15% efficiency would actually be pretty good considering by some calculations photosynthesis efficiency is around 5 to 20%.
Here is one calculation showing ~6.6% photosynthesis efficiency It takes into account things like canopy shading, which wouldn't necessarily apply to this, but here's the link: http://www.upei.ca/~physics/p261/Content/Sources_Conversion/Photo-_synthesis/photo-_synthesis.htm
I tried to find a peer reviewed one, but can't find one right now(I'm at work, break almost over...:( )
How do you convince the average modern user that they should think about their privacy and the privacy of others when turning on their computer?
If they won't listen, they may need to learn the hard way, when they lose money or friends from being free with their personal information. I remember my first year in college, I knew a couple of my fellow freshmen who learned to lock their dorm room doors when their stuff was stolen. They learned the expensive way not to trust everyone.
Street numbers maybe boring, but as the parent stated
... adds confusion not only to those who live with it, but visitors as well
If I'm visiting a city using a street numbering system that is consistent, I find it is easier to get around. That is, let's say I'm going up 22ND AVE, and I just passed 45TH ST, there is a damn good chance that the next street is 46TH ST (or 44TH depending on the direction of the numbers) without having to constantly look at a map to know which street is next.
And yes, if you are a long time resident of a city, you can get around just fine without numbered streets, but you could probably get around with streets labeled with pictograms or hieroglyphs, or unnamed streets, but damn, a visitor or a new resident would have a hard time getting around.
I lived in a city with a fairly logical street numbering system for a long time, and I still found it convenient even after living there a while.
Microsoft Word on Mac with a super dual core intel has an irritating delay
Office Mac 2004 (I'm assuming that's what you are using) was compiled for PowerPC, therefore the Rosetta PPC emulation layer is executing the program. Even the best PPC emulation can come close to but is not going to match the "real thing". (http://www.emaculation.com/ppc.php) I run MS Word for Mac 2004 on a G3/266 (OS 10.2.8 w/ 384MB RAM) and it is fairly snappy. Using the MS office suite on Intel based macs will get better when the next version comes out, since it will be a Universal application ("Fat binary").
I've had a couple good replies to this post, so I want to clearify my original post
I hate hearing about people demanding drugs after seeming them on TV, thinking they know better than a professional with 4+ years of training.
Hate is a strong word, one I shouldn't have used. I did not mean to say that the physician always knows best. Sometimes the patient is in a better position because they have done some type of research, usually far more than seeing an ad on TV or print. You should ask your doctor question about any treatment they are prescribing. Yes, it can be intimidating, but ultimately, you will be the one undergoing treatment, if your not comfortable with it, there may be problems. If you present what you have been finding out about your medical condition to your doctor, most will listen.
Also, most of the time an off-patent generic drug that's been around for years is more beneficial than those new drugs being advertised. This is an statement that I have heard one way or another made by some of the health professionals I've had contact with in my life. I'm not a physician, I'm wasn't qualified to make that statement. There are probably many advertised drugs that are significantly better then the generics, but might be overkill for some conditions and people. Only you and your physician will know what will be best.
Medical care is supposed to be a dialog between the doctor and the patient. I frankly resent the attitude of "doctor knows best".
I'm sorry if my post came out like that, I DON't think doctors always know best, in fact, they sometimes royally fsck things up. It should be a dialogue, you are 100% correct
I am certainly no luddite, but one lamentable aspect of the scientific and technological advances in medicine is that medical professionals can use it as a substitute for, instead of a supplement to, actually _listening_ to their pateints. You're correct, some doctors don't listen, some patients aren't fully honest about their histories, either. Technology is a tool, a powerful one, but NO replacement for a good dialogue between patient and doctor.
The abuse of power and conflict of interest in a system where the patient is assumed to be wrong/dumb and the doctor intelligent/powerful is rampant. Does it surprise you that there is a high incidence of C-section birth at highly profitable hospitals? Do you think, in aggregate, that pateints asking for medicines they've seen on TV is more or less of a problem than physicians prescribing medications they've received kickbacks for from pharmecuetical companies? 1. no it doesn't surprise me 2. Kickbacks are just as bad, thanks for mentioning that.
