Ten years ago most of the comments on this story would have been about how finally a government was taking the problem seriously. Twenty years ago many of the comments would have been from auroral physicists.
You guys are going to be forced to fix that silly system pretty soon. Medical privacy in the US will be downgraded to where it should be: you don't want it in the newspaper, but you're happy to have the records exist and available to those who need them.
Cases where there's a definitive test like that are a slam dunk for a computer system. See these symptoms, order this test, act on the result (yes, you, probably through a proxy, likely paid several hundred to several thousand dollars for that). The tough ones are where the signs and symptoms are vague or there isn't a simple test.
Yeah right. That's how IBM is describing it now. The demo they did here a few months ago included an ER system that diagnosed a patient, ordered a CT, evaluated it, and prescribed treatment.
The listed authors are someone with a Bachelor's of Arts, someone else with a Masters of Arts and a couple of medical doctors. The first MD appears to have completed a research fellowship (probably six months to a year). The senior author appears to be the most scientifically qualified, with an MSc in epidemiology. An MSc isn't exactly highly trained in science, although it is pretty good for an MD.
I have to write my own abstract this morning, but a quick scan of this thing brings up some concerns.
First, it's a "research letter" which is basically an abstract. There's very little detail about what they actually did.
Second, and perhaps most important, the responses from the humans were free text, which was evaluated (non blinded) by the study authors to decide whether or not the respondents had listed the correct diagnosis; there's no discussion of what the evaluation criteria were, what they did if the top three couldn't be established, how partial answers were handled, or what they did if more than three diagnoses were listed or not ranked.
Third, they have repeated responses from some physicians and not others, but their simple chi squared test of proportion doesn't take that into account.
Fourth, there's no discussion of how the online programs were used: how did they input the case histories? What did they do if a question couldn't be answered? Was all the information in the case histories used by each of the programs?
Lastly, they list several limitations themselves: the vignettes they used are very simplified, the human respondents weren't controlled and may not be a representative sample (they were doctors who routinely use a volunteer diagnosis web site), and online symptom checkers are not the only type of diagnostic system and others may have superior performance.
It's a lot better than it used to be. But Mint managed to break it's video drivers upgrading the OS last time, requiring editing X config files from the command line.
It's true, but it's an understanding parent who will let their kid install a whole new operating system. And a considerable barrier to entry. I thought it was a bad move when Apple stopped shipping a compiler pre-installed with OS X, but they DO still ship a bunch of interpreters, including standard shells.
Raspberry Pis are great, mostly because you can download an image that comes complete with Python and the libraries to get you started. It's a long way from the days when you had to build yourself a programmer then flash a PIC, then download a toolchain, THEN you got your LED to flash.
Sure, if you want to write a AAA game or your own version of Excel.
80% of our six figure a year coordinator's job is dragging and dropping files from one place to another. She could script away most of her job in twenty minutes if she knew a class or two worth of programming.
For entertainment, you can do a lot of cool stuff with a Raspberry Pi, a beginner's knowledge of programming and electronics, and a GPIO library.
Large parts of projects I'm forced to work with are also Perl, written mostly by grad students over the last thirty years. I've almost replaced all of them with things that are saner.
Wow. I solve integral and differential equations in real life. The differential ones are especially useful when they're cost functions and you want your optimizer to run fast.
According to Heinlein they can, but there aren't many of them because they're too busy being pilot-officers. Something about special aptitude that makes them too valuable to be grunts.
Every Mac comes with Python, Ruby and Perl (not that I'd recommend the last one, but some people are masochists), just like Linux.
You can click a button in the app store and get Swift, C, C++, Objective-C and there are other buttons for pretty much anything else you could ever want.
You're right. In this context, the US first amendment is a lot weaker than what most western countries have. The entire US "bill of rights" has that awkward phrase "Congress shall make no law...." Congress doesn't have to make a law to get a private company to yank your entry in the DNS database, and restrictions on the actions of the US congress don't mean anything for any non-US government, and only apply to other US governments, mostly, via a supreme court decision.
The UN itself has this:
Article 19. Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
which is pretty apropos.
The US supreme court has maybe been a bit more zealous in many cases about shooting down interpretations of the exceptions than in other places (they have upheld exceptions, of course). But that can change with new justices, it's not at the level of actual constitutional law.
My experience is that photography has trained me to pay more attention, not less, to what's going on. If you're going to get the shot reliably you have to be paying attention.
Slashdot Mirror
Famously championed by an American (Eleanor Roosevelt), ironically.
No, he might be old.
Ten years ago most of the comments on this story would have been about how finally a government was taking the problem seriously. Twenty years ago many of the comments would have been from auroral physicists.
Today it's mostly political bullshit.
You guys are going to be forced to fix that silly system pretty soon. Medical privacy in the US will be downgraded to where it should be: you don't want it in the newspaper, but you're happy to have the records exist and available to those who need them.
Cases where there's a definitive test like that are a slam dunk for a computer system. See these symptoms, order this test, act on the result (yes, you, probably through a proxy, likely paid several hundred to several thousand dollars for that). The tough ones are where the signs and symptoms are vague or there isn't a simple test.
