And yet you try to explain that to people and they don't believe it. Doctors really are not rolling around in cash. Those days are gone. Yeah there's the odd exception, those "movie star" specialists with either luck or a unique set of skills that can really rake in the millions. But most of us earn as much as any senior manager in a Fortune 500 company, with the added "bonus" of having to be available at 3 am.
It's not that I mind being woken up in the middle of the night, but the conversation usually goes like this: "And how long have you had this pain?" "About 4 days" (thinking to myself: 4 days and you had to wait until 3 am this morning to call me...).
A few points: First and lucky for me, I live and practice in a country with very little medical litigation - even for clear cases of medical malpractice (of the "oops we amputated the wrong leg" variety).
Secondly, that is what informed consent is all about. There is absolutely nothing unethical about giving the patient information and letting him make the decision. There's nothing wrong with saying "look, honestly your results are a little abnormal but since you aren't sick I think we should just observe you for a while, re-test you in a few months, and take it from there". Of course you're not going to do this if you suspect something serious, like a lurking cancer. This is where you want to be aggressive - IF the patient agrees (but you have to tell him why). But for the thousands of less serious conditions - why not be more relaxed? Exactly how many patients do you think actually comply with all those pills and strict dietary recommendations anyway? The medical literature says not too many.
Informed consent for some people is getting the patients to sign a form. For me it's taking the time to explain, in detail, what I suspect, why I suspect it, and what the consequences are with and without treatment. And really you can't win a law suit against that. But it should never be about the legal aspect anyway. "Defensive medicine" is not good medicine.
And also to treat the patient and not a set of lab results. This happens all too often in my country.
For example my father in law, who has never been symptomatic, was being treated for gout because he had a uric acid score slightly greater than 7. Since I am also a physician I ordered a few tests to rule out other conditions that could result a slightly abnormal uric acid result, took him off the allopurinol and told him to eat all the red meat he wants. He is still not symptomatic, has no kidney trouble, and will be dead in 10 years from his prostate cancer anyway.
Why label him as a "gout" sufferer and even worse, treat him for it, if he doesn't actually manifest the disease? Doctors must remember that the way we determine what "normal" values are is by fitting large samples to a bell curve, chopping off the ends at 1 or 2 standard deviations, and calling the middle "normal". There are perfectly healthy people on either end of the curve, however. We need to use our clinical skills to figure out who needs treatment and who doesn't, otherwise you might as well not have doctors at all and leave medicine to some giant, complex algorithm.
That's rather the whole point. I mean if your program (and by extension your job) is going to be canned after the launch, you will try to delay the launch as much as possible. I guarantee you that this will be the most meticulously planned and safest launch NASA has ever done. And that probably it won't launch in May. Depending on how tough the job market looks. Could even be next year.
I'm happy that you know what public domain means. However your point is irrelevant in the context of my argument. I suggest that you think about, say, how many "project gutenberg" text files (public domain due to expired copyrights) are transmitted via limewire versus, say, amateur porn videos (which are very much copyrighted).
Well insofar as pretty much everything you can download IS copyrighted - be it the poem you wrote, this post I am writing, grandma's photos, or Mass Effect 2, I would say that limewire is used to download any copyrighted material. Now the question remains about who had permission to distribute what. I promise not to sue you for reading this post.
Or mesothelioma sufferers. As a physician I find it ridiculous - do you know how many cases of mesothelioma there are every year? It's astonishingly small (3000 cases per YEAR in the US). The ONLY reason lawyers pursue it so aggressively is because it's very easy to miss.
Not only that but your parents and your grade school teacher taught you how to read - without that skill, you wouldn't have been able to find and download limewire. Sue the teachers, and the parents - hell sue everyone.
But we don't have fusion power plants yet, nor are we particularly close to getting them.
Nor will we ever get them. Fixed that for you. There is only one fusion plant in this solar system and it's about 93 million miles away. When we manage to build and sustain an environment that re-creates the gravitational, pressure and electromagnetic conditions that exist inside of that, we will have fusion. Perhaps instead of spending the billions of dollars chasing this dream the government(s) just stacked them in a very very dense pile, eventually there would be enough dollars to start the reaction. We should be mining the moon for paper, not helium.
I guess you missed that whole part about consent and ethics, huh? Why don't we just sterilize people with known genetic defects while we're at it. I mean, how could you be in favor of crippled babies?
When you get evicted from your house, your son is going to have to go too. Come to think of it where does it say that he's allowed to live in that house? The mortgage/rental agreement is in your name, not his.
Killing business before it even starts. The US is probably the most unfriendly country in the world to start a business in. Then you wonder why there's no growth.
That's the whole point - there IS no "Anonymous the group". All there is are a bunch of wannabe script kiddies who are dying to jump at the chance of being able to claim "credit" for something like this, but most of them don't even know what port 80 is for.
This very fact is what is tying up thousands of foreclosures right now, all across the US. They can't find the signatures. Therefore the mortgages are not valid, and can't be foreclosed. It's as simple as that. One of the principles of a contract is that it has to be signed. Good luck enforcing one if it hasn't been. I owe you how much? OK, show me the note. Now if you're an idiot and go posting your signature online, or giving it to people like UPS or your car rental agency, well, too bad for you. You are allowed to have more than one signature.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet you try to explain that to people and they don't believe it. Doctors really are not rolling around in cash. Those days are gone. Yeah there's the odd exception, those "movie star" specialists with either luck or a unique set of skills that can really rake in the millions. But most of us earn as much as any senior manager in a Fortune 500 company, with the added "bonus" of having to be available at 3 am.
