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User: jpschaaf

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  1. ...we just need some budding entrepreneurs to get into the generic drugs market. I'm actually surprised that walgreens and other pharmacies haven't gotten into that business.

  2. Re:They're proof-of-work for useless managers on Ask Slashdot: Should We Hang Up on Conference Calls? (ft.com) · · Score: 2

    I have countless coworkers that I have never met since they are on different continents, but I manage to accomplish quite a lot of work with them and recognize their voices. Face to face is usually not necessary. Even within the same site (a huge site), it is more efficient to use the phone than have half the participants make a 40 minute round trip walk to the other side of the plant.

    Ditto on this opinion. Not every conference call is useful, but neither is every in-person interaction. I've had significant success in getting work done with people around the world via conference calls. I think the key is to keep the groups small (only have people on the call who have a vested interest in the topic under discussion), and to have some sort of tangible work product that comes out of the call -- whether that's code that was created via pair programming, a report, or even just an e-mail summarizing decisions that were made. Any conferencing software worth its salt will handle the issue of keeping voices straight. The real problems are traffic noise and the guy who doesn't know how to use the mute button.

  3. Re:Great news on NYU Offers Full-Tuition Scholarships for All Medical Students (wsj.com) · · Score: 2

    we've been able to poach doctors from poorer countries

    I suspect this topic is more complicated than you realize. The Caribbean medical schools are oddly enough considered to be US medical schools, and US citizens who for whatever reason don't get accepted to a mainland medical school tend to go those schools. The supply of doctors is artificially lowered by a number of factors, not the least of which is congressional funding for residency spots. Roughly 10% of people who finish medical school and apply for residency don't match into a residency (See http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Main-Match-Result-and-Data-2018.pdf). I feel really sorry for the people who get all done, have piles of debt, don't match, and have to move to a different country if they want to practice medicine.

  4. Re:What? No new building? on NYU Offers Full-Tuition Scholarships for All Medical Students (wsj.com) · · Score: 1

    I was very surprised by just how little time my wife spent in physical buildings and how much time she spent watching video taped lectures at 1.5 speed. However, a lazy river might have been just the motivation she would have needed to actually go to the lectures in person.

  5. Sounds a lot like the sales pitch for ITP on Satellites Could Show Airplanes Faster Long-Haul Routes in Mid-Air (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    This sounds a lot like the same sales pitch which was being made to explain the purpose of In Trail Procedures (https://www.faa.gov/nextgen/programs/adsb/pilot/itp/), which to my knowledge hasn't really gone very far just yet. Anybody know if there's been any progress in making ITP a real thing?

  6. Re:Ban Intel chips for all US government use on Intel Did Not Tell US Cyber Officials About Chip Flaws Until Made Public (reuters.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm sure Intel dabbles in plenty of government contracts, but processors are a consumer good, not a defense product.

    If Intel had to choose between selling on the international consumer market and selling to the US government, I'm pretty sure they'd dump the government in about 5 seconds.

    If the US government really wants a secure processor, they should get a secure processor... instead of using the same consumer-grade contraption that I use to surf the web.

  7. Perhaps they should notify all goverments on Intel Did Not Tell US Cyber Officials About Chip Flaws Until Made Public (reuters.com) · · Score: 2

    ...should notifications go out alphabetically?

    Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, oh yes, and then the United States.

    Not that there wouldn't be certain arguments for notifying the government where the company's headquarters is located, but how exactly would Intel (or any other company working on a global scale) be expected to comply with the myriad of governments that could pass laws requiring that they get notified first. It's a lot simpler and a lot more elegant if everyone finds out at the same time.

  8. Re: $30+ fees? on Bitcoin Conference Stops Accepting BTC Due To High Fees (bitcoin.com) · · Score: 1

    That's not quite true. Several of the exchanges let you pay the fees in cryptocurrency.

  9. Re: What could possibly go wrong? on Facebook To Fight Revenge Porn by Letting Potential Victims Upload Nudes in Advance (bleepingcomputer.com) · · Score: 1

    I think you're missing the point. The point is that facebook would need to store more than just a hash to accomplish their goal -- they need ways to deal with the image being scaled, rotated, run through a filter, etc. In other words... they need to keep a likeness of the original image.

  10. It's not all from the employer side on Ask Slashdot: Why Do We Still Commute? (citylab.com) · · Score: 1

    Until employees begin to insist on the ability to work from home, employers are probably not going to ubiquitously offer the option. I've worked roughly 90% from home for about two years, but as a rather extroverted/social person, I honestly preferred working in an office. Working from home won't be an absolute requirement the next time I'm searching for a job. As for discussions about productivity -- I personally think it's a total wash. For types of work that require sustained focus -- I find working from home to be clearly superior. No distracting conversations because a friend walked past on their way to the coffee pot. Nobody prairie-dogging their head over the cubicle wall to ask a question. On the flip side, any work that requires access to specialized equipment requires a special trip, potentially requiring airplane tickets. One of the other commenters mentioned difficulty working with large files... I certainly share that issue, but can usually work around the problem with some creative use of remote servers.

  11. Brought to you by the creators of healthcare.gov on America Wasted $160 Million Trying To Get Afghanistan To Use E-Payments (vice.com) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    No doubt the same contracting firms that built healthcare.gov created the payment system.

