If you want some free tunes, check out http://www.internetarchive.org Bands on the site all actively support recording during their shows and posting on the web.
First a tip of the hat to the GnuCash team. I've been Quicken free for almost two years. THANK YOU (and I have sent $$ to the team in appreciation).
Second - Open Source is not new. I have been playing around with computer stuff since '85. Pretty much everything useful I've learned has come from 'the community'. First via CompuServe's forums and later the broader web. Pick an app, system, piece of hardware, whatever and you'll find a forum somewhere that deals with the item. Tons of trash, but always a core group of dedicated volunteers that drive the product forward and help others. People who work for companies that compete with each other check their swords at the door and help each other. A-freaking-mazing!
Excellent point. If it was up to me, I'd restructure high school back to a more basic format - reading, writing, math, science, history, PE, and foreign language with art, music, shop, and home ec (or whatever they call it today) being available and required at some level so kids get the basics and some coursework to broaden their horizons without burdening them with a bunch of crap required today.
I'd also recommend a structure I had in one of my high schools - 6 classes per semester. On Mon and Wed, take 3 classes for 2 hours each, on Tue and Thu take the other 3 for 2 hours, then on Friday take everything for one hour. We go so much done in the 2nd hour of those classes it was amazing. My kids had to take something like 8 courses per semester @ 45/class - they hardly got warmed up before the bell rang and they had to switch gears.
First, I don't think it is necessary for every kid in the world to know how to program. I can't tune my car and have no interest in tuning my car so why should I learn how? If a kid expresses interest in programming, go for it, otherwise, don't sweat it.
What tool? Whatever is at hand. What drives the kid? What kind of thing do they want to build? For what it's worth, the first real programming 'language' I learned and really used was Lotus Symphony's @Macro Language. I had a problem, Symphony was the tool provided, learn to code, fix the problem.
Today, Excel or OpenOffice both have fully functional languages that can be used to make very creative apps.
If they're into db type stuff - html, php, apache, MySQL. Total power, lots of cool stuff you can do, tons of sample code available and a great way to break into some highly useful coding concepts.
Bottom line for this message is to to think a bit outside of the typical 'programming' box and think about environments that include programming features. You may be surprised at what the little buggers dream up.
I installed the app a few days ago and have been running it on our oldest/least used laptop. I had no idea there were 'teams' you could join so now there's one more/.er
Don't know how things work in your home but in my home, I have a computer (Mandrake) and my wife has a computer (XP home). I don't 'let' her do anything with her pc, she does what she damn well wants thank you very much and god help me if I start screwing with her setup and make something burp... and yes, I do have to clean up the mess when things go bad.
the good news is that her system is well patched, runs zone alarm, avg, mozilla, and I just switched her from aim to gaim. Step by step the migration to FLOSS goes forward.
Keep in mind that 'her' computer is for more than home and has to work at her place of employ (Windows and apple shop) so some of the 'hands off' has to do with not screwing up use of the system at work.
Anyway - bottom line, at home you are NOT a sys admin, you're a spouse with special skills.
I've worked in sales and in marketing, been a customer, and had to provide field support for the products. If anyone can define 'THE TRUTH' for me, I'd be a happy camper.
Sales and marketing are all about presenting your product in the best possible light. One of the best sales reps I ever worked with said he never lied, he just sculpted the truth.
People rarely buy things using purely objective measureable criteria. Another response in this thread talks about the art of testing. No customer (or very few) are capable of writing up a requirements list that could really be tested.
Add to this an interesting phenomenon. If I am totally open and honest with a potential customer and lay out the good the bad and the ugly while my competion isn't bound by this code of ethics, guess who gets the sale? Customers want to be lied to (nobody here, I know that, but in 5 years of selling, that was my objective reality).
So, when a buyer asks 'does your wiget do xyz' and you know it does, but maybe not with a lot of grace, the answer is 'yes'. It's not my job to help the customer rephrase the question into something that can be tested.
