I am running Windows 7 Professional on an Acer Aspire One, and it runs beautifully. No under-performing here at all. Atom CPU, 160GB HDD, 1366x768 display.
Bought it last year for something like $320 including the 2GB RAM upgrade. (the 6-cell battery too, good for about 5 hours).
Replaced the operating system for another $30 (thank you Microsoft for your awesome student discounts).
Have about 10X the functionality of an iPad... and the only thing I had to sacrifice was less than 1lb of extra weight, and 1/2 inch of extra thickness.
Interestingly, that model is no longer available, and I don't think there's a replacement at that price point.
My Acer Aspire One has a 11.6" 1366x768 screen, 160gb hdd, 2gb ram, and a nearly (90%) full size keyboard. The whole package is something like 2.5lbs, and it lasts over 6 hours with a 6-cell battery.
I couldn't tolerate smaller screens due to the poor resolution, and a 70% keyboard where all characters have been placed in different places due to space constraints is pretty useless to me. I think that as far as a compromise between portability and usability, my 11.6" NETbook is about as good as it gets.
On the other hand, I can't tolerate small laptops - if I want a laptop I can work on, I want something with a 15 inch or larger screen, 1680x1050 or higher resolution, a full size keyboard, and a Core 2 Duo with a real graphics card.
= 1.4e4 km^2... or roughly a patch of land just 116km x 116km.
So assuming the unachievable 100% capture, we could generate all the power we need in the world by covering the state of Connecticut with magic solar panels.
I totally support the idea of clean nuclear power, but let's get our figures straight.
REAL unemployment, not people receiving unemployment benefits. I know a number of couples where one has lost their job, and who haven't been able to find one for more than a year, and may have stopped trying for the moment.
The unemployment numbers the government feeds the press are vastly deflated compared to the real rate of unemployment.
What kind of weird world do you live in? Jobs are offered to me regularly without me asking for it, my current company that I just joined 6 months ago provides me with lots of benefits and gives me whatever I feel like I need; I'm also free to come in whenever I want.
I say this whole crisis is nothing but a myth. Or maybe it only affects completely useless jobs.
I guess there also wasn't an earthquake in Haiti because you didn't feel any shaking. If it doesn't affect you, it must be a myth.
Dude, seriously, let it go. I have no reason to argue with you, especially since you insist on being belligerent.
The fact is that cancer risk increases with age. Just like any distribution, it has a tail. That's unfortunate for those in the tail, but does nothing to disprove my point.
We live in a country where some cities are topping 20% unemployment, much of it middle-class white-collar jobs.
Employers don't HAVE TO do anything now, because they can yawn, pick up the phone, and replace you in 24 hours with someone who doesn't mind dropping $2k to buy a shitty computer from the company's approved supplier to check work email at home, because they want to eat sometime this week.
The thing is that it doesn't replace the annual salary of anyone. As I mentioned, it is rather unlikely that a hospital that has the requisite specialist on staff will go for a machine instead.
Nothing replaces being on site, and looking and touching the patient in medicine... and any hospital that has the specialist on staff has sufficient number of cases for that surgeon to operate on. Therefore, rather than eliminating surgical jobs, it would likely add some, by allowing a larger center to staff surgeons who will now subspecialize in remote surgery in their field.
What the technology WILL do, is reduce the necessity to transport very sick patients hundreds of miles, and as you said, will increase the productivity of specialists.
As soon as robots can perform multivariable analysis and perceive and identify objects. By then, we'll all be wired and the concept will be irrelevant.
It's not the equipment, it's the surgeon. Depending on the type of procedure, some surgeons can be highly specialized in a specific kind of surgery. Even the large medical centers don't always have all the specialists on staff at all times.
So $1'000'000 for the robot is a lot cheaper for a regional-level center than maintaining a dedicated surgical staff who are trained in every kind of specialized surgery. Furthermore, specialists need to practice, and in a smaller hospital they may not get enough cases to maintain their specialization. Remote control would allow a hospital to draw on the the expertise of a much wider variety of specialists than they themselves can staff, even if they limit the operations to a radius of 20ms ping (say 200 miles away).
I agree with your statement in number 3. With the increasing introduction of new pollutants in our environment as well as the constant move of young generations from raw foods to processed ones, cancer will keep occurring. It is important to remember that with these due to these continual elements, we will see new types of unidentified cancer in the future, therefore making it that much more important to treat them on an individual basis.
1. The most poisonous, cancer causing toxin we can take into our bodies on an every day basis, we need to survive. O2 2. Cancer does not occur due to pollutants. It's a disease of old age. If we all go back to dying at 40 years old, it'll cease to be the problem.
Wth is it with you people coming out of the woodwork today...
Bright indeed. The immune system has an amazing ability for specificity. Once we master the art of training the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells the fight will be over. Interestingly, there was a cancer treatment in the late 1800's that relied on injecting cancer tumors with an infectious serum designed to elicit an immune response. The treatment had some success but was dangerous as the patient ran the risk of death from infection. I really think immuno therapy is the future of cancer therapy.
To be honest I find that unlikely. Unfortunately there is a reason why that cancer spread - it has already managed to evade the immune system.
Immune therapy is but one of the treatments that become available once you understand tumor biology. Even more promising are drugs that can have direct effects on the multiple pathways that have been disrupted or bypassed by the cells on their way to becoming cancerous. As we gain more complete understanding of these molecular mechanisms, as well as enhance our ability to identify the mutations or dysfunctions in each individual tumor, we'll be able to target them efficiently. For instance, we may be able to fix the "suicide" pathways (yes, I know it's called apoptosis) that were necessarily disabled in a particular tumor, and by treating the problem cause the tumor cells to destroy themselves and they were programmed to do by evolution.
