Something that is probably important to the Slashdot crowd--you'll gain about 10 lbs. of retained water in the first few weeks of taking it, and you will feel somewhat bloated. Yes, not only do I read Slashdot, but I also work out, and for approx. a year I tried Creatine. I'll be the first to say it does everything it advertises, but it also does a few things not necessarily on the label. So if you're going to sit in a chair all day, and take it, expect to pack on some more weight quick.
Depending on where you are, you may have a supermarket with automated checkout. You scan the items, and they are either weighed or put on a conveyer belt, then packaged. This reduces the need for 6 workers (4 checkout, 2 baggers) to 2 (2 floating baggers) per 4 lines.
If there is nobody in line ahead of me, its faster than getting checked out by a person. If there is someone ahead of me, and most people act as if they've never seen a touch screen or scanner, it's faster to go to a normal line. So in the end, the result is on average I'm not out of there any faster or slower, but the store saves on 4 jobs.
You're making the big assumption that ALL people who use P2P actually care about this law, realize it's going to happen, and for that matter, have the ability to vote for/against these people.
Just because something appears on Slashdot doesn't mean the rest of the world is aware of it. 95% of the people using KaZaa/etc have no clue this stuff is going on, and frankly, most don't care.
Until you can let the voting majority realize what is going on, statments like 'Senator X introduced bill Y, so nobody will vote for him' are wishful thinking at best.
Sure thing...take Pittsburgh (since I am familiar with the situation there). The Downtown area is very cramped--no room for expansion of parking. Our public transportation is a joke. Many companies that lease parking spaces for their employees have 'carpool only' spots. This is to encourage people to carpool, and having an HOV lane makes it even more convenient, reclaiming the time spent picking people up by zooming in to the city (which actually works quite well).
Thus, to the city leaders, keeping these businesses in the downtown area by making it easier for their employees to get there(which is a major problem--many have moved out to the suburbs) is as important as any benefit from reducing fossil fuel emissions.
Everyone isn't able to buy it. There are a limited number. If they determine that an extra 100 or 200 cars per day in the lane won't matter (and having driven in HOV lanes, that's a lowball estimate) and they can generate $X amount of revenue, which never hurts, and can help fund things to benefit everyone....
Also, carpool lanes are just as much about cramped parking in Metro areas as fossil fuel emmissions.
Ok, I read this and the little Mr. Cynical on my shoulder says, this is all just PR. Yes, they are filing lawsuits, etc...but in the grand scheme of things, this is just advertising.
Microsoft: "We're on your side" Microsoft: "We hate spammers too!" Microsoft: "We're fighting for the little guy"
etc, etc, etc.
The cost of a few million (drops in their bucket) of court costs might go a long way in falsly convincing some people that Microsoft actually cares about the little guy.
Great point, but at what stage in the business--do you get a lawyer and accountant before you've made penny 1, or wait a year to test the waters, then spend the $$$?
RTFA -- they don't crap over old, established customers -- they crap over people who had a high amount of rentals in the last month. It doesn't matter if you've been with them 2 months or 12 months. So yes, by their rule, your first month will have a quick turnaround in rental time, but after that, it is based on the last month.
What would you rather them do--make all new people wait the longest? Great business plan.
I don't have a problem with a company showing customer's loyalty, but you can't expect them to have a DVDfairy hanging out in their office crapping out DVDs on demand--there's a limited number, and this looks like the most reasonable way of distributing them fairly. You get a good month, then you get a not-so good month.
Look, there are only a certain amount of DVDs to go around. In the article, it states that the priority is based solely on the LAST billing cycle. So, if you have a bad month getting the movies you want, you'll have a good month the next time, then bad, then good.
It's not a perfect system, but given limited resources, it's the fairest thing they can do and still keep prices reasonble.
1. Deliberately dupe editors into posting story which will entice oodles of Shashdotter's to click through to Amazon, knowing the fix has already been made. 2. Use your reference (sr_aps_electronics_1_1) in the link, setting the cookie on their PC to you. 3. They use amazon in the future 4. PROFIT!!!
