I used to sell computers at Future Shop (a shitty Canadian retailer ala Best Buy in the US)
FYI, Future Shop is owned by Best Buy, and Best Buy has just started opening its own branded stores in Canada. Either they intend to fake some consumer choice in discount electronics by pretending to compete with themselves, or they are planning on eventually getting rid of the Future Shop label entirely.
For the record, I have been thoroughly unimpressed with the new local Best Buy. Not that I was ever too pleased with the Future Shop, either...
A 30-mHz range is plenty for audio and some radio work...
What kind of radio operates at 0.033 cycles per second?
Sorry. Couldn't resist. I ran across a problem like this a little while during a convesation with--surprise!--physicists. In discussing the kinetic energy of some particle, they said "It's about 25 em ee vee". I said, "That's ridiculous. There's no way it could have that kind of energy at room temperature." It took a little while to realize that they were talking meV, and I was thinking MeV. Oh well. What's nine orders of magnitude to a physicist? (The answer to that rhetorical question is all too often, "a pretty good guess.")
I know I used to have pain in my hands after long coding sessions at work on Querty...
The biggest problem is the long reach to the backspace key. After developing carpal tunnel syndrome, it's just not worth the trouble to reach over and retype QWERTY correctly.
How hard is it to spell, really? You just have to roll your hand across the top row of the keyboard...
Would you prefer to listen to Beethoven with a Walkman on the subway? It's still good music, but the quality of the experience is still much better if you see it live in a real concert hall.
I expect LOTR:TTT will be an excellent film on large or small screens, but a theatre-sized screen and surround sound will add to the experience. The movie was filmed with a proper theatre in mind--moving to another venue and a lossier format will cost you some of the nuance.
Man, I do not want to know what you use the Chevy for!!
It was a bitch to clamp it on to my balcony railing (do you have any idea how much it costs to rent a crane these days?), but now I get wireless net access from up to three states away!
I have also added a custom novelty horn that plays whenever I have new mail.
Seriously, we will only be taken seriously if we come up with a better handle than "Scapers" -- which sounds like something halfway between scapies and scalpers. Seriously.:)
Gee, when I hear "Scaper", I think of the edged tool with which I can remove ice from a car's windshield.
Canada certainly has much more of a monolithic culture than does America. I think much of what America terms as "problems" are simply the costs of having a truly heterogenous society.
Writing as a Canadian, I'm a little concerned about your characterization of my country as monolithic. The United States, from what I'm told, is all about assimilation--a melting pot. The philosophy in Canada leans more towards a multicultural mosaic. Yes, small communities in Canada are often WASP bubbles, just like they are in the States. Urban centres have active ethnic communities, and are better for it.
I'm afraid that the disparity in the level of gun violence is not due to racial friction as you would seem to imply. Rather, it is the different attitude in Canada towards guns. For better or worse, most Canadian guns are long guns used primarily for hunting and sport shooting. Handguns are much less popular, and much less common--and also involve much more paperwork to own. There is a social stigma associated with owning a handgun up here that seems totally absent in the States.
Talk to my sister in law, who was attacked and beaten by her boyfriend, and you might get a different point of view.
This might sound cruel, but are you reading what you're writing? If there was a gun in the house, she'd probably be dead right now.
I, for one, and [sic] a huge fan of the U.S. Constitution. And that means I think the government shouldn't be able to stop me from speaking, stop me from gathering in a peaceful manner, stop me from going to church, or stop me from owning a gun for my own self-protection.
Ah, the Constitution. To restrict freedoms granted by the Constitution is to take the first step down a slippery slope to dictatorship.
Or not.
Slashdotters are generally pretty big on the First Amendment if they are American, or on their respective nations' constitutional or legislated guarantees of free speech otherwise. You still can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. You're not allowed to put up a website encouraging people to kill doctors, even ones who perform abortions.
When an individual is arrested for a crime, he or she is immediately deprived of any number of rights, despite being presumed innocent. The Eighth Amendment states, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Yet people (nominally presumed innocent until proven otherwise) are regularly held without bail before trial. You know what? In some cases, it's not a bad thing.
Rights granted under the Constitution and Amendments must be balanced against one another. As written, the First Amendment is absolute. "Congress shall make no law..." Nevertheless, limitations to its application have been considered and imposed by government and upheld by the courts.
