist. Especially helpful for keeping wrists straight at night when you are not awake to supervise them.
Surgery
What does surgery do?
Surgery entails an incision over your wrist and a portion of the palm of your hand. The transverse ligament, which is the "roof" of the carpal tunnel, is then cut so that the median nerve is no longer trapped inside a tunnel. The tunnel becomes a ditch. The nerve breathes a sigh of relief. The degree of tightness is often quite impressive, and often the nerve is visibly swollen or even discolored. In those unfortunate enough to have waited too long, the nerve is visibly atrophied.
If pain and intermittant numbness were the only symptoms, then there is a very good chance for an excellent recovery after surgery. If, on the other hand, there is 'round-the-clock numbness or weakness prior to treatment, then this suggests that the nerve may be permanantly damaged, and a complete recover is less likely. In these cases, the pain will usually resolve fairly quickly postoperatively, but the numbness and weakness may take months to recover, and may not recover completely. Recovery in these cases is slow because the median nerve has actually lost some of its fibers (axons), and they must regrow. The axons begin in the spinal cord or a ganglion in the neck and extend all the way down the arm into your fingers. When there has been prolonged CTS and associated inflammation of the median nerve where it was pinched, there may exist scar tissue within the nerve which prevents the axons from crossing that segment as they try to regrow though the wrist to the hand. So the moral of the story is: try conservative measures if you are having pain or intermittant numbness. If the conservative measures do not work, and the CTS is interfering with your life, or if you develop 'round-the-clock numbess or signs of weakness then you should consider surgery. Most cases will not require surgery, but it is a sad thing to see when CTS is allowed to progress to the point at which damage to the nerve is permanant.
There seems to be a lot of talk on the internet lately about carpal tunnel syndrome as a mysterious entity that only a select group of doctors that treat famous musicians understand. Simply untrue. Family physicians see CTS all the time. Any neurosurgeon and most orthopedic surgeons (and some plastic surgeons) will be intimately familiar with CTS, as it is really quite common and is treated by a relatively minor procedure when conservative measures fail. The risks of surgery are small, but they include
damage to the median nerve leading to further numbness or weakness
infection
failure to completely free the nerve from compression (i.e. compression of the nerve beyond the extent of the incision).
In my own personal biased opinion, I favor the "open" approach with an incision over part of the palm of the hand and wrist over the "endoscopic" approach which allows a smaller incision. I believe that the traditional larger incision provides superior visualization of the nerve, and thus more control over what is and isn't being cut.
The other popular take on CTS these days on the net is that RSI is somehow being misdiagnosed as CTS. This is actually becoming a very popular misconception. The critical thing to keep in mind is that RSI (repetitive strain injury) is one of many mechanisms that can contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome. We don't tell patients that they have Repetitive Smoking Injury (another RSI!) when they have a stroke, heart attack, or lung cancer, even though smoking can certainly be a cause of those problems. It would be silly to say "You don't have lung cancer, you've got repetitive smoking injury". Similarly for RSI and CTS. If you have the signs and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, then you have carpal tunnel syndrome. Repetitive strain injury may have been an important contributing factor and you may be able to help your symptoms by taking altering your behavior. The increased public awareness of repetitive strain injury (RSI) is, IMHO, a good thing because it can lead to changes in behavior that help to avoid CTS and other problems - just like increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking can lead some people to quit. But let's try not to confuse our terms! RSI is a general mechanism of injury to tissues that contributes to problems thoughout the body. CTS is a specific problem with your wrist in which RSI may or may not be a contributing factor. I hope this has helped to explain RSI and CTS!
Excessive oxygen leads to derranged development of the blood vessels in the retina of a premature infant. If there is too much overgrowth of vessels, blindness occurs. Technically, it's called Retinopathy of Prematurity.
As far as I know, the "much better than Cats" line comes from an old SNL skit in which people are interviewed after attending a performance by a hypnotist. The hypnotist's show got the same great review from everyone: "I loved it. It was much better than Cats. I'm going to see it again and again."
As one of the many slashdocs here, I can't resist chiming in. We have three types of medicine in the states:
Socialized medicine in the US comes in the form of Medicare (for those 65 or older and certain disabled persons), Medicaid/MediCal/MediX - state administered medical plans for the poor, and the Veterans Administration (bigger than you think!). You tax dollars have been paying for socialized medicine in America for a long time. Hospitals also get tax breaks if they perform a certain amount of charity care.
Traditional private practice (fee for service), whereby you are clued in about a good doctor by a friend and then proceed to make him/her your doctor. Due to "market pressures", this form of medicine is on the decline. I like to compare it to the consulting industry in tech and other fields. You hire the best consultant you can find for the price and take into account past performance (based on word of mouth). In this model, the price and quality varies tremendously as your complaints will result in anything from "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" to a spare-no-expense leave no stone unturned workup. As with consulting, docs have different styles of practice which may suit some patients, but not others. In the view of those who pay the bills (govt and insurance companies), this type of healthcare system suffers from unaccountable variations in costs and practice parameters.
Corporate medicine. Enter the HMO and other healthcare acronyms. This is the PHB brand of medicine in which the business bottom line is the primary concern and the goal is to spend as little as possible in providing services so that the healcare corporation can maximize profits. This generally means hiring providers who are willing to work for less. It also means denying patients services whenever possible. It means official "company" policies that discourage doctors from ordering an expensive test they think might be helpful or even discussing the existance of a treatment regimen that is not covered by the plan. It means many more PHBs on the payroll to create and administer company policies, many of which amount to trying to practice medicine with an MBA. Some of these issues have received press and will/are leading to increased regulation of the "industry", but the basic incentive structure is still the same.
