I'd have to agree with this, even though my father and two brothers are doctors. In person they are humble and wonderful people, but I think that the professional persona is a god complex by default.
God yes, Pascal is hideously arcane and just this side of f*ckf*ck for usability and breadth of distribution. </sarcasm>
You know, there are still a lot of people programming in Delphi. Many are not in the English-speaking world (Brazil and Russia seem especially strong), so they don't show up here, but they exist. And a hell of a lot of people learned programming in Pascal, before Java became the standard in universities and colleges.
You do know that almost never happens, right? most doctors take nothing from these companies, and other doctors would scoff at the idea they would let that determine a patients treatment.
If these sales tactics did not increase the sales, then they would not be used (and make no mistake, they are used). Doctors may deny that they are swayed, and may honestly believe it, but the numbers don't lie.
About the region locking: I used to live in Japan, and my kids have many Japanese games for the Wii. Now that we live in Canada, we were faced with not being able to play any games sold here. I got a chip that makes the Wii region-free, but to make Rock Band work, I had to replace the entire OS with the North American version (it can still play Japanese games, thanks to the chip).
We've never played games that we haven't bought or rented, so the only effect of trying to kill homebrew, to us, is to potentially destroy our machine (no, we haven't upgraded to 4.2).
I can vouch for this. When we moved our office, Bell neglected to enable the phones at the new place for a week (they only had about 2 months' notice), so we had to forward the public number to my boss's cellphone and do business like that. And that's one of the GOOD stories!
You could use Apache Lenya, a CMS that uses a Java backend and spits out XML files and the associated XSLT. Then again, I have heard a lot more complaints about Lenya than compliments.
One of the big advantages (in my view) is that XML/XSLT is far, far less vulnerable (have there been any?) to an attack than any PHP, ColdFusion, Java, or the like.
The definition of love is a bit more complex than our single English word would indicate. C.S. Lewis defined it (better that anywhere else I have seen) in his book "The Four Loves". Like a lot of his stuff, it has more of the British public school that I like, but still makes valuable points.
Summary: four kinds of loves, based on the Greek words "eros", "philia", "storge" and "agape", but the New Testament (written in Greek) uses the last one almost exclusively when talking about the love we should have for others, an echo of God's love for us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves
Or they would have done what Delphi (Pascal-based) did, in fact, do: strings are reference-counted and copy-on-write and can contain any characters. They can also be treated as c-type strings when necessary (called a PChar, meaning a Pointer to an array of char), because assigning to a string automatically adds in a null byte at the end. But you can still get around the string handling and screw things up if you try hard enough.
Oh, you beat me to it. Ah well, it can't hurt to have two recommendations.
On a completely unrelated note, a wonderful way to learn about some of the major world events in the 19th-century is the series of Flashman books, by George Macdonald Fraser. Hilarious, but puts into perspective the Charge of the Light Brigade, Opium Wars, U.S. Civil War, and many more.
I highly recommend the website http://www.mil-millington.com/. He has turned a lot of his experience into a book: Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.
Very funny! I also just finished his second book, which is even better.
You know, I even heard that that bastard John A. MacDonald wasn't born in Canada either. In fact, from his birth in 1815 until 1867, he didn't even live in Canada, but in some British colony somewhere!
I've been a Delphi coder for more than ten years, and recently tried out Lazarus on my Mac at work. I still can't get the executable to run outside the IDE, and a Hello World program looks like it takes about 40MB, when all the necessary libraries are compiled in.
Under Linux/Windows, Lazarus is clunky but bearable, but still far, far less capable -- and downright fun -- than Delphi (which, by the way, is now planning to have cross-platform capabilities, by the end of next year, I think. If only they'd done it five years ago).
I remember reading (The Economist?) that there is a clear correlation between the respect shown to teachers in a society (generally linked to salaries) and the performance of children in international tests/competitions.
Maybe that's why my teacher brother can make 90K (CDN) a year, while I get 2/3 that as a software developer.
(I was making more at a much more stressful job; I took a $15K pay cut for the quality of life. Regardless, he still out-earned me.)
In Ontario, the government has done this. All EMR software that is certified (and clinics therefore are eligible for government subsidies when they buy it) must import/export patient data using a very detailed XML schema.
