Unfortunately that kind of thinking which you condemn is present in just about every facet of industry and society. It's called CYA (Cover Your Ass). Its why we have to take off our shoes at the airport, its why doctors order unnecessary tests, its why millions of tons of "expired" food is destroyed every year, its what runs the Legislative and Executive branches, its why we are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, its...
A PDA derivative of the iPhone could essentially be the "Newton II". Here is why:
1. The hardware, OS, and interface are pretty mature (most current PDAs are lacking in one of those dept's) 2. It would explain why Apple is not allowing 3rd party apps for the iPhone (it would be a "Newton II" exclusive) and why they have painstakingly removed most PDA "features" from the Touch. 3. Being based on OS X, it would be trivial developing new applications for the "Newton II".
Essentially having a customer remove the supported OS wipes them of all support responsibilities. Even gross hardware failures will probably be blamed on the new OS (likely Linux). Imagine your call to Dell Support because your optical drive blew up:
Dell: How can we help you? Mr. Vista Free: My DVD burner exploded. Dell: Right-click on the DVD drive and click "Properties". Mr. Vista Free: I'm using Ubuntu. Dell: Right-click on the icon please. Mr. Vista Free: My friggin DVD drive exploded! Dell: Please download the updated Vista drivers. Mr. Vista Free: I run Ubuntu and besides I don't need drivers! I need a fire extinguisher! Dell: Well please go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and uninstall Ubuntu. That might be causing the problem. Mr. Vista Free: LISTEN YOU DAMN CU... (head explodes)
One important point that I think the article and the critique fails to mention is the claim that laparoscopic skill trainers (and by extension video games) decrease intra-op complications/deaths. The author sites two previous articles that define the objective measures of laparoscopic skill which are tested by these trainers but it has yet to be proven whether improving these objective measures has any outcome at all on operative outcomes/complication rates.
So essentially they proved that video games improved surgeons' scores on objective measures of laparoscopic skill but the objective measures of laparoscopic skill have yet to be shown to improve surgical outcome.
P.S. - for those too lazy to read the article, the video games they used were Super Monkey Ball 2 (Gamecube), Star Wars Racer Revenge (PS2), and Silent Scope (Xbox). Sorry, no Trauma Center...
I'm tired of reading all these useless posts about stuff that someone thinks they might be able to do. From the article, there is no "snail-bot", muchless one that "glides through intestines". Completely misleading title and useless post. With no proof of concept, it's little more than educated-daydreaming.
On the other hand, I'm working on a new robot that "swims" through blood vessels and "eats" bad cholesterol. So far I've designed a fin that "might" make the (nonexistantant) robot swim, but I'm still "working on" creating the robot and how to get it to eat only the bad cholesterol. Celebrate me.
Just a thought but this could be a strategic plan for Microsoft. How so?
1. This causes a huge swell in memberships to the WMA services (Napster, Yahoo! and URGE) before their launch of Zune. Looks good on paper and looks good for Wall Street. Not to mention they patch the hole shortly thereafter...
2. They significantly disrupt the other WMA services (since they won't be needed anymore after Zune product launch?).
3. They get a ton of people to adopt WMA, fix the hole, and then hope people say "this ain't so bad, I might just pay for the service and/or a player to avoid the inconvenience of converting/rebuilding my collection on the iPod platform".
4. Build a "blacklist" of IPs/computers prone to piracy.
5. Build a marketing list of people who likely object to FairPlay.
6. Great publicity stunt for WMA, it's services and devices (bad press is better than no press?).
7. Excellent way to grab marketshare from iTMS and not at their own expense (unless the RIAA tries to recoup it's losses from MSFT).
I think the original poster might be wrong about Google's ability to filter. There's a difference blocking suggestions for the keyword "porn" and blocking only the "illegal" suggestions for "ServersCheck". Going by the logic in the post, Google could probably only easily block *all* sugggestions for "ServersCheck", not just the illegal ones. I'm pretty sure the software company wouldn't like that option...