I've known a few UK docs. I was surprised to learn from one of these that private practice exists in the UK (for those who can afford to pay). But most of the medicine is socialized. Probably not a bad way to do it. The bulk of the population is served by a reliable, but perhaps less responsive, public health service while the few who can afford private medicine are allowed to pursue that. No corporate medicine, where business and ethics can collide on so many planes.
I do hope we don't go the way of the Canadians. My doc friends in Canada tell me that private practice simply isn't allowed there. It's completely socialized. Certainly the docs are as good as anywhere else, but the waiting lists are much worse. If you have an urgent problem, you'll get timely attention. But if you've got nagging gallstones or a sore herniated disc, you may have to wait months in pain for that elective surgery. Meanwhile there is little or no wait in the states for even the poorest uninsured patient (just find your nearest friendly University hospital). More than a few Canadians can be found flying into the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere in the states for medical care they couldn't get in a timely manner or at all in Canada. Again, this is no reflection on the docs and nurses in the system, just the system.
Now, I'm not the best in the world by some margin, but would I have ever come across the works of so many of the artists I love if they weren't being paid to make music by their record companies, who then sold recordings? No way.
Sad, but true. Musicians make the best $$$ touring. They get screwed on record sales because:
Their royalty percentage is typically very low. If you are signing your first record contract, they will take great advantage of your naivete.
The cost of recoding the songs in the studio, mastering it, etc are extracted from the artists' portion of the royalties. The artists may never see any record sales royalties.
I know several people in the industry (not major big time players) who have been screwed in a similar fashion. Perhaps the best known example is the Goo-Goo Dolls. The hit song "Name" was all over the airwaves for a year. The rest of the "Boy Named Goo" CD had other hits too. The disc was selling like hot cakes. The band was touring and having a great time. When they got home to Buffalo, NY after their tour they recieved their royalty statement in the mail. After the record company subtracted the cost of recording and producing the CD (and whatever other costs of marketing/production they decided to subtract from the artists' small percentage of the royalties), the Dolls owed a few hundred grand! They had to go on tour again to raise money for lawyers to fight that absurdity. Believe me, we don't need record companies in their present form. Great music will come to the surface because people want to listen to it. And here in 1999 (not 1964), we have the infrastructure to rapidly distribute and promote artists without traditional record companies. The record companies are just marketing companies that exist to leech off of artists. With an MP3.com model, the artists gets 50% of royalites and pays none of MP3.com's costs. A 16 track digital studio with quality effects (e.g. Roland VS-1680, I love mine) can be had for $2500. Add a few good microphones, and you have a studio more than good enough. With these tools, the artists has much more control and much less need for traditional record companies. The film industry will reform next, probably with the iMac version 10, when anyone who cares to learn can do the technicals. Then it all comes down to the vision, which is the important thing. BWP anyone? The big budget studios will still have their place, but soon the field will be open to more competition.
Software IP stops me from putting my Battlezone CD in my CD-ROM and a £1 CD-R disc in my CD-RW, copying
I guess this is where we have a semantic misunderstanding. Are you sure you are not talking about copyright? A Steven King novel is not patented, but it is still protected from someone just xeroxing millions of copies and selling it themselves. Isn't that copyright, not patent/IP. The author of a novel can't prevent anyone from writing a similar novel with the same premise, but he can prevent unauthorized verbatim duplication.
Microsoft Windows.... Remove IP from the equation and what you end up with is no-one able to afford to develop anything even remotely like Windows - which, much as I dislike it personally, was a big help to getting proper computers into the home.
I just can't see how your argument leads to the conclusion that nobody would be able to afford to develop good software once the fear of being sued out of business is removed. If anything, there will be less money spent on litigation and more for development. Note that I am not arguing for the illegal duplication and distribution of another persons' software, only for the freedom to develop my own version. Just because there is more competition, the market doesn't just disappear. Someone is going to sell an OS with a GUI (Mac/Windows/Amiga, or other). Others will be developing free OS's with GUI (Linux/GNOME/KDE). Others will be selling and supporting the free stuff (RedHat, etc.). And so on. The only time we need to bring lawyers into the equation is when someone is making perfect unauthorized copies (not clean room reimplementations) of someone else's product and selling them.
Again, you confuse IP (copyright) with patents. Two very different issues.
Actually, the term IP does not have a precise legal definition. In common usage around here, and on slashdot, the term IP has been attached to patents, copyrights, trademarks and every other legal mechanism that can be used to protect yourself and intimidate others. I agree with RMS that its probably better to avoid that term. I will start avoiding it today.
Perhaps in the UK, the term IP is a legal equivalent of copyright, and that's why we seem to be having some miscommunication.
Yes, the psion is much more functional and not much bigger. I can get about 80% of regular typing speed, and can have an appointment scheduled, a to do item created, or a note entered in less than half the time that takes my Palm Pilot toting friends! And I have a 48Mb CF on which I have stored several big manuals in html format. Very handy. Entering data into a Palm Pilot is just too awkward and slow (but I guess others don't agree since the blasted thing is so much more popular than the series 5). We will have a nice interface in that form factor when we have voice recognition.
Ditto if you want to kill the music or film industries.
I'm all for it. They have outlasted their usefulness. The current industry screws both the artists and the consumers. I think MP3.com and its ilk have a model much more in tune with the times.
Why did Vertigo and Mettalica put so much time, effort and money into recording Load? Because they could sell it. And why did AT&T fund Bell Labs - specifically Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan in their development of Unix and C?