Don't spend so much time worrying about and planning for the future--no matter how smart you think you are at 12, or 16, or 20, your plans never work out the way you expect them to--you can only control yourself--not the world around you.
Within reason, enjoy the present, make sensible decisions, and enjoy the time you have, since in the future, you'll look back and wish you had.
Office Space is much closer to reality than fiction for programmers, even though they are a sidebar in the story. Most people in programming are not going to be sitting in their own world, and will have to be interactive in an office environment. In most cases, you better get used to the drugery of TPS reports and interacting with people from a wide variety of departments rather than slamming out code.
Because if it was 7 games, and the 7th game was a draw, then it would STILL end in a tie, 3.5 to 3.5. It's just the nature of chess that long, drawn out matches, can end in ties.
Though I only read a bit of Sci-fi stuff, one non-Sci-fi series of books that has always interested me is the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. It has nothing to do with space aliens, the end of the world, etc, but it is a pretty long series (23 books, starting with The Deep Blue Goodbye), and it is interesting as you can see the changes in his writing style over 20 years. It gives you an interesting glimpse not only into Southern Florida at the time, but the attitudes and how things have changed since then. Nobody I've recommended these books to has come away disappointed.
Yeah, it's not Sci-fi, but sometimes a change of pace is good.
Amen to that. I've started so many stories, of all sorts, drama, sci-fi, Arthurian legend, etc, I can't count. They all are about 3 chapters long, and GOOD, by the opinion of the people who I let read them. It's just getting chapters 4->X on paper which kills me. I can get it started good, just can't close the deal.
Anyone else run into this in the past? How'd you get around it? (If you did)
Cedar Point is a one admission fee-for-everything in the park (ridewise) It doesn't matter if the cycle 100 or 10000 people through an hour.
I work for one of these companies...
on
Robot Pharmacists
·
· Score: 2
McKesson Automation does this for hospitals. I should know, I work for them.
Hospitals like using robots in their pharmacy for a variety of reasons. Safety is reason #1. Barcodes are used, errors are almost non-existant. When there are errors, they are usually due to a human error at some point down the line. Second, it eliminates human need to do that task--freeing time and money.
In addition to dispensing drugs at the pharmacy level, we also make a product that sits at the nursing station level and does fundamentally the same thing dispensing the proper drug. We also have a nurse hand-held barcoding system to ensure the proper medication gets to the proper patient via barcoding -- it checks the nurses barcode, the patients barcode, and the drug barcode.
Check out the link above and go to 'products and services' to see what I'm talking about.
There are a lot of people growing up today who want to learn to use computers in a productive way. For some, this is limited to MS Word and Paint. For others, C, FORTRAN, or whatever else. Not everyone will use computers the same.
The problem is, the computer doesn't sprout arms and legs and a cartoon face on the monitor and teach you to use it. You need qualified people. How many of us out there who bemoan the fact that children today aren't learning what they're supposed to are willing to hang up their $40,000++++ year jobs (if you have one) and start pulling in $20,500 (starting parochial school teachers salary in my area, slightly more for public schools) just to share that knowledge.
I know I wouldn't. And I volunteer with children in other activities and I have found I work great with children, explaining things to their level without dumbing it down more. I've tutored individual students with great success. That being said, wild horses could drag me into a classroom with the education system the way it is today.
Start paying teachers a salary in the ballpark of the professionals of their field, and you'll attract the teachers who are enthused, know what they're doing, and become an asset. That isn't to say that there already aren't, but my experience has shown me that for the most part, before college, computer science teachers are teachers who just couldn't cut it elsewhere, and that's a shame.
speaking as someone who works for a business associate, not a covered entity...On a given day, i may have on my computer, or a department server, sensitive patient information. for my company, a business associate--NOT a covered entity, the physical security is no more and no less than for any other PC.
however, the primary point we've had drilled into us is that all data not being actively used must be encrypted or deleted. nothing just sitting around.
so in that respects, if this computer was in an office that was locked up at night, the physical security isn't really a hipaa violation (as far as I know). the unsecure data is.