While most likely the 360 will lose sales after the PS3 launch, here are a couple reasons why it might not:
1. There are those that are waiting to compare the 360 to the PS3 before they buy their next-gen console. If when the PS3 is released it doesn't live up to the hype, those people will make the investment in the 360, with more piece of mind that there's nothing better coming just around the corner.
2. If the (as yet unspecified) price of the PS3 is ridiculously high compared to the 360, some people who were waiting for the PS3 might just say "fuck it, I'll get the 360 and six games for the price of the PS3 which is only marginally better".
This is all conjecture as we all don't know whether the PS3 will blow the 360 out of the water or just on paper and just how much the price differential will be.
AMD keeps making processors that run hotter and hotter and they get applauded for including adequate cooling this time? Please. It's kind of retarded to worry about desktop processor size when the *mandatory* cooling device is the size of a brick. It's like saying you developed a new optical disc the size of a postage stamp that holds 1000x times more information than a CD *BUT* the drive to read such media fills a garage...
How come noone has mentioned flash media? What's the lifespan of your data on that 1GB thumb drive? Seems perfect because there are now moving parts to fail.
Why is everybody so excited about using Bittorrent as a means for a commercial enterprise to distribute media?
I mean why would anyone want to have to install and setup another piece of software, load it up, and then share your bandwidth in the hopes that everyone else is doing the same so that your download can be a little faster?
I don't know about you but I would definitely prefer that the damn company increase their download bandwidth so that they can support thousands of users direct-downloading their material at speeds similar to a heavily seeded BT file without worrying about how many people are actually seeding the file.
Of course this is not a perfect world and most companies would not shell out the extra bucks to increase their bandwidth when they have a somewhat free alternative that shifts the costs/burden to you. But it gets even better for them when we have a bunch of BT cheerleaders who try to make it sound like it's a good thing for us!
These companies are not doing us any favors by distributing via BT. The stuff is either promotional or content you paid for. Why help them profit when they are too cheap to spend $$$ on the better distribution model (that being direct downloads)?
The backend of Vista might be rough but of all the MIS software my collegues and I have used, Vista ranks at the top. It's actually seen as one of the benefits in working in the VA healthsystem.
Our city health corporation (NYC) uses a commercial product called Misys which is universally despised by anyone that comes close to it (well maybe not the backend people).
Why do we like Vista? It allows us a lot more freedom in terms of entering notes and orders. Also reviewing the medical record is A LOT more intuitive than with most commercial offerings.
...and to save you all time, follow this link so you can activate this new security feature here: www.bankofamericaz.com or www.bnakofamerica.com if the first site is too busy.
Maybe that should be rephrased "Why should we care?" Is there any utility in having a 3D map versus a 2D one? Yeah it's cool and all, but there is no practical purpose to the overwhelming majority of the population (just like the satellite maps)...
Yeah there are other email services but just like any other significant form of interpersonal communication, people have to have a certain level of dependence on it as it is not a trivial matter to change/redirect your emails in situations like this.
It is completely reasonable to "flip out" if your voice, your cell phone, your IM, or in this case, your email doesn't work for several hours and you have no idea how long it's going to take for it to come back.
Of course maybe if you are a complete loser then noone would really care that you keep changing email addresses every time your server goes down...
I wish the original source of the story didn't reveal how they happened on the classified information. Who knows how much more juicy classified info might have come out in future PDFs...
I remember learning Pascal in high school for my AP (advanced placement) computer science class. If I remember correctly, the final exam was based around that language. Are they still using Pascal for the test?
Today we gained a new astronaut and also lost one. Anyone know exactly how many people have made it into space? (living and dead [not counting Carl Sagan])?
I *was* a Verizon customer for POTS and DSL. I was spending approx $22/month for their cheapest plan ("message-rate" where I pay $.09 per outgoing call with NO calling features) just so I could get the damn DSL ($35/month). I averaged about 5 outgoing calls a month.
This prompted me to recently switch to Cablevision (Optimum) for their $90/month package deal of basic digital cable, cable modem service and VOIP (unlimited local/long distance with all the premium calling features).