If I get sales literature, I start by assuming that the core of the ad is legally correct. I also assume that there is a lot about the product that the ads and product spec sheets don't cover. If it's cheap and low risk to me, I'll buy it to see how it works. If it's expensive and going to take me time to implement - demo time. I want it in my hands long enough to figure out if it'll really work.
Trust but verify... Buyer beware... There's a sucker born every minute...
Let me ask this. Try creating a pivot-like system with drag and drop grahics using Excel. Let's face it, if you're using Excel for data analysis, you're NOT handling tons of data. The point of my post is to explain, to those who don't use pivot table, why they are so amazing.
Oracle has a moderately nice tool called Discoverer that provides pivot/chart functionality so if you need do handle a gazillion records, I think Oracle can handle the taks.
If there's an existing FLOSS system that is able to perform these functions, I'm all in!
I'm no M$ lover, but pivot tables beat the crap out of SQL. Why? Ease of use. To build a pivot table takes about, ohhh, 30 seconds if you're clueless. To then generate a graph, 1 second. Don't like the particular pivot/chart you have set up? No problem, grab the field you don't want, pull it out, drag a couple more in and you're done. They make it incredibly easy to visualize the data you're working with and take very little effort to set up or change. They also provide almost effort free data filtering and very simple but powerful drill down options. We use them to figure out failure trends on production data.
I use OO and the data pilot just ain't there yet.
If you've never used pivots (and have Excel) go play.
Are they perfect? No. I'd love to see an option to use something besides bar charts - XY plots with regressions would be the one big thing I'd like to see.
The article describes, quite well, the kinds of issues and problems a Windows user (like me) is likely to encounter when trying to make the switch to Linux (and I have met all of those problems). The common statement is the 'in Windows, it just works'. Audio, video, streaming of both, cameras, you name it, plug-n-play pretty much works in the Win world while with Linux, it works but often requires all kinds of interesting effort.
It's more complex that that and I propose that two issues work together to make Linux less than 'dummy' friendly.
First, installing apps can be a painful exercise in frustration. If you're lucky, the rpm or apt-get is available for your distro. If you're not,./configure, make, make install and god help you if anything fails. Robust install methods that 'just work dammit' are a must.
Second, and less obvious, is the fact that most web sites that require something special (say a great web radio station like http://www.radioparadise.com says you need winamp or windows media player. Clearly, you don't need either, but there are NO links on the page for the Linux alternatives.
When it's easy to install something and Linux alteratives become common on web sites - it won't be 'the' answer, but it'll go a long way towards making Linux a choice for the common user.
I've had a number of different jobs as an adult - clinical chemist (hospital lab work), medical device chemist, medical device tech rep, sales rep, marketing, manufacturing engieer, and most currently applications developer. Every job required lots of hard, and often unplanned, work. Nights, weekends, multi-week road trips, forgotten vacations, you name it. If you work at anything remotely interesting and want to be involved as more than a clock punching automaton, you WILL give up much of your personal life. If being a stay at home dad is important, you WILL give up advancement opportunities (ask all those stay at home moms about this) and miss out on critical assignments. It's about choice. Whatever you choose, something has to give - the lie is that you can have it all. You can't. Accept it, choose, move on and don't look back.
There is no value judgement implied in this message. I chose to do what I did and gave up time at home with the kids. It's not a good choice or a bad choice, just the one I made. If you choose to spend more time at home - go for it and have a great time.
Any language you choose is easy once you 'get it'. No language is intuitive or easy. Basic concepts are relatively simple in all languages (if/then, looping, comparisons, basic math) but the use of those methods to DO stuff is what's hard.
She's eventually going to need to bite the bullet and figure out how it all goes together. No pain, no gain and programming is all about pain.
Suggestion - have her conceive of something she'd like to automate. Does she use spreadsheets? Great! There have to be any number of things she does over and over and over that would be prime candidates for coding. Guess what? Most sheets include programming languages. Now she has a goal (automate a task) and a tool (scripting language). She's 1/2 way there.