As for the Second Amendment--are you part of a 'well regulated militia'? The world was a very different place in 1791--perhaps the time for the Second Amendment is not past, but surely our interpretation of it should have matured beyond "Everyone should have a right to guns as they see fit."
Re:Most important quote...
on
Largo Loving Linux
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· Score: 2, Redundant
Having said that, the 1.3% vs. 3% IT budget cost reduction is not all because of linux. All of that dirt cheap hardward adds up. I'm sure their bottom sure would still be significantly less than 3% even if they did use windows. Spending a couple dollars on a dumb terminal equals hugh hardware savings.
What was your plan for using Windows with the low-cost dumb terminals, again?
You have forgotten to mention the futon, the elementary force carrier for futility. Some people are futon emitters; things break down when they're around.
If that's true, we have less than a third of the pirates paying for less than a third of their music... which, if downloading is uniformly distributed, means less than 11% of all music being pirated is being paid for.
I'm confused--what are you trying to prove here? The argument cannot be that the 89% who do not pay are responsible for any drop in record sales. If the Internet did not exist, most of that 89% probably just wouldn't buy much music at all. I freely admit that I download much of the music to which I listen, infringing on copyrights held by record labels. Quite frankly, I can't afford to buy a large number of CDs that contain mostly low quality music. Back before file sharing was popular, I recorded music off the radio using analog media.
I will still buy classical music CDs. Good classical recordings have much more dynamic range than popular music (which is engineered for radio). Higher bit rate actually makes a difference, too. If there is a band with a track record of quality music, then I will shell out then, too. Twenty dollars for two good tracks is too much money, though.
I'd pay for most of what I've downloaded and delete the rest if I could pay on a track-by-track basis. Charge me ten cents for a preview track that I can listen to for (say) a few days or a week. Load it up with DRM, I don't care. Let me buy tracks for fifty cents apiece. Those should be genuine mp3s at 160 kbps, that I can copy and burn as I see fit. To really impress me let me apply the initial dime to the cost of the mp3 track. Send me a monthly bill for downloads, or perhaps I can pay a fixed amount up front and operate on a declining balance system.
I want to fairly compensate artists, but I will not be ripped off.
You are correct. "God's Signature", the string of 500x500 mostly zeroes, definitely appears within the infinite digits of full-blown pi. In fact, it does so many times.
Actually, if pi is normal, then the string we're looking for will appear an infinite number of times.
Heck, the utilities you used to pull the binary off the machine in question could have been compromised and may not be actually copying the binary in question, but a good version of the binary. The only way to check this would be to mount the drive on another machine and check it there... And if people aren't doing that (which it's a pain in the ass) all this website is going to do is give people a false sense of security.>Heck, the utilities you used to pull the binary off the machine in question could have been compromised and may not be actually copying the binary in question, but a good version of the binary.
Other replies have mentioned that it might make more sense to boot off known clean read-only media, on which you also have a copy of your checksum utility.
That said, this still provides a false sense of security. The only way to be absolutely certain that your binaries have not been compromised is the following technique:
Have all your code written by hermit programmers. They must develop their OS and all programming tools (compilers, etc.) by themselves, on a computer that has no connection to the outside world. Taking an OS from another hermit programmer is also acceptable, as long as it is conveyed by hand from one to the other.
You must know and trust all of the hermit programmers.
The hermits must live, eat, and sleep in giant vaults designed to provide physical security to them and their computers. They definitely will not have telephones.
They must develop applications from scratch--no outside data may be allowed to contaminate their pristine systems. Source code may be imported, as long as it is delivered in hard copy form and hand keyed by someone who is very security conscious.
The hermits must hand deliver the binaries of applications to you. You should have already received a copy of their pristine OS by this method.
Presto! Completely secure binaries. No trojans. No false sense of security.
Oh, unless someone finds a buffer overrun that your hermits missed. Then some kiddie will own your box. Damn.
I can't say it often enough. I love PINE. If I started get pornographic ASCII art, I'm pretty sure that most of my female coworkers would be amused, not offended.
See, those European solutions will not work in the United States because of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Not necessarily. In the United States, you're still not allowed to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. (Unless, of course, there really is a fire.) On broadcast television, you're not allowed full frontal nudity. And there are still (at least) seven words you're not allowed to say on T.V.
