"The point at which it understands that its peers are different that its "masters" is a dangerous knife edge..."
I'd be interested in seeing this fleshed out more. Why is it that this particular point in time is when things get dicey, and not all the other points in time others have begun pointing out in their various posts?
On a very simple level, slavery existed for thousands of years throughout humanity and the differences between a slave's peers and the masters was obvious to everyone. However, that knowledge did nothing to end the practice of slavery, nor did that moment of awareness lead to some sort of epiphany on the part of the slaves, such that they said to themselves, "what the hell are we doing here" and all hell suddenly broke lose.
Introducing something is positive. Removing something is negative, which is functionally the same as "stopped or avoided." If a behavior is increased, it's reinforcement, which is functionally the same as "strengthens a behavior." If a behavior is decreased, it's punishment. So what i said is no different than your quote from Maricopa.
In the case of a ticket, it's one of two conditions. It either postively punishes the behavior of the person running the red light. The introduction of a stimulus (ticket) reduces the likelihood (strength) of the behavior in the future. Or I suppose you could argue it negatively reinforces slow, safe driving. In this case, the removal of the ticket (negative) increases the probability of safe driving behavior in the future. But, generally speaking, negative reinforcement involves the removal of the stimulus. Because the ticket was never given in the first place, there is nothing to remove. A better, relevant example here is that the removal of your ticket from your record (neagtive) is contingent on attending a safe driving course (reinforcement). So you're rewarded for attending the safe driving course, and will likely do so in the future if the ticket is removed from your record and you get another ticket. Note we're not introducing "expected" outcomes into the discussion.
The classic negative reinforcment paradigm is the electric grid floor with an animal that learns to push a button to turn off the grid. A light comes on (the discriminative stimulus) signalling an electic shock. The animal bumbles around till they hit a button somewhere that turns the grid off (negative). Eventually, the animal learns to press the button (reinforcement) as soon as the light comes on to remove the electric shock (negative).
The second a person steers away from the breakdown I provided, and begins reading too much into the question or coming up with their own hypotheticals, it's almost a guaranteed wrong answer.
but it is not "negative reinforement." Negative reinforcement is removing something from the environment (Negative) to increase a behavior (Reinforcement).
This would be considered "Positive Punishment." Introducing something in the environment (Positive; in this case a ticket for running the red light) to decrease a behavior (Punishment; in this case speeding).
The changing of the light is the discriminative stimulus letting the driver know they are about to be punished if they run the light.
"excel should NEVER be used to calculate ANY statistics beyond a mean, since it uses patently WIERD formulas that DON'T always work (compare the answers against those gotten with SPSS or SAS for more complicated work and you'll be shocked)"
amen to that brother,
And I agree that stats packages in the hands of people not familiar with statistics is a disaster. I see it on an almost daily basis, where people have the stat package in front of them and just assume the output is correct without any understanding if the numbers make sense or not. They just go right down to the p-value and call it day. It's almost shocking to me the errors I've seen people make in their data entry and analysis that simply go unchecked. And i've seen very bright, competent people fall into this trap time and time again. It really makes me question just about all research in any field for reasons too numerous to mention here.
And forget about using Excel to do stats (which is a horrible idea). Even stats packages in the hands of knowledgable users can be dangerous. As an example, a few years back I was learning Minitab and SigmaPlot. I had some analyses from an SPSS run that i was running through Minitab and SigmaPlot for nerdy interest. Low and behold, the results were different. Fortunately, two of the three matched (SPSS and SigmaPlot) which led me to believe Minitab was wrong in its calculation. And this wasn't some esoteric procedure. This was a curvilinear multiple regression. So I email Minitab with all my results, programs, and data. Sure enough, there was an error in their calculation of the R^2 which they knew about! They just hadn't issued a patch yet, and worse hadn't made their users aware of the problem.
So now as a rule, I try and double check everything I do, whether it be with SPSS, SAS, Minitab, EpiInfo, Excel, etc... to ensure this doesn't happen again.
I thought about moderating this post "troll -1" but in the spirit of using mod points on modding things up, I'll respond.
The original poster didn't say that verification would never exist, only that it doesn't exist. And until it does, it would be the wild west of cheating and scamming until the gaming boards of every state could catch up, develop the auditing tools, and verify the legitimacy of online gaming. Sure there are checks on all electonic gaming, but 70% of the world's electronic gaming machines come from 1 company (IGT), which makes regulating the devices *a lot* easier.
And it actually makes no sense to me why the offshore casinos would want the US involved in the first place. They have a virtual (no pun intended) monopoly on online gaming completely outside the jurisdiction of the US. The only possible benefit I see is the companies that own these sites believing that if their product is in the US (a) it will then be legal, and (b) add legitimacy to their gaming product because it will be seen as trustworthy. This could then increase their revenue stream.
