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User: demonlapin

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  1. Re:But... on The World's Most Wasteful Megacity · · Score: 1

    Quite a lot of them in the outer boroughs, just not in Manhattan.

  2. Re:25% deflation? Amateurs, I tell you! on Bitcoin Is Disrupting the Argentine Economy · · Score: 1

    It's the reverse trade that points out the real value of this business: the steady stream of people who are willing to sell pesos to buy BTC. Those would be wealthy Argentines trying to get their bank accounts out of the country without the government getting a share. You charge them a modest fee (say, 10%) and you can provide your dollars->pesos service for free (because you can only offshore money as quickly as you can get dollars to trade).

  3. Re:$100 billion for 150 miles? on Maglev Train Exceeds 600km/h For World Record · · Score: 1

    Why do you think you're going to be able to skip the taxi ride? You're not going to pull into Penn Station unless this thing can seamlessly convert onto standard rolling stock. And what would you do in LA without a car?

  4. Re: Wow on George Lucas Building Low-Income Housing Next Door To Millionaires · · Score: 1

    ... because these days, Memphis is renowned as a center of governmental excellence, low crime rates, and substantial wealth.

  5. Re: Wow on George Lucas Building Low-Income Housing Next Door To Millionaires · · Score: 1

    Because doing so would distribute the residents of the project all over town. Ask Memphis how well that worked out.

  6. I agree, but I don't trust the state enough to give them that power.

  7. Well written, and you even put your Latin in the accusative case.

  8. Somewhat disturbingly, no. As a general rule, you can only sue the government if it lets you do so. If you get railroaded by a prosecutor, your only recourse in most instances is to convince the legislature to grant you a sum of money. The state doesn't even have to give you a cab ride into town from the prison.

  9. Re:Usability metrics, anyone? on Kludgey Electronic Health Records Are Becoming Fodder For Malpractice Suits · · Score: 1

    I don't work for free. You want to increase my workload so your hospital can save money? Pay me.

  10. Re:No new treatments? on How Brain Pacemakers Treat Parkinson's Disease · · Score: 1

    Don't get me started on that subject.

  11. Re:No new treatments? on How Brain Pacemakers Treat Parkinson's Disease · · Score: 1

    That's improving delivery, not improving the drug. It's still an ugly hack of a drug - one that I'm glad we have, but an ugly hack. Pyridostigmine for myasthenia gravis falls in the same category. If you want to see a synaptic-effect drug that is a real advance, look at sugammadex for reversal of aminosteroid paralytics.

  12. Re:Usability metrics, anyone? on Kludgey Electronic Health Records Are Becoming Fodder For Malpractice Suits · · Score: 1

    "I would love an EMR that makes my job easy."

    Well, no kidding. Isn't that the whole point of automation - making our jobs easier? What would be the state of the automotive industry if cars were slower than walking?

    This is usually heard from doctors who are upset they have to actually take five minutes to put in what they mean

    Look, you want to take potshots at doctors, feel free. God complex/prima donna? Yeah, sure, it happens. I've done it myself, though I'm not proud of it. But is lazy really the right word for people who spend seven to twelve years after college just laying the groundwork for a career?

    It is beyond idiotic that physicians are expected to work as data entry clerks. Thirty years ago, a doctor could grab a couple of nurses on the floor and make rounds with them, dictating orders as they went. The nurses had the opportunity to ask questions about orders that seem strange right then and there, and the doctor could clarify them so that everyone knew what was going on. If a family member came by later in the day, the nurse already knew the doctor's reasoning for a treatment plan and could tell them without having to make a phone call requesting that I speak to Mr. So-and-So's brother. Even better, the nurses could save up all their less-important questions for that once-a-day interaction, saving everyone a lot of time. Now, the doctors are expected to enter all of those orders themselves, in a clunky system that takes upwards of a minute of dedicated time to enter a set of standing orders with no options changed from default. Multiply by sixty patients a day...

    Of course, not only do they not want to spend time to figure out and plan a new workflow, they often don't want to actually spend time and figure out their current workflow. They just hand everything off to the computer people who don't know why they do anything, but are just told to duplicate it.

    Well, the computer people are paid to do that sort of thing. I'm not. I mean, sure, if you want to pay me a consultant's fee, I'll sit down and really analyze my workflow and tell you what I think is going on, and how I think it could be improved, but I'm not a systems analyst, a programmer, or an IT guy, so there's no real reason to think that my input is particularly valuable in itself. Paying someone to follow me around and watch me work would make a lot more sense.

