There is at least one RFID sponge counting system out there. I don't think it is FDA approved as of yet. We did a trial in one of the hospitals that I worked at. It works very well, except in large patients where body mass interferes with receiving the signal.
I would love to know what percentage of viewers are watching on TiVO or another DVR. Those viewers are also not counted in the ratings (because of the dubious assumption that all commercials are skipped). My wife and I have been avid views of BSG since the beginning and almost always from our TiVo (especially since the move to Sunday nights). I would suspect that the demographic watching this show is also a demographic that has a high rate of DVR ownership. And I don't buy that the commercials are lost on DVR viewers. I know that I will occasionally stop if a commercial catches my eye. That is probably a more valuable view of that commercial as I have chosen to watch it.
The ratings systems are behind the times, which probably punishes shows like BSG disproportionately. Of course if reality coed semi-naked pillow fighting pulls in even a fraction of the ad dollars as a series like BSG it will win out because of production costs. Alas...
They'll change the name, and everybody will still call it the iPhone and know it refers to Apple's phone whenever you hear iPhone, not Cisco. Mission accomplished.
I'd mod you up if I had points! I would dub it the "apple"-phone (as in the new "apple"-tv). Everyone and their dog calls it iPhone, Cisco can't sue, and can't really use the trademark as iPhone would have already entered the lexicon as referring to the Apple phone/music player/internet device/kitchen sink device! It's a home run for Apple!
* Having to confirm some System Preferences changes with a password is a feature that makes OS X more secure in a corporate environment, where random people may walk up to your desktop trying to change things; it's a nuisance in a home environment.
Trust me, people are greedy and aren't going to do so by choice... At least not until we hit peak oil or something else that drastically drives up the price of our consumption.
You've answered your own question. People are greedy, asking large populations of people to "do the right thing" for the environment is doomed to failure (see Tragedy of the commons). Therefore governmental policies must be put in place to drive of the price of consumption to a point it is in the economic interest of individuals to make consumption decisions that benefit the environment. Laws and regulations that achieve this goal will be VERY unpopular, as large portions of our modern lifestyle will be put out of reach of all but the very rich (i.e. $15/gallon gas). Technology can mitigate this to some degree, but the bottom line is that our current lifestyles in most industrialized countries (especially the US) are non-sustainable. To reduce consumption in societies that vote for thier leaders will require decisions to be made by those leaders that will be uniformly despised. And this doesn't even begin to address population growth issues, which are just as big a problem.
Especially if you roll out such a small number. You have to keep all of the overhead and support costs of your existing Windows infrastructure and add a new layer of support costs. You won't start to see savings until you reduce your support costs for Windows, this requires a bolder move on the number of seats converted to Linux.
I would agree with you in principle, and even alluded to that in my post:
Overall the economic engine seems to be running better...
However, to see these benefits you need most groups participating in this economy to have some control of corruption and meet some standard of competence. Given the track record for the use of resources in many of the developing countries I would suspect that "premium" extracted by corruption and incompetence would swamp the benefit of specialization. At some point the economy becomes sophisticated enough (i.e. just enough control of corruption and incompetence) to support concentration of resources while still returning enough to the population to support overall economic growth better than that seen with a more distrubted economy.
Another quote from the text of the article:
During the test in Bangladesh, Kamen's Stirling machines created three entrepreneurs in each village: one to run the machine and sell the electricity, one to collect dung from local farmers and sell it to the first entrepreneur, and a third to lease out light bulbs (and presumably, in the future, other appliances) to the villagers.
This demonstrates the emergence of just the specialization you suggest, just on a "micro" level. I would suggest that allowing an economy grow from the "bottom" up has more of a chance of succeeding than trying to establish a full blown macro-economy with large power and phone companies without the social, financial, and political infrastruction necessary to keep the corruption/competence tax in check.
... If the numbers work out, not only does he think that distributing them in a decentralized fashion will be good business -- he also thinks it will be good public policy. Instead of putting up a 500-megawatt power plant in a developing country, he argues, it would be much better to place 500,000 one-kilowatt power plants in villages all over the place, because then you would create 500,000 entrepreneurs.
This is the model that built the wealth of 20th century America. It works, and is an efficient distributor of wealth. The effects of corruption and mismanagement are mitigated by the fact that the process as a whole is distributed. Since profits are distributed throughout the country, they are reinvested back into local communities, creating local economies that over time become more and more self-sustaining.
The late 20th century reversal of this process is being played out in the American economy (as well as other industrialized countries worldwide). Local entrepreneurs are being pushed and bought out of business by large concerns (i.e. national and multi-national corporations). The economy of scale and polical clout of these giants are impossible to compete with effectively for most small, individual run businesses. The effect is to drain profit out of local economies and into a much larger scale economy. This robs resources from local-scale economies, and makes them less self-sustaining. Overall the economic engine seems to be running better, but fewer people benefit. The resultant concentration of resources eventually make such systems unstable.