In theory, at least, a doctor could export from one software package and import that XML file into a new package. EMR packages can store additional data, which can be exported in generic sections of the XML, but all standard data should be simple to transfer.
Oh yes, and doctors/clinics get bonuses for using electronic records and tracking various preventive measures (e.g. vaccinations) with them.
I had a headache (I have a lazy eye) for a full day after Journey to the Centre of the Earth (and the usual regret for paying money to see that crapfest), but Coraline and Monsters vs. Aliens were fine.
And I think SMS are artificially limited to less characters than the standard (don't remember the number). Maybe this limit is so that you use emails instead, which would be more expensive? Not sure.
Maybe this is because all Japanese texts would be in UTF-8, which would use 2 bytes per Japanese character, so the total number of characters would be halved.
I use a Rogers USB "RocketStick" for my home (wireless) internet. I have only a data package, no phone, and the cost is $25/500MB, $30/1GB, $60/3GB, on a monthly basis. It means that I don't download Linux distros at home, and limit the videos I watch.
But going over costs $0.03/MB, not $0.03/kB. (http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-plans/iphone_card_plans)
I checked with Telus, and they said that even though I am in Ontario, my rural location meant that I would be charged U.S. roaming rates for ALL my internet access!
This just happened to me. I bought a boxed Steam-based game over a year ago, but needed to upgrade my system to play it.
Steam tells me that it is a duplicate key, and I can only reassign it if I send them the receipt within 90 days of purchase.
So I'm SOL. And I had bought the game brand new (as far as I can tell).
So I will never buy a Steam game at retail again. And I have a low bandwidth cap (3GB/month) on my wireless Internet connection (the only one available to me), so downloading isn't really an option. I guess I'm not buying any Steam games again.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have to agree with this, even though my father and two brothers are doctors. In person they are humble and wonderful people, but I think that the professional persona is a god complex by default.
God yes, Pascal is hideously arcane and just this side of f*ckf*ck for usability and breadth of distribution. </sarcasm>
You know, there are still a lot of people programming in Delphi. Many are not in the English-speaking world (Brazil and Russia seem especially strong), so they don't show up here, but they exist. And a hell of a lot of people learned programming in Pascal, before Java became the standard in universities and colleges.
You do know that almost never happens, right? most doctors take nothing from these companies, and other doctors would scoff at the idea they would let that determine a patients treatment.
If these sales tactics did not increase the sales, then they would not be used (and make no mistake, they are used). Doctors may deny that they are swayed, and may honestly believe it, but the numbers don't lie.
About the region locking: I used to live in Japan, and my kids have many Japanese games for the Wii. Now that we live in Canada, we were faced with not being able to play any games sold here. I got a chip that makes the Wii region-free, but to make Rock Band work, I had to replace the entire OS with the North American version (it can still play Japanese games, thanks to the chip).
We've never played games that we haven't bought or rented, so the only effect of trying to kill homebrew, to us, is to potentially destroy our machine (no, we haven't upgraded to 4.2).
Thanks, Nintendo.
I can vouch for this. When we moved our office, Bell neglected to enable the phones at the new place for a week (they only had about 2 months' notice), so we had to forward the public number to my boss's cellphone and do business like that. And that's one of the GOOD stories!
You could use Apache Lenya, a CMS that uses a Java backend and spits out XML files and the associated XSLT. Then again, I have heard a lot more complaints about Lenya than compliments.
One of the big advantages (in my view) is that XML/XSLT is far, far less vulnerable (have there been any?) to an attack than any PHP, ColdFusion, Java, or the like.
The definition of love is a bit more complex than our single English word would indicate. C.S. Lewis defined it (better that anywhere else I have seen) in his book "The Four Loves". Like a lot of his stuff, it has more of the British public school that I like, but still makes valuable points.
Summary: four kinds of loves, based on the Greek words "eros", "philia", "storge" and "agape", but the New Testament (written in Greek) uses the last one almost exclusively when talking about the love we should have for others, an echo of God's love for us. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves
I'd rather add "Bruce Schneier" to my list of trustees, but your friend "Bruce Schneider" may be okay too.
I'm really not trying to be a smartass. I just want people to get his name right; he deserves it.