  13. Re:Usability metrics, anyone? on Kludgey Electronic Health Records Are Becoming Fodder For Malpractice Suits · · Score: 1

    A hybrid system in which paper charts are scanned in at discharge and available for review in a computer system offer something like 95+% of the value of a full EMR from a clinician's point of view. Not necessarily from a data miner's, but since I get paid to be a clinician and don't get paid for the mined data, I don't have a lot of interest in increasing my own workload so the hospital can make more money. Especially as I'm not a hospital employee.

  14. Re:Usability metrics, anyone? on Kludgey Electronic Health Records Are Becoming Fodder For Malpractice Suits · · Score: 1

    I would love an EMR that was as efficient as a paper record.

  15. Re:Not surprising on Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout For Swype · · Score: 1

    You're thinking of electronic typewriters, perhaps. Electromechanical typewriters include the Selectric and that Smith-Corona - the keys mechanically engage certain clutches and drive systems, which allows the motor to drive the hammer(s) for the appropriate key. The motor was always running.

  16. Re:Graffiti? on Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout For Swype · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but Grafitti was pretty good and you could get away with using less screen real estate than modern on-screen keyboards if you implemented it. You'd need HP's permission, though.

  17. Re:Not surprising on Finding an Optimal Keyboard Layout For Swype · · Score: 1

    I doubt many people here under the age of, oh, thirty or so have ever used a typewriter, let alone one that was capable of jamming. Selectrics didn't, daisy wheels didn't. The last one I used that could jam was my dad's mid-70s Smith-Corona portable.

  18. Re:But....Profits! on The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid · · Score: 1

    You live in northern Europe, though, right? Where it basically never gets very hot or very cold, and the yearly mean temperature is such that the heat generated by a few humans going about their day is enough to keep it comfortable inside? Our summers are upper 30s Celsius nearly every day. It is not at all uncommon to go two or three months without the ambient temperature ever dropping below 20 C. In winter, typical daytime highs are low teens C with lows in low single digits, but with occasional drops to around -10 C. Typical power usage then is around 1/5 of peak summer load, although the gas usage for heating means that total utility bills are not much changed.

  19. Re:But....Profits! on The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid · · Score: 1

    So you keep electric load low by using non-electric heating and living somewhere with a very mild, dry climate. That's a great solution, if you live somewhere with a mild, dry climate. I don't.

    It's spring here, which means it's pollen season, so even if I wanted to take advantage of days with cool air outside I couldn't do so without turning every surface in the house yellow. My house is well-insulated, and it's painted white, and I use LED's as much as I can, but there's little I can do given that the climate here is basically "subtropical swamp".

  20. Re:But....Profits! on The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid · · Score: 1

    Should have put this in other comment, but: let's round 10 kWh/d up to 12 kWh/d to make the math easy. That is equivalent to 500W continuous load, or a mere 4 Ampere at 120 V. How the hell do you keep load that low?

  21. Re:But....Profits! on The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid · · Score: 1

    It's a ballpark, but $300/mo power bill at roughly $0.10/kWh (actually slightly cheaper, but not enough to worry about) means 3000 kWh/mo, or 100/day. Southeastern US, air conditioning is most of the bill. And here, air conditioning really is air conditioning, as neither dehumidification nor cooling would be adequate alone,

  22. Re:But....Profits! on The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid · · Score: 2

    Sounds like bullshit, or you live in Santa Monica and don't actually need that central air for cooling. I use around 100 kWh per day in peak of summer; you can pull that much out of 30 batteries for three days straight?

  23. Re:The states... on Powdered Alcohol Banned In Six States · · Score: 1

    You can buy liquor 24/7 in Louisiana, at any kind of store - convenience store, Walgreens, grocery store, etc. Check out the first exit in LA on any interstate highway, you're going to find a gas station/liquor store. Back in the early nineties, their legal alcohol age was still 18; I smuggled $400 of booze back from Christmas break my freshman year.

  24. Re:oh jeez. on World's Largest Aircraft Seeks Investors To Begin Operation · · Score: 1

    most places in the US are limited to 55mph

    Maybe in the Northeast, but not generally true across the country, and especially not so out West, where 75 is normal on freeways. In Texas, the speed limit tends to be 70 even on two-lane roads.

  25. Re:it could have been an accident on Germanwings Plane Crash Was No Accident · · Score: 1

    Christ, some people have no sense of humor.