On top of that, HIPAA isn't even fully enacted yet, so they don't have to worry about it to begin with. just because a law has been passed and people aer getting 'ready' and 'compliant' doesn't mean it is enforced yet.
hope that clears some stuff up. i'd use more caps, but it's late and i'm tired =)
>>The reason I've seen a few geek friends try out Linux then walk away disgusted (possibly forever) is hardware support. Sure, with modern distros almost all common hardware available is supported, but in a lot of cases it requires a kernel recompile, some config file changes, sometimes even low-level stuff like probing around to find out an IRQ setting.
AMEN BROTHER! I have been using computers since the mid-early 80's and last week, when I finished building my newest PC and installing Windows XP, I decided what the hell, I'll put Linux on it. Picked up Mandrake from Best Buy, came home and spent the better part of an evening getting it up, running, and configured.
Except for my modem. My WINmodem. Ok, I know it's a software issue. So I write in to Mandrake 'experts' on the website, and after explaining I knew where the problem was likely coming from, and that there were solutions, I just needed to be pointed in the right direction, the response I got back was along the lines of: "If it's a winmodem it won't work I think." Clap, clap, clap.
Screw it, I buy a 3com 56K compatible for linux, have to fix the IRQ and symbolic links myself, add them to the startup config file. Fine, it works a day later. I know the common user would never know what to do, and most of my 'geek' friends would have struggled as much as I did.
XP on the other hand grabbed everything either online from its updates, or I had the CD physically in my hand with the XP driver. Not one hardware issue.
I'm still dual booting and fiddling around with Linux, but I have yet to see one thing that's going to make me delete my Windows partition in the near future. It's certainly a good OS, and one that has many good features, but it's still a little rough around the edges in some areas that matter a lot to the average person. (i.e., putting in a CD and fire-and-forgetting installs)
PS--I am looking forward to exploring Linux more--I'm not knocking it in that regard--I just need to spend some time getting acquainted. It just hasn't 'knocked my socks off' yet.
Ok, I'm going to say this plain and simple. We don't matter to them. The slashdot crowd doesn't matter. We can sit here and write about all these wacky protests we're going to do. How many people actually buy crippled CDs, open them, then return in principled disgust. I know I haven't. I know none of my friends have. Frankly, I don't know one person who has returned a crippled CD to a store because 'it didn't work'.
I can dig your music. Most of the people who write about their fav bands like indie stuff, or local, regional bands. That's cool. I don't think too many Slashdotters have front row tix for Pink or Justin Timberlake. Those are the acts that sell the majority of the CDs. Try explaining to a 12 year old girl with $20.00 burning in her pocket why she shouldn't buy the Britney Spears CD all her friends have because it's 'crippled'. It plays in her walkman and that's all she cares about. The worst part is, if it doesn't play in her player, she'll buy a new one.
Articles like this don't surprise me. To the informed crowds, all 2% of us, they might as well rent out big billboards and post a big "F*ck you" for all to see. We're not their bread and butter in their short term vision. Keep slapping a belly-baring shirt on a 17 year old with golden vocal cords and you'll never run out of $$$.
So in protest, we download the specific music we want. Morals or not, most people have done it or still do. It just adds the fuel to the fire. They cite pointless statistics about dropping sales. To us it's because the music might suck. As long as they keep putting the words File-sharing and Kazaa in the press-releases, people will assume the two are related, and legit file sharing gets screwed.
They won't go out of business because I don't buy their CDs. Or you don't buy them.
Start getting the 11-14 year olds to stop needing their N'sync fix and then you're onto something. I hate to say it, but with as much knowledge and purpose as we may have, we're no match for teenieboppers with mommy and daddy's money.
Slashdot Mirror
Something that is probably important to the Slashdot crowd--you'll gain about 10 lbs. of retained water in the first few weeks of taking it, and you will feel somewhat bloated. Yes, not only do I read Slashdot, but I also work out, and for approx. a year I tried Creatine. I'll be the first to say it does everything it advertises, but it also does a few things not necessarily on the label. So if you're going to sit in a chair all day, and take it, expect to pack on some more weight quick.