People have been making great music for eons out of the pure love of making music. Many of the greatest composers and seminal musicians died dirt poor but loved making music. Making money is fine since you have to eat, but I don't believe that it is the only force at work when it comes to creative endeavors and quality workmanship. Innate curiosity and pride are just as important. For every AT&T and K&R, there is an RMS and Torvalds.
Someone else would have developed a spreadsheet for the PC in all probability, but as powerful as 1-2-3 entirely for love?
If there is a real need for spreadsheet functionality that is was not being met with an existing product, more people would probably devote their energy to it. Conversely, if the concept of a spreadsheet could be made IP by a patent, then this limits competition and, hence the possibility of better products, since it allows the owner of the IP to improve his product at a snails pace or not at all without worrying about having to compete. Simply put, I belive that the anti-competitive nature of software IP is bad for society since it allows sloppy implementations to go unchallenged. Regardless of the freedom of the underlying ideas, the person or company with the best implementations of the ideas in a product will be rewarded. And this is as it should be.
Then take Windows. Much as I dislike it, too... Now, remove it. How many home PCs do you have?
Plenty. Without M$'s anticompetitive behavior, there would probably have been a much healthier mix. Better yet, if Apple didn't have so many GUI lawyers and supposed GUI IP, I'm sure we would be much further along now than we are.
I mean, how are the software companies supposed to survive, support revenues?
They will survive if they produce the best products! That is, if they produce a product that I need and cannot (or do not have time to) create myself. I'm not saying that they should all have to roll over and die and just give away their source, only that they shouldn't be able to sue their competitor out of business if he tries to make a better version of the product based on similar ideas - because, as a consumer, I'm going to want to buy that better version that would never had appeared if the IP lawyers had their way.
It is just plain silly that someone can claim to own an idea simply because they got to the patent office first! But I've gone over that before....
If Microsoft tried to survive on such a business mdoel it'd be chaos and software quality would go through the floor.
I don't believe for a second that M$ would go out of business if they were unable to "enforce" their IP. They do, after all, have a pretty functional WYSIWYG word processor along with office and such. Even if anyone could violate M$'s "software patents", the would still have to come up with an implementation of the software which is better than M$'s - and that's a nontrivial task. If anything, it might prod M$ along and encourage them to work out their bugs faster, etc to keep their competitive edge. People are still going to want to buy the best stuff, regardless of what the IP laws are. If you make the best stuff, it will probably make you some money. But if you make a sloppy widget and are hoping to get by on your IP portfolio, then you should lose. Having the idea first (difficult to prove anyway) should not give you the right to make a mint. Making a spectacular product that actually *works* well and is affordable does give you the right to make a mint, since the business of making a product really is 1% inspiration - 99% perspiration!
Bottom line - IP restricts competition. Competition is a good thing for society at large. It makes businesses work harder, but we all win because implementations of ideas are going to be better when more than one team can run with the idea.
If you wish to release a program that uses *any* GPL'd code in it, your *entire program* must be released under the GPL.
What is the threshold for calling it GPL code though?
I've used the line "i++;" many times, and I'm sure it shows up in a few GPL programs. Clearly we are not talking about single lines here, right? What about simple loops and sorts that are common knowledge, but also found in some GPL source that you are familiar with. Are you infected then? Does it need to be a whole C function or code for a nonobvious algorithm? I can guarantee that a lot of lines of code will match some GPL code if you substitute for different variable names. Maybe you saw some GPL code and something a lot like it elsewhere (after all, much of the GPL code has been inspired by other code) and your code closely resembles them both. Are you infected? How closely does it have to resemble the GPL code for the license to be effective? What if it also resembles some non GPL example public domain code from a textbook, etc.?
...if it worked and could be controlled by thoughts or perhaps through facial movements. Christopher Reeve would love something like this, as would all the other quadriplegics and paraplegics out there. A few of the problems include:
Sensory feedback - it's much more difficult to listen in on a nerve to find out what the hand is feeling than it is to fire the muscles. Sensation will be crucial for manipulating objects.
Reflex arcs (muscle "stretch" sensory feedback) - if you stimlate a nerve or muscle directly, you will elicit a relex in the opposing muscles. This "stretch" reflex is mediated by the spinal cord. Voluntary movements usually suppress this reflex so that when you bend your knee, it doesn't kick back out like it does when you stretch the quadriceps tendon with a reflex hammer. These relexes will need to be suppressed somehow.
Now go to their web site, find the Gtk-Perl module, and figure out how to download it.
Get the cpan module. It gives you a cpan command shell. Then type in "i/Gtk/" to get a list of all Gtk related stuff. Type "install Gtk" and it downloads it, compiles any parts written in C, installs, and than tests it for you. Also reminds you of what modules are out of date and updates them for you. Gotta love it!
Perl 'OO' programming is a hideous joke played on unsuspecting saps who think they can develop maintainable, clean OO systems in Perl, which is impossible for anything of any complexity.
I'm by no means a Perl bigot nor do I think it should be used for everything. I used to laugh at Perl and tease its practitioners. But I've used C++ and Java in relatively large OO projects and am not convinced at all that they are better OO languages than even Perl. True to the nature of Perl, you have a great deal of flexibility implementing OO systems - you can do it cleanly or do it sloppy. I have actually been very pleasantly surprised at the power and elegance of OO in Perl compared to Java/C++. I rather enjoy the flexibility of Perl's namespaces and blessed hashes! After years of hard knocks, I have learned to appreciate that a clean OO system is much more dependent upon your factorization of the problem into classes and their interactions (design of the Class hierarchy) than the language used to implement the design. I spend about 2x the time designing the class hierarchy as I do coding it. Also, I have come to prefer shallow class hierarchies which use a "hasa" component strategy than complex "isa" inheritance hierarchies, and Perl works very well for this. Perl also allows object inspection/introspection in a straightforward manner. One definite downside of Perl OO is that there is no language enforcement of private data and member functions, but this is not as limiting as I initially thought it would be. Anyway, to each his own.....Look at some of the CPAN perl modules for examples of nice perl OO.
