My wife's a NP in a busy clinic and reports the expensive, commercial software they purchased:
Has no keyboard navigation. Each box on a form must be selected by the mouse.
Has no spell checking or medical or pharmaceutical dictionary.
Has no way to add custom form templates or common phrases. Staff must retype the same thing over and over and over.
Is very slow to respond; everything is done from underpowered PC's running a RDP client logged into overloaded servers in another state.
The entiire system, spanning many offices sometimes becomes totally inaccessible.
On failure, there is no Plan B. Staff resorts to scribbling notes on random scraps of paper and uses those to fill in forms when the system is working again.
In addition, The IT support staff told her that the vendors "super secure" remote access software would only run on a Windows PC. When she's on-call she has to update patient records. Their plan is BYOD, of course. So... she took her old, crappy Vista Netbook in. All they set up was the RDP client, defaulting to their server on the public internet. She clicks the link, Remote Client starts, 2 user/passwords and she gets a 800x600 Windows desktop. It's got a solitary icon which starts the native application. Yup... Super secure. Scrolling, mousing, cursoring and clicking to get to the form elements take more than half her time charting. It was painful to watch.
She prefers to use her Mac laptop, so I set up a Mac RDP client to use their URL and she was able to login. I watched her for a few minutes and noticed that all the controls and text were low contrast and used tiny, fuzzy fonts in the tiny 800x600 window.
I asked her; "Why do you have it configured to be so small with tiny fonts?" "That's the way it's always been. Everyone complains about it at work". Sigh.
I show her how she can expand the desktop by increasing the size of the client window and full-screen the app window to expose more of the forms. "Wow! we didn't know you could do that. That will really help! Critical stuff is always hiding off screen"
Control Panel is available so I select a high contrast theme and larger, default fonts. "Wow, now I'll be able to read what's on the charts from my exam stool." Their clinic had lots of training and "experts" on site to help them learn and use the system in the first weeks, so there's no excuse for the poor default configuration they gave them.
I don't understand what has happened to the software industry. We seem to have forgotten the basics and now make the people serve the tools.
I don't believe there's a scarcity. The job market is relatively good here in Boulder CO, but employers are still flooded with applicants.
Here's an example from a job posting for a Systems Support Engineer.
Updated 3/19/2013
Due to the high volume of applications, we kindly request that applicants refrain from phoning to inquire about their application status. If we decide to move forward with your application, we will respond within one to two weeks of receiving your resume and cover letter.
My experience as a software engineer in their 50's is I rarely get a response back when I apply via an on-line mechanism. I have great qualifications and lots of experience in current technologies, but rarely get past the initial culling process. Note, I have standing offers for employment and a job that pays well, but my experiments in the last months of actively applying to various companies posting openings shows I'm pretty much SOL in finding new work through any on-line process.
The National Labs here in Boulder are laying off American engineers and giving the work to H1-B recruits. It's much cheaper to hire a PhD scientist from China to write software, than hire a qualified software engineer in the local market. When I worked for NCAR, there were often only 1-3 US citizens on project teams of 10, especially on the DOD related projects. Meanwhile, lots of local STEM grads are waiting tables here in Boulder, for lack of work in their field.
I loved working with the best and brightest from around the world, but now feel bitter and abused. I'd like to see H1-B visa's transferred to the recipient after 90 days of employment. If our National Labs and Tech Industries are really paying above market salaries for H1-B workers, then they won't have to worry about retaining their new recruits. The National Labs and Industry should have to prove they are having trouble finding talent by posting their open positions on a National Job Board for 90 days and documenting the lack of qualified applicants, before a H1-B visa is granted.
Intuitive feel is not really worth much. The ADDS plot shows wind direction, speed to the nearest 2.5kts, gust speeds, pressure, temperature, and local flight rules. Quantitative things a pilot needs to know. Watch the nice animation, but learn to read the plot symbols.
[rant]As one of the originators of the ADDS web site, and someone with 25+ years writing scientific data visualisation software, I can report that most meteorologists and forecasters are disinterested in this type of presentation. I produced a display which could produce these types of wind plots for NCAR in the early '90s and I never saw anyone but software people look at them. I thought it looked great, but I was mocked for suggesting it might be useful. My tool provides maps overlays, topography, and multi parametric, false colour and contour plots, with all the fancy animation controls. One can select arbitrary multi way-point cross sections of the volumetric data to visualise the atmosphere along a flight path or interesting weather features. Most meteorologists look at a few, low resolution, static 500mb and surface plots from several models, a sounding or two and make their forecast. No fancy tools needed, only plots produced on the supercomputer. In my experience, it was mainly people responsible for producing live watches and warnings or weather enthusiasts that made use of new, modern visualisation tools. It was a joy to produce something for people (GA pilots) who actually appreciated the effort and creativity we put into the site. We got awards (plaques and a tiny cash bonus) and lots of attention for ADDS, but I was still laid off a few years later after 18+ years of service with NCAR. [/rant]
6. Intellectual Property Rights:
All submissions to the DOC Business Apps Challenge remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them. By registering, consenting to the terms of the challenge, and entering a Submission, however, the Participant agrees that DOC reserves an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, distribute to the public, create derivative works from, and publicly display and perform a Submission for a period of one year starting on the date of the announcement of contest winners.