  12. Re:Of course, the lengthy and expensive cert proce on US Government Task Force Urges Cash Incentives For Ditching Insecure Medical Devices (securityledger.com) · · Score: 1

    As far as I'm concerned, the commenter whose posting was broken apart line-by-line knows exactly what he/she is talking about, and their engineering judgment should not be questioned.

    In the medical device arena, an obvious two line of code change can easily take 3-4 days to complete the necessary reviews and documentation updates; the testing can take a week or two. Now imagine that a patch was made in the networking subsystem of a real-time operating system to deal with a security hole. Completing the relevant documentation/testing turns into a three to six month process. By the time the patch has gone through the necessary regulatory rigmarole, it's arriving so late in the field that any malware that targets the exploit will have long-ago infected the device. Medical device manufacturers are still scrambling to complete the paperwork/testing required to authorize patching their devices for eternalblue/Wannacry, in spite of the fact that it's truly a top priority for both hospitals and the manufacturers.

    Without a question of a doubt, generating paperwork that will withstand FDA audit is at least as big of a challenge as engineering the device itself.

  13. And now to go back on Italian City To Dump OpenOffice For Microsoft After Four Years · · Score: 1

    Next year they'll announce they're going back to LibreOffice due to the 15 minutes being spent every day for 300 employees to repaginate documents as they move to Microsoft Office

  14. Developers prefer Ubuntu? on How Red Hat Can Recapture Developer Interest · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't think that's a cut-and-dry sort of thing. As a developer, I hate the fact that Ubuntu is changing so quickly that I can't keep up. Leading edge is fine, but bleeding edge gets blood everywhere.

  15. How good are Verizon's Lobbyists? on Germany Scores First: Ends Verizon Contract Over NSA Concerns · · Score: 1

    I wonder if Verizon's lobbying budget is big enough to bring about any changes... maybe AT&T will help out on this one to keep the same from happening to them in other countries?

  16. The danger of commonality on Is the New "Common Core SAT" Bill Gates' Doing? · · Score: 1

    What this entire concept fails to acknowledge is that when everyone learns the same thing, you lose the benefits of everyone having a different educational experience. If we all learn exactly the same things, we take the risk that everyone fails. Why not do things differently in every state to see what works? Somebody needs to learn from basic experimental design...

  17. echo on supportive high schools on Why We Need To Teach Hacking In High School · · Score: 1

    One of my teachers in high school gave me relatively unfettered access to a mac clones that had been booted from the computer lab. My experiments in getting mklinux working on it directly tie to my current career. I have relatively little doubt that my current career stems from having unstructured access to a computer and an internet connection. Sadly, our educational institutions are addicted to structure -- I would probably be doing something much less interesting if it weren't for a teacher that bent the rules and let me do something that might today be viewed as potentially dangerous.

  18. Metadata regarding metadata on DOJ Announces New Methods For Reporting National Security Requests · · Score: 1

    The government doesn't want any metadata surrounding their requests to be released to the public.

  19. Re:"Concerns" on Paging Dr. MacGyver: Maker Movement Comes To Medical Gear · · Score: 2

    You damn well should be concerned about random medical devices made in someone's garage.

    It's really not that simple. Almost anyone on slashdot is unbelievably wealthy by comparison to the the average denizen of our world. Risks that are unacceptable for a wealthy person are very acceptable for someone who has nothing. Think about it: if your choice is between certain death due to heart failure or using a pacemaker assembled by a tinkerer in his/her garage, a rational person would be willing to accept additional and substantial risks. Admittedly, I don't want a pressure cooker in somebody's kitchen to sterilize medical devices that I will be using, but I can certainly understand why someone else would.

  20. Documentation is King on Comparing G++ and Intel Compilers and Vectorized Code · · Score: 3, Interesting

    For better or worse, I've always given the intel compiler the benefit of the doubt. They have access to documents that the GCC folks don't.

  21. Re:No reproduction on 9th Grade Science Experiment: Garden Cress Won't Germinate Near Routers · · Score: 0

    as the case may be

    Don't you mean "as the case will be"?

  22. What a prize on Are Contests the Best Way To Find Programmers? · · Score: 1

    top prize being a trip to the sponsoring company's headquarters to interview for a job

    Last time I checked (a bit over a year ago), the normal cost of that "prize" is to spend a few hours on making an updated resume. Granted, I may be on the lucky side of having the experience needed to open doors, but I suspect that as a rule skilled people find more convenient ways to get doors open.

    That stated, if the potential job had a particularly impressive salary, I might change my mind.

  23. Not fooling on Systemd Ditches GNU C Library for Their Own · · Score: 1

    The worst part is that this almost sounds like a good idea.

  24. Re:Centos is awesome! on CentOS 5.9 Released · · Score: 2

    Nah, Scientific Linux is better :-) And don't forget Oracle's Linux.

  25. Re:You're holding it upside down on Course Asks University Students To Tackle Medical Device Insecurity · · Score: 1

    The FDA reported that 75% of recalls did not in any way involve a software failure.

    I realize you're saying this tongue-in-cheek, but frankly, it's the better way of looking at it.