If I could transfer mod points from my post to yours, I would, it should be modded higher than mine:) No, I'm not a physician, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
"I hate hearing about people demanding drugs after seeming them on TV,"
Okay, I'll admit, hate is a strong word, and one I should not have used. Mildly annoyed is more like it.
Which drugs do you have in mind? I don't know of one. Crestor is better for some and advertised pretty clearly. Levitra and Viagra were never around before and had no prior similar drugs that did what they do. I've never seen a TV ad for an antibiotic, yet those are pumped the most by salespersons to doctors. I don't mind it if pharm companies send samples and information to doctors on new drugs, it can be quite helpful. The doctor is in the position to evaulate the information having some background in pharm, which most people don't have.
So, name ONE drug that you think is pumped on TV that's out of line. You know restless leg syndrome? Most people were never informed by their doc about it. Know most Herpes patients didn't know antivirals were available to them. Merck has been promoting their cervical cancer vaccine, and you know what? Most women didn't even known it was available and that particular vaccine even got a lot of press when it came out.
So why do you "hate" this? Most doctors know less than an informed patient. An informed patient will often know about his condition than his doctor; he lives with it, knows the signs, has been getting treatment, etc. A doctor maybe spends 15-20 minutes per patient on average.
I define an informed patient as one that has seen more than a ad for a drug. An informed patient should having take some time to go to webMD, or do some book searches. If that's your definition of an informed patient, then yes what you say is very true.
Cases in point--My family physicians (I see a group, so at least 2) didn't understand iodine had squat to do with my particular thyroid condition. Another didn't identify. There is a whole generation of doctors who STILL can't identify the warning signs of a heart attack in women, or the general average age heart attacks occur in women or a good way to calculate risk based on menopause. Even with HIV/AIDS treatment, the patient often knows more than their treating physician. Sometimes the patient knows more, sometimes not. If the patient feels their doctor is not qualified to treat their condition, they need to work find another one. It's not easy, but in the long run it best for all involved.
I'll tell you why--because you realize that your family's occupation is really sham, that they are simple overpaid health technicians, and that the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies have forwarded medicine far far more than the practioners as a discipline.
Sham, eh? When all drugs are so safe and effective with no interactions or side effects and everyone has sufficient training in realising the symptoms and treatments of most common diseases (other then sinus problems and the common cold/flu), then it will be a sham, until then, they are quite a bit more than "overpaid health technicians". (Just like being software engineers are overpaid IT technicians, etc...)
"thinking they know better than a professional with 4+ years of training."
They often do. The patient depends on signs and symptoms, and they live through it. Often it's the doctor who does not listen who is creating the problem, not some overanxious, worrisome patient.
I'll admit that I should have worded that better... most people that have had a long term illness will know quite a bit about their condition and about treatments that their doctor may no have been aware of. Others won't know dick, but bitch to their doctor anyway
btw, you don't know squat either. An OD or MD who comes out of medical school knows shit about the actual practice of medicine except in the roughest sense. They've only been trained, what, 4-5 weeks per general discipline and have not undergone residency.
I know that after med school a lot of the real training begins, and even then its not as compl
My mom's an MA (medical assistant) and my wife is a medical student (M2), and both tell me that those ads are a problem.
I hate hearing about people demanding drugs after seeming them on TV, thinking they know better than a professional with 4+ years of training. I watched my wife study for her pharm course, and all the interactions, contraindications, etc is enough to make her head spin a little bit (and mine a lot). Also, most of the time an off-patent generic drug that's been around for years is more beneficial than those new drugs being advertised.
It's the like the old joke about the old lady who wants that new arthritis drug: Viagra.
