Doctors have a much lower threshold for diagnosis of "sick people" because if they miss anything, they can get sued for malpractice (founded lawsuit or not). Even if the lawsuit is completely without merit, most lawyers will settle instead of clearing the doctor with a full trial due to cost. So when the threat of lawsuit is over a doc's head, good medicine goes out the window and lawsuit-preventing medicine goes into full effect.
I realize not every doctor is actually good, and that they can make egregious errors and need to be corrected. Enact tort reform, cap damages, and actually encourage preventative medicine instead of paying lip service to it and you'll get lower costs and better yield for the non-sick 999.
I don't expect a doctor to start caring about the other 999 until that 1 possibly sick person can't sue him and take everything he owns.
I was playing golf and my Nokia 6680 flew out of the cart somewhere along the course. Overnight, there was a thunderstorm, and so I wrote it off. I got a call from a guy the next day saying that he found my phone! Apparently, it wasn't working when he found it in a two-inch puddle on the fairway, so he dumped out the water, dried it off with a golf towel, and it powered right up.
Only damage happened when I took apart the screen to hair-dry the water out of it.
I've been shooting a Minolta XG-1 for years now - great lens and flash options, fully manual as well as fully automatic modes, electronic light meter, and incredibly rugged. Plus, they go for roughly $75 on ebay, and they don't leak light. Best bet for the money.
In the 1950's, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was developed as a method to analyze organic molecules, and could very accurately show the different functional groups (alcohols, ethers, aldehydes, etc) in a given sample. This allowed identification of almost any organic molecule, and won the Nobel Prize in the late 50's or early 60's. When MRI first came out, people viewed it as a simple extension of NMR - "Instead of an organic sample, let's use the human body as a sample and look for the same shifts!" That's why MRI hasn't won a Nobel in 30+ years.
How can I invest in this guy's company? Seriously, the guy is obviously so far ahead of the curve that getting in now (while he's in debt) will make me a wealthy man. Because he's investing in hardware and not software, his idea might actually work.
This doesn't seem like another webvan, but what the hell do I know?
I'm a recent Duke engineering graduate (BSE, '02), and I believe I can clear up a few things.
From my experience, the grade inflation is most apparent in the soft sciences(poly-sci, etc) and humanities(English et.al). In engineering and hard sciences (bio,chem, physics,math), professors have absolutely no qualms (as evidenced by my transcript) about giving C's and below. Interestingly, I got A's in every single humanities class I took.
The reason intro calculus is the most failed class is because they have a 7-question integrals exam that you can take a few times during a semester. If you don't get them all right on any one administration of the exam, you fail.
I know at least one EE professor who awards no partial credit (and rightly so), saying, "You're an engineer. You make a mistake at your job, people die." At least four of my professors did not curve any of the classes they taught, their reasoning being that a student earns his grade, and doesn't just fall ass-backwards into an A.
Also, Dr. Stuart Rojstaczer has a primary appointment in the Earth and Ocean Sciences Dept., and a secondary appointment in the Civil Dept., and right now he's a Visiting Professor at Stanford.
(Aside: Stanford is the place where you can drop a class until the day of the final with no mention of the class on your transcript. And if you don't show for the final, they assume you've withdrawn from the class, but don't list it on your transcript as a withdrawal.)
I don't think AOL is going to make quite the killing on this app as they expect - most large corporations already completely block AIM/AOL access, for exactly the productivity reasons mentioned in other threads. And especially given the high cost of monitoring, complete blockage is much more cost-effective.
If people want to communicate with each other "real time", that's what the phone is for. As any college student will tell you, AIM is possibly -the worst- time waster available, and simply blocking access lets employees focus on what they're PAID to do.
In all fairness, this could be Dell's chance to create something truly novel. Their PCs are pretty much the same as other manufacturers, and so creativity has been minimal.
On the other hand, this could be simply another way to push WindowsCE through some backdoor agreement with Bill and Co. But we can only wait and see.
I just hope that Dell's PDA doesn't turn into another Palm clone (Handspring, et. al)
Seriously, what were the no-talent ass-clowns thinking when they thought up this business venture? Who's their target market - people with a high-speed, low-restriction internet connection, but no TV and no transportation to a video store?
Wait, it can't be - they got the movie on Kazaa a week before it was released in theaters.