The Swiss don't ban advertising entirely. It is limited to print media only, however. It eliminates the ridiculous spending on television and radio advertising--print ads much less costly on both sides of the ocean. It also limits the name-calling and soundbite politics that are so popular in the United States. A newspaper ad is a useful forum where one can put forth reasoned, intelligent arguments.
The First Amendment is not utterly sacrosanct. Infringments on it are regularly tolerated, particularly with respect to what is permissible for airing on television. Indeed, as long as other widely-disseminated media are available to circulate advertising (newspapers, direct mailings, etc.) this is a very limited restriction on free speech.
I'll keep American Republic-Democracy over Swiss Democracy, after all in the US women could vote more than 80 years before they could in Switzerland, even though we are 500 years younger.
And where slavery was permitted until 1865. But I thought we were talking about campaign reform, not taking petty shots at the historical blemishes of other countries.
Having a gun doesn't mean that you are going to kill someone.
Having a program used to steal a companies intellectual property is, uh, stealing. I think the contrast between having a gun that has uses other then killing someone, and having a program that's only use is to steal from a company is quite clear.
First of all, you're changing arguments. I could just throw back, "Having an e-book reader doesn't mean that you're going to infringe Adobe's copyrights." Are those blind people who use this type of software so they can feed unencrypted text to their Braille readers thieves? Ahem. Fair use applies.
Further. A gun is a tool which may be used to kill other human beings. (Many are designed expressly for this purpose.) This is a serious criminal offense--possibly the most serious.
An e-book reader is a tool which may be used to infringe copyright, going beyond the bounds of fair use. (Some software is probably designed for this purpose.) This is a civil offense (DMCA nonsense aside.)
As a society acting through our legislative representatives, we may choose to ban one tool, or both, or neither. Which represents the greater potential harm? Which should be our legislative priority?
Incidental aside: there is an important legal distinction between theft and copyright infringement. It is only through oversimplification to the point of error that the two are equated. Similarly, theft, burglary, and robbery are all legally distinct. Don't get me started on the abuse of the word piracy, which properly involves certain crimes on the high seas. One of the things that makes it difficult to have a calm, rational discussion about intellectual property rights is the frequent, reckless use of emotionally loaded--and inaccurate--terms by zealots on both sides.
Yes, it is. *raises eyebrows in amusement; eyes twinkle* So?
I assume no responsibility for the English language developing words with overly broad definitions.
In this case, though, it's actually a relevant distinction even using its broadest definition. Graves disease (discussed in the article) and many cancers are treated using chemotherapy (treatment by chemical means) and/or radiotherapy (treatment with radiation). With radioiodine treatment of Graves disease, we're using chemical properties of a substance (iodine) to deliver active material to the target region (the thyroid). On arrival, we're doing radiotherapy to destroy part or all of the overactive thyroid. So this technique combines chemotherapy and radiotherapy--perhaps a new term 'chemoradiotherapy' should be used.
Such a term would be cut from the same cloth as 'immunoradiotherapy', mentioned earlier in this thread. (Antibodies attached to radioisotopes would bind specifically to surface antigens of malignant cells, delivering very specific radiotherapy.)
Having a quick look at impact factors (IF) for a few journals, I was surprised to note that papers in JAP (IF ~2.2) are more likely to be cited (taken collectively) than papers in any of Phil. Mag. A, B, or Lett. (IF 1.8, 1.2, and 1.5, respectively.) IF should never be used by itself to measure the quality or importance of a journal.
Still, if you're purely interested in getting cited (for good or bad) JAP is a better bet. Now, some of those citations may be self-referential, and some may be refutations. Really, though, they're all third-tier journals. Phys. Rev. Lett. is definitely more prestigious, based on reputation and IF (6.46). I would lump it in loosely with the second-tier journals. The top-tier journals (for physics discoveries) are almost universally considered to be Science (IF 23.9) and Nature (IF 25.8). These last two are in a class by themselves.
So what's the point of all this? Usually there is some correlation between the scientific importance of an article and the level of journal in which it is published. I have published a paper in a third-tier journal. It was good science and solid data, but not a particularly important result. I was happy with that--people in my field could find it and appreciate it, and I wasn't wasting too many people's time with something rather obscure.