On the roboteducation.org website they also offer a way to set up a robot using Myro (My Robotics) [http://www.roboteducation.org/guides.html] which is coded in Python, and runs on linux. I have used it with a Scribbler robot (scribblerrobot.com) and linux and it works well. Of course it does not really teach how to program a microcontroller as much as how to program a robot.
Thanks,
I forgot that not all ulcers are caused by H. Pylori... I shouldn't post stuff before noon (US-CST), since I'm brain dead before noon most of the time.
Omeprazole (aka Prilosec) alone won't cure ulcers, but in combination with antibiotics it can. In the US, except for OTC antibiotic ointments, antibiotics in anything require a prescription.
To quote wikipedia:
"Use in Helicobacter pylori eradication
Omeprazole is combined with the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin (or metronidazole in penicillin-hypersensitive patients) in the one week eradication triple therapy for Helicobacter pylori. Infection by H. pylori is the causative factor in the majority of peptic and duodenal ulcers."
The Shared Computer Toolkit is fairly easy to use. If you don't have Partition Magic, GParted (Gnome Partition Editor) works great, is freely available, and I've used it to setup shared machines with no problems. ( http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ )
And Dave Schroeder, regardless of whatever it is that would make you try to defend him, to Hell with you.
The above comment epitomize what, in part, I believe is wrong with political discourse in this country (USA). We can't disagree in a civil manner. No, no, no... We have to turn around and name call and tell people to "rot in hell" among other things. Our debates turn into the fights small children have:
Child 1 to Child 2: "you're a poop poop head" Child 2 to Child 1: "You're a ca-ca face"
Except replace the names with nastier ones. You don't have to agree with your oppenent, but remember they're a human being too. Be civil.
Doctors screw up a lot more than the bank, in my experience.
I've seen MDs screw up, it happens quite a bit. Medicine is not an exact science, we aren't at the Star Trek level of medicine yet. As for your bank, they must suck to screw up that many times, I'd find a new bank if possible.
You sound like someone who has never had a serious illness or watched somoene with one.
My father has prostate cancer. It responds to hormonal therapy for now, but it will come back, and the number of treatments he can go for will get smaller and smaller. I've seen the cancer turn him from a energenic business owner to struggling to get through the day most of the time.
Expert AI is essentially the definition of what a MD does.
My wife and I will have to somewhat dissagree with you. Quite a bit of what a doctor does amounts to dicision trees running through a list of smyptoms to narrow it down to a particular disease(s) and give an appropriate treatment. I've sat in on some of her classes, and from the MDs that teach there I can tell you a certain amount of intuition and gut feeling goes into the practice of medicine as well. AI can't replicate that yet.
Except a computer can bring it to the masses, much cheaper. With the demographics shifting, we're either going to be a nation of doctors, or people are going to be dying in the street. I'm all for mass-marketed medicine if it can help.
I should have posted my view on computers in medicine a bit more in my parent post. I beleive computers will play an vital role in improving medicine. I worked with an instructor who now is the CEO of a business that deals in "personalised medicine." That is by using genomic approaches (i.e. gene chips) and computer technology (AI, knowledge management, etc) it will allow a doctor to give a customised treatment to a patient that will increase the effectiveness of the treatment and decrease the side effects. This will allow doctors to give better treatment. My problem with the book being reviewed is the implication of the title 'The End of Medicine'. Computer technology will not end medicine, in fact I believe it will be the beginning of better medicine. More personalised, with less guess work by the doctor, which will allow a doctor more time to focus on the patient and not just their disease.
An expert AI would also be upgradable without extensive re-training. I work in IT, specifically help desk. The university I work for has attempted to implement self-service somewhat AI based trouble shooting web applications to help users solve their problems faster. The problem we found is that users want to talk to a human, even if the help desk worker is using the self-service program to guide the user though lets say... a password reset. Expert AI in medicine would be a great improvement, but few people fully trust a machine.