Just when Hollywood Video and Blockbuster are extending their rental times, they try to pull this scam.
On a serious note, when does the 24-hour window begin? After paying the rental fee or after successful download of the film? Because it would be a fine lawsuit indeed if someone sued for breach of contract when, after payment, they never got the movie.
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I realize not every doctor is actually good, and that they can make egregious errors and need to be corrected. Enact tort reform, cap damages, and actually encourage preventative medicine instead of paying lip service to it and you'll get lower costs and better yield for the non-sick 999.
I don't expect a doctor to start caring about the other 999 until that 1 possibly sick person can't sue him and take everything he owns.
In fact, you could make the argument that it would be unethical to turn down the job because your family would suffer due to the lack of income.
Only damage happened when I took apart the screen to hair-dry the water out of it.
Cue (entirely appropriate) lawsuit in 3...2...1...
Step 1 - announce software
Step 2 - make all your links to software dead
Step 3 - Profit?
Step 1: Make a decent product
Step 2: Poison the market for other products/combo devices
Step 3: Profit!
Companies are giving real incentive to be an engineer.
That's what I did, and now I'm in med school, training for a job that can't be outsourced.
Microsoft Windows 2000 Microsoft Office 2000 FireFox Adobe Acrobat Winamp SSH Secure Shell AOL Instant Messenger DeadAIM Ad-Aware Kazaa Lite GhostScript/GhostView
I've been shooting a Minolta XG-1 for years now - great lens and flash options, fully manual as well as fully automatic modes, electronic light meter, and incredibly rugged. Plus, they go for roughly $75 on ebay, and they don't leak light. Best bet for the money.
In the 1950's, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was developed as a method to analyze organic molecules, and could very accurately show the different functional groups (alcohols, ethers, aldehydes, etc) in a given sample. This allowed identification of almost any organic molecule, and won the Nobel Prize in the late 50's or early 60's. When MRI first came out, people viewed it as a simple extension of NMR - "Instead of an organic sample, let's use the human body as a sample and look for the same shifts!" That's why MRI hasn't won a Nobel in 30+ years.
This doesn't seem like another webvan, but what the hell do I know?
From my experience, the grade inflation is most apparent in the soft sciences(poly-sci, etc) and humanities(English et.al). In engineering and hard sciences (bio,chem, physics,math), professors have absolutely no qualms (as evidenced by my transcript) about giving C's and below. Interestingly, I got A's in every single humanities class I took.
The reason intro calculus is the most failed class is because they have a 7-question integrals exam that you can take a few times during a semester. If you don't get them all right on any one administration of the exam, you fail.
I know at least one EE professor who awards no partial credit (and rightly so), saying, "You're an engineer. You make a mistake at your job, people die." At least four of my professors did not curve any of the classes they taught, their reasoning being that a student earns his grade, and doesn't just fall ass-backwards into an A.
Also, Dr. Stuart Rojstaczer has a primary appointment in the Earth and Ocean Sciences Dept., and a secondary appointment in the Civil Dept., and right now he's a Visiting Professor at Stanford.
(Aside: Stanford is the place where you can drop a class until the day of the final with no mention of the class on your transcript. And if you don't show for the final, they assume you've withdrawn from the class, but don't list it on your transcript as a withdrawal.)
If people want to communicate with each other "real time", that's what the phone is for. As any college student will tell you, AIM is possibly -the worst- time waster available, and simply blocking access lets employees focus on what they're PAID to do.
On the other hand, this could be simply another way to push WindowsCE through some backdoor agreement with Bill and Co. But we can only wait and see.
I just hope that Dell's PDA doesn't turn into another Palm clone (Handspring, et. al)
Seriously, what were the no-talent ass-clowns thinking when they thought up this business venture? Who's their target market - people with a high-speed, low-restriction internet connection, but no TV and no transportation to a video store? Wait, it can't be - they got the movie on Kazaa a week before it was released in theaters. Just when Hollywood Video and Blockbuster are extending their rental times, they try to pull this scam. On a serious note, when does the 24-hour window begin? After paying the rental fee or after successful download of the film? Because it would be a fine lawsuit indeed if someone sued for breach of contract when, after payment, they never got the movie.
Of course, Duke Law is THE best place to give such a donation, given that their most famous alumnus is ... Richard Nixon.