It's not that I mind being woken up in the middle of the night, but the conversation usually goes like this: "And how long have you had this pain?" "About 4 days" (thinking to myself: 4 days and you had to wait until 3 am this morning to call me...).
A few points: First and lucky for me, I live and practice in a country with very little medical litigation - even for clear cases of medical malpractice (of the "oops we amputated the wrong leg" variety).
Secondly, that is what informed consent is all about. There is absolutely nothing unethical about giving the patient information and letting him make the decision. There's nothing wrong with saying "look, honestly your results are a little abnormal but since you aren't sick I think we should just observe you for a while, re-test you in a few months, and take it from there". Of course you're not going to do this if you suspect something serious, like a lurking cancer. This is where you want to be aggressive - IF the patient agrees (but you have to tell him why). But for the thousands of less serious conditions - why not be more relaxed? Exactly how many patients do you think actually comply with all those pills and strict dietary recommendations anyway? The medical literature says not too many.
Informed consent for some people is getting the patients to sign a form. For me it's taking the time to explain, in detail, what I suspect, why I suspect it, and what the consequences are with and without treatment. And really you can't win a law suit against that. But it should never be about the legal aspect anyway. "Defensive medicine" is not good medicine.
And also to treat the patient and not a set of lab results. This happens all too often in my country.
For example my father in law, who has never been symptomatic, was being treated for gout because he had a uric acid score slightly greater than 7. Since I am also a physician I ordered a few tests to rule out other conditions that could result a slightly abnormal uric acid result, took him off the allopurinol and told him to eat all the red meat he wants. He is still not symptomatic, has no kidney trouble, and will be dead in 10 years from his prostate cancer anyway.
Why label him as a "gout" sufferer and even worse, treat him for it, if he doesn't actually manifest the disease? Doctors must remember that the way we determine what "normal" values are is by fitting large samples to a bell curve, chopping off the ends at 1 or 2 standard deviations, and calling the middle "normal". There are perfectly healthy people on either end of the curve, however. We need to use our clinical skills to figure out who needs treatment and who doesn't, otherwise you might as well not have doctors at all and leave medicine to some giant, complex algorithm.
OpenID puts all the eggs in one basket.
Apparently it's more like a sieve than a basket. A sieve with very big holes where the eggs can fall out if you shake it enough.
Or stop giving $600M to a single car company so that it can pretend to manufacture 200 electric cars that only movie stars can afford.
That's rather the whole point. I mean if your program (and by extension your job) is going to be canned after the launch, you will try to delay the launch as much as possible. I guarantee you that this will be the most meticulously planned and safest launch NASA has ever done. And that probably it won't launch in May. Depending on how tough the job market looks. Could even be next year.
You want infra red for that - oh wait...
I'm happy that you know what public domain means. However your point is irrelevant in the context of my argument. I suggest that you think about, say, how many "project gutenberg" text files (public domain due to expired copyrights) are transmitted via limewire versus, say, amateur porn videos (which are very much copyrighted).
Whatever, troll.
At the rate they are going, I am sure they will get to it eventually. After all, lawyers would still make money under that model.
Well insofar as pretty much everything you can download IS copyrighted - be it the poem you wrote, this post I am writing, grandma's photos, or Mass Effect 2, I would say that limewire is used to download any copyrighted material. Now the question remains about who had permission to distribute what. I promise not to sue you for reading this post.
Or mesothelioma sufferers. As a physician I find it ridiculous - do you know how many cases of mesothelioma there are every year? It's astonishingly small (3000 cases per YEAR in the US). The ONLY reason lawyers pursue it so aggressively is because it's very easy to miss.
Not only that but your parents and your grade school teacher taught you how to read - without that skill, you wouldn't have been able to find and download limewire. Sue the teachers, and the parents - hell sue everyone.
But this is more like suing the company that made the steel used by the gun manufacturer.
What, you expected sensible and consistent accounting from a publicly traded company? rofl
Nah, all the campers are either in Rancer or Amamake...
But we don't have fusion power plants yet, nor are we particularly close to getting them.
Nor will we ever get them. Fixed that for you. There is only one fusion plant in this solar system and it's about 93 million miles away. When we manage to build and sustain an environment that re-creates the gravitational, pressure and electromagnetic conditions that exist inside of that, we will have fusion. Perhaps instead of spending the billions of dollars chasing this dream the government(s) just stacked them in a very very dense pile, eventually there would be enough dollars to start the reaction. We should be mining the moon for paper, not helium.
Thanks, that's the day I close my Skype account I guess.
I guess you missed that whole part about consent and ethics, huh? Why don't we just sterilize people with known genetic defects while we're at it. I mean, how could you be in favor of crippled babies?
When you get evicted from your house, your son is going to have to go too. Come to think of it where does it say that he's allowed to live in that house? The mortgage/rental agreement is in your name, not his.
Killing business before it even starts. The US is probably the most unfriendly country in the world to start a business in. Then you wonder why there's no growth.
That's the whole point - there IS no "Anonymous the group". All there is are a bunch of wannabe script kiddies who are dying to jump at the chance of being able to claim "credit" for something like this, but most of them don't even know what port 80 is for.
In b4 "Sony was hacked by the Scientologists who wanted to frame Anonymous for it"...
This very fact is what is tying up thousands of foreclosures right now, all across the US. They can't find the signatures. Therefore the mortgages are not valid, and can't be foreclosed. It's as simple as that. One of the principles of a contract is that it has to be signed. Good luck enforcing one if it hasn't been. I owe you how much? OK, show me the note. Now if you're an idiot and go posting your signature online, or giving it to people like UPS or your car rental agency, well, too bad for you. You are allowed to have more than one signature.
At which point I would say "show me the note". You know, the one with my signature on it.