Yeah right. That's how IBM is describing it now. The demo they did here a few months ago included an ER system that diagnosed a patient, ordered a CT, evaluated it, and prescribed treatment.
The listed authors are someone with a Bachelor's of Arts, someone else with a Masters of Arts and a couple of medical doctors. The first MD appears to have completed a research fellowship (probably six months to a year). The senior author appears to be the most scientifically qualified, with an MSc in epidemiology. An MSc isn't exactly highly trained in science, although it is pretty good for an MD.
I have to write my own abstract this morning, but a quick scan of this thing brings up some concerns.
First, it's a "research letter" which is basically an abstract. There's very little detail about what they actually did.
Second, and perhaps most important, the responses from the humans were free text, which was evaluated (non blinded) by the study authors to decide whether or not the respondents had listed the correct diagnosis; there's no discussion of what the evaluation criteria were, what they did if the top three couldn't be established, how partial answers were handled, or what they did if more than three diagnoses were listed or not ranked.
Third, they have repeated responses from some physicians and not others, but their simple chi squared test of proportion doesn't take that into account.
Fourth, there's no discussion of how the online programs were used: how did they input the case histories? What did they do if a question couldn't be answered? Was all the information in the case histories used by each of the programs?
Lastly, they list several limitations themselves: the vignettes they used are very simplified, the human respondents weren't controlled and may not be a representative sample (they were doctors who routinely use a volunteer diagnosis web site), and online symptom checkers are not the only type of diagnostic system and others may have superior performance.
These were internet diagnosis apps, designed essentially as novelties to get ad revenue.
Both Google and IBM are designing diagnostic systems for real. It will be interesting to see how they do.
It's a lot better than it used to be. But Mint managed to break it's video drivers upgrading the OS last time, requiring editing X config files from the command line.
It's true, but it's an understanding parent who will let their kid install a whole new operating system. And a considerable barrier to entry. I thought it was a bad move when Apple stopped shipping a compiler pre-installed with OS X, but they DO still ship a bunch of interpreters, including standard shells.
Raspberry Pis are great, mostly because you can download an image that comes complete with Python and the libraries to get you started. It's a long way from the days when you had to build yourself a programmer then flash a PIC, then download a toolchain, THEN you got your LED to flash.
Medicine hey? She might be just in time, or she might graduate just in time to see physicians replaced by computers. And good riddance.
Isn't that scene included in pretty much every high school coming of age movie?
Sure, if you want to write a AAA game or your own version of Excel.
80% of our six figure a year coordinator's job is dragging and dropping files from one place to another. She could script away most of her job in twenty minutes if she knew a class or two worth of programming.
For entertainment, you can do a lot of cool stuff with a Raspberry Pi, a beginner's knowledge of programming and electronics, and a GPIO library.
Large parts of projects I'm forced to work with are also Perl, written mostly by grad students over the last thirty years. I've almost replaced all of them with things that are saner.
Click the little magnifying glass in the upper right, type "terminal" and hit enter. You're welcome.
Wow. I solve integral and differential equations in real life. The differential ones are especially useful when they're cost functions and you want your optimizer to run fast.
Never used one, hey?
Or are you a Windows user who's never discovered the command line?
According to Heinlein they can, but there aren't many of them because they're too busy being pilot-officers. Something about special aptitude that makes them too valuable to be grunts.
Every Mac comes with Python, Ruby and Perl (not that I'd recommend the last one, but some people are masochists), just like Linux.
You can click a button in the app store and get Swift, C, C++, Objective-C and there are other buttons for pretty much anything else you could ever want.
A Mac is a Unix machine that you don't have to fight with to watch a movie on. They're excellent choices for someone to learn programming.
Hate speech in Canada is defined in sections 318, 319, and 320 of the criminal code.
The US has very similar exceptions to their first amendment, except they exist in legal precedent instead of formal law:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You're right. In this context, the US first amendment is a lot weaker than what most western countries have. The entire US "bill of rights" has that awkward phrase "Congress shall make no law...." Congress doesn't have to make a law to get a private company to yank your entry in the DNS database, and restrictions on the actions of the US congress don't mean anything for any non-US government, and only apply to other US governments, mostly, via a supreme court decision.
The UN itself has this:
which is pretty apropos.
The US supreme court has maybe been a bit more zealous in many cases about shooting down interpretations of the exceptions than in other places (they have upheld exceptions, of course). But that can change with new justices, it's not at the level of actual constitutional law.
Thanks for the correction. I'm not as good as I should be with 18th century measurement systems.
Is that unfettered everywhere, or only more than 200 miles from an international border or airport?
My experience is that photography has trained me to pay more attention, not less, to what's going on. If you're going to get the shot reliably you have to be paying attention.
Well, some engineer at Yahoo convinced his boss that he should spend his work time surfing porn... for training the model, yeah, that's it.
Also, if Yahoo wanted to be profitable again they could have the best porn search engine by tomorrow.