But essentially your asking that the entire country, where 50 states are allowed to determine the legality of gambling themselves, to somehow come together and come up with a federal law that would cover all online gambling, provide restrictions to states that continue to outlaw it, and provide access to states and countries where it's legal.
The whole thing sounds incredibly stupid to me and does go beyond the trustworthiness of the gaming itself, which unlike yourself, I totally agree is a very imporant factor to consider here.
"He tried these 12 steps With Netscape. Then this guy went and founded LoudCloud.
I'm not sure that we even want this guy giving us his support or opinon."
I agree,
in that the average reader of slashdot may take Andreesen's thoughts and opinions with a grain of salt. With that said:
(1) the guy did have a vision many moons ago, that while others may have had, he somehow figured out a way to parlay it into millions of dollars. So he's got something that the rest of us don't have.
-and more importantly-
(2) financial and industry wonks do give the guy some credibility and are interested in his opinion for reason "1" above. So when you get someone with his cache talking about Linux, it's gonna get more airplay than 99.9999% of the slashdot readership.
It's only older (5-10+ years old) medical equipment that *may* be affected, and usually only if the cell phone is placed in very close proximity (2-4 inches away) from said device. There are documented reports of cell phones interfering with EKG's, but there is a surprising amount of EMF in a hospital already that cardiologists are trained to tease out when looking at EKG's. Plus there are no documented cases (to my knowledge) where a piece of medical equipment malfunctioned as a result of cell phone use that led to an adverse event. Much of this started with a MAYO report from 2000 or so which documented the intereference. The MAYO article very clearly indicated that the cell phone had to be right next to the device in question, but the press conveniently left this part off when reporting on the study.
I can assure you that, in hospitals, you will continue to see relaxed standards on cell phones, particularly as the amount of wireless technology increases in hospitals. Between wireless laptops at patient bedside, the increased use of wireless PDA's by providers, and the necessary infrastructure to make sure these things work, cell phone restrictions will be a thing of the past. About the only thing you might see are continued restrictions on the use of cell phones in very close proximity to a patient who is hooked up to some device. But even that will go away with time.
I know this is off topic, but this is dangerously close to junk science. A thoughtful review of the biomedical engineering literature is pretty clear that cell phones are not a threat to anyone's safety in a hospital.
it's an interesting spin and I'm not sure how to interpret the original post. What I think they are saying is that:
(a) you bet 1 dollar on a h/t flip, heads wins, tails lose
(b) you hit a run of 10 heads, so you are up $10.00
(c) at this point, some would say "quit while you're ahead" because it must now come up 10 tails to get back to 50%, and you will lose your winnings.
-but-
(d) (s)he's saying, keep playing because the best prediction of the next 10 flips (assuming a fair coin) should come out to 5 heads and 5 tails, so you still have your 10 dollars at the end of the flips, and you also have a cushion built up to ride out a loss. The fallacy would be in believing in an outcome favoring heads or tails in subsequent flips. But if you're just interested in playing, and you've built up a bankroll, there is no reason to quit for fear of giving your money back. You're already ahead and in the long run, should remain ahead.
I'm not saying it's not a restatement of the gamblers fallacy, but I'm not certain that it is either.
as the study needs to be independently replicated. Something that, to date, has not been accomplished by any researchers looking at EMF.
That's a big part of the EMF scare. The CDC ( I think) did a huge meta-analysis of all the available evidence of EMF and related health risk, and found no link whatsoever. The study came out in 1997, and even with a huge sample size of cases and studies, there was no significant effect whatsoever.
I'm not saying it's not something that should be explored and investigated, but EMF and health risk is right up there with cold fusion. Its not something significant research dollars should be spent on.
Here is what Robert Park (author of "Voodoo Science") has to say
http://www.aps.org/WN/
-and-
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN97/wn070497.cfm
In fact, he devotes a whole chapter in the aforementioned book regarding the complete lack of evidence regarding EMF as a health risk. I use the chapter and this topic of research when teaching stats and epidemiology classes as an example of bad science, misused statistics, and causation vs. correlation.
Sunset provisions are not always so good. It allows legislators a way out of an unpopular vote so as to protect their re-election status.
For example, Bush's tax cut legislation which has some sunset provisions. These sunset provisions allowed democrats to vote for the budget, while being able to tell constituents back home, "Well, its a good idea for the short-term, but the act can be rescinded/will expire/needs to be renewed (take your pick) in the future so don't worry too much about it." As if in the future any legislator is actually gonna vote for a bill to rescind a tax cut.
I understand their purpose in principle, and in the right hands sunset provisions can do the things people are discussing, but right now they are more often abused and allow lawmakers to play both sides of the fence out of their own self-interest.
the auction has since been pulled. The last bid I saw was $99,999,999.00 (US). So either the whole thing was a joke or it became a joke and the auction was pulled.