When I called Verizon to disconnect my phone service, of course the CSR asked me why and I told her because of VOIP. She then proceeded to ask me if Cablevision explained to me about not getting "911" or "0" service, that I couldn't make a call if the power is out, and that since my calls are "going over the internet" it was "less secure" than a regular line. I mockingly replied "Hell yeah!".
I sure hope she does as good a job FUD'ing her own company's VoiceWing service as she did for Cablevision.
On "installation" day, the Cablevision guy couldn't get the VOIP part working. So he calls local support and after being put on hold for 15mins while the tech "looked into it", the tech returns with the brilliant suggestion of trying a new modem. After trying two different Motorola VOIP cable modems with no success and another 10mins on hold the tech transfers him to the national support center. He waits another 15mins on hold to be connected to a "national" tech just to be told by the tech that "field guys" can't talk directly to the national tech guys and that only the local techs can talk to the national techs then *CLICK*. He then calls local support again, where finally a different tech tells him that VOIP has been down for 1hr and doesn't know when it will be back up.
Total time for cable modem and cable TV setup (including running wires, etc.) = 30min. Total VOIP setup time = 90min. (and it still wasn't working when the cable guy left). Finally about an hour later the service came back up.
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Take your pick. Either way you lose and it ain't even election day yet...
Yes, increased portability is behind the success of the iPod and other portable players. However take a look around you the next time you're riding the train, taking the bus or walking down a busy street: count how many people who are actually listening to ANYTHING, be it a MP3 player or even a portable CD player (excluding cell phones). Chances are it will be less than 1 in 10 (even for here in NYC).
The portability market is finite, and it has just about reached the saturation point. People in general only listen to recorded music in 3 places: home, the office, and the car. The first two of which do not benefit from increased portability. Who cares if the listening device+media is as big as a brick or as small as a postage stamp in their home/office?
This brings me to the car. The only portability that benefits the car listener is the ease of transferring and listening to one's music (which for the overwhelming majority of the population is on CD or cassette) from the home/office to the car and vice versa in the least steps possible. Right now the simplest way is a two step process: #1:take CD from home/office unit, #2:place in car stereo. In all the different portability solutions available, none comes close to rivaling the ease of use of the CD solution.
Well actually, one solution comes close: those people that download ALL their music, place it directly to a memory card and then plug it into a car stereo that accepts that memory card/compression format. This is very unlikely to take off as it requires a fundamental shift in the physical media used to distribute recorded music to the "non-connected people" aka "the buying public". Why? Because if the original source of the music is on a CD, that automatically adds another (time-consuming) step to the process (converting from CDDA to whatever file format becomes the next big thing).
Other than the glaringly obvious advantage of getting something for free (that isn't), MP3 succeeded because it brought us greater ACCESSIBILITY to our music. Mr. Home/Office/Car Listener could now get (timely) access to exactly the music he wants without having to leave his home/office. It wasn't (and still is not) because he could carry his whole collection in a nifty little device that fits in his shirt pocket, he just burns the music (uncompressed) to CD anyway.
The majority of the public does not need increased portability (the MiniDisc fiasco should have tipped the industry off to that). We need increased ACCESSIBILITY: getting the music I want, where I want (which for most of us is just the home/office/car), when I want (which is NOW).
The compression/the device/the size/the method of transmission/the protection is insignificant to me, just MAKE IT HAPPEN in as few steps as possible. Right now their is only one ubiquitous digital device (other than the CD player) that could serve as a point of access to OUR music, and you probably already know what it is:
As I clearly stated: "Tzakis likely only had to join this single unit of organs (the liver+stomach+pancreas+spleen+small bowel+large bowel)... and then probably about another 4 anastamoses for blood supply." I made no mention of the kidneys.
I assume the entire celiac trunk was taken, it wouldn't make sense to take it more distal, it would just increase the complexity.
Also it is not necessary to take the IMA as enough collateral flow is available from the SMA to supply this young hindgut. Ligation of the IMA occurs in many colorectal cases without any ill effect.
As I said before, if you consider the adrenal gland an organ, then the gall bladder and appendix should also be considered organs. What is your criteria for calling something an organ?
Yes, I agree the adrenal gland is important, but unless you believe in the walking dead, there are quite a few people living without both adrenals and many more without functioning adrenals.