Look, if you get confused by C's string handling, then, yep, Perl is for you. But *IF* you can handle the power, 'C' is for you!
String handling in C is not confusing at all. It's actually very basic. The problem is that it's just not very powerful at the language level. You have to spend a lot of time rolling your own routines to do powerful string manipulation. And wouldn't you know it, some guy named Larry Wall did just that, and he called his powerful C program for manipulating strings "Perl". Maybe you've heard of it? If you don't like the C program called "Perl" you are free to use other C programs to manipulate strings, such as lex and yacc. *IF* you cannot handle the power of Perl (or lex/yacc), I guess you could just waste your time reinventing the wheel all the time.
Precisely. I used C/C++ for about eight years before giving in to Perl for certain things.
My advice (which with $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee)
Use C/C++ when you need fine grained control of memory and/or hardware, or if you need to perform numerical computations. These features make it nice for writing operating systems, device drivers, games, etc. But these capabilities become liabilities when you do not really need them.
Use Perl to manipulate text. After all, by its design, it excells in text manipulation - which what is happening in >99% of web applications. It has the added advantage of more rapid development, but I would still use it for web stuff instead of C/C++ even if it had to be compiled. Believe me, it is much nicer to use Perl's regular expressions capabilities than to do it in C/C++/lex/yacc (which I've used for many previous projects that needed sophisticated string handling - before I finally learned Perl).
I have mixed feelings about Java. It's somewhere in the middle. You lose the fine control of memory & hardware that C/C++ has but don't gain much in the way of higher level language features, except for automatic garbage collection and (the claim of) greater portability. It's sort of a spayed/neutered C++, and Perl is probably more portable anyway. Java will probably suceed on the strength of its libraries.
...but it should not be the whole story. Scientific thought encompasses ideas with a tremendous range of rigor, and nothing in the physical sciences can ever be completely proved anyway. A forum for loosely formed, but interesting, ideas is just as important as peer reviewed journals since it can be thought provoking and send people in directions they previously wouldn't have considered. And with the internet, such forums are easy to create.
The problem that must be overcome is that there is a stigma attached to scientists who voice nonrigorous ideas. But this is just plain silly, since the nature of the forum should make it pretty clear which articles are rigorous and peer reviewed, and which are more speculative.
After all, people used to think that heavier objects fall faster than light objects.
But they often do! Heavier things are often denser things, hence they achieve a higher terminal velocity. In the very special case of a perfect vacuum, all things fall at the same speed.
Whether or not the cost is substantial, the very act of making a receiver of information pay for that information means that the recipient will start to think really hard about whether that information is needed.
I think the site does have potential because there are a lot of people who don't have the time to scan usenet or find the appropriate place on the internet. These people will pay a little $ for a quick and easy answer. There will be people willing to take their money and provide an answer. For everyone else, the answers elsewhere on the internet and usenet will still be free. The only sticky problem here is how to objectively determine if an answer is good enough to deserve payment or not. If the answer is very suboptimal (one that the asking party had already thought of), do you still have to pay?
I haven't studied it carefully, but I hope it is set up so that no actual $$$ has to change hands, but rather people get "points" from other people by answering their questions and it becomes a type of distributed bartering system (tax free!). The use of real $$$ should be an option for those with no "points" to barter with.
....and a time for every purpose under heaven, etc.etc.
I guess it's time for internet development!
Imagine how Colonial architecture could have progressed if the brightest minds of the industrial revolution had not been so wrapped up in factories and machinery!
As for McNealy in a political debate, Clinton would eat him alive!
Seriously, I think it's more than a bit presumptious to believe that the brightest minds are completely absorbed by the internet. The brightest minds are able to grok more than one industry/project simultaneously. Anyone who's young and got a modicum of intelligence these days will likely have a firm understanding of the internet and how it will potentially impact their bottom line. I would argue that internet is just a means to an end for most of the "bright minds" out there, and not necessarily and end in itself as this article seems to suggest.
Perl is a scripting language, Java is a system programming language. Mind experiment: implement java in perl, now implement perl in java which of those two programs do you want to maintain?
I used to think this way too, but over time, and with much pain, I learned the hard way that Perl is superior to java or c/c++ when it comes to web/db stuff. Why? Because Perl is the most efficient language for dealing with text, and web based applications are primarily all about text. Java and C/C++, which I used to defend to the death, are much clumsier with text than Perl. It's true! I even prefer the way Perl allows very flexible object oriented programming to the old Java/C++ days. The programmer is given incredible control and expressive power. I must admit, I haven't yet played with Python, though. Now if I need to quickly render a few Mandelbrodt sets, I'll probably do it in C++ (or java, if I'm not in a hurry to see the pictures), but for web stuff give me Perl!
I used to be really turned off by the "ugly" syntax, but now that I'm accustomed to it, I can't stand looking at Java anymore. IMHO, most things can be done much more elegantly in Perl.
The US is sure to get the glory for any nugget of code they hatch, which certainly cannot be said for other places. Each "prominent" coder leaving his or her country for the US makes a little bit more cetain that IT in that country becomes that much less glamorous for the next generation.