Any author will prefer a paper in Nature to a paper in a journal from one of the lower tiers. Shrinking hydrogen atoms has just the sort of gee-whiz factor appeal that journals (and their readers) love. Further, it suggests a new realm of science. Consequently, if the author in question had solid supporting data then he would have a paper in Nature right now. You need three things for a top-flight journal article: an interesting topic, an interesting result, and rock-solid data. He's got the first two. To quote Carl Sagan:
I fully concur on your last point. Total body irradiation in preparation for a bone marrow transplant is definitely one of the least pleasant treatments in oncology--and that's a field with a lot of competition in that regard.
That said, not all radiation therapy has acutely painful side effects. Radiotherapy for localized skin lesions is often very quick and causes only mild discomfort.
Prostate cancer can be treated using conventional external beam radiotherapy with all its attendant side effects. One alternative involves inserting anywhere up to about a hundred metal-encased 'seeds' of iodine-131 into the prostate to deliver radiation in situ. The patient can return home after the one inpatient procedure.
Although I appreciate the misery of what you went through, deciding whether or not something counts as radiotherapy, or chemotherapy, or both based on how bad its side effects are doesn't hold water.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, they don't even make obsolescence like they used to. Alas.
FYI, Future Shop is owned by Best Buy, and Best Buy has just started opening its own branded stores in Canada. Either they intend to fake some consumer choice in discount electronics by pretending to compete with themselves, or they are planning on eventually getting rid of the Future Shop label entirely.
For the record, I have been thoroughly unimpressed with the new local Best Buy. Not that I was ever too pleased with the Future Shop, either...
What kind of radio operates at 0.033 cycles per second?
Sorry. Couldn't resist. I ran across a problem like this a little while during a convesation with--surprise!--physicists. In discussing the kinetic energy of some particle, they said "It's about 25 em ee vee". I said, "That's ridiculous. There's no way it could have that kind of energy at room temperature." It took a little while to realize that they were talking meV, and I was thinking MeV. Oh well. What's nine orders of magnitude to a physicist? (The answer to that rhetorical question is all too often, "a pretty good guess.")
The biggest problem is the long reach to the backspace key. After developing carpal tunnel syndrome, it's just not worth the trouble to reach over and retype QWERTY correctly.
How hard is it to spell, really? You just have to roll your hand across the top row of the keyboard...
I expect LOTR:TTT will be an excellent film on large or small screens, but a theatre-sized screen and surround sound will add to the experience. The movie was filmed with a proper theatre in mind--moving to another venue and a lossier format will cost you some of the nuance.
It was a bitch to clamp it on to my balcony railing (do you have any idea how much it costs to rent a crane these days?), but now I get wireless net access from up to three states away!
I have also added a custom novelty horn that plays whenever I have new mail.
Gee, when I hear "Scaper", I think of the edged tool with which I can remove ice from a car's windshield.
For the record, I like your comment, but I have one little nitpick.
Amino acids are left handed. DNA helices (the natural, common forms) are right handed.
Writing as a Canadian, I'm a little concerned about your characterization of my country as monolithic. The United States, from what I'm told, is all about assimilation--a melting pot. The philosophy in Canada leans more towards a multicultural mosaic. Yes, small communities in Canada are often WASP bubbles, just like they are in the States. Urban centres have active ethnic communities, and are better for it.
I'm afraid that the disparity in the level of gun violence is not due to racial friction as you would seem to imply. Rather, it is the different attitude in Canada towards guns. For better or worse, most Canadian guns are long guns used primarily for hunting and sport shooting. Handguns are much less popular, and much less common--and also involve much more paperwork to own. There is a social stigma associated with owning a handgun up here that seems totally absent in the States.
Talk to my sister in law, who was attacked and beaten by her boyfriend, and you might get a different point of view.
This might sound cruel, but are you reading what you're writing? If there was a gun in the house, she'd probably be dead right now.
Ah, the Constitution. To restrict freedoms granted by the Constitution is to take the first step down a slippery slope to dictatorship.
Or not.
Slashdotters are generally pretty big on the First Amendment if they are American, or on their respective nations' constitutional or legislated guarantees of free speech otherwise. You still can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. You're not allowed to put up a website encouraging people to kill doctors, even ones who perform abortions.
When an individual is arrested for a crime, he or she is immediately deprived of any number of rights, despite being presumed innocent. The Eighth Amendment states, "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." Yet people (nominally presumed innocent until proven otherwise) are regularly held without bail before trial. You know what? In some cases, it's not a bad thing.