And again, taking the kidney without the adrenal is just generally not done. I seriously doubt there was any indication for Tzakis and collegues to do a bilateral adrenalectomy when doing the donor nephrectomies. It's more work and rarely neccessary.
You can live very happily (quite subjective) without several of your organs, but it is never used (and should never be used) as a contraindication for transplant.
Anyways, my point was not to argue the relative value of one organ vs. another or whether Tzakis should have taken both kidneys, the fact is that regardless of what criteria you use to count the number of organs transplanted, Tzakis beat the Germans.
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It's a sad state of affairs when your service pack needs a service pack. What ever happened to quality control?!?
Unfortunately that kind of thinking which you condemn is present in just about every facet of industry and society. It's called CYA (Cover Your Ass). Its why we have to take off our shoes at the airport, its why doctors order unnecessary tests, its why millions of tons of "expired" food is destroyed every year, its what runs the Legislative and Executive branches, its why we are still in Afghanistan and Iraq, its...
A PDA derivative of the iPhone could essentially be the "Newton II". Here is why:
1. The hardware, OS, and interface are pretty mature (most current PDAs are lacking in one of those dept's)
2. It would explain why Apple is not allowing 3rd party apps for the iPhone (it would be a "Newton II" exclusive) and why they have painstakingly removed most PDA "features" from the Touch.
3. Being based on OS X, it would be trivial developing new applications for the "Newton II".
Dell: How can we help you?
Mr. Vista Free: My DVD burner exploded.
Dell: Right-click on the DVD drive and click "Properties".
Mr. Vista Free: I'm using Ubuntu.
Dell: Right-click on the icon please.
Mr. Vista Free: My friggin DVD drive exploded!
Dell: Please download the updated Vista drivers.
Mr. Vista Free: I run Ubuntu and besides I don't need drivers! I need a fire extinguisher!
Dell: Well please go to Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and uninstall Ubuntu. That might be causing the problem.
Mr. Vista Free: LISTEN YOU DAMN CU... (head explodes)
So essentially they proved that video games improved surgeons' scores on objective measures of laparoscopic skill but the objective measures of laparoscopic skill have yet to be shown to improve surgical outcome.
P.S. - for those too lazy to read the article, the video games they used were Super Monkey Ball 2 (Gamecube), Star Wars Racer Revenge (PS2), and Silent Scope (Xbox). Sorry, no Trauma Center...
On the other hand, I'm working on a new robot that "swims" through blood vessels and "eats" bad cholesterol. So far I've designed a fin that "might" make the (nonexistantant) robot swim, but I'm still "working on" creating the robot and how to get it to eat only the bad cholesterol. Celebrate me.
Just a thought but this could be a strategic plan for Microsoft. How so?
1. This causes a huge swell in memberships to the WMA services (Napster, Yahoo! and URGE) before their launch of Zune. Looks good on paper and looks good for Wall Street. Not to mention they patch the hole shortly thereafter...
2. They significantly disrupt the other WMA services (since they won't be needed anymore after Zune product launch?).
3. They get a ton of people to adopt WMA, fix the hole, and then hope people say "this ain't so bad, I might just pay for the service and/or a player to avoid the inconvenience of converting/rebuilding my collection on the iPod platform".
4. Build a "blacklist" of IPs/computers prone to piracy.
5. Build a marketing list of people who likely object to FairPlay.
6. Great publicity stunt for WMA, it's services and devices (bad press is better than no press?).
7. Excellent way to grab marketshare from iTMS and not at their own expense (unless the RIAA tries to recoup it's losses from MSFT).
Any other suggestions?
I think the original poster might be wrong about Google's ability to filter. There's a difference blocking suggestions for the keyword "porn" and blocking only the "illegal" suggestions for "ServersCheck". Going by the logic in the post, Google could probably only easily block *all* sugggestions for "ServersCheck", not just the illegal ones. I'm pretty sure the software company wouldn't like that option...
1. There are those that are waiting to compare the 360 to the PS3 before they buy their next-gen console. If when the PS3 is released it doesn't live up to the hype, those people will make the investment in the 360, with more piece of mind that there's nothing better coming just around the corner.