So, for $10k they get bunches of apps which can be distributed royalty-free for a year. If an app is popular, they can change the labels (create derivative works) and continue on. Only 3 developers get any money. Everyone else may have their their app distributed with no compensation.
If you plan on paying off loans or feeding your family by developing software, you should avoid these contests. Leave the submissions to the 9th grade web design classes.
Nice tech, but some of their claims are a bit of a stretch. It looks like a film demonstrating milestones to a sponsor. It's power comes via en umbilical cable and it rights itself on a level floor using plywood cams to do the roll and stop.
When compared to a donkey or mule, 4 legged robots have a long way to go. I live in Colorado and have done pack trips with animals. Here's what comes to mind:
Animals are cheaper and can self replicate.
Animals walk almost silently. Anything that stomps can be heard for miles.
Animals can run pretty darn fast, and can cut and quickly dodge.
Animals auto detect nearby predators and have more sensitive hearing.
Animals usually can auto-refuel themselves using locally available materials.
Yes. This is a great deal for about 100 million people in the US.
Here's why. Many people in the US, like myself, have no health insurance or what is made available to us has a very high annual deductible. ($6000/yr in the case of my insurance).
After paying 28 years of premiums as a young healthy adult, as I turn 50, the rules all change and I'm effectively left to my own devices to find health care services. To Illustrate; let's say I've come down with a sinus infection (4th time in my life. - I recognize the symptoms) and I need to get a prescription for an antibiotic. This is a trivial medical problem, that in other countries might involve $10 and 30 minutes. In the US, we have very limited options and the terms and conditions to access specific health services often change annually. First task is to find someone who will treat you given your insurance plan. You may have to travel to the next city to find a doctor who will take your insurance. If you do not have insurance and no cash on hand for one of the for-profit private urgent care clinics, you may only get seen if your life is in immediate danger at an Emergency Clinic. In the case of my insurance plan, which very few providers accept, success is when it only takes 1-3 weeks to get a 20 minute appointment with a doctor you've never seen before in the middle of a work day. Before receiving any treatment for anything, at each new clinic one has to fill out a lengthy health questionnaire (entire life's health history from memory including dates, medications and dosages). The entire last page of the health form is a release that you must initial and sign, allowing all US insurance companies and the US government access to these records. Doctors will not treat you if you do not sign. I've tried. We all know this information can and will be used in the future to deny insurance claims as most individual health insurance plans in the US exclude coverage for "pre-existing conditions". Additionally, failing to document a treatment received 20+ years earlier, for example; acne, on any form may allow the insurance company to deny all coverage when your bills come due because you 'falsified' your application forms. You don't own any of your medical records (seems like "work for hire" to me) and you often can't get them from previous providers without another doctor requesting them. No one in the US really knows if the insurance they pay for actually covers them until the bills hit. "Medical bankruptcy" is common in the US.
Conversely, I'll be able to go down to Rite-Aid, talk for 5 minutes for free to the gate keeper nurse, she determines that you have a simple problem that a prescription can solve and that you can pay for it. The doctor gets on-line, asks you if you are allergic to any medication then she writes a prescription for a nicely profitable brand-name antibiotic and sends it right to the store, ready for pick up in 15 minutes. This visit will likely take no phone calls, one car trip, cost less than $100 out-of-pocket without a loss of a half day at work and treatment beings within the hour. This is how "the best health care system in the world" currently operates.
The FA has no info on what software or media is to be installed. The only thing that make sense to me is they plan on using the tablets primarily as e-books, installing an e-reader and age appropriate books on them. Sending kids home with the entire library collection might actually help some to read more. I doubt the iPads will run anything other than the schools educational apps.
Yes. Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies
in the 1960's & 70's. It got so bad the people demanded the government step in and enforce minimal standards and provide for insurance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Retirement_Income_Security_Act
Historically, private investment funds were often set up by wealthy people to attract the life's savings of the working class. The market is then manipulated such that the "market makers" (Job Creators:) win at the expense of the common investor. Laws are passed to prevent the manipulation. Yet the problem persists.
How many times has US government social insurance gone bankrupt?
I wonder when young people will realize they are being led to slaughter using the soothing drone of FUD on all government.
That's a very bad thing. It's a long standing principle in British and American jurisprudence, all the way back to the 1600s, that juries do not have to justify their verdicts and cannot be held accountable for them.
Too bad this isn't true any more in the US. You can be charged with a crime if you vote to acquit a person and other jurors or the prosecutor doesn't like your politics.