Using tools will allow the doctors to spend more time with data to apply to problem solving, and less time attempting to extract that data using less advanced techniques. These will not replace the doctors they will help them realize their potential.
Mod up. Exactly, you hit the head and the nail. These tools will allow for greater doctor/patient interaction because the doctor can offset time spend diagnosising with more face-to-face time with the patient.
One of the main theses of this book is the comptuer technology will do to doctors what ATMs did to tellers. I call BS. My wife is studying to be a doctor (MD), and its more than memorising disease X and treatment Y. It involves alot of bedside manner and gut instinct. Think about what a teller does... a tellers does not need 4 years of teller school and 3+ years of teller residency to do his or her job. A teller fscks up a transaction, no one's going to die. An doctor fscks a diagnosis, well the patient may be up the proverbal polluted creek without a means of propulsion (i.e. death).
I've done research into using AI methods to diagnosis patients with a disease based on MALDI-TOF of proteins from patients with and without lung tumors. The group I worked in had a difficult job spliting groups. When we presented at a conference, everyother presenter could not find and answer (this was a sponsored 'contest' to see if it could be done). It was a b*tch to seperate patients by biological markers. AI will probably be able to do it one day, but not now.
(paper: Proteomics. 2003 Sep;3(9):1704-9. Multiple approaches to data-mining of proteomic data based on statistical and pattern classification methods. Tatay JW, Feng X, Sobczak N, Jiang H, Chen CF, Kirova R, Struble C, Wang NJ, Tonellato PJ.)
Quite a few who buy the PS3 will have a PS2 so backwards compatability is not a big issue. It is an issue for buyers of the PS3 who never owned a PS3 (i.e. parents buy one for little billy or susie) and see a large assortment of PS2 games for sale at a cheaper price (because they are the last generation console games) and want to get those games because of a limited availability of PS3 games (which is true at the introduction of most consoles).
One moral of the story: Be very careful if you are designing you applications/systems around a proprietary system. If the vender decides to go in another direction, or needs to get more systems sales by making a newer version of the proprietary OS intentionally incompatible with older hardware for no other reason than to drive up sales of newer equipement, you may get your 'assets' burned.
I can just see this program being used to "create" content to push more advertising. Just what we need more of, websites that have recycled content put online for ad revenue.
I've noticed whenever I hear about a gender gap study or story, the gender gap is a about a shortage of women in good, clean professions with upward mobility and high pay. I've never hear or seen a story about a shortage of women in garbage collecting or ditch digging, or other lower pay and often "dead end" jobs. I've only seen one female garbage collector ever, out of dozens of male garbage collectors, in the various places I've lived.
P.S. I have nothing against garbage collectors... they just happen to be the most visible "down and dirty not high paying" job I can think of. They do a great service for us, I'm not putting them down. I would like to see more women going into CS as well. I'm just pointing out something I've noticed.
When drivers are in the kernel, they handle the dirty low-level work and (ideally) present user mode with a nice, friendly, safe API for configuring and using the hardware.
But if there are bugs in the "nice, friendly, safe API", could not those be exploited? And if assuming there would be more of those API than calls to the small kernel-mode shim, and those "nice, safe, friendly APIs" could potientally have bugs, wouldn't there be a similar amount of security between kernel mode and user space drivers?
Quoting the parent There are mathematicians that couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag - but all good programmers seem to have some faculty with math. I've seen this first hand. I've tutored a math student in CS level 1 (programming in Java), and while I've seen her do (complex) integrals in her head, she had a difficult time writting some of the assigned programs. The best way I found to help her was to have her think of the program in a (more) mathematical way... that helped a little.
Slashdot Mirror
15% efficiency would actually be pretty good considering by some calculations photosynthesis efficiency is around 5 to 20%.
:( )
Here is one calculation showing ~6.6% photosynthesis efficiency
It takes into account things like canopy shading, which wouldn't necessarily apply to this, but here's the link:
http://www.upei.ca/~physics/p261/Content/Sources_Conversion/Photo-_synthesis/photo-_synthesis.htm
I tried to find a peer reviewed one, but can't find one right now(I'm at work, break almost over...