Once she's gotten her feet wet, it's just a matter of building more and more complex systems and figuring out the techniques of programming.
My personal choice for the best tool to quickly and easily build apps that really do cool stuff - Lotus Notes. Full built in development environment, choice of two built in languages plus hooks to whatever else you'd like, a limited number of widgets with a limited number of methods and properties - it's totally possible to get the entire environment into your head making it easy to focus on the objective rather than finding the right method. Downside - you gotta buy the designer client and it's about a grand.
Python is similar to Notes in that the language is small enough to grasp and is extensible.
If she gives you crap about 'it'll take me years to learn how to do this', just tell her the years are going to go by whether or not she tries this so go for it!
HTH and wish her well - old farts can learn new tricks too.
I am ever so glad the a certified linux guru has trouble getting printing to work. My setup makes it seem that things are printing, but nothing happens at the printer. Queue is empty, no obvious errors, no printout. Searching for a reason has been a fruitless project. Trying to figure out how to debug landed me at some 300 page troubleshooting page with all kinds of stuff to do files to log switches to throw... yeah, right. I'll generate a PDF, send it to my Win box and print from there.
What's especially frustrating is that my HP printer/scanner/fax scans just great from my Mandrake box, I just can't print.
Eric has it bang on dead to rights. Linux scares the crap out of 'the unwashed n00bs' because of things like this - printing is a basic fact of computer life and if I have to spend more than 2 minutes setting up a printer, I am outta there.
A few years back this was tried. People drank MORE just to see how high they could get the meter to read!
And then left, got in their cars and drove home.
People who drink and drive are just plain stupid. And I include myself in that list. While I no longer drink and drive, if I did, the cops should toss my butt into jail and leave me there for a while.
If I had a choice, I wouldn't put up with it;-) We're 'all Windows, all the time', OS by fiat, no choice, no options...I'm with you 100% on this one, I just don't have an option.
Geez, I'm not even sure our IT department can spell Linux...We just loooooovvvvve filling Bill's pockets with money.
Oh wait, gotta reboot....
Dogu
ps - as much as I hate to admit it, we've been switching most everything over to Win2000 and/or XP Pro and the overall reliability of workstations and servers has improved - we don't crash and burn nearly as often as we used to.
Just a word to those SCO employees lurking/posting here. Keep in your mind that, at least for me, I despise what your management is doing but hold the poor laboring schlub actually doing work in only the highest regard. I hope for your sake that cooler heads prevail, your owner/boss/tyrant gets the ax, and you can go back to doing useful work for a class company.
Hang in.
Dogu
ps - if you ARE a manager/owner/tyrant, move along, there's nothing here for you.
Just in case you haven't noticed, a lot of 'live' concerts now are so pre-programmed, the folks on stage are little more than prancing automatons there to provide a bit of motion to go along with the sound. (of course, this assessment does not include bands like Phish - hard to preprogram that kind of thing...)
If the venue isn't small enough that I can watch the performer sweat and hear the sound of fingers sliding over strings, I'll buy the CD - it's cheaper and I don't have to deal with the idiot next to me going 'Whooooooooooooo' for 2 hours.
Commercial ventures will always look for ways to cut costs. Most TV stations now use robotic cameras and purchase 'our man in DC' from somebody on a per minute basis so finding ways to get people out of the music equation is no big surprise. Support individual musicians - buy their music, go to their concerts, keep them in business.
BTW - interesting technology at Radio Paradise. Two people, awesome music, and they're shooting to be able to run the site from anywhere in the world via laptop. Go there, pay them money, keep them in business!
so I'm not sure how the regulations may have changed...
Ohhhh they're ever so much more intrusive than ever before. If you think software management in a regular commercial enterprise can be difficult, the medical world is way worse. The FDA can inspect down to the code when they drop in for a little visit and if you can't point every bit of code back to some top level end user/device requirement (along with all the changes, the reasons for the changes, the risk analysis you did for each of the changes, all the sign-offs, all the definitions of who's allowed to sign off, all the changes to the list and why they were made and who approved them and....), you will probably be written up and that ain't good.