This happened to juror Laura Kriho in Colorado in 1997. She was the lone holdout to acquit on a drug possession charge.
"Unable to persuade the other jurors of her view of the evidence, she also used nullification and sentencing consequences arguments. The judge signed contempt of court charges against her two months later." http://www.ndsn.org/marapr97/kriho.html
"She was issued the contempt citation for failure to inform the court, without being asked, that she had been arrested as a teenager thirteen years earlier for possession of an illegal substance. She was apparently supposed to have remembered each question asked to all of the preceding jury candidates and, then, at the end of the very long voir dire process, volunteer answers to possible questions she wasn't asked." http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/1998/09/jury_nullification.html
If ever called to to a trial as a juror I will inform the judge that I feel compelled to always vote to convict because I don't want to be held in contempt for not answering questions I was not asked, like Laura Kriho in 1997.
"Former juror Dan Cooper testified at Kriho's hearing that he overheard Judge Barnhill tell prosecutor Stanley to "look into this" after Kriho went to her car and returned with a pamphlet advocating jury nullification to give to another juror. The juror gave the pamphlet to Judge Barnhill. Grant says Stanley did "look into it" with the help of Gilpin County Judge Frederic Rodgers who wrote an article this summer for the Judge's Journal about what a judge can do when faced with a jury pool "tainted" with notions of jury nullification."
If you think you have power as a Juror, think again. Laura Kriho was convicted and fined $1200 for attempting jury nullification.
Perhaps having the algorithm also add a unique animation sequence would help make these visual representations more identifiable to users. If a flower's rotation suddenly goes from 6 RPM to 60 RPM, that would be a much quicker tipoff that something has changed.
I agree the images seem unremarkable and not very memorable. How about using the hash to walk the space of facial parameters, generating character faces instead of curves.
It's amazing how many Mii's one can recognize and remember. Use 2 different hashes and generate a male, female pair.
They are a pretty recent invention and not many people know about them. They are made to cut glass and can cut intricate curved shapes. They use water for cooling the blade and all the debris ends up in the tank. There is no airborne dust at all, and its relatively quiet for a saw. I have one and it's a fantastic tool. You can hold and cut tiny pieces by hand and even run your fingers into the blade without fear, yet it will easily cut cleanly through metal, glass and ceramic. I found a nice demo video of one at http://www.gryphoncorp.com/index.php?p=ringsaw. (I own a similar ring saw made by Taurus). They are the perfect tool for cleanly and safely cutting circuit boards into artistic forms.
Anyways, I'm a "happy" Microsoft Office user, which doesn't have anything particularly bad to say about it. And yes, I have a legitimate, paid-for Office, so the "but it's free!" argument doesn't quite cut it.
You've already paid for a product, spent the time to install and customize the settings and it does what you need. Why would you even consider using another product unless you're worried that you won't have access to your own documents in the future?
OOffice is worth it for people who don't have lots of money or want to be able to work with their documents decades later when MS is gone. Additionally, OOffice is often better at recovering old or messed up MS Office format documents than current MS products.
The makers says it uses fingerprints to activate the watch.
The Armatix SmartGun concept consits of a weapon that requires locking, a biometric radio wrist watch and a system programming device. Each authorized person wears a radio wrist watch giving them access to the programmed weapon. To activate the wrist watch, the authorized person's fingerprint must first be read by the wrist watch. An internal database compares the current fingerprint against stored prints and responds accordingly. The wrist watch is then activated for a definable period - e.g. an officer's work shift or until manually deactivated.
They do not appear to be marketing these to civilians. They look like they are trying to provide a solution to the risk that a police officer might have his weapon taken in crowd control situations.
Perhaps the risk of having the police officer disarmed is greater then the risk of tech failure. The company makes gun locks. This is just another lock.
Is a holster snap adequate security for a loaded weapon when mingling in a crowd? Perhaps this tech provides an alternative to not carry a gun because of this risk.
Old people do need money to eat and get health care
You assume that because they need it, they should get it. At the other end of the scale is a child that needs an education. If there's only one dollar out there, and the old guy wants it, versus the child, I'd say, give it to the child, and let the old guy die.
Just wait until 2038, and all the old Unix programmers in the US are dead due to lack of Health Care. Then you'll be sorry. Back to stone tools and smoke signals, you'll be.
Large corporations work hard to create Fascist states. In the US, they seem to be succeeding, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision.
I actually agree with most of the rest of your post but I wish that people would consider the ramifications of the legislation that SCOTUS just struck down before they condemn the ruling. You do realize that the ban on corporations participating in the political process also extended to organizations like the NRA, ACLU and EFF, right?
I hope that you can see why such a prohibition is inherently incompatible with the notion of free speech and expression.