2. If the (as yet unspecified) price of the PS3 is ridiculously high compared to the 360, some people who were waiting for the PS3 might just say "fuck it, I'll get the 360 and six games for the price of the PS3 which is only marginally better".
This is all conjecture as we all don't know whether the PS3 will blow the 360 out of the water or just on paper and just how much the price differential will be.
Scaled Composites has the "White Knight", SpaceX has the "Dragon", what's next? The "Grand Wizard" orbiting space station?
AMD keeps making processors that run hotter and hotter and they get applauded for including adequate cooling this time? Please. It's kind of retarded to worry about desktop processor size when the *mandatory* cooling device is the size of a brick. It's like saying you developed a new optical disc the size of a postage stamp that holds 1000x times more information than a CD *BUT* the drive to read such media fills a garage...
How come noone has mentioned flash media? What's the lifespan of your data on that 1GB thumb drive? Seems perfect because there are now moving parts to fail.
I mean why would anyone want to have to install and setup another piece of software, load it up, and then share your bandwidth in the hopes that everyone else is doing the same so that your download can be a little faster?
I don't know about you but I would definitely prefer that the damn company increase their download bandwidth so that they can support thousands of users direct-downloading their material at speeds similar to a heavily seeded BT file without worrying about how many people are actually seeding the file.
Of course this is not a perfect world and most companies would not shell out the extra bucks to increase their bandwidth when they have a somewhat free alternative that shifts the costs/burden to you. But it gets even better for them when we have a bunch of BT cheerleaders who try to make it sound like it's a good thing for us!
These companies are not doing us any favors by distributing via BT. The stuff is either promotional or content you paid for. Why help them profit when they are too cheap to spend $$$ on the better distribution model (that being direct downloads)?
What OS did Amigas run (don't tell me they called it Amigos)? What was it based on? Also why was the OS "far ahead of its time"?
Our city health corporation (NYC) uses a commercial product called Misys which is universally despised by anyone that comes close to it (well maybe not the backend people).
Why do we like Vista? It allows us a lot more freedom in terms of entering notes and orders. Also reviewing the medical record is A LOT more intuitive than with most commercial offerings.
Don't say I never did anything for you...
Maybe that should be rephrased "Why should we care?" Is there any utility in having a 3D map versus a 2D one? Yeah it's cool and all, but there is no practical purpose to the overwhelming majority of the population (just like the satellite maps)...
It is completely reasonable to "flip out" if your voice, your cell phone, your IM, or in this case, your email doesn't work for several hours and you have no idea how long it's going to take for it to come back.
Of course maybe if you are a complete loser then noone would really care that you keep changing email addresses every time your server goes down...
I wish the original source of the story didn't reveal how they happened on the classified information. Who knows how much more juicy classified info might have come out in future PDFs...
I remember learning Pascal in high school for my AP (advanced placement) computer science class. If I remember correctly, the final exam was based around that language. Are they still using Pascal for the test?
Today we gained a new astronaut and also lost one. Anyone know exactly how many people have made it into space? (living and dead [not counting Carl Sagan])?
This prompted me to recently switch to Cablevision (Optimum) for their $90/month package deal of basic digital cable, cable modem service and VOIP (unlimited local/long distance with all the premium calling features).
When I called Verizon to disconnect my phone service, of course the CSR asked me why and I told her because of VOIP. She then proceeded to ask me if Cablevision explained to me about not getting "911" or "0" service, that I couldn't make a call if the power is out, and that since my calls are "going over the internet" it was "less secure" than a regular line. I mockingly replied "Hell yeah!".
I sure hope she does as good a job FUD'ing her own company's VoiceWing service as she did for Cablevision.
On "installation" day, the Cablevision guy couldn't get the VOIP part working. So he calls local support and after being put on hold for 15mins while the tech "looked into it", the tech returns with the brilliant suggestion of trying a new modem. After trying two different Motorola VOIP cable modems with no success and another 10mins on hold the tech transfers him to the national support center. He waits another 15mins on hold to be connected to a "national" tech just to be told by the tech that "field guys" can't talk directly to the national tech guys and that only the local techs can talk to the national techs then *CLICK*. He then calls local support again, where finally a different tech tells him that VOIP has been down for 1hr and doesn't know when it will be back up.