I disagree. I don't think people think of Linux as an "American" project now that Linus has moved here, nor do I believe for one minute that his departure has lessened the appeal of hacking in his native country. People truely enjoy hacking in most every country, including poor ones like China and India. The fact that some will leave for well paid jobs abroad would seem to be a source of inspiration for would be hackers since these people become "sucessful" role models. In a larger sense, Silicon Valley is a role model for success that other cities around the world are trying to emulate with varying degrees of success. The forces of equilibrium will prevail as the cost of living in SV is now stratospheric and it has no room to grow. Meanwhile, a lot of other places (and in countries outside the US) have developed increasingly robust tech infrastructures and work forces, and boast much more affordable living and more interesting environments.
They fit so well with the group of revolutionaries from that, with the varying viewpoints and personalities all united in a weird way towards a common purpose of changing the world to a better place. I just hope the cDc fares better than Hugo's revolutionaries did.
When the cDc do achieve world domination, which is their stated purpose, and are in charge of everything, what sort of changes can we look forward to? Will it be a benevolent dictatorship or will we be slaves? Free hamburgers, perhaps? Will Bill Gates' wealth be redistributed. Will he be allowed to live? If not, will he be given a choice in the manner in which he is decapitated, and for how long his head shall be placed upon a wall for people to throw things at it?;)
Who out there could describe the way a typical startup is sliced and diced as it proceeds from Angel Investers to VC's and ultimately to IPO? What percent of the company can the founding team reasonably expect to be holding when all is said and done? How much do the angels who pitched in the first $100K get. The VC's who put in $5 Million? The fouding members who maxed out their cards?
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If you have Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Chiropractic (spine popping) is very unlikely to help at all, since the problem lies in the wrist. If you have certain types of neck pain, then it can sometimes help, but you must also consider that, like any other medical procedure, it is not without risk. I have personally treated people who have suffered paralysis (fracture) and stroke (vertebral and carotid artery dissection) after chiropractic manipulation of the neck. Just make sure that you are formally diagnosed (including EMG/NCV) with a specific problem before you undergo any medical procedure that carries risk. Chiropractic has a place where appropriate, but I do not recommend using it for carpal tunnel syndrome since it will be all risk and no benefit.
The stuff below is one of my posts from a previous slashdot thread:
Is there a doctor out there (or anyone, for that matter) who can describe the symptoms of CTS?
Yes, as a neurosurgeon, I see a fair number of patients who suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome, some of which eventually have surgery.
The simplest way to conceptualize carpal tunnel syndrome is to think about it as a problem of proportions: The median nerve must pass through the carpal tunnel in order to reach the hand. If the carpal tunnel is too small (for any number of reasons) or the median nerve is swollen or enlarged (again, many possible causes), then you may develop the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, since the median nerve is essentially being "pinched" as it passes through the carpal tunnel. Nerves really do not like to be pinched!
There are many possible contributing factors which can lead to such a situation, some of which can be improved with medications of behavior modification, and other which cannot.
Some Contributing Factors
Symptoms
Diagnosis
Treatments
What does surgery do?
Surgery entails an incision over your wrist and a portion of the palm of your hand. The transverse ligament, which is the "roof" of the carpal tunnel, is then cut so that the median nerve is no longer trapped inside a tunnel. The tunnel becomes a ditch. The nerve breathes a sigh of relief. The degree of tightness is often quite impressive, and often the nerve is visibly swollen or even discolored. In those unfortunate enough to have waited too long, the nerve is visibly atrophied.
If pain and intermittant numbness were the only symptoms, then there is a very good chance for an excellent recovery after surgery. If, on the other hand, there is 'round-the-clock numbness or weakness prior to treatment, then this suggests that the nerve may be permanantly damaged, and a complete recover is less likely. In these cases, the pain will usually resolve fairly quickly postoperatively, but the numbness and weakness may take months to recover, and may not recover completely. Recovery in these cases is slow because the median nerve has actually lost some of its fibers (axons), and they must regrow. The axons begin in the spinal cord or a ganglion in the neck and extend all the way down the arm into your fingers. When there has been prolonged CTS and associated inflammation of the median nerve where it was pinched, there may exist scar tissue within the nerve which prevents the axons from crossing that segment as they try to regrow though the wrist to the hand. So the moral of the story is: try conservative measures if you are having pain or intermittant numbness. If the conservative measures do not work, and the CTS is interfering with your life, or if you develop 'round-the-clock numbess or signs of weakness then you should consider surgery. Most cases will not require surgery, but it is a sad thing to see when CTS is allowed to progress to the point at which damage to the nerve is permanant.
There seems to be a lot of talk on the internet lately about carpal tunnel syndrome as a mysterious entity that only a select group of doctors that treat famous musicians understand. Simply untrue. Family physicians see CTS all the time. Any neurosurgeon and most orthopedic surgeons (and some plastic surgeons) will be intimately familiar with CTS, as it is really quite common and is treated by a relatively minor procedure when conservative measures fail. The risks of surgery are small, but they include
- damage to the median nerve leading to further numbness or weakness
- infection
- failure to completely free the nerve from compression (i.e. compression of the nerve beyond the extent of the incision).