I've come to the conclusion that corporations are not people, and those rights should be highly limited to prevent a Fascist takeover of government. Only people should have the constitutional right to free speech and expression. Corporations, including non profits are government sanctioned entities that limit the liability of the individuals that make up that organization. In exchange for that substantial benefit, there should be reciprocal limitations, far in excess of the restrictions on people. Corporate speech is highly regulated already. For example, Newcorp can't claim their snake oil cures all cancer.
I think it should be illegal for any LLC to contribute to political campaigns or try to bribe our elected officials by helping them get elected. That includes non-profits like the NRA, EFF, ACLU. The only reason we have the ACLU, EFF, NRA in Washington is to gain parity to those who currently spend millions and millions trying to consolidate and strengthen their power over government decisions.
In the US, our representatives have to raise on the order of $30k every day they hold office. When CEO's get the call asking for a donation, don't you think that CEO gets their concerns heard and addressed? As a regular citizen, I have no such access or influence. Currently, it takes lots of money to gain access to and influence our politicians. The voter is now nearly powerless, and even more so if LLC's are permitted to influence political campaigns without restrictions or limits.
So that would make you about 35, right? Well, take a look around you. How many technical coworkers do you see that are ten years older than you? How about twenty? And thirty years?
There's age discrimination in every field, but being a 60-year-old programmer is only marginally more likely than being a 60-year-old stripper.
While you may be correct, I don't think the current status quo is necessarily evidence of it. I'm 36, and am of one of the first generations where it was reasonable to have a microcomputer around the house as a small child. People 10, 20, 30 years older than me probably got their first computer at a much older age than me and probably don't have that much more experience than me. When I'm 60, I'll likely have decades more software experience than they do now.
Of course, the younger kids might crush me in networking experience, since the WWW didn't exist until just about when I went to University.
It's a myth that younger people are "better with computers and technology" because they had access to computers in their house as they grew up. I turned 50 this year and have been doing scientific programming for over 35 years. I started at 14 yrs old in '73, working on time share systems and wire wrapping PDP-11 backplanes. I've been on the Internet since '86 and kids almost always assume they have more "network" experience than I. Some of the recent CS college grads I've worked with can't program their way out of a paper bag without GUI UML tools an IDE and weeks of effort refactoring their work. Young kids take days to do things I'd have it done in several hours because I'd be using use the right tool for the job. 'Awk', 'sed' , bash, csh are still very useful for "fixing" data sets. 'perl', 'php' and 'python' are used for more complex tasks. Compiled languages and libraries are used when performance matters or complexity is high. We had 10+ yr experience software engineers who would spend weeks writing a Java app, when a one line 'dd' would do. They've never heard of 'dd', so they write their own buggy, hard coded program. This old guy was the first one to make use of AJAX and web apps in our 50+ engineering division. Companies should think about this, as they lay off us older guys so they can hire a new cheap, young kid within a month.
I'm now doing low-level Linux driver and DSP work for a scientific instrument maker, trying to rescue them from the mess the Java programmer they hired to port their old C, C++ DOS code to XP. "interrupt latency jitter? what's that!?". How come I can't do 5k interrupts/sec on this PC?
Right now, in many scientific fields, the new software being written have less features and run slower than they did 20 years ago. NCAR has spent over 5 years and many, many FTE's trying to replace a C application I wrote in 1991 with a Java version. This 19 year old C/C++ application is still being used quite extensively, even though it's been "replaced" several times with new the development efforts.
They have legions of lawyers working on compliance and lobbyists in DC working to ensure that the regulations protect their existing business while shutting out competitors.
I kind of agree with you. However, if you can provide names and conclusive proof and evidence of this, I urge you to submit a complaint to the FTC with said details falling under the Sherman Antitrust Act. They actually do take that stuff very seriously.
Here's a good example I know from first hand experience. The FTC won't do shit.
Baron Services, Inc., of Huntsville, Alabama filed a formal protest with the GAO after they lost a bid, knowing it would seriously harm their competition.
See http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/402109.htm
They knew they had little chance of success, but they know by filing protests against awards to small, innovative competitors, they have a chance of killing off the small company due to the induced long delays in distribution of contract funds. Based on comments from our contract administrator, this is standard practice, with well over 90% of protests being dismissed.
Here's why it works. Right after we are awarded the contract, we ordered $100+k of parts so we can meet the contract deadlines. Then, Barron steps in and files a complaint. At this point all contact with PNNL and all money stops. We still have to pay for parts we ordered. Try to get a small business loan these days. Banks tell us; "If you deposit that amount of the money in our bank, we'll lend it back to you". Really. Thanks for all the help with the US economy, Wall Street. Fascist Bastards. I'll never forget.
Large corporations work hard to create Fascist states. In the US, they seem to be succeeding, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision. Some of us actually had hope things would change.
Silly us, the GOP won't stand for that and the Dems have clearly demonstrated they can't pick their nose without gaining "bipartisan support".
Both have excellent building guides, are very educational and fun to play with.