This level of FDA oversite include not just the software on the devices but also any data collection/analysis systems used by manufacturing or QA - including things like spreadsheets.
Using COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf Software)? No pass. You may not have to validate the COTS but you do have to validate it's use in your application or system.
Geez, I use AOL's IM and it has the feature as well (I am not an AOL customer, just use the IM client since everyone I need to chat with uses it, forgive me...).
The AOL client puts control of this feature in the hands of the sender - some people use it, some don't but clearly the function has existed for a while.
I'm very spoiled. We use Lotus Notes at work for mail and applications. Notes has a construct called multivalue fields that can be used to create multiple categories (similar to folders) for grouping and sorting of data. I can file mail in as many categories as I like via use of categories. Simple idea that works great
If I remember my immunology right, he's not wrong.
Threats are handled in a couple of ways. The body can mount an untargeted 'kill it' response that doesn't depend on prior exposure. At the same time, specific cells detemine the chemical structure of the assault and build specific response chemicals (antibodies) that are used in subsequent attacks. The body does build a completely new antibody to a new threat - it's not just exposing some already there antibody. This is why innoculation against last year's virus doesn't help this year. Your survival isn't dependent on what antibodies you have but rather on your ability to create new and successful antibodies when required.
Word of caution. If you read the card contracts, you MUST sign the back. Many places will accept a 'see id' note, but more and more places will not (like the us post office for instance and many car rental places). Save youself some trouble, put 'see id' and sign it as well. I get about a 70% hit rate.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want some free tunes, check out http://www.internetarchive.org Bands on the site all actively support recording during their shows and posting on the web.
Doug
Two things.
First a tip of the hat to the GnuCash team. I've been Quicken free for almost two years. THANK YOU (and I have sent $$ to the team in appreciation).
Second - Open Source is not new. I have been playing around with computer stuff since '85. Pretty much everything useful I've learned has come from 'the community'. First via CompuServe's forums and later the broader web. Pick an app, system, piece of hardware, whatever and you'll find a forum somewhere that deals with the item. Tons of trash, but always a core group of dedicated volunteers that drive the product forward and help others. People who work for companies that compete with each other check their swords at the door and help each other. A-freaking-mazing!
I love this field!
Dogu
Excellent point. If it was up to me, I'd restructure high school back to a more basic format - reading, writing, math, science, history, PE, and foreign language with art, music, shop, and home ec (or whatever they call it today) being available and required at some level so kids get the basics and some coursework to broaden their horizons without burdening them with a bunch of crap required today.
I'd also recommend a structure I had in one of my high schools - 6 classes per semester. On Mon and Wed, take 3 classes for 2 hours each, on Tue and Thu take the other 3 for 2 hours, then on Friday take everything for one hour. We go so much done in the 2nd hour of those classes it was amazing. My kids had to take something like 8 courses per semester @ 45/class - they hardly got warmed up before the bell rang and they had to switch gears.
Doug
First, I don't think it is necessary for every kid in the world to know how to program. I can't tune my car and have no interest in tuning my car so why should I learn how? If a kid expresses interest in programming, go for it, otherwise, don't sweat it.
What tool? Whatever is at hand. What drives the kid? What kind of thing do they want to build? For what it's worth, the first real programming 'language' I learned and really used was Lotus Symphony's @Macro Language. I had a problem, Symphony was the tool provided, learn to code, fix the problem.
Today, Excel or OpenOffice both have fully functional languages that can be used to make very creative apps.
If they're into db type stuff - html, php, apache, MySQL. Total power, lots of cool stuff you can do, tons of sample code available and a great way to break into some highly useful coding concepts.
Bottom line for this message is to to think a bit outside of the typical 'programming' box and think about environments that include programming features. You may be surprised at what the little buggers dream up.