Depending on where you are, you may have a supermarket with automated checkout. You scan the items, and they are either weighed or put on a conveyer belt, then packaged. This reduces the need for 6 workers (4 checkout, 2 baggers) to 2 (2 floating baggers) per 4 lines.
If there is nobody in line ahead of me, its faster than getting checked out by a person. If there is someone ahead of me, and most people act as if they've never seen a touch screen or scanner, it's faster to go to a normal line. So in the end, the result is on average I'm not out of there any faster or slower, but the store saves on 4 jobs.
You're making the big assumption that ALL people who use P2P actually care about this law, realize it's going to happen, and for that matter, have the ability to vote for/against these people.
Just because something appears on Slashdot doesn't mean the rest of the world is aware of it. 95% of the people using KaZaa/etc have no clue this stuff is going on, and frankly, most don't care.
Until you can let the voting majority realize what is going on, statments like 'Senator X introduced bill Y, so nobody will vote for him' are wishful thinking at best.
Sure thing...take Pittsburgh (since I am familiar with the situation there). The Downtown area is very cramped--no room for expansion of parking. Our public transportation is a joke. Many companies that lease parking spaces for their employees have 'carpool only' spots. This is to encourage people to carpool, and having an HOV lane makes it even more convenient, reclaiming the time spent picking people up by zooming in to the city (which actually works quite well).
Thus, to the city leaders, keeping these businesses in the downtown area by making it easier for their employees to get there(which is a major problem--many have moved out to the suburbs) is as important as any benefit from reducing fossil fuel emissions.
Everyone isn't able to buy it. There are a limited number. If they determine that an extra 100 or 200 cars per day in the lane won't matter (and having driven in HOV lanes, that's a lowball estimate) and they can generate $X amount of revenue, which never hurts, and can help fund things to benefit everyone....
Also, carpool lanes are just as much about cramped parking in Metro areas as fossil fuel emmissions.
Ok, I read this and the little Mr. Cynical on my shoulder says, this is all just PR. Yes, they are filing lawsuits, etc...but in the grand scheme of things, this is just advertising.
Microsoft: "We're on your side"
Microsoft: "We hate spammers too!"
Microsoft: "We're fighting for the little guy"
etc, etc, etc.
The cost of a few million (drops in their bucket) of court costs might go a long way in falsly convincing some people that Microsoft actually cares about the little guy.
Just a though.
Great point, but at what stage in the business--do you get a lawyer and accountant before you've made penny 1, or wait a year to test the waters, then spend the $$$?
GAMES magazine detailed this book and had 10 sample problems in their last issue. Very interesting read.
RTFA -- they don't crap over old, established customers -- they crap over people who had a high amount of rentals in the last month. It doesn't matter if you've been with them 2 months or 12 months. So yes, by their rule, your first month will have a quick turnaround in rental time, but after that, it is based on the last month.
What would you rather them do--make all new people wait the longest? Great business plan.
I don't have a problem with a company showing customer's loyalty, but you can't expect them to have a DVDfairy hanging out in their office crapping out DVDs on demand--there's a limited number, and this looks like the most reasonable way of distributing them fairly. You get a good month, then you get a not-so good month.
Look, there are only a certain amount of DVDs to go around. In the article, it states that the priority is based solely on the LAST billing cycle. So, if you have a bad month getting the movies you want, you'll have a good month the next time, then bad, then good.
It's not a perfect system, but given limited resources, it's the fairest thing they can do and still keep prices reasonble.
He's most likely not had charges brought against him since doing so might jeopardize an ongoing investigation.
Anyone have a simpler explination that doesn't involve putting on your tin foil hats to keep the gub'ment info rays out of your mind?
1. Deliberately dupe editors into posting story which will entice oodles of Shashdotter's to click through to Amazon, knowing the fix has already been made.