Wedgits are great for the younger kids. K'nex roller coasters and ferris wheels would be well used and loved.
K'nex teach about structural design, mechanical engineering and assembly. They start with simple, easy to assemble structures and get very complex, taking days to assemble at the high end.
We also spent many, many hours building our own designs.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition, The IT support staff told her that the vendors "super secure" remote access software would only run on a Windows PC. When she's on-call she has to update patient records. Their plan is BYOD, of course. So... she took her old, crappy Vista Netbook in. All they set up was the RDP client, defaulting to their server on the public internet. She clicks the link, Remote Client starts, 2 user/passwords and she gets a 800x600 Windows desktop. It's got a solitary icon which starts the native application. Yup... Super secure. Scrolling, mousing, cursoring and clicking to get to the form elements take more than half her time charting. It was painful to watch.
She prefers to use her Mac laptop, so I set up a Mac RDP client to use their URL and she was able to login. I watched her for a few minutes and noticed that all the controls and text were low contrast and used tiny, fuzzy fonts in the tiny 800x600 window.
I asked her; "Why do you have it configured to be so small with tiny fonts?" "That's the way it's always been. Everyone complains about it at work". Sigh.
I show her how she can expand the desktop by increasing the size of the client window and full-screen the app window to expose more of the forms. "Wow! we didn't know you could do that. That will really help! Critical stuff is always hiding off screen" Control Panel is available so I select a high contrast theme and larger, default fonts. "Wow, now I'll be able to read what's on the charts from my exam stool." Their clinic had lots of training and "experts" on site to help them learn and use the system in the first weeks, so there's no excuse for the poor default configuration they gave them.
I don't understand what has happened to the software industry. We seem to have forgotten the basics and now make the people serve the tools.
Soon to be nicknamed the 'Nudie-cam.'
Obligatory (SFW) pic worth 1K words. [Google image search result for "Terahertz imaging"].
Note to self: THz-camo underwear market will be big. Get in early.
Someone with mod points please take a look.
Updated 3/19/2013 Due to the high volume of applications, we kindly request that applicants refrain from phoning to inquire about their application status. If we decide to move forward with your application, we will respond within one to two weeks of receiving your resume and cover letter.
My experience as a software engineer in their 50's is I rarely get a response back when I apply via an on-line mechanism. I have great qualifications and lots of experience in current technologies, but rarely get past the initial culling process. Note, I have standing offers for employment and a job that pays well, but my experiments in the last months of actively applying to various companies posting openings shows I'm pretty much SOL in finding new work through any on-line process.
The National Labs here in Boulder are laying off American engineers and giving the work to H1-B recruits. It's much cheaper to hire a PhD scientist from China to write software, than hire a qualified software engineer in the local market. When I worked for NCAR, there were often only 1-3 US citizens on project teams of 10, especially on the DOD related projects. Meanwhile, lots of local STEM grads are waiting tables here in Boulder, for lack of work in their field.
I loved working with the best and brightest from around the world, but now feel bitter and abused. I'd like to see H1-B visa's transferred to the recipient after 90 days of employment. If our National Labs and Tech Industries are really paying above market salaries for H1-B workers, then they won't have to worry about retaining their new recruits. The National Labs and Industry should have to prove they are having trouble finding talent by posting their open positions on a National Job Board for 90 days and documenting the lack of qualified applicants, before a H1-B visa is granted.
It needs to verify that I'm the one wearing it via a heartbeat detector, fingerprint reader and/or DNA verification.
It should have a reverse touch interface to signal alerts and to provide directions without having to look at the screen.
[rant]As one of the originators of the ADDS web site, and someone with 25+ years writing scientific data visualisation software, I can report that most meteorologists and forecasters are disinterested in this type of presentation. I produced a display which could produce these types of wind plots for NCAR in the early '90s and I never saw anyone but software people look at them. I thought it looked great, but I was mocked for suggesting it might be useful. My tool provides maps overlays, topography, and multi parametric, false colour and contour plots, with all the fancy animation controls. One can select arbitrary multi way-point cross sections of the volumetric data to visualise the atmosphere along a flight path or interesting weather features. Most meteorologists look at a few, low resolution, static 500mb and surface plots from several models, a sounding or two and make their forecast. No fancy tools needed, only plots produced on the supercomputer. In my experience, it was mainly people responsible for producing live watches and warnings or weather enthusiasts that made use of new, modern visualisation tools. It was a joy to produce something for people (GA pilots) who actually appreciated the effort and creativity we put into the site. We got awards (plaques and a tiny cash bonus) and lots of attention for ADDS, but I was still laid off a few years later after 18+ years of service with NCAR. [/rant]
6. Intellectual Property Rights: All submissions to the DOC Business Apps Challenge remain the intellectual property of the individuals or organizations that developed them. By registering, consenting to the terms of the challenge, and entering a Submission, however, the Participant agrees that DOC reserves an irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free license to use, copy, distribute to the public, create derivative works from, and publicly display and perform a Submission for a period of one year starting on the date of the announcement of contest winners.