Doug
I installed the app a few days ago and have been running it on our oldest/least used laptop. I had no idea there were 'teams' you could join so now there's one more /.er
Doug
Don't know how things work in your home but in my home, I have a computer (Mandrake) and my wife has a computer (XP home). I don't 'let' her do anything with her pc, she does what she damn well wants thank you very much and god help me if I start screwing with her setup and make something burp... and yes, I do have to clean up the mess when things go bad.
the good news is that her system is well patched, runs zone alarm, avg, mozilla, and I just switched her from aim to gaim. Step by step the migration to FLOSS goes forward.
Keep in mind that 'her' computer is for more than home and has to work at her place of employ (Windows and apple shop) so some of the 'hands off' has to do with not screwing up use of the system at work.
Anyway - bottom line, at home you are NOT a sys admin, you're a spouse with special skills.
dogu
I've worked in sales and in marketing, been a customer, and had to provide field support for the products. If anyone can define 'THE TRUTH' for me, I'd be a happy camper.
Sales and marketing are all about presenting your product in the best possible light. One of the best sales reps I ever worked with said he never lied, he just sculpted the truth.
People rarely buy things using purely objective measureable criteria. Another response in this thread talks about the art of testing. No customer (or very few) are capable of writing up a requirements list that could really be tested.
Add to this an interesting phenomenon. If I am totally open and honest with a potential customer and lay out the good the bad and the ugly while my competion isn't bound by this code of ethics, guess who gets the sale? Customers want to be lied to (nobody here, I know that, but in 5 years of selling, that was my objective reality).
So, when a buyer asks 'does your wiget do xyz' and you know it does, but maybe not with a lot of grace, the answer is 'yes'. It's not my job to help the customer rephrase the question into something that can be tested.
If I get sales literature, I start by assuming that the core of the ad is legally correct. I also assume that there is a lot about the product that the ads and product spec sheets don't cover. If it's cheap and low risk to me, I'll buy it to see how it works. If it's expensive and going to take me time to implement - demo time. I want it in my hands long enough to figure out if it'll really work.
Trust but verify...
Buyer beware...
There's a sucker born every minute...
Let me ask this. Try creating a pivot-like system with drag and drop grahics using Excel. Let's face it, if you're using Excel for data analysis, you're NOT handling tons of data. The point of my post is to explain, to those who don't use pivot table, why they are so amazing.
Oracle has a moderately nice tool called Discoverer that provides pivot/chart functionality so if you need do handle a gazillion records, I think Oracle can handle the taks.
If there's an existing FLOSS system that is able to perform these functions, I'm all in!
Dogu
I'm no M$ lover, but pivot tables beat the crap out of SQL. Why? Ease of use. To build a pivot table takes about, ohhh, 30 seconds if you're clueless. To then generate a graph, 1 second. Don't like the particular pivot/chart you have set up? No problem, grab the field you don't want, pull it out, drag a couple more in and you're done. They make it incredibly easy to visualize the data you're working with and take very little effort to set up or change. They also provide almost effort free data filtering and very simple but powerful drill down options. We use them to figure out failure trends on production data.
I use OO and the data pilot just ain't there yet.
If you've never used pivots (and have Excel) go play.
Are they perfect? No. I'd love to see an option to use something besides bar charts - XY plots with regressions would be the one big thing I'd like to see.
Dogu
The article describes, quite well, the kinds of issues and problems a Windows user (like me) is likely to encounter when trying to make the switch to Linux (and I have met all of those problems). The common statement is the 'in Windows, it just works'. Audio, video, streaming of both, cameras, you name it, plug-n-play pretty much works in the Win world while with Linux, it works but often requires all kinds of interesting effort.
./configure, make, make install and god help you if anything fails. Robust install methods that 'just work dammit' are a must.
It's more complex that that and I propose that two issues work together to make Linux less than 'dummy' friendly.