2. Use your reference (sr_aps_electronics_1_1) in the link, setting the cookie on their PC to you.
3. They use amazon in the future
4. PROFIT!!!
Don't spend so much time worrying about and planning for the future--no matter how smart you think you are at 12, or 16, or 20, your plans never work out the way you expect them to--you can only control yourself--not the world around you.
Within reason, enjoy the present, make sensible decisions, and enjoy the time you have, since in the future, you'll look back and wish you had.
Office Space is much closer to reality than fiction for programmers, even though they are a sidebar in the story. Most people in programming are not going to be sitting in their own world, and will have to be interactive in an office environment. In most cases, you better get used to the drugery of TPS reports and interacting with people from a wide variety of departments rather than slamming out code.
Because if it was 7 games, and the 7th game was a draw, then it would STILL end in a tie, 3.5 to 3.5. It's just the nature of chess that long, drawn out matches, can end in ties.
Though I only read a bit of Sci-fi stuff, one non-Sci-fi series of books that has always interested me is the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald. It has nothing to do with space aliens, the end of the world, etc, but it is a pretty long series (23 books, starting with The Deep Blue Goodbye), and it is interesting as you can see the changes in his writing style over 20 years. It gives you an interesting glimpse not only into Southern Florida at the time, but the attitudes and how things have changed since then. Nobody I've recommended these books to has come away disappointed.
Yeah, it's not Sci-fi, but sometimes a change of pace is good.
Amen to that. I've started so many stories, of all sorts, drama, sci-fi, Arthurian legend, etc, I can't count. They all are about 3 chapters long, and GOOD, by the opinion of the people who I let read them. It's just getting chapters 4->X on paper which kills me. I can get it started good, just can't close the deal.
Anyone else run into this in the past? How'd you get around it? (If you did)
Cedar Point is a one admission fee-for-everything in the park (ridewise) It doesn't matter if the cycle 100 or 10000 people through an hour.
McKesson Automation does this for hospitals. I should know, I work for them.
Hospitals like using robots in their pharmacy for a variety of reasons. Safety is reason #1. Barcodes are used, errors are almost non-existant. When there are errors, they are usually due to a human error at some point down the line. Second, it eliminates human need to do that task--freeing time and money.
In addition to dispensing drugs at the pharmacy level, we also make a product that sits at the nursing station level and does fundamentally the same thing dispensing the proper drug. We also have a nurse hand-held barcoding system to ensure the proper medication gets to the proper patient via barcoding -- it checks the nurses barcode, the patients barcode, and the drug barcode.
Check out the link above and go to 'products and services' to see what I'm talking about.
There are a lot of people growing up today who want to learn to use computers in a productive way. For some, this is limited to MS Word and Paint. For others, C, FORTRAN, or whatever else. Not everyone will use computers the same.
The problem is, the computer doesn't sprout arms and legs and a cartoon face on the monitor and teach you to use it. You need qualified people. How many of us out there who bemoan the fact that children today aren't learning what they're supposed to are willing to hang up their $40,000++++ year jobs (if you have one) and start pulling in $20,500 (starting parochial school teachers salary in my area, slightly more for public schools) just to share that knowledge.
I know I wouldn't. And I volunteer with children in other activities and I have found I work great with children, explaining things to their level without dumbing it down more. I've tutored individual students with great success. That being said, wild horses could drag me into a classroom with the education system the way it is today.
Start paying teachers a salary in the ballpark of the professionals of their field, and you'll attract the teachers who are enthused, know what they're doing, and become an asset. That isn't to say that there already aren't, but my experience has shown me that for the most part, before college, computer science teachers are teachers who just couldn't cut it elsewhere, and that's a shame.
speaking as someone who works for a business associate, not a covered entity...On a given day, i may have on my computer, or a department server, sensitive patient information. for my company, a business associate--NOT a covered entity, the physical security is no more and no less than for any other PC.
however, the primary point we've had drilled into us is that all data not being actively used must be encrypted or deleted. nothing just sitting around.
so in that respects, if this computer was in an office that was locked up at night, the physical security isn't really a hipaa violation (as far as I know). the unsecure data is.