The idea outlined in the article is brillant. I suspect, though, it will never come to pass. Not because it won't work, but because it will work. As soon as small scale success begins to be seen, larger concerns will interrupt the process, buying out the local entrepreneurs, and concentrating production and profit where it is subject to corruption and incompetence.
My guess is that rich boy was handed a cashier's check for his balance and offered his choice of a cooler or a backpack on his way out the door. Oh yeah, serious clout, unh huh.
No, I'm not leaving my bank. I didn't choose the bank for the free toaster-oven, but for the banker I interact with. The relationship with the banker (for my needs) is far more important than their web interface. I did, however, open an account at a bank with better bill-pay and web access (ie mac compatible), for day to day use. For real banking issues you can't replace a good relationship with a real human banker.
Seems to me I remember a fertility treatment called thalidomide....and a bunch of babies born without arms and legs being the reason for that.
Isn't it amazing how profit creates short memories?
Not a fertility treatment, but a treatment for morning sickness (see here). And interestingly enough, never approved for distribution in the US (until 1998 for leprosy and myeloma).
I find this quite disturbing. I, however, am not surprised. I have been in academic medicine for 15 years, and have seen the requirements for human research change to the point that many clinicians have just given up any hope of being able to practice and participate in meaningful clinical trials due to the exploding amount of red tape. Of course the red tape does serve a purpose; from the article:
In another incident, Sun Pharmaceuticals convinced doctors to prescribe Letrozole, a breast cancer drug, to more than 400 women as a fertility treatment in a covert clinical trial -- and used the results to promote the drug for the unapproved use.
This type of problem was not terribly uncommon in the past in the US (and I assume other industrialized nations), but is not common now, due to the oversight of clinical trials we have now.
If your bank's IT staff is so incompetent that it can't figure out how to make a standards-compliant webpage, then why would you trust them to not screw up more critical systems that could have an effect on the security of your accounts? I think you need to start looking for another bank.
The bank is a competent, and sound. For my particular needs (trusts, commercial interests) the personal relationships with the bankers is more important than the web access, YMMV.
We have already tried to convince our bank to support Mac users. I have a good relationship with the bank and my banker, and she pushed the issue up the management chain. I got a nice letter from the home office that their IT guys estimated that Mac support would affect 1% of their users, and wasn't worth the investment necessary to implement it. They actually asked if they could buy me a PC and a copy of Quicken for the PC to make sure they kept my business.
I use a Mac and love it, but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).
I think you have it badly backwards. NO politician makes a living lowering taxes on the low income taxpayers. They do, however, laugh all the way to the bank when they lower taxes on the highest income persons in the country (ie those who derive their income from dividends and capital gains). Remember the first rule of politics, pander to the rich!
Private insurance companies will be writing billions of dollars in claims checks to the victims of the flood
This is complete nonsense. Private insurance companies do not, I repeat DO NOT, write flood insurance policies, at least not at affordable rates. Flood insurance is available as federally subsidized program. Please check your facts before you post.
To them "privatization" means socialization of risk and privatization of reward.
This needs to be modded up (I have no points to give). This is one of the best summations of the Bush administration's basic governing philosophy that I have seen anywhere.
A) Don't live by a freaking ocean. Oceans have hurricanes.
B) Don't live in a city that is 8 feet below sea level. Flooding WILL occur.
Problem solved.
Nice if you plan cities in the 21st century based on an information economy with satellite recon of all flood and tidal basins. Not realistic in the real world where cities appear and evolve over centuries, and ocean side locations were vital to the economy, as they still are (check out this link from the la times and see if you still think it is reasonable to think that costal areas can be sparsely populated).
I do agree that most people who flock toward the coastal areas now do so for reasons other than that they make their living from the sea, but expecting people to suddenly see the light and move to Oklahoma is not realistic (besides tornados suck too).
What makes more sense, is what was done in Gavelston after it was wiped off the face of the map in 1900 by a hurricane. They dredged the surrounding inland waterways and raised the entire island by some 17 feet. In areas of New Orleans that require existing structures be razed could have this done.
I see this as just normal patterns in a maturing industry. As the technology era matures, the number of significant players decreases. This is happening even faster in the modern era where governments are pulling down barriers to this type of integration in the name of "free trade." There are of course downsides to this pattern. The larger the entity the more difficut true innovation is. True innovation will continue on the fringes of the industry in the smaller startups and by individuals.
I think our real fear should not be of this kind of commercial merger squashing innovation, but of our screwed up patent system strangling the type of innovation that started the technology and information revolution.