In my own personal biased opinion, I favor the "open" approach with an incision over part of the palm of the hand and wrist over the "endoscopic" approach which allows a smaller incision. I believe that the traditional larger incision provides superior visualization of the nerve, and thus more control over what is and isn't being cut.The other popular take on CTS these days on the net is that RSI is somehow being misdiagnosed as CTS. This is actually becoming a very popular misconception. The critical thing to keep in mind is that RSI (repetitive strain injury) is one of many mechanisms that can contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome. We don't tell patients that they have Repetitive Smoking Injury (another RSI!) when they have a stroke, heart attack, or lung cancer, even though smoking can certainly be a cause of those problems. It would be silly to say "You don't have lung cancer, you've got repetitive smoking injury". Similarly for RSI and CTS. If you have the signs and symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, then you have carpal tunnel syndrome. Repetitive strain injury may have been an important contributing factor and you may be able to help your symptoms by taking altering your behavior. The increased public awareness of repetitive strain injury (RSI) is, IMHO, a good thing because it can lead to changes in behavior that help to avoid CTS and other problems - just like increased public awareness of the dangers of smoking can lead some people to quit. But let's try not to confuse our terms! RSI is a general mechanism of injury to tissues that contributes to problems thoughout the body. CTS is a specific problem with your wrist in which RSI may or may not be a contributing factor. I hope this has helped to explain RSI and CTS!
Excessive oxygen leads to derranged development of the blood vessels in the retina of a premature infant. If there is too much overgrowth of vessels, blindness occurs. Technically, it's called Retinopathy of Prematurity.
As far as I know, the "much better than Cats" line comes from an old SNL skit in which people are interviewed after attending a performance by a hypnotist. The hypnotist's show got the same great review from everyone: "I loved it. It was much better than Cats. I'm going to see it again and again."
I've known a few UK docs. I was surprised to learn from one of these that private practice exists in the UK (for those who can afford to pay). But most of the medicine is socialized. Probably not a bad way to do it. The bulk of the population is served by a reliable, but perhaps less responsive, public health service while the few who can afford private medicine are allowed to pursue that. No corporate medicine, where business and ethics can collide on so many planes.
I do hope we don't go the way of the Canadians. My doc friends in Canada tell me that private practice simply isn't allowed there. It's completely socialized. Certainly the docs are as good as anywhere else, but the waiting lists are much worse. If you have an urgent problem, you'll get timely attention. But if you've got nagging gallstones or a sore herniated disc, you may have to wait months in pain for that elective surgery. Meanwhile there is little or no wait in the states for even the poorest uninsured patient (just find your nearest friendly University hospital). More than a few Canadians can be found flying into the Mayo Clinic and elsewhere in the states for medical care they couldn't get in a timely manner or at all in Canada. Again, this is no reflection on the docs and nurses in the system, just the system.
Sad, but true. Musicians make the best $$$ touring. They get screwed on record sales because:
- Their royalty percentage is typically very low. If you are signing your first record contract, they will take great advantage of your naivete.
- The cost of recoding the songs in the studio, mastering it, etc are extracted from the artists' portion of the royalties. The artists may never see any record sales royalties.
I know several people in the industry (not major big time players) who have been screwed in a similar fashion. Perhaps the best known example is the Goo-Goo Dolls. The hit song "Name" was all over the airwaves for a year. The rest of the "Boy Named Goo" CD had other hits too. The disc was selling like hot cakes. The band was touring and having a great time. When they got home to Buffalo, NY after their tour they recieved their royalty statement in the mail. After the record company subtracted the cost of recording and producing the CD (and whatever other costs of marketing/production they decided to subtract from the artists' small percentage of the royalties), the Dolls owed a few hundred grand! They had to go on tour again to raise money for lawyers to fight that absurdity. Believe me, we don't need record companies in their present form. Great music will come to the surface because people want to listen to it. And here in 1999 (not 1964), we have the infrastructure to rapidly distribute and promote artists without traditional record companies. The record companies are just marketing companies that exist to leech off of artists. With an MP3.com model, the artists gets 50% of royalites and pays none of MP3.com's costs. A 16 track digital studio with quality effects (e.g. Roland VS-1680, I love mine) can be had for $2500. Add a few good microphones, and you have a studio more than good enough. With these tools, the artists has much more control and much less need for traditional record companies. The film industry will reform next, probably with the iMac version 10, when anyone who cares to learn can do the technicals. Then it all comes down to the vision, which is the important thing. BWP anyone? The big budget studios will still have their place, but soon the field will be open to more competition.Software IP stops me from putting my Battlezone CD in my CD-ROM and a £1 CD-R disc in my CD-RW, copying
I guess this is where we have a semantic misunderstanding. Are you sure you are not talking about copyright? A Steven King novel is not patented, but it is still protected from someone just xeroxing millions of copies and selling it themselves. Isn't that copyright, not patent/IP. The author of a novel can't prevent anyone from writing a similar novel with the same premise, but he can prevent unauthorized verbatim duplication.
Microsoft Windows .... Remove IP from the equation and what you end up with is no-one able to afford to develop anything even remotely like Windows - which, much as I dislike it personally, was a big help to getting proper computers into the home.
I just can't see how your argument leads to the conclusion that nobody would be able to afford to develop good software once the fear of being sued out of business is removed. If anything, there will be less money spent on litigation and more for development. Note that I am not arguing for the illegal duplication and distribution of another persons' software, only for the freedom to develop my own version. Just because there is more competition, the market doesn't just disappear. Someone is going to sell an OS with a GUI (Mac/Windows/Amiga, or other). Others will be developing free OS's with GUI (Linux/GNOME/KDE). Others will be selling and supporting the free stuff (RedHat, etc.). And so on. The only time we need to bring lawyers into the equation is when someone is making perfect unauthorized copies (not clean room reimplementations) of someone else's product and selling them.