How do you convince the average modern user that they should think about their privacy and the privacy of others when turning on their computer?
If they won't listen, they may need to learn the hard way, when they lose money or friends from being free with their personal information. I remember my first year in college, I knew a couple of my fellow freshmen who learned to lock their dorm room doors when their stuff was stolen. They learned the expensive way not to trust everyone.
Street numbers maybe boring, but as the parent stated
... adds confusion not only to those who live with it, but visitors as well
If I'm visiting a city using a street numbering system that is consistent, I find it is easier to get around. That is, let's say I'm going up 22ND AVE, and I just passed 45TH ST, there is a damn good chance that the next street is 46TH ST (or 44TH depending on the direction of the numbers) without having to constantly look at a map to know which street is next.
And yes, if you are a long time resident of a city, you can get around just fine without numbered streets, but you could probably get around with streets labeled with pictograms or hieroglyphs, or unnamed streets, but damn, a visitor or a new resident would have a hard time getting around.
I lived in a city with a fairly logical street numbering system for a long time, and I still found it convenient even after living there a while.
Microsoft Word on Mac with a super dual core intel has an irritating delay
Office Mac 2004 (I'm assuming that's what you are using) was compiled for PowerPC, therefore the Rosetta PPC emulation layer is executing the program. Even the best PPC emulation can come close to but is not going to match the "real thing". (http://www.emaculation.com/ppc.php) I run MS Word for Mac 2004 on a G3/266 (OS 10.2.8 w/ 384MB RAM) and it is fairly snappy. Using the MS office suite on Intel based macs will get better when the next version comes out, since it will be a Universal application ("Fat binary").
I've had a couple good replies to this post, so I want to clearify my original post
I hate hearing about people demanding drugs after seeming them on TV, thinking they know better than a professional with 4+ years of training.
Hate is a strong word, one I shouldn't have used. I did not mean to say that the physician always knows best. Sometimes the patient is in a better position because they have done some type of research, usually far more than seeing an ad on TV or print. You should ask your doctor question about any treatment they are prescribing. Yes, it can be intimidating, but ultimately, you will be the one undergoing treatment, if your not comfortable with it, there may be problems. If you present what you have been finding out about your medical condition to your doctor, most will listen.
Also, most of the time an off-patent generic drug that's been around for years is more beneficial than those new drugs being advertised.
This is an statement that I have heard one way or another made by some of the health professionals I've had contact with in my life. I'm not a physician, I'm wasn't qualified to make that statement. There are probably many advertised drugs that are significantly better then the generics, but might be overkill for some conditions and people. Only you and your physician will know what will be best.
Medical care is supposed to be a dialog between the doctor and the patient. I frankly resent the attitude of "doctor knows best".
:)
I'm sorry if my post came out like that, I DON't think doctors always know best, in fact, they sometimes royally fsck things up. It should be a dialogue, you are 100% correct
I am certainly no luddite, but one lamentable aspect of the scientific and technological advances in medicine is that medical professionals can use it as a substitute for, instead of a supplement to, actually _listening_ to their pateints.
You're correct, some doctors don't listen, some patients aren't fully honest about their histories, either. Technology is a tool, a powerful one, but NO replacement for a good dialogue between patient and doctor.
The abuse of power and conflict of interest in a system where the patient is assumed to be wrong/dumb and the doctor intelligent/powerful is rampant. Does it surprise you that there is a high incidence of C-section birth at highly profitable hospitals? Do you think, in aggregate, that pateints asking for medicines they've seen on TV is more or less of a problem than physicians prescribing medications they've received kickbacks for from pharmecuetical companies?
1. no it doesn't surprise me
2. Kickbacks are just as bad, thanks for mentioning that.
If I could transfer mod points from my post to yours, I would, it should be modded higher than mine
No, I'm not a physician, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
"I hate hearing about people demanding drugs after seeming them on TV,"
Okay, I'll admit, hate is a strong word, and one I should not have used. Mildly annoyed is more like it.