So, for $10k they get bunches of apps which can be distributed royalty-free for a year. If an app is popular, they can change the labels (create derivative works) and continue on. Only 3 developers get any money. Everyone else may have their their app distributed with no compensation.
If you plan on paying off loans or feeding your family by developing software, you should avoid these contests. Leave the submissions to the 9th grade web design classes.
Nice tech, but some of their claims are a bit of a stretch. It looks like a film demonstrating milestones to a sponsor. It's power comes via en umbilical cable and it rights itself on a level floor using plywood cams to do the roll and stop.
When compared to a donkey or mule, 4 legged robots have a long way to go. I live in Colorado and have done pack trips with animals. Here's what comes to mind:
Here's why. Many people in the US, like myself, have no health insurance or what is made available to us has a very high annual deductible. ($6000/yr in the case of my insurance). After paying 28 years of premiums as a young healthy adult, as I turn 50, the rules all change and I'm effectively left to my own devices to find health care services. To Illustrate; let's say I've come down with a sinus infection (4th time in my life. - I recognize the symptoms) and I need to get a prescription for an antibiotic. This is a trivial medical problem, that in other countries might involve $10 and 30 minutes. In the US, we have very limited options and the terms and conditions to access specific health services often change annually. First task is to find someone who will treat you given your insurance plan. You may have to travel to the next city to find a doctor who will take your insurance. If you do not have insurance and no cash on hand for one of the for-profit private urgent care clinics, you may only get seen if your life is in immediate danger at an Emergency Clinic. In the case of my insurance plan, which very few providers accept, success is when it only takes 1-3 weeks to get a 20 minute appointment with a doctor you've never seen before in the middle of a work day. Before receiving any treatment for anything, at each new clinic one has to fill out a lengthy health questionnaire (entire life's health history from memory including dates, medications and dosages). The entire last page of the health form is a release that you must initial and sign, allowing all US insurance companies and the US government access to these records. Doctors will not treat you if you do not sign. I've tried. We all know this information can and will be used in the future to deny insurance claims as most individual health insurance plans in the US exclude coverage for "pre-existing conditions". Additionally, failing to document a treatment received 20+ years earlier, for example; acne, on any form may allow the insurance company to deny all coverage when your bills come due because you 'falsified' your application forms. You don't own any of your medical records (seems like "work for hire" to me) and you often can't get them from previous providers without another doctor requesting them. No one in the US really knows if the insurance they pay for actually covers them until the bills hit. "Medical bankruptcy" is common in the US.
Conversely, I'll be able to go down to Rite-Aid, talk for 5 minutes for free to the gate keeper nurse, she determines that you have a simple problem that a prescription can solve and that you can pay for it. The doctor gets on-line, asks you if you are allergic to any medication then she writes a prescription for a nicely profitable brand-name antibiotic and sends it right to the store, ready for pick up in 15 minutes. This visit will likely take no phone calls, one car trip, cost less than $100 out-of-pocket without a loss of a half day at work and treatment beings within the hour. This is how "the best health care system in the world" currently operates.
The FA has no info on what software or media is to be installed. The only thing that make sense to me is they plan on using the tablets primarily as e-books, installing an e-reader and age appropriate books on them. Sending kids home with the entire library collection might actually help some to read more. I doubt the iPads will run anything other than the schools educational apps.
You would rather trust it to the government?
Yes. Please ask someone old enough to remember the many, many private pension raids and bankruptcies in the 1960's & 70's. It got so bad the people demanded the government step in and enforce minimal standards and provide for insurance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_Retirement_Income_Security_Act
Historically, private investment funds were often set up by wealthy people to attract the life's savings of the working class. The market is then manipulated such that the "market makers" (Job Creators :) win at the expense of the common investor. Laws are passed to prevent the manipulation. Yet the problem persists.
How many times has US government social insurance gone bankrupt? I wonder when young people will realize they are being led to slaughter using the soothing drone of FUD on all government.
That's a very bad thing. It's a long standing principle in British and American jurisprudence, all the way back to the 1600s, that juries do not have to justify their verdicts and cannot be held accountable for them.
Too bad this isn't true any more in the US. You can be charged with a crime if you vote to acquit a person and other jurors or the prosecutor doesn't like your politics. This happened to juror Laura Kriho in Colorado in 1997. She was the lone holdout to acquit on a drug possession charge.