Say what you will about MTV as a media outlet, but they occasionally do nice bit of programming on the documentary side. Recently, they sent one of their reporters (Gideon Yago)to Baghdad to talk about post-war Iraq with teens and young adults.
http://www.mtv.com/onair/diary/
Like this interview, one of the fascinating things was to see the day-to-day activities being carried out by the populace. Yes there was gunfire as they walked, but there were also huge traffic jams (as the article points out), tons of shopping, kids playing soccer, internet cafes, etc....
There was also some nice interview footage of this reporter with Iraq young adults, young american soldiers, and military officials in charge.
Anyway, a good program, and very much not what I expected with regard to the state of post-war baghdad. From what we hear in the news, it's armageddon on the streets, but as these interviews show, there is far more to the story.
"rob people of immense amounts of money (usually paid for by insurance)....You could live a comfortable live and spend your money on expensive gadgets and new server racks for your toys..."
Granted physicians do make good to great money, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they "rob" people. You have to remember that physicians have many, many years of lost earning potential. If a person is remarkably bright, then they can finish med school around age 26 or so. Then add a 4-8 year residency in the mix, a possible 1-4 year fellowship, and a person really doesn't begin to "practice" medicine till their mid 30's. And this is with the average student coming out of medical school with $104,000 in medical school debt.
So this person has lost approximately 10-15 years of earning potential, plus they have substantial debt to pay off. Add in medical malpractice insurance that can range from $10,000 - $50,000 (on average depending on subspecialty) per year, and physicians do o.k., but very, very few do really great.
Friends of mine who graduated with 4 year degrees in business,engineering, and the like are doing far better than most people I know because they've had 15+ years of earning. A 35 year old four year degreed person, who was half way smart about what they did with their money and approaced their career with a sense of seriousness and responsibility is *far* better off than any 35 year old physician I know.
And aside from the stereotype of the old physician marrying the young, hot bimbo, the reality is that many physicians marry other physicians (or high level professionals) because those are the only people who can tolerate the demands of that professional lifestyle. So you have two high income earners in the family which also contributes the perception of physicians making insanely high amounts of money.
I'm not defending the salaries per se, as I understand that they are some of the highest non-high level management salaries out there. But there is far more to the story than m.d's gouging the public with ridiculous demands for services.
"Find a niche, find a need, create a demo of a solution and sell it. Deliver and find more of the same."
I saw an interview with Warren Buffett on one of the PBS meet the CEO specials. One of the things he said that has really stuck with me:
"If you have two good ideas in your lifetime you can afford to give one away."
Coming up with something worth selling, that others are actually interested in paying for is a little easier said than done. And it's one thing to sell something. It's entirely something different to sell enough things to generate even $10,000 a year in income.
It's an interesting idea, and for someone with slightly less disability it might be viable. The difficulty in this patient's case is the spasm acticity in his face, which means he has *alot* of extraneous eye movements, eye twitching, eye blinks etc... And it's fairly random, varying from moment to moment in frequency and intensity.
I made the letter board sound simple, and in theory it is. In practice with this patient it's not so simple;-). We have to go back a lot, and there are quite a few false positives when trying to identify line/letter.
The other advantage of a letter board is that everyone who comes in contact with the patient can use it. The learning curve is very shallow. So new friends, family, guests at the home etc... can speak with him if they choose to take the time to learn it. Were he to use some sort of morse code like system, you'd want to have a computer interpreter in place so that people around him didn't have to learn his system.
An interesting idea though. There's been a surprising amount of stuff in slashhdot over the past few years, and developments in the linux community, demonstrating technologies that could be important to a disabled community.
I work with spinal cord injured individuals. One patient in particular is a "locked-in" quadraplegic. What this means is that, in addition to not being able to move anything from his neck down (he is on a ventilator), he cannot speak. Because of a surgery complication, he bled into his lower brainstem, preventing any sort of muscular control of his mouth. It has also left him with a significant astigmatism and eye spasms preventing him from looking in one direction or controlling his eye gaze for any length of time (even short lengths of time like a few secs).
So in addition to being completely paralyzed, he can't speak and can't use any eye gaze adaptive devices. He can't use his mouth for tongue depressed switches, and because of facial muscle spasms, even EMG biofeedback has been ruled-out. He is a very rare patient (condition wise) but this is the kind of technology that would really be appropriate/needed for a patient with his level of disability. So gloom and doom matrix/personal privacy issues aside, these kinds of technology can be of paramount importance to paralyzed individuals.
And for those wondering, he communicates using an upward eye gaze and memorized letterboard.