Which drugs do you have in mind? I don't know of one. Crestor is better for some and advertised pretty clearly. Levitra and Viagra were never around before and had no prior similar drugs that did what they do. I've never seen a TV ad for an antibiotic, yet those are pumped the most by salespersons to doctors.
I don't mind it if pharm companies send samples and information to doctors on new drugs, it can be quite helpful. The doctor is in the position to evaulate the information having some background in pharm, which most people don't have.
So, name ONE drug that you think is pumped on TV that's out of line. You know restless leg syndrome? Most people were never informed by their doc about it. Know most Herpes patients didn't know antivirals were available to them. Merck has been promoting their cervical cancer vaccine, and you know what? Most women didn't even known it was available and that particular vaccine even got a lot of press when it came out.
So why do you "hate" this? Most doctors know less than an informed patient. An informed patient will often know about his condition than his doctor; he lives with it, knows the signs, has been getting treatment, etc. A doctor maybe spends 15-20 minutes per patient on average.
I define an informed patient as one that has seen more than a ad for a drug. An informed patient should having take some time to go to webMD, or do some book searches. If that's your definition of an informed patient, then yes what you say is very true.
Cases in point--My family physicians (I see a group, so at least 2) didn't understand iodine had squat to do with my particular thyroid condition. Another didn't identify. There is a whole generation of doctors who STILL can't identify the warning signs of a heart attack in women, or the general average age heart attacks occur in women or a good way to calculate risk based on menopause. Even with HIV/AIDS treatment, the patient often knows more than their treating physician.
Sometimes the patient knows more, sometimes not. If the patient feels their doctor is not qualified to treat their condition, they need to work find another one. It's not easy, but in the long run it best for all involved.
I'll tell you why--because you realize that your family's occupation is really sham, that they are simple overpaid health technicians, and that the insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies have forwarded medicine far far more than the practioners as a discipline.
Sham, eh? When all drugs are so safe and effective with no interactions or side effects and everyone has sufficient training in realising the symptoms and treatments of most common diseases (other then sinus problems and the common cold/flu), then it will be a sham, until then, they are quite a bit more than "overpaid health technicians". (Just like being software engineers are overpaid IT technicians, etc...)
"thinking they know better than a professional with 4+ years of training." They often do. The patient depends on signs and symptoms, and they live through it. Often it's the doctor who does not listen who is creating the problem, not some overanxious, worrisome patient.
I'll admit that I should have worded that better... most people that have had a long term illness will know quite a bit about their condition and about treatments that their doctor may no have been aware of. Others won't know dick, but bitch to their doctor anyway
btw, you don't know squat either. An OD or MD who comes out of medical school knows shit about the actual practice of medicine except in the roughest sense. They've only been trained, what, 4-5 weeks per general discipline and have not undergone residency.
I know that after med school a lot of the real training begins, and even then its not as compl
YES.
My mom's an MA (medical assistant) and my wife is a medical student (M2), and both tell me that those ads are a problem.
I hate hearing about people demanding drugs after seeming them on TV, thinking they know better than a professional with 4+ years of training. I watched my wife study for her pharm course, and all the interactions, contraindications, etc is enough to make her head spin a little bit (and mine a lot). Also, most of the time an off-patent generic drug that's been around for years is more beneficial than those new drugs being advertised.
It's the like the old joke about the old lady who wants that new arthritis drug: Viagra.
On the roboteducation.org website they also offer a way to set up a robot using Myro (My Robotics) [http://www.roboteducation.org/guides.html] which is coded in Python, and runs on linux. I have used it with a Scribbler robot (scribblerrobot.com) and linux and it works well. Of course it does not really teach how to program a microcontroller as much as how to program a robot.
