When was the last time that a Senior at a US university produced a result of this calibre? Answer: Never been done.
I don't know why I let myself be suckered by such obvious bait.
There is a lot of extraordinary undergraduate research being done in the United States. For two obvious examples, look at the work done by the students of Feank Morgan and at Harvery Mudd College
Let me first apologize. My question is going to sound like flame-bait, but that is not my intention. I am honestly curious to know people feel about this.
Many people here have called for eliminating copyright laws. Their arguments are often based on some variant of the "information wants to be free" philosophy. My question is : How do you resolve this philosophy with your desire for privacy?
There is a great deal of concern about corporations that gather information about their customers shopping habits and preferences. Last thursday's Circuit section of the New York Times had an article on the subject. Slashdot has recently run several articles on TRUSTe. However, TRUSTe's primary purpose is to guarantee that information is not free.
Every web site we visit and every purchase we make provides information about ourselves. We broadcast that information in thousands of ways every day, both on-line and off. If you subscribe to the philosophy that information should be free, how do you criticize companies that collect that information? Why aren't they free to use the information in order to better market their products?
Am I the only person who thinks the smart toilet is a good idea?
Quite often, the most important factor in curing a disease is catching it early enough. If it was possible to design a system that would cheaply and effectively monitor my health on a regular basis in a non-invasive manner, I would want to have it.
I can think of several other benefits of such a toilet. Even if it did not initially diagnose the problem, it might be usefull to provide my doctor with records of the analysis going back a couple of months. Also, while it is overkill for the toilet to analyze every sample (one a month should be adequate for most healthy adults), people who are sick may want or need more frequent monitoring. Once an illness has been diagnosed, you could start dialy monitoring, which your doctor could use to keep track of your progress. When my mother was sick recently, she found it very tiring and inconvenient to have to get up and go to the doctor's office a couple of times a week for routine blood tests. If the same information could be retrieved automatically from a stool sample, it would have made her sickness that much easier.
I don't know how feasible such a toilet is. I do not know how much information can be obtained from urine and stool samples. Also, it would have be fairly cheap. I don't think many people would pay a premium for such a device (unless they had a pre-existing condition). However, assuming all the technical obstacles can be overcome, I think the fundamental idea is a good one.
This is a very easy article to attack, but it does make some good points. I think it is worth asking "What if they're right?" There are two specific points that I think we need to consider: the scalability of OSI and the real motivations of corportate sponsors.
First, the success of Linux does not automatically guarantee the success of the entire Open Source movement. Imagine all software distributed under GPL (it isn't hard to do). I doubt that the same people who devote so much time to Linux would be willing to spend as much time improving Word Perfect and Excel and Quicken and... There are a very limitted number of people who are both willing and capable to make meaningful contributions these huge programs. The more programs that are released as open source, the more diluted the pool of able programmers will become. What works for a few programs may not work for the entire software industry.
Also, consider the large number of programs that are currently open source. How many of the programs actually benefit from the contributions of other people? How many programs are maintained solely by the original authors?
The other interesting question that this article raises is the motivation of the companies that have recently jumped on the the Linux banswagon. Are these companies really dedicated to the idea of open source software, or are they simply seizing an opportunity to attack Microsoft. What will happen to all this support after the antitrust lawsuits are concluded?
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There is a lot of extraordinary undergraduate research being done in the United States. For two obvious examples, look at the work done by the students of Feank Morgan and at Harvery Mudd College
Matthew Kudzin
Let me first apologize. My question is going to sound like flame-bait, but that is not my intention. I am honestly curious to know people feel about this.
Many people here have called for eliminating copyright laws. Their arguments are often based on some variant of the "information wants to be free" philosophy. My question is : How do you resolve this philosophy with your desire for privacy?
There is a great deal of concern about corporations that gather information about their customers shopping habits and preferences. Last thursday's Circuit section of the New York Times had an article on the subject. Slashdot has recently run several articles on TRUSTe. However, TRUSTe's primary purpose is to guarantee that information is not free.
Every web site we visit and every purchase we make provides information about ourselves. We broadcast that information in thousands of ways every day, both on-line and off. If you subscribe to the philosophy that information should be free, how do you criticize companies that collect that information? Why aren't they free to use the information in order to better market their products?
Am I the only person who thinks the smart toilet is a good idea?
Quite often, the most important factor in curing a disease is catching it early enough. If it was possible to design a system that would cheaply and effectively monitor my health on a regular basis in a non-invasive manner, I would want to have it.
I can think of several other benefits of such a toilet. Even if it did not initially diagnose the
problem, it might be usefull to provide my doctor with records of the analysis going back a couple of months. Also, while it is overkill for the toilet to analyze every sample (one a month should be adequate for most healthy adults), people who are sick may want or need more frequent monitoring. Once an illness has been diagnosed, you could start dialy monitoring, which your doctor could use to keep track of your progress. When my mother was sick recently, she found it very tiring and inconvenient to have to get up and go to the doctor's office a couple of times a week for routine blood tests. If the same information could be retrieved automatically from a stool sample, it would have made her sickness that much easier.
I don't know how feasible such a toilet is. I do not know how much information can be obtained from urine and stool samples. Also, it would have be fairly cheap. I don't think many people would pay a premium for such a device (unless they had a pre-existing condition). However, assuming all the technical obstacles can be overcome, I think
the fundamental idea is a good one.
This is a very easy article to attack, but it does make some good points. I think it is worth asking "What if they're right?" There are two specific points that I think we need to consider: the scalability of OSI and the real motivations of corportate sponsors.
... There are a
First, the success of Linux does not automatically guarantee the success of the entire Open Source movement. Imagine all software distributed under
GPL (it isn't hard to do). I doubt that the same people who devote so much time to Linux would be willing to spend as much time improving Word Perfect and Excel and Quicken and
very limitted number of people who are both willing and capable to make meaningful contributions these huge programs. The more programs that are released as open source, the more diluted the pool of able programmers will become. What works for a few programs may not work for the entire software industry.
Also, consider the large number of programs that are currently open source. How many of the programs actually benefit from the contributions of other people? How many programs are maintained solely by the original authors?
The other interesting question that this article raises is the motivation of the companies that have recently jumped on the the Linux banswagon. Are these companies really dedicated to the idea
of open source software, or are they simply seizing an opportunity to attack Microsoft. What will happen to all this support after the antitrust lawsuits are concluded?