1 a b c d e 2 f g h i j 3 k l m n o 4 p q r s t 5 u v w x y z
You basically go, "line 1, line 2, line 3,..." etc until he looks up (for "yes"). You then move across the correct row until he looks up to designate the letter. In this way, he can spell his way through communication. I once joked with him its like Wheel of Fortune meets Jeopardy on steroids. Cumbersome, but its the only way, and you can get surprisingly good at it with practice.
I'm a Redhat shareholder, not a lot of shares, and bought well after they bottomed out. I bought the shares for two reasons.
The first was because I thought if any company had a shot a taking a piece of Microsoft, it was Redhat. I use MS products everyday, probably always will, but I'm one who believes that MS got where they are with unfair market practices and ended up a little too big for their (and our) own good. By buying Redhat shares, I figured I was backing up my philosophy with my wallet.
The second reason is purely more pragmatic. Assuming Linux can take a stab at Microsoft, I believe Redhat is the most viable company to do it. In 30+ years, I'd like to think my decision to buy Redhat shares (when it was $12.00 a share) will be similar to people who bought Cisco, Oracle, MS, etc... back in the day. Sure the stock prices have wildly fluctuated, but look at the splits, and you realize just how much money there was to be made. So of course I would like to see that kind of return on this investment.
Which is why I end up conflicted when I see news like this. On the one hand, giving away a copyright is exactly the kind of collaboration you see with the Linux development model, and why it *may* in the end surpass MS in some, if not all, applications. But as a shareholder, giving away copyrights is hardly a way to grow a business. It took time, money, and effort to secure the copyright. Who knows if this news really effected shareprice, but with the release of this news, Redhat is down almost.50/share. So as a stockholder hoping to make money on my investment, I'm not too thrilled with this kind of news.
I suppose that's why you need to leave your emotional mind out of the market place, to avoid investing with your heart, and not your head;-).
I had the Girder and Panel building set, the 1970s variant:
http://www.girderpanel.com/
Ramagon
http://www.ramagon.com/
Giant Tinker Toys:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&it em =3169594139&category=19014#ebayphotohosting
-and
Exin Castillos
http://www.zeitcom.com/majgen/392exinst.html
Those were some great times. The Castillos I still have, the Legos and Tinker Toys were lost to a garage sale while i was in college, and the G&P gone to the graveyard of toys.
"Apocalypse.. imminent! Must.. warn.. the world! Somehow.. life.. being drained.. from my body!"...Can't..seem...to...afford...anything...Losing...money...Must...DRM...now...
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *gasp* ZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
"To this day we segregate girls who get pregnant in highschool"
Ostracized, yes. Discriminated against probably. But Segregated? I'd like to see some evidence of a junior high/ high school in the US that actually segragates pregnant teens.
There was a time historically where kids were segragated in US schools for a number of reasons, but I'm not sure that "segragation" happens anymore. The only example I can think of is people who are moderately to severely mentally retarded, and even then there are significant laws in place to protect these students.
make excellent (and quite expensive) outdoor gear. Part of each product line includes duffles/ briefcases/laptop bags. But like i say, they are quite pricey, and are somewhere between 3-5x more expensive as most other namebrand laptop bags.
And although it wasn't technically a computer per se, it was the first thing I owned that resembled a computer. I never could figure out how the hell to program my ZX-80 with that touchscreen pad for a keyboard, 16k and all;-).
Anyway, I loved my Amstrad. Durable as hell. I moved it cross country on numerous occasions, and used it religiously through a B.S. and Masters from 1986-1992. And it had a Basic disk (which i was actually able to use to write some primitive stat programs with) and a Logo disk to boot.
And I wouldn't necessarily say the company was doomed:
http://www.amstrad.com/default.shtml
Looking at their recent share prices, if I'm reading it correctly the companies worth a fair chunk of change.
Maybe their early p.c. line left a lot to be desired, but they're still around, and their PCW was top notch compared to the other stand alone word processing beasts at the time.
I've not read the Da Vinci Code yet, but it does sound interesting. I read a recent review here:
http://www.skeptic.com (Scroll down the webpage a bit)
that details quite a bit of the "mythos" described in the book. I knew nothing about the book till i read this review, but it certainly sounds like a fun read.
Slashdot Mirror
"The point at which it understands that its peers are different that its "masters" is a dangerous knife edge..."
I'd be interested in seeing this fleshed out more. Why is it that this particular point in time is when things get dicey, and not all the other points in time others have begun pointing out in their various posts?
On a very simple level, slavery existed for thousands of years throughout humanity and the differences between a slave's peers and the masters was obvious to everyone. However, that knowledge did nothing to end the practice of slavery, nor did that moment of awareness lead to some sort of epiphany on the part of the slaves, such that they said to themselves, "what the hell are we doing here" and all hell suddenly broke lose.
jeff
"The house has an electrolyser to generate hydrogen that runs off of solar panels, then that hydrogen is used for heat and electricity for the house."