On top of that, HIPAA isn't even fully enacted yet, so they don't have to worry about it to begin with. just because a law has been passed and people aer getting 'ready' and 'compliant' doesn't mean it is enforced yet.
hope that clears some stuff up. i'd use more caps, but it's late and i'm tired =)
>>The reason I've seen a few geek friends try out Linux then walk away disgusted (possibly forever) is hardware support. Sure, with modern distros almost all common hardware available is supported, but in a lot of cases it requires a kernel recompile, some config file changes, sometimes even low-level stuff like probing around to find out an IRQ setting.
AMEN BROTHER! I have been using computers since the mid-early 80's and last week, when I finished building my newest PC and installing Windows XP, I decided what the hell, I'll put Linux on it. Picked up Mandrake from Best Buy, came home and spent the better part of an evening getting it up, running, and configured.
Except for my modem. My WINmodem. Ok, I know it's a software issue. So I write in to Mandrake 'experts' on the website, and after explaining I knew where the problem was likely coming from, and that there were solutions, I just needed to be pointed in the right direction, the response I got back was along the lines of: "If it's a winmodem it won't work I think." Clap, clap, clap.
Screw it, I buy a 3com 56K compatible for linux, have to fix the IRQ and symbolic links myself, add them to the startup config file. Fine, it works a day later. I know the common user would never know what to do, and most of my 'geek' friends would have struggled as much as I did.
XP on the other hand grabbed everything either online from its updates, or I had the CD physically in my hand with the XP driver. Not one hardware issue.
I'm still dual booting and fiddling around with Linux, but I have yet to see one thing that's going to make me delete my Windows partition in the near future. It's certainly a good OS, and one that has many good features, but it's still a little rough around the edges in some areas that matter a lot to the average person. (i.e., putting in a CD and fire-and-forgetting installs)
PS--I am looking forward to exploring Linux more--I'm not knocking it in that regard--I just need to spend some time getting acquainted. It just hasn't 'knocked my socks off' yet.
Figuring out her Email address, then Googling it reveals Ms. Cooke probably does nothing but writes reviews allllllllll day long.
Man, what a horrible way to waste time. Well, back to reloading Slashdot....
ASCI Purple
I can't wait until a few years from now when we're treated to talking about ASCI Mauve, ASCI Burnt Sienna, and ASCI Periwinkle....
Ok, I'm going to say this plain and simple. We don't matter to them. The slashdot crowd doesn't matter. We can sit here and write about all these wacky protests we're going to do. How many people actually buy crippled CDs, open them, then return in principled disgust. I know I haven't. I know none of my friends have. Frankly, I don't know one person who has returned a crippled CD to a store because 'it didn't work'.
I can dig your music. Most of the people who write about their fav bands like indie stuff, or local, regional bands. That's cool. I don't think too many Slashdotters have front row tix for Pink or Justin Timberlake. Those are the acts that sell the majority of the CDs. Try explaining to a 12 year old girl with $20.00 burning in her pocket why she shouldn't buy the Britney Spears CD all her friends have because it's 'crippled'. It plays in her walkman and that's all she cares about. The worst part is, if it doesn't play in her player, she'll buy a new one.
Articles like this don't surprise me. To the informed crowds, all 2% of us, they might as well rent out big billboards and post a big "F*ck you" for all to see. We're not their bread and butter in their short term vision. Keep slapping a belly-baring shirt on a 17 year old with golden vocal cords and you'll never run out of $$$.
So in protest, we download the specific music we want. Morals or not, most people have done it or still do. It just adds the fuel to the fire. They cite pointless statistics about dropping sales. To us it's because the music might suck. As long as they keep putting the words File-sharing and Kazaa in the press-releases, people will assume the two are related, and legit file sharing gets screwed.
They won't go out of business because I don't buy their CDs. Or you don't buy them.
Start getting the 11-14 year olds to stop needing their N'sync fix and then you're onto something. I hate to say it, but with as much knowledge and purpose as we may have, we're no match for teenieboppers with mommy and daddy's money.