Rights granted under the Constitution and Amendments must be balanced against one another. As written, the First Amendment is absolute. "Congress shall make no law..." Nevertheless, limitations to its application have been considered and imposed by government and upheld by the courts.
As for the Second Amendment--are you part of a 'well regulated militia'? The world was a very different place in 1791--perhaps the time for the Second Amendment is not past, but surely our interpretation of it should have matured beyond "Everyone should have a right to guns as they see fit."
What was your plan for using Windows with the low-cost dumb terminals, again?
Net futon absorbers just get depressed.
I'm confused--what are you trying to prove here? The argument cannot be that the 89% who do not pay are responsible for any drop in record sales. If the Internet did not exist, most of that 89% probably just wouldn't buy much music at all. I freely admit that I download much of the music to which I listen, infringing on copyrights held by record labels. Quite frankly, I can't afford to buy a large number of CDs that contain mostly low quality music. Back before file sharing was popular, I recorded music off the radio using analog media.
I will still buy classical music CDs. Good classical recordings have much more dynamic range than popular music (which is engineered for radio). Higher bit rate actually makes a difference, too. If there is a band with a track record of quality music, then I will shell out then, too. Twenty dollars for two good tracks is too much money, though.
I'd pay for most of what I've downloaded and delete the rest if I could pay on a track-by-track basis. Charge me ten cents for a preview track that I can listen to for (say) a few days or a week. Load it up with DRM, I don't care. Let me buy tracks for fifty cents apiece. Those should be genuine mp3s at 160 kbps, that I can copy and burn as I see fit. To really impress me let me apply the initial dime to the cost of the mp3 track. Send me a monthly bill for downloads, or perhaps I can pay a fixed amount up front and operate on a declining balance system.
I want to fairly compensate artists, but I will not be ripped off.
Actually, if pi is normal, then the string we're looking for will appear an infinite number of times.
Staggering, isn't it?
Psychology is the technique you use to try to figure out where number theorists come from.
Wow. Pictures and video. It's a printed circuit board. I suppose that the video will show all kinds of hot fan action.
Other replies have mentioned that it might make more sense to boot off known clean read-only media, on which you also have a copy of your checksum utility.
That said, this still provides a false sense of security. The only way to be absolutely certain that your binaries have not been compromised is the following technique:
Have all your code written by hermit programmers. They must develop their OS and all programming tools (compilers, etc.) by themselves, on a computer that has no connection to the outside world. Taking an OS from another hermit programmer is also acceptable, as long as it is conveyed by hand from one to the other.
You must know and trust all of the hermit programmers.
The hermits must live, eat, and sleep in giant vaults designed to provide physical security to them and their computers. They definitely will not have telephones.
They must develop applications from scratch--no outside data may be allowed to contaminate their pristine systems. Source code may be imported, as long as it is delivered in hard copy form and hand keyed by someone who is very security conscious.
The hermits must hand deliver the binaries of applications to you. You should have already received a copy of their pristine OS by this method.
Presto! Completely secure binaries. No trojans. No false sense of security.
Oh, unless someone finds a buffer overrun that your hermits missed. Then some kiddie will own your box. Damn.
I can't say it often enough. I love PINE. If I started get pornographic ASCII art, I'm pretty sure that most of my female coworkers would be amused, not offended.
See, those European solutions will not work in the United States because of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Not necessarily. In the United States, you're still not allowed to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. (Unless, of course, there really is a fire.) On broadcast television, you're not allowed full frontal nudity. And there are still (at least) seven words you're not allowed to say on T.V.
The Swiss don't ban advertising entirely. It is limited to print media only, however. It eliminates the ridiculous spending on television and radio advertising--print ads much less costly on both sides of the ocean. It also limits the name-calling and soundbite politics that are so popular in the United States. A newspaper ad is a useful forum where one can put forth reasoned, intelligent arguments.
The First Amendment is not utterly sacrosanct. Infringments on it are regularly tolerated, particularly with respect to what is permissible for airing on television. Indeed, as long as other widely-disseminated media are available to circulate advertising (newspapers, direct mailings, etc.) this is a very limited restriction on free speech.
I'll keep American Republic-Democracy over Swiss Democracy, after all in the US women could vote more than 80 years before they could in Switzerland, even though we are 500 years younger.