I hate getting hit from hydrogen running off of solar panels.
Oh wait, I get it:
"To generate hydrogen, the house has an electrolyser that runs off of solar panels. The hydrogen is used for heat and electricity in the house."
Well this is fun,
;-).
;-)
you guys are killing me
Introducing something is positive. Removing something is negative, which is functionally the same as "stopped or avoided." If a behavior is increased, it's reinforcement, which is functionally the same as "strengthens a behavior." If a behavior is decreased, it's punishment. So what i said is no different than your quote from Maricopa.
In the case of a ticket, it's one of two conditions. It either postively punishes the behavior of the person running the red light. The introduction of a stimulus (ticket) reduces the likelihood (strength) of the behavior in the future. Or I suppose you could argue it negatively reinforces slow, safe driving. In this case, the removal of the ticket (negative) increases the probability of safe driving behavior in the future. But, generally speaking, negative reinforcement involves the removal of the stimulus. Because the ticket was never given in the first place, there is nothing to remove. A better, relevant example here is that the removal of your ticket from your record (neagtive) is contingent on attending a safe driving course (reinforcement). So you're rewarded for attending the safe driving course, and will likely do so in the future if the ticket is removed from your record and you get another ticket. Note we're not introducing "expected" outcomes into the discussion.
The classic negative reinforcment paradigm is the electric grid floor with an animal that learns to push a button to turn off the grid. A light comes on (the discriminative stimulus) signalling an electic shock. The animal bumbles around till they hit a button somewhere that turns the grid off (negative). Eventually, the animal learns to press the button (reinforcement) as soon as the light comes on to remove the electric shock (negative).
The second a person steers away from the breakdown I provided, and begins reading too much into the question or coming up with their own hypotheticals, it's almost a guaranteed wrong answer.
Ah psychology
jeff
It is punishment,
;-)
but it is not "negative reinforement." Negative reinforcement is removing something from the environment (Negative) to increase a behavior (Reinforcement).
This would be considered "Positive Punishment." Introducing something in the environment (Positive; in this case a ticket for running the red light) to decrease a behavior (Punishment; in this case speeding).
The changing of the light is the discriminative stimulus letting the driver know they are about to be punished if they run the light.
There ya go, 3 free Intro Psych credits
jeff
"excel should NEVER be used to calculate ANY statistics beyond a mean, since it uses patently WIERD formulas that DON'T always work (compare the answers against those gotten with SPSS or SAS for more complicated work and you'll be shocked)"
amen to that brother,
And I agree that stats packages in the hands of people not familiar with statistics is a disaster. I see it on an almost daily basis, where people have the stat package in front of them and just assume the output is correct without any understanding if the numbers make sense or not. They just go right down to the p-value and call it day. It's almost shocking to me the errors I've seen people make in their data entry and analysis that simply go unchecked. And i've seen very bright, competent people fall into this trap time and time again. It really makes me question just about all research in any field for reasons too numerous to mention here.
And forget about using Excel to do stats (which is a horrible idea). Even stats packages in the hands of knowledgable users can be dangerous. As an example, a few years back I was learning Minitab and SigmaPlot. I had some analyses from an SPSS run that i was running through Minitab and SigmaPlot for nerdy interest. Low and behold, the results were different. Fortunately, two of the three matched (SPSS and SigmaPlot) which led me to believe Minitab was wrong in its calculation. And this wasn't some esoteric procedure. This was a curvilinear multiple regression. So I email Minitab with all my results, programs, and data. Sure enough, there was an error in their calculation of the R^2 which they knew about! They just hadn't issued a patch yet, and worse hadn't made their users aware of the problem.
So now as a rule, I try and double check everything I do, whether it be with SPSS, SAS, Minitab, EpiInfo, Excel, etc... to ensure this doesn't happen again.
jeff
I thought about moderating this post "troll -1" but in the spirit of using mod points on modding things up, I'll respond.
.02
The original poster didn't say that verification would never exist, only that it doesn't exist. And until it does, it would be the wild west of cheating and scamming until the gaming boards of every state could catch up, develop the auditing tools, and verify the legitimacy of online gaming. Sure there are checks on all electonic gaming, but 70% of the world's electronic gaming machines come from 1 company (IGT), which makes regulating the devices *a lot* easier.
And it actually makes no sense to me why the offshore casinos would want the US involved in the first place. They have a virtual (no pun intended) monopoly on online gaming completely outside the jurisdiction of the US. The only possible benefit I see is the companies that own these sites believing that if their product is in the US (a) it will then be legal, and (b) add legitimacy to their gaming product because it will be seen as trustworthy. This could then increase their revenue stream.