The popular theory (which is considered pretty darn solid) is that over thousands of years women have been more closely tied to the children, and been more closely involved in teaching them, therefore requiring better verbal and descriptive skills.
A theory I like better is that women developed better verbal skills as a survival technique in a world dominated by males that they could not hope to physically overcome. I certainly have been confounded in my verbal conflicts with my wife!
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There is at least one RFID sponge counting system out there. I don't think it is FDA approved as of yet. We did a trial in one of the hospitals that I worked at. It works very well, except in large patients where body mass interferes with receiving the signal.
Very interesting take on a comparison between the LA of Bladerunner and the current LA.
I would love to know what percentage of viewers are watching on TiVO or another DVR. Those viewers are also not counted in the ratings (because of the dubious assumption that all commercials are skipped). My wife and I have been avid views of BSG since the beginning and almost always from our TiVo (especially since the move to Sunday nights). I would suspect that the demographic watching this show is also a demographic that has a high rate of DVR ownership. And I don't buy that the commercials are lost on DVR viewers. I know that I will occasionally stop if a commercial catches my eye. That is probably a more valuable view of that commercial as I have chosen to watch it.
...
The ratings systems are behind the times, which probably punishes shows like BSG disproportionately. Of course if reality coed semi-naked pillow fighting pulls in even a fraction of the ad dollars as a series like BSG it will win out because of production costs. Alas
Especially if you roll out such a small number. You have to keep all of the overhead and support costs of your existing Windows infrastructure and add a new layer of support costs. You won't start to see savings until you reduce your support costs for Windows, this requires a bolder move on the number of seats converted to Linux.
A bug in the installer would also do this.
Another quote from the text of the article:
This demonstrates the emergence of just the specialization you suggest, just on a "micro" level. I would suggest that allowing an economy grow from the "bottom" up has more of a chance of succeeding than trying to establish a full blown macro-economy with large power and phone companies without the social, financial, and political infrastruction necessary to keep the corruption/competence tax in check.The late 20th century reversal of this process is being played out in the American economy (as well as other industrialized countries worldwide). Local entrepreneurs are being pushed and bought out of business by large concerns (i.e. national and multi-national corporations). The economy of scale and polical clout of these giants are impossible to compete with effectively for most small, individual run businesses. The effect is to drain profit out of local economies and into a much larger scale economy. This robs resources from local-scale economies, and makes them less self-sustaining. Overall the economic engine seems to be running better, but fewer people benefit. The resultant concentration of resources eventually make such systems unstable.
The idea outlined in the article is brillant. I suspect, though, it will never come to pass. Not because it won't work, but because it will work. As soon as small scale success begins to be seen, larger concerns will interrupt the process, buying out the local entrepreneurs, and concentrating production and profit where it is subject to corruption and incompetence.
We have already tried to convince our bank to support Mac users. I have a good relationship with the bank and my banker, and she pushed the issue up the management chain. I got a nice letter from the home office that their IT guys estimated that Mac support would affect 1% of their users, and wasn't worth the investment necessary to implement it. They actually asked if they could buy me a PC and a copy of Quicken for the PC to make sure they kept my business.
I use a Mac and love it, but I am concerned about this development, as there are few websites (including my bank) which don't work with Safari (and my bank's web pages don't load correctly on Firefox).
I think you have it badly backwards. NO politician makes a living lowering taxes on the low income taxpayers. They do, however, laugh all the way to the bank when they lower taxes on the highest income persons in the country (ie those who derive their income from dividends and capital gains). Remember the first rule of politics, pander to the rich!
Inconceivable!!!!
cheers, ben
cheers, ben
I live in OK as well and I agree.
cheers, ben
I do agree that most people who flock toward the coastal areas now do so for reasons other than that they make their living from the sea, but expecting people to suddenly see the light and move to Oklahoma is not realistic (besides tornados suck too).
cheers, ben
What makes more sense, is what was done in Gavelston after it was wiped off the face of the map in 1900 by a hurricane. They dredged the surrounding inland waterways and raised the entire island by some 17 feet. In areas of New Orleans that require existing structures be razed could have this done.
cheers, ben
I see this as just normal patterns in a maturing industry. As the technology era matures, the number of significant players decreases. This is happening even faster in the modern era where governments are pulling down barriers to this type of integration in the name of "free trade." There are of course downsides to this pattern. The larger the entity the more difficut true innovation is. True innovation will continue on the fringes of the industry in the smaller startups and by individuals.
I think our real fear should not be of this kind of commercial merger squashing innovation, but of our screwed up patent system strangling the type of innovation that started the technology and information revolution.
cheers, ben
cheers, ben