Thanks,
I forgot that not all ulcers are caused by H. Pylori... I shouldn't post stuff before noon (US-CST), since I'm brain dead before noon most of the time.
Omeprazole (aka Prilosec) alone won't cure ulcers, but in combination with antibiotics it can. In the US, except for OTC antibiotic ointments, antibiotics in anything require a prescription.
To quote wikipedia:
"Use in Helicobacter pylori eradication
Omeprazole is combined with the antibiotics clarithromycin and amoxicillin (or metronidazole in penicillin-hypersensitive patients) in the one week eradication triple therapy for Helicobacter pylori. Infection by H. pylori is the causative factor in the majority of peptic and duodenal ulcers."
Also see "Management of Helicobacter pylori Infection" ( http://www.aafp.org/afp/20020401/1327.html )
And no, I'm not a medical doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night...
The Shared Computer Toolkit is fairly easy to use. If you don't have Partition Magic, GParted (Gnome Partition Editor) works great, is freely available, and I've used it to setup shared machines with no problems. ( http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ )
And Dave Schroeder, regardless of whatever it is that would make you try to defend him, to Hell with you.
The above comment epitomize what, in part, I believe is wrong with political discourse in this country (USA). We can't disagree in a civil manner. No, no, no... We have to turn around and name call and tell people to "rot in hell" among other things. Our debates turn into the fights small children have:
Child 1 to Child 2: "you're a poop poop head"
Child 2 to Child 1: "You're a ca-ca face"
Except replace the names with nastier ones.
You don't have to agree with your oppenent, but remember they're a human being too. Be civil.
Must be a slow news day, again!
Stories to be seen soon on Slashdot:
"Jihad declared on SysRq key" and "Crusade declared on 'Scroll Lock' Key"
Mod up the parent (alerante), I forgot about that site. Thanks. It's pretty datailed.
Man, must be a slowwwww news day...
Here is a link to a better timeline:
http://toastytech.com/guis/guitimeline.html Toasty Tech has some spiffy screenshots of various GUIs.
Ah, the memories...
Doctors screw up a lot more than the bank, in my experience.
I've seen MDs screw up, it happens quite a bit. Medicine is not an exact science, we aren't at the Star Trek level of medicine yet. As for your bank, they must suck to screw up that many times, I'd find a new bank if possible.
You sound like someone who has never had a serious illness or watched somoene with one.
My father has prostate cancer. It responds to hormonal therapy for now, but it will come back, and the number of treatments he can go for will get smaller and smaller. I've seen the cancer turn him from a energenic business owner to struggling to get through the day most of the time.
Expert AI is essentially the definition of what a MD does.
My wife and I will have to somewhat dissagree with you. Quite a bit of what a doctor does amounts to dicision trees running through a list of smyptoms to narrow it down to a particular disease(s) and give an appropriate treatment. I've sat in on some of her classes, and from the MDs that teach there I can tell you a certain amount of intuition and gut feeling goes into the practice of medicine as well. AI can't replicate that yet.
Except a computer can bring it to the masses, much cheaper. With the demographics shifting, we're either going to be a nation of doctors, or people are going to be dying in the street. I'm all for mass-marketed medicine if it can help.
I should have posted my view on computers in medicine a bit more in my parent post. I beleive computers will play an vital role in improving medicine. I worked with an instructor who now is the CEO of a business that deals in "personalised medicine." That is by using genomic approaches (i.e. gene chips) and computer technology (AI, knowledge management, etc) it will allow a doctor to give a customised treatment to a patient that will increase the effectiveness of the treatment and decrease the side effects. This will allow doctors to give better treatment. My problem with the book being reviewed is the implication of the title 'The End of Medicine'. Computer technology will not end medicine, in fact I believe it will be the beginning of better medicine. More personalised, with less guess work by the doctor, which will allow a doctor more time to focus on the patient and not just their disease.
An expert AI would also be upgradable without extensive re-training.