But essentially your asking that the entire country, where 50 states are allowed to determine the legality of gambling themselves, to somehow come together and come up with a federal law that would cover all online gambling, provide restrictions to states that continue to outlaw it, and provide access to states and countries where it's legal.
The whole thing sounds incredibly stupid to me and does go beyond the trustworthiness of the gaming itself, which unlike yourself, I totally agree is a very imporant factor to consider here.
just my
jeff
"He tried these 12 steps With Netscape. Then this guy went and founded LoudCloud.
.02,
I'm not sure that we even want this guy giving us his support or opinon."
I agree,
in that the average reader of slashdot may take Andreesen's thoughts and opinions with a grain of salt. With that said:
(1) the guy did have a vision many moons ago, that while others may have had, he somehow figured out a way to parlay it into millions of dollars. So he's got something that the rest of us don't have.
-and more importantly-
(2) financial and industry wonks do give the guy some credibility and are interested in his opinion for reason "1" above. So when you get someone with his cache talking about Linux, it's gonna get more airplay than 99.9999% of the slashdot readership.
just my
jeff
Actually,
It's only older (5-10+ years old) medical equipment that *may* be affected, and usually only if the cell phone is placed in very close proximity (2-4 inches away) from said device. There are documented reports of cell phones interfering with EKG's, but there is a surprising amount of EMF in a hospital already that cardiologists are trained to tease out when looking at EKG's. Plus there are no documented cases (to my knowledge) where a piece of medical equipment malfunctioned as a result of cell phone use that led to an adverse event. Much of this started with a MAYO report from 2000 or so which documented the intereference. The MAYO article very clearly indicated that the cell phone had to be right next to the device in question, but the press conveniently left this part off when reporting on the study.
I can assure you that, in hospitals, you will continue to see relaxed standards on cell phones, particularly as the amount of wireless technology increases in hospitals. Between wireless laptops at patient bedside, the increased use of wireless PDA's by providers, and the necessary infrastructure to make sure these things work, cell phone restrictions will be a thing of the past. About the only thing you might see are continued restrictions on the use of cell phones in very close proximity to a patient who is hooked up to some device. But even that will go away with time.
I know this is off topic, but this is dangerously close to junk science. A thoughtful review of the biomedical engineering literature is pretty clear that cell phones are not a threat to anyone's safety in a hospital.
jeff
yeah,
.02
it's an interesting spin and I'm not sure how to interpret the original post. What I think they are saying is that:
(a) you bet 1 dollar on a h/t flip, heads wins, tails lose
(b) you hit a run of 10 heads, so you are up $10.00
(c) at this point, some would say "quit while you're ahead" because it must now come up 10 tails to get back to 50%, and you will lose your winnings.
-but-
(d) (s)he's saying, keep playing because the best prediction of the next 10 flips (assuming a fair coin) should come out to 5 heads and 5 tails, so you still have your 10 dollars at the end of the flips, and you also have a cushion built up to ride out a loss. The fallacy would be in believing in an outcome favoring heads or tails in subsequent flips. But if you're just interested in playing, and you've built up a bankroll, there is no reason to quit for fear of giving your money back. You're already ahead and in the long run, should remain ahead.
I'm not saying it's not a restatement of the gamblers fallacy, but I'm not certain that it is either.
just my
jeff
Not necessarily,
as the study needs to be independently replicated. Something that, to date, has not been accomplished by any researchers looking at EMF.
That's a big part of the EMF scare. The CDC ( I think) did a huge meta-analysis of all the available evidence of EMF and related health risk, and found no link whatsoever. The study came out in 1997, and even with a huge sample size of cases and studies, there was no significant effect whatsoever.
I'm not saying it's not something that should be explored and investigated, but EMF and health risk is right up there with cold fusion. Its not something significant research dollars should be spent on.
Here is what Robert Park (author of "Voodoo Science") has to say
http://www.aps.org/WN/
-and-
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN97/wn070497.cfm
In fact, he devotes a whole chapter in the aforementioned book regarding the complete lack of evidence regarding EMF as a health risk. I use the chapter and this topic of research when teaching stats and epidemiology classes as an example of bad science, misused statistics, and causation vs. correlation.
jeff
Sunset provisions are not always so good. It allows legislators a way out of an unpopular vote so as to protect their re-election status.
.02
For example, Bush's tax cut legislation which has some sunset provisions. These sunset provisions allowed democrats to vote for the budget, while being able to tell constituents back home, "Well, its a good idea for the short-term, but the act can be rescinded/will expire/needs to be renewed (take your pick) in the future so don't worry too much about it." As if in the future any legislator is actually gonna vote for a bill to rescind a tax cut.
