I'm an electrical engineer who used to work at the proton accelerator at LLUMC. Here are some facts as I recall them.
1. About 70% of the patients are prostate cancer patients. You can cut it out and lose control of things related to your penis, or use protons.
2. People can walk in, get treated, walk out, play golf, all in the same day. Going to the dentist is probably worse.
3. The radiation pattern is shaped to treat the tumor
A. Radiation coming out of the accelerator is one particular energy. If this was directed at the patient, it would treat a plane in the patient due to the bragg peak.
B. The beam is passed through a spinning mod wheel. This looks like a bicycle wheel with really thick plastic spokes. This creates a range of proton energies which would treat a "slug" of the patient.
C. A thick metal "cookie cutter" is made in the shape of the tumor so that the slug of treated tissue is the shape of the tumor.
D. A wax mold that is the shape of the distal side of the tumor is made. This forms, by selectively reducing the remaining engergy of the protons, the leading edge of the radiation slug to be the shape of the tumor.
4. General, blast everywhere, radiation may be useful when the tumors have metastasized, otherwise (engineer not a doctor) protons may be better.
5. Insurance covers protons.
6. Doctors who say, "Protons are just another form of radiation, you don't want that.", are uninformed. They probably don't know the difference between #3 and #4. Go to LLUMC and get an informed opinion.
7. If I get cancer, Protons therapy will be on my list of possible treatments.
8. This type of therapy is ~20 years old. SAIC designed the particle accelerator portion of LLUMC a long time ago. Unless you haven't heard of this before, this is not news.
9. Protons can treat brain tumors that may not be accessible to surgery. (I'm foggy on the details of this. Did I mention that I'm an EE not at Dr?)
I have kdawson filtered out of slashdot view when I'm logged in. Sadly I wasn't logged in this time. What a horrible article. Overturned reversal of a dissenting opinion. I feel informed.
Ya, I had this idea a while ago too. We should roll it back so that people would have to apply for the copyright. At the time of application, they would state the value of the IP. They would then be taxed at a fixed rate for the life of the copyright. Since we don't want to have a bunch of auditors looking stuff over to make sure that people stated a reasonable value, there needs to be a balance some how. The balance is that the copyright holder can be paid the stated value and the IP then becomes public domain. The IP holder should be allowed to change the value of thier IP if they chose. If they stop paying taxes on the IP, it gets reposed by the people and becomes public domain.
Here is a simple system:
Some states have property tax. IP is property, therefore it should be taxed. When I say IP I'm refering to both patents and copyright, but I suspect this concept will be most easy to implement with patents first. Now I generally don't like taxes, I don't want another government branch, and I distrust the government. This is why IP owners should be able specify what thier IP is worth. They are then taxed some flat rate, 1%, 10%, I don't know. If someone else needs to use that IP, they have the option of paying the owner the stated cost. The IP then becomes public domain.
This solution also solves the orphaned IP problem. Any IP that doesn't have a stated value after some period of time would automatically revert to public domain.
I thought about this a year or so ago. I've been trying to spread the idea around.
Yup, it is legally copyright infrigement. The issue is that none (very few...) of us accept the laws.
Maybe once the US rolls back the copyright laws, and maybe IP laws in general, to a more reasonable time period and interpertation of fair use, there won't be so many techno heads running around sticking thier touges out at the RIAA/MPAA.
Last I heard was that redwoods need to have a fire to germinate the seeds. Otherwise new tree won't grow. So is it really that redwoods are dying off, or is it that our mis-informed forest management has kept fires from going trough and letting new trees grow.
I was at Armstrong Woods a couple of weeks ago (big redwood grove out past Guernville in Sonoma county). They had actually resorted to planting new redwoods.
Let them BURN!!!! You'll actually get more trees.
At least that is what I've heard...
Our campany is just now starting to mandate that all released documents shall be in.pdf form (original word, solidworks, whatever still available). We tried to get XML accepted at our company, but we couldn't get the big wigs on board.