Again, you confuse IP (copyright) with patents. Two very different issues.
Actually, the term IP does not have a precise legal definition. In common usage around here, and on slashdot, the term IP has been attached to patents, copyrights, trademarks and every other legal mechanism that can be used to protect yourself and intimidate others. I agree with RMS that its probably better to avoid that term. I will start avoiding it today.
Perhaps in the UK, the term IP is a legal equivalent of copyright, and that's why we seem to be having some miscommunication.
Yes, the psion is much more functional and not much bigger. I can get about 80% of regular typing speed, and can have an appointment scheduled, a to do item created, or a note entered in less than half the time that takes my Palm Pilot toting friends! And I have a 48Mb CF on which I have stored several big manuals in html format. Very handy. Entering data into a Palm Pilot is just too awkward and slow (but I guess others don't agree since the blasted thing is so much more popular than the series 5). We will have a nice interface in that form factor when we have voice recognition.
I'm all for it. They have outlasted their usefulness. The current industry screws both the artists and the consumers. I think MP3.com and its ilk have a model much more in tune with the times.
Why did Vertigo and Mettalica put so much time, effort and money into recording Load? Because they could sell it. And why did AT&T fund Bell Labs - specifically Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan in their development of Unix and C?
People have been making great music for eons out of the pure love of making music. Many of the greatest composers and seminal musicians died dirt poor but loved making music. Making money is fine since you have to eat, but I don't believe that it is the only force at work when it comes to creative endeavors and quality workmanship. Innate curiosity and pride are just as important. For every AT&T and K&R, there is an RMS and Torvalds.
Someone else would have developed a spreadsheet for the PC in all probability, but as powerful as 1-2-3 entirely for love?
If there is a real need for spreadsheet functionality that is was not being met with an existing product, more people would probably devote their energy to it. Conversely, if the concept of a spreadsheet could be made IP by a patent, then this limits competition and, hence the possibility of better products, since it allows the owner of the IP to improve his product at a snails pace or not at all without worrying about having to compete. Simply put, I belive that the anti-competitive nature of software IP is bad for society since it allows sloppy implementations to go unchallenged. Regardless of the freedom of the underlying ideas, the person or company with the best implementations of the ideas in a product will be rewarded. And this is as it should be.
Then take Windows. Much as I dislike it, too... Now, remove it. How many home PCs do you have?
Plenty. Without M$'s anticompetitive behavior, there would probably have been a much healthier mix. Better yet, if Apple didn't have so many GUI lawyers and supposed GUI IP, I'm sure we would be much further along now than we are.
I mean, how are the software companies supposed to survive, support revenues?
They will survive if they produce the best products! That is, if they produce a product that I need and cannot (or do not have time to) create myself. I'm not saying that they should all have to roll over and die and just give away their source, only that they shouldn't be able to sue their competitor out of business if he tries to make a better version of the product based on similar ideas - because, as a consumer, I'm going to want to buy that better version that would never had appeared if the IP lawyers had their way.
It is just plain silly that someone can claim to own an idea simply because they got to the patent office first! But I've gone over that before....
If Microsoft tried to survive on such a business mdoel it'd be chaos and software quality would go through the floor.
I don't believe for a second that M$ would go out of business if they were unable to "enforce" their IP. They do, after all, have a pretty functional WYSIWYG word processor along with office and such. Even if anyone could violate M$'s "software patents", the would still have to come up with an implementation of the software which is better than M$'s - and that's a nontrivial task. If anything, it might prod M$ along and encourage them to work out their bugs faster, etc to keep their competitive edge. People are still going to want to buy the best stuff, regardless of what the IP laws are. If you make the best stuff, it will probably make you some money. But if you make a sloppy widget and are hoping to get by on your IP portfolio, then you should lose. Having the idea first (difficult to prove anyway) should not give you the right to make a mint. Making a spectacular product that actually *works* well and is affordable does give you the right to make a mint, since the business of making a product really is 1% inspiration - 99% perspiration!
Bottom line - IP restricts competition. Competition is a good thing for society at large. It makes businesses work harder, but we all win because implementations of ideas are going to be better when more than one team can run with the idea.
What is the threshold for calling it GPL code though?
I've used the line "i++;" many times, and I'm sure it shows up in a few GPL programs. Clearly we are not talking about single lines here, right? What about simple loops and sorts that are common knowledge, but also found in some GPL source that you are familiar with. Are you infected then? Does it need to be a whole C function or code for a nonobvious algorithm? I can guarantee that a lot of lines of code will match some GPL code if you substitute for different variable names. Maybe you saw some GPL code and something a lot like it elsewhere (after all, much of the GPL code has been inspired by other code) and your code closely resembles them both. Are you infected? How closely does it have to resemble the GPL code for the license to be effective? What if it also resembles some non GPL example public domain code from a textbook, etc.?
But they seem to penetrate the walls of most builings I use a cell phone in without severe attenuation...Your skull offers very limited protection.
I remember one Japanese company announcing fuzzy logic for their washing machines a few years back. My own logic has been fuzzy for some time now...
Get the cpan module. It gives you a cpan command shell. Then type in "i /Gtk/" to get a list of all Gtk related stuff. Type "install Gtk" and it downloads it, compiles any parts written in C, installs, and than tests it for you. Also reminds you of what modules are out of date and updates them for you. Gotta love it!