I work in IT, specifically help desk. The university I work for has attempted to implement self-service somewhat AI based trouble shooting web applications to help users solve their problems faster. The problem we found is that users want to talk to a human, even if the help desk worker is using the self-service program to guide the user though lets say... a password reset. Expert AI in medicine would be a great improvement, but few people fully trust a machine.
Using tools will allow the doctors to spend more time with data to apply to problem solving, and less time attempting to extract that data using less advanced techniques. These will not replace the doctors they will help them realize their potential.
Mod up. Exactly, you hit the head and the nail. These tools will allow for greater doctor/patient interaction because the doctor can offset time spend diagnosising with more face-to-face time with the patient.
One of the main theses of this book is the comptuer technology will do to doctors what ATMs did to tellers. I call BS. My wife is studying to be a doctor (MD), and its more than memorising disease X and treatment Y. It involves alot of bedside manner and gut instinct. Think about what a teller does... a tellers does not need 4 years of teller school and 3+ years of teller residency to do his or her job. A teller fscks up a transaction, no one's going to die. An doctor fscks a diagnosis, well the patient may be up the proverbal polluted creek without a means of propulsion (i.e. death).
I've done research into using AI methods to diagnosis patients with a disease based on MALDI-TOF of proteins from patients with and without lung tumors. The group I worked in had a difficult job spliting groups. When we presented at a conference, everyother presenter could not find and answer (this was a sponsored 'contest' to see if it could be done). It was a b*tch to seperate patients by biological markers. AI will probably be able to do it one day, but not now.
(paper: Proteomics. 2003 Sep;3(9):1704-9. Multiple approaches to data-mining of proteomic data based on statistical and pattern classification methods. Tatay JW, Feng X, Sobczak N, Jiang H, Chen CF, Kirova R, Struble C, Wang NJ, Tonellato PJ.)
Just my 4 bits...
Quite a few who buy the PS3 will have a PS2 so backwards compatability is not a big issue. It is an issue for buyers of the PS3 who never owned a PS3 (i.e. parents buy one for little billy or susie) and see a large assortment of PS2 games for sale at a cheaper price (because they are the last generation console games) and want to get those games because of a limited availability of PS3 games (which is true at the introduction of most consoles).
One moral of the story: Be very careful if you are designing you applications/systems around a proprietary system. If the vender decides to go in another direction, or needs to get more systems sales by making a newer version of the proprietary OS intentionally incompatible with older hardware for no other reason than to drive up sales of newer equipement, you may get your 'assets' burned.
I can just see this program being used to "create" content to push more advertising. Just what we need more of, websites that have recycled content put online for ad revenue.
I've noticed whenever I hear about a gender gap study or story, the gender gap is a about a shortage of women in good, clean professions with upward mobility and high pay. I've never hear or seen a story about a shortage of women in garbage collecting or ditch digging, or other lower pay and often "dead end" jobs. I've only seen one female garbage collector ever, out of dozens of male garbage collectors, in the various places I've lived.
P.S. I have nothing against garbage collectors... they just happen to be the most visible "down and dirty not high paying" job I can think of. They do a great service for us, I'm not putting them down. I would like to see more women going into CS as well. I'm just pointing out something I've noticed.
When drivers are in the kernel, they handle the dirty low-level work and (ideally) present user mode with a nice, friendly, safe API for configuring and using the hardware. But if there are bugs in the "nice, friendly, safe API", could not those be exploited? And if assuming there would be more of those API than calls to the small kernel-mode shim, and those "nice, safe, friendly APIs" could potientally have bugs, wouldn't there be a similar amount of security between kernel mode and user space drivers?
Quoting the parent There are mathematicians that couldn't program their way out of a wet paper bag - but all good programmers seem to have some faculty with math.
I've seen this first hand. I've tutored a math student in CS level 1 (programming in Java), and while I've seen her do (complex) integrals in her head, she had a difficult time writting some of the assigned programs. The best way I found to help her was to have her think of the program in a (more) mathematical way... that helped a little.