Everyone uses.pdf (nearly). Even big wigs can probably use.pdf. I think that once a company has realized the gain from the efficiencies of a common document platform (.pdf), big wigs will be much more likely to invest money in the deployment of.xml
Slashdot Mirror
I'm an electrical engineer who used to work at the proton accelerator at LLUMC. Here are some facts as I recall them. 1. About 70% of the patients are prostate cancer patients. You can cut it out and lose control of things related to your penis, or use protons. 2. People can walk in, get treated, walk out, play golf, all in the same day. Going to the dentist is probably worse. 3. The radiation pattern is shaped to treat the tumor A. Radiation coming out of the accelerator is one particular energy. If this was directed at the patient, it would treat a plane in the patient due to the bragg peak. B. The beam is passed through a spinning mod wheel. This looks like a bicycle wheel with really thick plastic spokes. This creates a range of proton energies which would treat a "slug" of the patient. C. A thick metal "cookie cutter" is made in the shape of the tumor so that the slug of treated tissue is the shape of the tumor. D. A wax mold that is the shape of the distal side of the tumor is made. This forms, by selectively reducing the remaining engergy of the protons, the leading edge of the radiation slug to be the shape of the tumor. 4. General, blast everywhere, radiation may be useful when the tumors have metastasized, otherwise (engineer not a doctor) protons may be better. 5. Insurance covers protons. 6. Doctors who say, "Protons are just another form of radiation, you don't want that.", are uninformed. They probably don't know the difference between #3 and #4. Go to LLUMC and get an informed opinion. 7. If I get cancer, Protons therapy will be on my list of possible treatments. 8. This type of therapy is ~20 years old. SAIC designed the particle accelerator portion of LLUMC a long time ago. Unless you haven't heard of this before, this is not news. 9. Protons can treat brain tumors that may not be accessible to surgery. (I'm foggy on the details of this. Did I mention that I'm an EE not at Dr?)
I have kdawson filtered out of slashdot view when I'm logged in. Sadly I wasn't logged in this time. What a horrible article. Overturned reversal of a dissenting opinion. I feel informed.
Ya, I had this idea a while ago too. We should roll it back so that people would have to apply for the copyright. At the time of application, they would state the value of the IP. They would then be taxed at a fixed rate for the life of the copyright. Since we don't want to have a bunch of auditors looking stuff over to make sure that people stated a reasonable value, there needs to be a balance some how. The balance is that the copyright holder can be paid the stated value and the IP then becomes public domain. The IP holder should be allowed to change the value of thier IP if they chose. If they stop paying taxes on the IP, it gets reposed by the people and becomes public domain.
Here is a simple system: Some states have property tax. IP is property, therefore it should be taxed. When I say IP I'm refering to both patents and copyright, but I suspect this concept will be most easy to implement with patents first. Now I generally don't like taxes, I don't want another government branch, and I distrust the government. This is why IP owners should be able specify what thier IP is worth. They are then taxed some flat rate, 1%, 10%, I don't know. If someone else needs to use that IP, they have the option of paying the owner the stated cost. The IP then becomes public domain. This solution also solves the orphaned IP problem. Any IP that doesn't have a stated value after some period of time would automatically revert to public domain. I thought about this a year or so ago. I've been trying to spread the idea around.
Only $5, but that infinitely more than usual. Please donate...
Doesn't the US legal system strip certain IP / copyright / something from companies when they selectively enforce?
Yup, it is legally copyright infrigement. The issue is that none (very few...) of us accept the laws. Maybe once the US rolls back the copyright laws, and maybe IP laws in general, to a more reasonable time period and interpertation of fair use, there won't be so many techno heads running around sticking thier touges out at the RIAA/MPAA.
Last I heard was that redwoods need to have a fire to germinate the seeds. Otherwise new tree won't grow. So is it really that redwoods are dying off, or is it that our mis-informed forest management has kept fires from going trough and letting new trees grow. I was at Armstrong Woods a couple of weeks ago (big redwood grove out past Guernville in Sonoma county). They had actually resorted to planting new redwoods. Let them BURN!!!! You'll actually get more trees. At least that is what I've heard...
Our campany is just now starting to mandate that all released documents shall be in .pdf form (original word, solidworks, whatever still available). We tried to get XML accepted at our company, but we couldn't get the big wigs on board.
.pdf (nearly). Even big wigs can probably use .pdf. I think that once a company has realized the gain from the efficiencies of a common document platform (.pdf), big wigs will be much more likely to invest money in the deployment of .xml
Everyone uses