First, installing apps can be a painful exercise in frustration. If you're lucky, the rpm or apt-get is available for your distro. If you're not,
Second, and less obvious, is the fact that most web sites that require something special (say a great web radio station like http://www.radioparadise.com says you need winamp or windows media player. Clearly, you don't need either, but there are NO links on the page for the Linux alternatives.
When it's easy to install something and Linux alteratives become common on web sites - it won't be 'the' answer, but it'll go a long way towards making Linux a choice for the common user.
Just some thoughts.
Dogu
I've had a number of different jobs as an adult - clinical chemist (hospital lab work), medical device chemist, medical device tech rep, sales rep, marketing, manufacturing engieer, and most currently applications developer. Every job required lots of hard, and often unplanned, work. Nights, weekends, multi-week road trips, forgotten vacations, you name it. If you work at anything remotely interesting and want to be involved as more than a clock punching automaton, you WILL give up much of your personal life. If being a stay at home dad is important, you WILL give up advancement opportunities (ask all those stay at home moms about this) and miss out on critical assignments. It's about choice. Whatever you choose, something has to give - the lie is that you can have it all. You can't. Accept it, choose, move on and don't look back.
There is no value judgement implied in this message. I chose to do what I did and gave up time at home with the kids. It's not a good choice or a bad choice, just the one I made. If you choose to spend more time at home - go for it and have a great time.
Dogu
Any language you choose is easy once you 'get it'. No language is intuitive or easy. Basic concepts are relatively simple in all languages (if/then, looping, comparisons, basic math) but the use of those methods to DO stuff is what's hard.
She's eventually going to need to bite the bullet and figure out how it all goes together. No pain, no gain and programming is all about pain.
Suggestion - have her conceive of something she'd like to automate. Does she use spreadsheets? Great! There have to be any number of things she does over and over and over that would be prime candidates for coding. Guess what? Most sheets include programming languages. Now she has a goal (automate a task) and a tool (scripting language). She's 1/2 way there.
Once she's gotten her feet wet, it's just a matter of building more and more complex systems and figuring out the techniques of programming.
My personal choice for the best tool to quickly and easily build apps that really do cool stuff - Lotus Notes. Full built in development environment, choice of two built in languages plus hooks to whatever else you'd like, a limited number of widgets with a limited number of methods and properties - it's totally possible to get the entire environment into your head making it easy to focus on the objective rather than finding the right method. Downside - you gotta buy the designer client and it's about a grand.
Python is similar to Notes in that the language is small enough to grasp and is extensible.
If she gives you crap about 'it'll take me years to learn how to do this', just tell her the years are going to go by whether or not she tries this so go for it!
HTH and wish her well - old farts can learn new tricks too.
Dogu (an old fart who gets paid to write code)
I am ever so glad the a certified linux guru has trouble getting printing to work. My setup makes it seem that things are printing, but nothing happens at the printer. Queue is empty, no obvious errors, no printout.
Searching for a reason has been a fruitless project. Trying to figure out how to debug landed me at some 300 page troubleshooting page with all kinds of stuff to do files to log switches to throw... yeah, right. I'll generate a PDF, send it to my Win box and print from there.
What's especially frustrating is that my HP printer/scanner/fax scans just great from my Mandrake box, I just can't print.
Eric has it bang on dead to rights. Linux scares the crap out of 'the unwashed n00bs' because of things like this - printing is a basic fact of computer life and if I have to spend more than 2 minutes setting up a printer, I am outta there.
dogu
Every bar should have one
A few years back this was tried. People drank MORE just to see how high they could get the meter to read!
And then left, got in their cars and drove home.
People who drink and drive are just plain stupid. And I include myself in that list. While I no longer drink and drive, if I did, the cops should toss my butt into jail and leave me there for a while.
Dogu
They just GOSUB without RETURN
(stolen from some posting somewhere)
If I had a choice, I wouldn't put up with it ;-) We're 'all Windows, all the time', OS by fiat, no choice, no options...I'm with you 100% on this one, I just don't have an option.