"Unable to persuade the other jurors of her view of the evidence, she also used nullification and sentencing consequences arguments. The judge signed contempt of court charges against her two months later." http://www.ndsn.org/marapr97/kriho.html "She was issued the contempt citation for failure to inform the court, without being asked, that she had been arrested as a teenager thirteen years earlier for possession of an illegal substance. She was apparently supposed to have remembered each question asked to all of the preceding jury candidates and, then, at the end of the very long voir dire process, volunteer answers to possible questions she wasn't asked." http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/1998/09/jury_nullification.html
If ever called to to a trial as a juror I will inform the judge that I feel compelled to always vote to convict because I don't want to be held in contempt for not answering questions I was not asked, like Laura Kriho in 1997.
"Former juror Dan Cooper testified at Kriho's hearing that he overheard Judge Barnhill tell prosecutor Stanley to "look into this" after Kriho went to her car and returned with a pamphlet advocating jury nullification to give to another juror. The juror gave the pamphlet to Judge Barnhill. Grant says Stanley did "look into it" with the help of Gilpin County Judge Frederic Rodgers who wrote an article this summer for the Judge's Journal about what a judge can do when faced with a jury pool "tainted" with notions of jury nullification."
If you think you have power as a Juror, think again. Laura Kriho was convicted and fined $1200 for attempting jury nullification.
Perhaps having the algorithm also add a unique animation sequence would help make these visual representations more identifiable to users. If a flower's rotation suddenly goes from 6 RPM to 60 RPM, that would be a much quicker tipoff that something has changed.
I agree the images seem unremarkable and not very memorable. How about using the hash to walk the space of facial parameters, generating character faces instead of curves.
It's amazing how many Mii's one can recognize and remember. Use 2 different hashes and generate a male, female pair.
They are a pretty recent invention and not many people know about them. They are made to cut glass and can cut intricate curved shapes. They use water for cooling the blade and all the debris ends up in the tank. There is no airborne dust at all, and its relatively quiet for a saw. I have one and it's a fantastic tool. You can hold and cut tiny pieces by hand and even run your fingers into the blade without fear, yet it will easily cut cleanly through metal, glass and ceramic. I found a nice demo video of one at http://www.gryphoncorp.com/index.php?p=ringsaw. (I own a similar ring saw made by Taurus). They are the perfect tool for cleanly and safely cutting circuit boards into artistic forms.
so once you have paid the copy tax you are free to copy as much music as you like?
According to the copyright collective; Yes, Provided you record audio from your stereo speakers onto a SD card using a portable stereo recorder.
You may also make a personal mix tape from your own record collection.
I wonder if Sony regrets waving the red flag. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20050310-17.html. Anybody heard from geohotz in the last few days?
Anyways, I'm a "happy" Microsoft Office user, which doesn't have anything particularly bad to say about it. And yes, I have a legitimate, paid-for Office, so the "but it's free!" argument doesn't quite cut it.
You've already paid for a product, spent the time to install and customize the settings and it does what you need. Why would you even consider using another product unless you're worried that you won't have access to your own documents in the future?
OOffice is worth it for people who don't have lots of money or want to be able to work with their documents decades later when MS is gone. Additionally, OOffice is often better at recovering old or messed up MS Office format documents than current MS products.
The Armatix SmartGun concept consits of a weapon that requires locking, a biometric radio wrist watch and a system programming device. Each authorized person wears a radio wrist watch giving them access to the programmed weapon. To activate the wrist watch, the authorized person's fingerprint must first be read by the wrist watch. An internal database compares the current fingerprint against stored prints and responds accordingly. The wrist watch is then activated for a definable period - e.g. an officer's work shift or until manually deactivated.
They do not appear to be marketing these to civilians. They look like they are trying to provide a solution to the risk that a police officer might have his weapon taken in crowd control situations. Perhaps the risk of having the police officer disarmed is greater then the risk of tech failure. The company makes gun locks. This is just another lock.
Is a holster snap adequate security for a loaded weapon when mingling in a crowd? Perhaps this tech provides an alternative to not carry a gun because of this risk.
Old people do need money to eat and get health care
You assume that because they need it, they should get it. At the other end of the scale is a child that needs an education. If there's only one dollar out there, and the old guy wants it, versus the child, I'd say, give it to the child, and let the old guy die.
Just wait until 2038, and all the old Unix programmers in the US are dead due to lack of Health Care. Then you'll be sorry. Back to stone tools and smoke signals, you'll be.
Large corporations work hard to create Fascist states. In the US, they seem to be succeeding, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision.
I actually agree with most of the rest of your post but I wish that people would consider the ramifications of the legislation that SCOTUS just struck down before they condemn the ruling. You do realize that the ban on corporations participating in the political process also extended to organizations like the NRA, ACLU and EFF, right?
I hope that you can see why such a prohibition is inherently incompatible with the notion of free speech and expression.
I've come to the conclusion that corporations are not people, and those rights should be highly limited to prevent a Fascist takeover of government. Only people should have the constitutional right to free speech and expression. Corporations, including non profits are government sanctioned entities that limit the liability of the individuals that make up that organization. In exchange for that substantial benefit, there should be reciprocal limitations, far in excess of the restrictions on people. Corporate speech is highly regulated already. For example, Newcorp can't claim their snake oil cures all cancer.