I'm by no means a Perl bigot nor do I think it should be used for everything. I used to laugh at Perl and tease its practitioners. But I've used C++ and Java in relatively large OO projects and am not convinced at all that they are better OO languages than even Perl. True to the nature of Perl, you have a great deal of flexibility implementing OO systems - you can do it cleanly or do it sloppy. I have actually been very pleasantly surprised at the power and elegance of OO in Perl compared to Java/C++. I rather enjoy the flexibility of Perl's namespaces and blessed hashes! After years of hard knocks, I have learned to appreciate that a clean OO system is much more dependent upon your factorization of the problem into classes and their interactions (design of the Class hierarchy) than the language used to implement the design. I spend about 2x the time designing the class hierarchy as I do coding it. Also, I have come to prefer shallow class hierarchies which use a "hasa" component strategy than complex "isa" inheritance hierarchies, and Perl works very well for this. Perl also allows object inspection/introspection in a straightforward manner. One definite downside of Perl OO is that there is no language enforcement of private data and member functions, but this is not as limiting as I initially thought it would be. Anyway, to each his own.....Look at some of the CPAN perl modules for examples of nice perl OO.
String handling in C is not confusing at all. It's actually very basic. The problem is that it's just not very powerful at the language level. You have to spend a lot of time rolling your own routines to do powerful string manipulation. And wouldn't you know it, some guy named Larry Wall did just that, and he called his powerful C program for manipulating strings "Perl". Maybe you've heard of it? If you don't like the C program called "Perl" you are free to use other C programs to manipulate strings, such as lex and yacc. *IF* you cannot handle the power of Perl (or lex/yacc), I guess you could just waste your time reinventing the wheel all the time.
My advice (which with $1.50 will get you a cup of coffee)
The problem that must be overcome is that there is a stigma attached to scientists who voice nonrigorous ideas. But this is just plain silly, since the nature of the forum should make it pretty clear which articles are rigorous and peer reviewed, and which are more speculative.
But they often do! Heavier things are often denser things, hence they achieve a higher terminal velocity. In the very special case of a perfect vacuum, all things fall at the same speed.
I think the site does have potential because there are a lot of people who don't have the time to scan usenet or find the appropriate place on the internet. These people will pay a little $ for a quick and easy answer. There will be people willing to take their money and provide an answer. For everyone else, the answers elsewhere on the internet and usenet will still be free. The only sticky problem here is how to objectively determine if an answer is good enough to deserve payment or not. If the answer is very suboptimal (one that the asking party had already thought of), do you still have to pay?
I haven't studied it carefully, but I hope it is set up so that no actual $$$ has to change hands, but rather people get "points" from other people by answering their questions and it becomes a type of distributed bartering system (tax free!). The use of real $$$ should be an option for those with no "points" to barter with.
....and a time for every purpose under heaven, etc.etc.
I guess it's time for internet development!
Imagine how Colonial architecture could have progressed if the brightest minds of the industrial revolution had not been so wrapped up in factories and machinery!
As for McNealy in a political debate, Clinton would eat him alive!
Seriously, I think it's more than a bit presumptious to believe that the brightest minds are completely absorbed by the internet. The brightest minds are able to grok more than one industry/project simultaneously. Anyone who's young and got a modicum of intelligence these days will likely have a firm understanding of the internet and how it will potentially impact their bottom line. I would argue that internet is just a means to an end for most of the "bright minds" out there, and not necessarily and end in itself as this article seems to suggest.
Trust me, the rest of the world will be okay!
Just my 2 cents
I used to think this way too, but over time, and with much pain, I learned the hard way that Perl is superior to java or c/c++ when it comes to web/db stuff. Why? Because Perl is the most efficient language for dealing with text, and web based applications are primarily all about text. Java and C/C++, which I used to defend to the death, are much clumsier with text than Perl. It's true! I even prefer the way Perl allows very flexible object oriented programming to the old Java/C++ days. The programmer is given incredible control and expressive power. I must admit, I haven't yet played with Python, though. Now if I need to quickly render a few Mandelbrodt sets, I'll probably do it in C++ (or java, if I'm not in a hurry to see the pictures), but for web stuff give me Perl!
I used to be really turned off by the "ugly" syntax, but now that I'm accustomed to it, I can't stand looking at Java anymore. IMHO, most things can be done much more elegantly in Perl.
I disagree. I don't think people think of Linux as an "American" project now that Linus has moved here, nor do I believe for one minute that his departure has lessened the appeal of hacking in his native country. People truely enjoy hacking in most every country, including poor ones like China and India. The fact that some will leave for well paid jobs abroad would seem to be a source of inspiration for would be hackers since these people become "sucessful" role models. In a larger sense, Silicon Valley is a role model for success that other cities around the world are trying to emulate with varying degrees of success. The forces of equilibrium will prevail as the cost of living in SV is now stratospheric and it has no room to grow. Meanwhile, a lot of other places (and in countries outside the US) have developed increasingly robust tech infrastructures and work forces, and boast much more affordable living and more interesting environments.
When the cDc do achieve world domination, which is their stated purpose, and are in charge of everything, what sort of changes can we look forward to? Will it be a benevolent dictatorship or will we be slaves? Free hamburgers, perhaps? Will Bill Gates' wealth be redistributed. Will he be allowed to live? If not, will he be given a choice in the manner in which he is decapitated, and for how long his head shall be placed upon a wall for people to throw things at it? ;)
As Spinal Tap was to the music industry....
Who out there could describe the way a typical startup is sliced and diced as it proceeds from Angel Investers to VC's and ultimately to IPO? What percent of the company can the founding team reasonably expect to be holding when all is said and done? How much do the angels who pitched in the first $100K get. The VC's who put in $5 Million? The fouding members who maxed out their cards?