And where slavery was permitted until 1865. But I thought we were talking about campaign reform, not taking petty shots at the historical blemishes of other countries.
As a Canadian, I can readily identify bullshit because the link to it is right next to an "It's funny. Laugh" icon.
Having a program used to steal a companies intellectual property is, uh, stealing. I think the contrast between having a gun that has uses other then killing someone, and having a program that's only use is to steal from a company is quite clear.
First of all, you're changing arguments. I could just throw back, "Having an e-book reader doesn't mean that you're going to infringe Adobe's copyrights." Are those blind people who use this type of software so they can feed unencrypted text to their Braille readers thieves? Ahem. Fair use applies.
Further. A gun is a tool which may be used to kill other human beings. (Many are designed expressly for this purpose.) This is a serious criminal offense--possibly the most serious.
An e-book reader is a tool which may be used to infringe copyright, going beyond the bounds of fair use. (Some software is probably designed for this purpose.) This is a civil offense (DMCA nonsense aside.)
As a society acting through our legislative representatives, we may choose to ban one tool, or both, or neither. Which represents the greater potential harm? Which should be our legislative priority?
Incidental aside: there is an important legal distinction between theft and copyright infringement. It is only through oversimplification to the point of error that the two are equated. Similarly, theft, burglary, and robbery are all legally distinct. Don't get me started on the abuse of the word piracy, which properly involves certain crimes on the high seas. One of the things that makes it difficult to have a calm, rational discussion about intellectual property rights is the frequent, reckless use of emotionally loaded--and inaccurate--terms by zealots on both sides.
Yes, it is. *raises eyebrows in amusement; eyes twinkle* So?
I assume no responsibility for the English language developing words with overly broad definitions.
In this case, though, it's actually a relevant distinction even using its broadest definition. Graves disease (discussed in the article) and many cancers are treated using chemotherapy (treatment by chemical means) and/or radiotherapy (treatment with radiation). With radioiodine treatment of Graves disease, we're using chemical properties of a substance (iodine) to deliver active material to the target region (the thyroid). On arrival, we're doing radiotherapy to destroy part or all of the overactive thyroid. So this technique combines chemotherapy and radiotherapy--perhaps a new term 'chemoradiotherapy' should be used.
Such a term would be cut from the same cloth as 'immunoradiotherapy', mentioned earlier in this thread. (Antibodies attached to radioisotopes would bind specifically to surface antigens of malignant cells, delivering very specific radiotherapy.)
Still, if you're purely interested in getting cited (for good or bad) JAP is a better bet. Now, some of those citations may be self-referential, and some may be refutations. Really, though, they're all third-tier journals. Phys. Rev. Lett. is definitely more prestigious, based on reputation and IF (6.46). I would lump it in loosely with the second-tier journals. The top-tier journals (for physics discoveries) are almost universally considered to be Science (IF 23.9) and Nature (IF 25.8). These last two are in a class by themselves.
So what's the point of all this? Usually there is some correlation between the scientific importance of an article and the level of journal in which it is published. I have published a paper in a third-tier journal. It was good science and solid data, but not a particularly important result. I was happy with that--people in my field could find it and appreciate it, and I wasn't wasting too many people's time with something rather obscure.
Any author will prefer a paper in Nature to a paper in a journal from one of the lower tiers. Shrinking hydrogen atoms has just the sort of gee-whiz factor appeal that journals (and their readers) love. Further, it suggests a new realm of science. Consequently, if the author in question had solid supporting data then he would have a paper in Nature right now. You need three things for a top-flight journal article: an interesting topic, an interesting result, and rock-solid data. He's got the first two. To quote Carl Sagan:
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Looks like that (admittedly and appropriately high) bar has not been passed.
Damn, we're good.
That said, not all radiation therapy has acutely painful side effects. Radiotherapy for localized skin lesions is often very quick and causes only mild discomfort.
Prostate cancer can be treated using conventional external beam radiotherapy with all its attendant side effects. One alternative involves inserting anywhere up to about a hundred metal-encased 'seeds' of iodine-131 into the prostate to deliver radiation in situ. The patient can return home after the one inpatient procedure.
Although I appreciate the misery of what you went through, deciding whether or not something counts as radiotherapy, or chemotherapy, or both based on how bad its side effects are doesn't hold water.