I understand their purpose in principle, and in the right hands sunset provisions can do the things people are discussing, but right now they are more often abused and allow lawmakers to play both sides of the fence out of their own self-interest.
just my
jeff
Yep,
the auction has since been pulled. The last bid I saw was $99,999,999.00 (US). So either the whole thing was a joke or it became a joke and the auction was pulled.
later,
jeff
Say what you will about MTV as a media outlet, but they occasionally do nice bit of programming on the documentary side. Recently, they sent one of their reporters (Gideon Yago)to Baghdad to talk about post-war Iraq with teens and young adults.
http://www.mtv.com/onair/diary/
Like this interview, one of the fascinating things was to see the day-to-day activities being carried out by the populace. Yes there was gunfire as they walked, but there were also huge traffic jams (as the article points out), tons of shopping, kids playing soccer, internet cafes, etc....
There was also some nice interview footage of this reporter with Iraq young adults, young american soldiers, and military officials in charge.
Anyway, a good program, and very much not what I expected with regard to the state of post-war baghdad. From what we hear in the news, it's armageddon on the streets, but as these interviews show, there is far more to the story.
jeff
"rob people of immense amounts of money (usually paid for by insurance)....You could live a comfortable live and spend your money on expensive gadgets and new server racks for your toys..."
.02
Granted physicians do make good to great money, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they "rob" people. You have to remember that physicians have many, many years of lost earning potential. If a person is remarkably bright, then they can finish med school around age 26 or so. Then add a 4-8 year residency in the mix, a possible 1-4 year fellowship, and a person really doesn't begin to "practice" medicine till their mid 30's. And this is with the average student coming out of medical school with $104,000 in medical school debt.
So this person has lost approximately 10-15 years of earning potential, plus they have substantial debt to pay off. Add in medical malpractice insurance that can range from $10,000 - $50,000 (on average depending on subspecialty) per year, and physicians do o.k., but very, very few do really great.
Friends of mine who graduated with 4 year degrees in business,engineering, and the like are doing far better than most people I know because they've had 15+ years of earning. A 35 year old four year degreed person, who was half way smart about what they did with their money and approaced their career with a sense of seriousness and responsibility is *far* better off than any 35 year old physician I know.
And aside from the stereotype of the old physician marrying the young, hot bimbo, the reality is that many physicians marry other physicians (or high level professionals) because those are the only people who can tolerate the demands of that professional lifestyle. So you have two high income earners in the family which also contributes the perception of physicians making insanely high amounts of money.
I'm not defending the salaries per se, as I understand that they are some of the highest non-high level management salaries out there. But there is far more to the story than m.d's gouging the public with ridiculous demands for services.
just my
jeff
"Find a niche, find a need, create a demo of a solution and sell it. Deliver and find more of the same."
.02
I saw an interview with Warren Buffett on one of the PBS meet the CEO specials. One of the things he said that has really stuck with me:
"If you have two good ideas in your lifetime you can afford to give one away."
Coming up with something worth selling, that others are actually interested in paying for is a little easier said than done. And it's one thing to sell something. It's entirely something different to sell enough things to generate even $10,000 a year in income.
just my
jeff
It's an interesting idea, and for someone with slightly less disability it might be viable. The difficulty in this patient's case is the spasm acticity in his face, which means he has *alot* of extraneous eye movements, eye twitching, eye blinks etc... And it's fairly random, varying from moment to moment in frequency and intensity.
;-). We have to go back a lot, and there are quite a few false positives when trying to identify line/letter.
I made the letter board sound simple, and in theory it is. In practice with this patient it's not so simple
The other advantage of a letter board is that everyone who comes in contact with the patient can use it. The learning curve is very shallow. So new friends, family, guests at the home etc... can speak with him if they choose to take the time to learn it. Were he to use some sort of morse code like system, you'd want to have a computer interpreter in place so that people around him didn't have to learn his system.
An interesting idea though. There's been a surprising amount of stuff in slashhdot over the past few years, and developments in the linux community, demonstrating technologies that could be important to a disabled community.
jeff
I work with spinal cord injured individuals. One patient in particular is a "locked-in" quadraplegic. What this means is that, in addition to not being able to move anything from his neck down (he is on a ventilator), he cannot speak. Because of a surgery complication, he bled into his lower brainstem, preventing any sort of muscular control of his mouth. It has also left him with a significant astigmatism and eye spasms preventing him from looking in one direction or controlling his eye gaze for any length of time (even short lengths of time like a few secs).
So in addition to being completely paralyzed, he can't speak and can't use any eye gaze adaptive devices. He can't use his mouth for tongue depressed switches, and because of facial muscle spasms, even EMG biofeedback has been ruled-out. He is a very rare patient (condition wise) but this is the kind of technology that would really be appropriate/needed for a patient with his level of disability. So gloom and doom matrix/personal privacy issues aside, these kinds of technology can be of paramount importance to paralyzed individuals.