Total time for cable modem and cable TV setup (including running wires, etc.) = 30min. Total VOIP setup time = 90min. (and it still wasn't working when the cable guy left). Finally about an hour later the service came back up.
Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Take your pick. Either way you lose and it ain't even election day yet...
Yes, increased portability is behind the success of the iPod and other portable players. However take a look around you the next time you're riding the train, taking the bus or walking down a busy street: count how many people who are actually listening to ANYTHING, be it a MP3 player or even a portable CD player (excluding cell phones). Chances are it will be less than 1 in 10 (even for here in NYC).
The portability market is finite, and it has just about reached the saturation point. People in general only listen to recorded music in 3 places: home, the office, and the car. The first two of which do not benefit from increased portability. Who cares if the listening device+media is as big as a brick or as small as a postage stamp in their home/office?
This brings me to the car. The only portability that benefits the car listener is the ease of transferring and listening to one's music (which for the overwhelming majority of the population is on CD or cassette) from the home/office to the car and vice versa in the least steps possible. Right now the simplest way is a two step process: #1:take CD from home/office unit, #2:place in car stereo. In all the different portability solutions available, none comes close to rivaling the ease of use of the CD solution.
Well actually, one solution comes close: those people that download ALL their music, place it directly to a memory card and then plug it into a car stereo that accepts that memory card/compression format. This is very unlikely to take off as it requires a fundamental shift in the physical media used to distribute recorded music to the "non-connected people" aka "the buying public". Why? Because if the original source of the music is on a CD, that automatically adds another (time-consuming) step to the process (converting from CDDA to whatever file format becomes the next big thing).
Other than the glaringly obvious advantage of getting something for free (that isn't), MP3 succeeded because it brought us greater ACCESSIBILITY to our music. Mr. Home/Office/Car Listener could now get (timely) access to exactly the music he wants without having to leave his home/office. It wasn't (and still is not) because he could carry his whole collection in a nifty little device that fits in his shirt pocket, he just burns the music (uncompressed) to CD anyway.
The majority of the public does not need increased portability (the MiniDisc fiasco should have tipped the industry off to that). We need increased ACCESSIBILITY: getting the music I want, where I want (which for most of us is just the home/office/car), when I want (which is NOW).
The compression/the device/the size/the method of transmission/the protection is insignificant to me, just MAKE IT HAPPEN in as few steps as possible. Right now their is only one ubiquitous digital device (other than the CD player) that could serve as a point of access to OUR music, and you probably already know what it is:
The cell phone.
Anyone listening?
As I clearly stated: "Tzakis likely only had to join this single unit of organs (the liver+stomach+pancreas+spleen+small bowel+large bowel) ... and then probably about another 4 anastamoses for blood supply." I made no mention of the kidneys.
I assume the entire celiac trunk was taken, it wouldn't make sense to take it more distal, it would just increase the complexity.
Also it is not necessary to take the IMA as enough collateral flow is available from the SMA to supply this young hindgut. Ligation of the IMA occurs in many colorectal cases without any ill effect.
As I said before, if you consider the adrenal gland an organ, then the gall bladder and appendix should also be considered organs. What is your criteria for calling something an organ?
Yes, I agree the adrenal gland is important, but unless you believe in the walking dead, there are quite a few people living without both adrenals and many more without functioning adrenals.
And again, taking the kidney without the adrenal is just generally not done. I seriously doubt there was any indication for Tzakis and collegues to do a bilateral adrenalectomy when doing the donor nephrectomies. It's more work and rarely neccessary.
You can live very happily (quite subjective) without several of your organs, but it is never used (and should never be used) as a contraindication for transplant.
Anyways, my point was not to argue the relative value of one organ vs. another or whether Tzakis should have taken both kidneys, the fact is that regardless of what criteria you use to count the number of organs transplanted, Tzakis beat the Germans.