Or they would have done what Delphi (Pascal-based) did, in fact, do: strings are reference-counted and copy-on-write and can contain any characters. They can also be treated as c-type strings when necessary (called a PChar, meaning a Pointer to an array of char), because assigning to a string automatically adds in a null byte at the end. But you can still get around the string handling and screw things up if you try hard enough.
I had that happen with the Canadian mirror. I refreshed the page (as instructed at the very top), got a U.S. mirror, and everything was fine.
Oh, you beat me to it. Ah well, it can't hurt to have two recommendations.
On a completely unrelated note, a wonderful way to learn about some of the major world events in the 19th-century is the series of Flashman books, by George Macdonald Fraser. Hilarious, but puts into perspective the Charge of the Light Brigade, Opium Wars, U.S. Civil War, and many more.
I highly recommend the website http://www.mil-millington.com/. He has turned a lot of his experience into a book: Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About.
Very funny! I also just finished his second book, which is even better.
You know, I even heard that that bastard John A. MacDonald wasn't born in Canada either. In fact, from his birth in 1815 until 1867, he didn't even live in Canada, but in some British colony somewhere!
I've been a Delphi coder for more than ten years, and recently tried out Lazarus on my Mac at work. I still can't get the executable to run outside the IDE, and a Hello World program looks like it takes about 40MB, when all the necessary libraries are compiled in.
Under Linux/Windows, Lazarus is clunky but bearable, but still far, far less capable -- and downright fun -- than Delphi (which, by the way, is now planning to have cross-platform capabilities, by the end of next year, I think. If only they'd done it five years ago).
I remember reading (The Economist?) that there is a clear correlation between the respect shown to teachers in a society (generally linked to salaries) and the performance of children in international tests/competitions.
Maybe that's why my teacher brother can make 90K (CDN) a year, while I get 2/3 that as a software developer.
(I was making more at a much more stressful job; I took a $15K pay cut for the quality of life. Regardless, he still out-earned me.)
Not to be pedantic, but I feel like being pedantic!
Sigh...
My wife *teachers* here
don't try to *incliude*
*A* BEST these would be forced into *convoluded*
is better-formatted
My wife *teachers* here don't try to *incliude* *A* BEST these would be forced into *convoluded*
First three sentences.
Rather amusing that you are commenting on the quality of education. Even though you have good points, the presentation somewhat diminishes them.
In Ontario, the government has done this. All EMR software that is certified (and clinics therefore are eligible for government subsidies when they buy it) must import/export patient data using a very detailed XML schema.
In theory, at least, a doctor could export from one software package and import that XML file into a new package. EMR packages can store additional data, which can be exported in generic sections of the XML, but all standard data should be simple to transfer.
Oh yes, and doctors/clinics get bonuses for using electronic records and tracking various preventive measures (e.g. vaccinations) with them.
I had a headache (I have a lazy eye) for a full day after Journey to the Centre of the Earth (and the usual regret for paying money to see that crapfest), but Coraline and Monsters vs. Aliens were fine.
Just like we have
Oh, wait....
You piece me off, you far can jerk
(as I recall, the name of a song (album?) by some band that came to my university in the early 80s)
And I think SMS are artificially limited to less characters than the standard (don't remember the number). Maybe this limit is so that you use emails instead, which would be more expensive? Not sure.
Maybe this is because all Japanese texts would be in UTF-8, which would use 2 bytes per Japanese character, so the total number of characters would be halved.
I use a Rogers USB "RocketStick" for my home (wireless) internet. I have only a data package, no phone, and the cost is $25/500MB, $30/1GB, $60/3GB, on a monthly basis. It means that I don't download Linux distros at home, and limit the videos I watch.
But going over costs $0.03/MB, not $0.03/kB. (http://www.rogers.com/web/content/wireless-plans/iphone_card_plans)
I checked with Telus, and they said that even though I am in Ontario, my rural location meant that I would be charged U.S. roaming rates for ALL my internet access!
This just happened to me. I bought a boxed Steam-based game over a year ago, but needed to upgrade my system to play it.
Steam tells me that it is a duplicate key, and I can only reassign it if I send them the receipt within 90 days of purchase.
So I'm SOL. And I had bought the game brand new (as far as I can tell).
So I will never buy a Steam game at retail again. And I have a low bandwidth cap (3GB/month) on my wireless Internet connection (the only one available to me), so downloading isn't really an option. I guess I'm not buying any Steam games again.