I think it should be illegal for any LLC to contribute to political campaigns or try to bribe our elected officials by helping them get elected. That includes non-profits like the NRA, EFF, ACLU. The only reason we have the ACLU, EFF, NRA in Washington is to gain parity to those who currently spend millions and millions trying to consolidate and strengthen their power over government decisions.
In the US, our representatives have to raise on the order of $30k every day they hold office. When CEO's get the call asking for a donation, don't you think that CEO gets their concerns heard and addressed? As a regular citizen, I have no such access or influence. Currently, it takes lots of money to gain access to and influence our politicians. The voter is now nearly powerless, and even more so if LLC's are permitted to influence political campaigns without restrictions or limits.
While you may be correct, I don't think the current status quo is necessarily evidence of it. I'm 36, and am of one of the first generations where it was reasonable to have a microcomputer around the house as a small child. People 10, 20, 30 years older than me probably got their first computer at a much older age than me and probably don't have that much more experience than me. When I'm 60, I'll likely have decades more software experience than they do now.
Of course, the younger kids might crush me in networking experience, since the WWW didn't exist until just about when I went to University.
It's a myth that younger people are "better with computers and technology" because they had access to computers in their house as they grew up. I turned 50 this year and have been doing scientific programming for over 35 years. I started at 14 yrs old in '73, working on time share systems and wire wrapping PDP-11 backplanes. I've been on the Internet since '86 and kids almost always assume they have more "network" experience than I. Some of the recent CS college grads I've worked with can't program their way out of a paper bag without GUI UML tools an IDE and weeks of effort refactoring their work. Young kids take days to do things I'd have it done in several hours because I'd be using use the right tool for the job. 'Awk', 'sed' , bash, csh are still very useful for "fixing" data sets. 'perl', 'php' and 'python' are used for more complex tasks. Compiled languages and libraries are used when performance matters or complexity is high. We had 10+ yr experience software engineers who would spend weeks writing a Java app, when a one line 'dd' would do. They've never heard of 'dd', so they write their own buggy, hard coded program. This old guy was the first one to make use of AJAX and web apps in our 50+ engineering division. Companies should think about this, as they lay off us older guys so they can hire a new cheap, young kid within a month. I'm now doing low-level Linux driver and DSP work for a scientific instrument maker, trying to rescue them from the mess the Java programmer they hired to port their old C, C++ DOS code to XP. "interrupt latency jitter? what's that!?". How come I can't do 5k interrupts/sec on this PC?
Right now, in many scientific fields, the new software being written have less features and run slower than they did 20 years ago. NCAR has spent over 5 years and many, many FTE's trying to replace a C application I wrote in 1991 with a Java version. This 19 year old C/C++ application is still being used quite extensively, even though it's been "replaced" several times with new the development efforts.
They have legions of lawyers working on compliance and lobbyists in DC working to ensure that the regulations protect their existing business while shutting out competitors.
I kind of agree with you. However, if you can provide names and conclusive proof and evidence of this, I urge you to submit a complaint to the FTC with said details falling under the Sherman Antitrust Act. They actually do take that stuff very seriously.
Here's a good example I know from first hand experience. The FTC won't do shit.
Baron Services, Inc., of Huntsville, Alabama filed a formal protest with the GAO after they lost a bid, knowing it would seriously harm their competition. See http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/402109.htm
They knew they had little chance of success, but they know by filing protests against awards to small, innovative competitors, they have a chance of killing off the small company due to the induced long delays in distribution of contract funds. Based on comments from our contract administrator, this is standard practice, with well over 90% of protests being dismissed.
Here's why it works. Right after we are awarded the contract, we ordered $100+k of parts so we can meet the contract deadlines. Then, Barron steps in and files a complaint. At this point all contact with PNNL and all money stops. We still have to pay for parts we ordered. Try to get a small business loan these days. Banks tell us; "If you deposit that amount of the money in our bank, we'll lend it back to you". Really. Thanks for all the help with the US economy, Wall Street. Fascist Bastards. I'll never forget.
Large corporations work hard to create Fascist states. In the US, they seem to be succeeding, especially in light of the recent SCOTUS decision. Some of us actually had hope things would change. Silly us, the GOP won't stand for that and the Dems have clearly demonstrated they can't pick their nose without gaining "bipartisan support".
Both have excellent building guides, are very educational and fun to play with. Wedgits are great for the younger kids. K'nex roller coasters and ferris wheels would be well used and loved. K'nex teach about structural design, mechanical engineering and assembly. They start with simple, easy to assemble structures and get very complex, taking days to assemble at the high end. We also spent many, many hours building our own designs.
I've flown slope RC. Little planes can change direction incredibly fast.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824254026 - $310 delivered.
It's also very bright which helps with depth of focus. It's so nice I purchased two.