Geez, I'm not even sure our IT department can spell Linux...We just loooooovvvvve filling Bill's pockets with money.
Oh wait, gotta reboot....
Dogu
ps - as much as I hate to admit it, we've been switching most everything over to Win2000 and/or XP Pro and the overall reliability of workstations and servers has improved - we don't crash and burn nearly as often as we used to.
Just a word to those SCO employees lurking/posting here. Keep in your mind that, at least for me, I despise what your management is doing but hold the poor laboring schlub actually doing work in only the highest regard. I hope for your sake that cooler heads prevail, your owner/boss/tyrant gets the ax, and you can go back to doing useful work for a class company.
Hang in.
Dogu
ps - if you ARE a manager/owner/tyrant, move along, there's nothing here for you.
Just in case you haven't noticed, a lot of 'live' concerts now are so pre-programmed, the folks on stage are little more than prancing automatons there to provide a bit of motion to go along with the sound. (of course, this assessment does not include bands like Phish - hard to preprogram that kind of thing...)
If the venue isn't small enough that I can watch the performer sweat and hear the sound of fingers sliding over strings, I'll buy the CD - it's cheaper and I don't have to deal with the idiot next to me going 'Whooooooooooooo' for 2 hours.
Commercial ventures will always look for ways to cut costs. Most TV stations now use robotic cameras and purchase 'our man in DC' from somebody on a per minute basis so finding ways to get people out of the music equation is no big surprise. Support individual musicians - buy their music, go to their concerts, keep them in business.
BTW - interesting technology at Radio Paradise. Two people, awesome music, and they're shooting to be able to run the site from anywhere in the world via laptop. Go there, pay them money, keep them in business!
Dogu
so I'm not sure how the regulations may have changed...
Ohhhh they're ever so much more intrusive than ever before. If you think software management in a regular commercial enterprise can be difficult, the medical world is way worse. The FDA can inspect down to the code when they drop in for a little visit and if you can't point every bit of code back to some top level end user/device requirement (along with all the changes, the reasons for the changes, the risk analysis you did for each of the changes, all the sign-offs, all the definitions of who's allowed to sign off, all the changes to the list and why they were made and who approved them and....), you will probably be written up and that ain't good.
This level of FDA oversite include not just the software on the devices but also any data collection/analysis systems used by manufacturing or QA - including things like spreadsheets.
Using COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf Software)? No pass. You may not have to validate the COTS but you do have to validate it's use in your application or system.
But hey, I love saving lives. Code on!
Dogu
Geez, I use AOL's IM and it has the feature as well (I am not an AOL customer, just use the IM client since everyone I need to chat with uses it, forgive me...).
The AOL client puts control of this feature in the hands of the sender - some people use it, some don't but clearly the function has existed for a while.
Dogu
I'm very spoiled. We use Lotus Notes at work for mail and applications. Notes has a construct called multivalue fields that can be used to create multiple categories (similar to folders) for grouping and sorting of data. I can file mail in as many categories as I like via use of categories. Simple idea that works great
If I remember my immunology right, he's not wrong.
Threats are handled in a couple of ways. The body can mount an untargeted 'kill it' response that doesn't depend on prior exposure. At the same time, specific cells detemine the chemical structure of the assault and build specific response chemicals (antibodies) that are used in subsequent attacks. The body does build a completely new antibody to a new threat - it's not just exposing some already there antibody. This is why innoculation against last year's virus doesn't help this year. Your survival isn't dependent on what antibodies you have but rather on your ability to create new and successful antibodies when required.
Dogu
Word of caution. If you read the card contracts, you MUST sign the back. Many places will accept a 'see id' note, but more and more places will not (like the us post office for instance and many car rental places).
Save youself some trouble, put 'see id' and sign it as well. I get about a 70% hit rate.
Dogu
This man could make any subject accessible. Good stuff.
There are a series of books that have titles beginning 'The cartoon guide to...'. More really well written books.
Best of luck - enjoy.