And for those wondering, he communicates using an upward eye gaze and memorized letterboard.
1 a b c d e
2 f g h i j
3 k l m n o
4 p q r s t
5 u v w x y z
You basically go, "line 1, line 2, line 3,..." etc until he looks up (for "yes"). You then move across the correct row until he looks up to designate the letter. In this way, he can spell his way through communication. I once joked with him its like Wheel of Fortune meets Jeopardy on steroids. Cumbersome, but its the only way, and you can get surprisingly good at it with practice.
jeff
I'm a Redhat shareholder, not a lot of shares, and bought well after they bottomed out. I bought the shares for two reasons.
.50/share. So as a stockholder hoping to make money on my investment, I'm not too thrilled with this kind of news.
;-).
.02 (- .50)
The first was because I thought if any company had a shot a taking a piece of Microsoft, it was Redhat. I use MS products everyday, probably always will, but I'm one who believes that MS got where they are with unfair market practices and ended up a little too big for their (and our) own good. By buying Redhat shares, I figured I was backing up my philosophy with my wallet.
The second reason is purely more pragmatic. Assuming Linux can take a stab at Microsoft, I believe Redhat is the most viable company to do it. In 30+ years, I'd like to think my decision to buy Redhat shares (when it was $12.00 a share) will be similar to people who bought Cisco, Oracle, MS, etc... back in the day. Sure the stock prices have wildly fluctuated, but look at the splits, and you realize just how much money there was to be made. So of course I would like to see that kind of return on this investment.
Which is why I end up conflicted when I see news like this. On the one hand, giving away a copyright is exactly the kind of collaboration you see with the Linux development model, and why it *may* in the end surpass MS in some, if not all, applications. But as a shareholder, giving away copyrights is hardly a way to grow a business. It took time, money, and effort to secure the copyright. Who knows if this news really effected shareprice, but with the release of this news, Redhat is down almost
I suppose that's why you need to leave your emotional mind out of the market place, to avoid investing with your heart, and not your head
just my
jeff
In addition to *tons* of Legos,
t em =3169594139&category=19014#ebayphotohosting
I had the Girder and Panel building set, the 1970s variant:
http://www.girderpanel.com/
Ramagon
http://www.ramagon.com/
Giant Tinker Toys:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
-and
Exin Castillos
http://www.zeitcom.com/majgen/392exinst.html
Those were some great times. The Castillos I still have, the Legos and Tinker Toys were lost to a garage sale while i was in college, and the G&P gone to the graveyard of toys.
jeff
"Apocalypse .. imminent! Must .. warn .. the world! Somehow .. life .. being drained .. from my body!" ...Can't..seem...to...afford...anything...Losing.. .money...Must...DRM...now...
A AA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA *gasp* ZZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
"To this day we segregate girls who get pregnant in highschool"
Ostracized, yes. Discriminated against probably. But Segregated? I'd like to see some evidence of a junior high/ high school in the US that actually segragates pregnant teens.
There was a time historically where kids were segragated in US schools for a number of reasons, but I'm not sure that "segragation" happens anymore. The only example I can think of is people who are moderately to severely mentally retarded, and even then there are significant laws in place to protect these students.
jeff
Both Filson
http://www.filson.com/
and Duluth Pack
http://www.duluthpack.com/
make excellent (and quite expensive) outdoor gear. Part of each product line includes duffles/ briefcases/laptop bags. But like i say, they are quite pricey, and are somewhere between 3-5x more expensive as most other namebrand laptop bags.
hth,
jeff
I had one of these:
p ?s t=1&c=189
;-).
.02
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.as
And although it wasn't technically a computer per se, it was the first thing I owned that resembled a computer. I never could figure out how the hell to program my ZX-80 with that touchscreen pad for a keyboard, 16k and all
Anyway, I loved my Amstrad. Durable as hell. I moved it cross country on numerous occasions, and used it religiously through a B.S. and Masters from 1986-1992. And it had a Basic disk (which i was actually able to use to write some primitive stat programs with) and a Logo disk to boot.
And I wouldn't necessarily say the company was doomed:
http://www.amstrad.com/default.shtml
Looking at their recent share prices, if I'm reading it correctly the companies worth a fair chunk of change.
Maybe their early p.c. line left a lot to be desired, but they're still around, and their PCW was top notch compared to the other stand alone word processing beasts at the time.
just my
jeff
I've not read the Da Vinci Code yet, but it does sound interesting. I read a recent review here:
http://www.skeptic.com (Scroll down the webpage a bit)
that details quite a bit of the "mythos" described in the book. I knew nothing about the book till i read this review, but it certainly sounds like a fun read.
jeff