2. View the #2 in your post. They have to struggle in a market that's immediately artificially saturated by Company A's wonder drug. This is like Pepsi trying to show up and claim "we can quench your thirst", but regulations say that, for the first n number of years, people have to drink a full coke before they can drink a Pepsi. Hope you're still thirsty after that coke, and if you're not, then hopefully the pepsi will quench your thirst when the coke did not!
And there, spelled out in soda, we have the well-meaning recipe for disaster in American healthcare -- the one that isn't fixed by the government plan, but needs to be before the government plan sends us headlong into a depression because of this unresolved bug.
That's not at all a good understanding of the market or of biomedical research.
Anyone else is free to come up with a treatment that works better using the same principles. It just can't be the same exact protocol.
Similarly, to spell it out in soda for you, Pepsi can't produce soda using Coke's recipe and charge less for it.
Drug patents are woefully short-lived in the US, and only give the company a few years (unlikely to reach a decade, even under the fastest FDA review) to make their research money back, make a profit, and finance further research. For all the negative press patents get, the are still essential for stimulating development by rewarding innovation.
Unlike other IP, however, drug patent periods haven't been climbing up in duration, and as a result we can all enjoy levostatin, ezomeprazole, and the rest of the drugs that used to be sought-after prescription drugs, and are now cheap generics.
Several major points: 1. There were 512 people in the trial. Assuming that these were split into two groups, that n=256. Of course it depends on the standard deviation, but you could get your p value very low with an n like that. 2. Human trials of drugs that treat potentially fatal conditions are generally only allowed for patients who've failed "best available" therapy at least once, because it would be unethical to deny standard therapy to someone in a trial. The relative risk reduction may get better when used outside the context of the trial because of that. Or not. Remains to be seen, as usual.
3. As our understanding of the immune system and the molecular processes underlying cancer improves, we will slowly unravel a huge potential for case-by-case-based treatment of cancer. As a matter of fact, I believe a recent study I am too lazy to look up to link has shown that people whose cancer therapies relied on analyzing the biochemistry of each individual tumor resulted in about a 50% increase in 5-year survival, compared to conventional pathology-based treatments. The future is bright for oncology.
4. The caveat of #3 is that such treatments are expensive, and will get progressively more expensive based on the degree of testing and individualization required (until the wide use and technology make them cheaper of course). This will necessarily introduce a further divide into the available treatments for the rich and the poor, and contribute to the class struggle that's already rather inflamed. The problem is that there's no OTHER way - giving everyone $100'000 treatments would bankrupt us rather quickly. Instead, similar to the case with electronics, we will simply have to suffer through the period of expensive first-adopter treatments, until the improvements in laboratory techniques and high-throughput testing make such treatments increasingly affordable.
Slashdot Mirror
This reminds me of an XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/125/
I am running Windows 7 Professional on an Acer Aspire One, and it runs beautifully. No under-performing here at all. Atom CPU, 160GB HDD, 1366x768 display.
Bought it last year for something like $320 including the 2GB RAM upgrade. (the 6-cell battery too, good for about 5 hours).
Replaced the operating system for another $30 (thank you Microsoft for your awesome student discounts).
Have about 10X the functionality of an iPad... and the only thing I had to sacrifice was less than 1lb of extra weight, and 1/2 inch of extra thickness.
Interestingly, that model is no longer available, and I don't think there's a replacement at that price point.
My Acer Aspire One has a 11.6" 1366x768 screen, 160gb hdd, 2gb ram, and a nearly (90%) full size keyboard. The whole package is something like 2.5lbs, and it lasts over 6 hours with a 6-cell battery.
I couldn't tolerate smaller screens due to the poor resolution, and a 70% keyboard where all characters have been placed in different places due to space constraints is pretty useless to me. I think that as far as a compromise between portability and usability, my 11.6" NETbook is about as good as it gets.
On the other hand, I can't tolerate small laptops - if I want a laptop I can work on, I want something with a 15 inch or larger screen, 1680x1050 or higher resolution, a full size keyboard, and a Core 2 Duo with a real graphics card.
Union labor FTW
They do.
Total world energy consumption ~ 1.5 terawatts.
At 1.5x10^13 / 1.1x10^3 = 1.4e10 m^2
= 1.4e4 km^2... or roughly a patch of land just 116km x 116km.
So assuming the unachievable 100% capture, we could generate all the power we need in the world by covering the state of Connecticut with magic solar panels.
I totally support the idea of clean nuclear power, but let's get our figures straight.
REAL unemployment, not people receiving unemployment benefits. I know a number of couples where one has lost their job, and who haven't been able to find one for more than a year, and may have stopped trying for the moment.
The unemployment numbers the government feeds the press are vastly deflated compared to the real rate of unemployment.
What kind of weird world do you live in?
Jobs are offered to me regularly without me asking for it, my current company that I just joined 6 months ago provides me with lots of benefits and gives me whatever I feel like I need; I'm also free to come in whenever I want.
I say this whole crisis is nothing but a myth. Or maybe it only affects completely useless jobs.
I guess there also wasn't an earthquake in Haiti because you didn't feel any shaking. If it doesn't affect you, it must be a myth.
Dude, seriously, let it go. I have no reason to argue with you, especially since you insist on being belligerent.
The fact is that cancer risk increases with age. Just like any distribution, it has a tail. That's unfortunate for those in the tail, but does nothing to disprove my point.
It's the equivalent of cutting your salary by $2000. If the alternative is not earning any salary, you better come up with the money.
Depending on your profession, at this point in our economy, THERE may be the direct alternative to NOWHERE is my point.
Actual measurement != media speculation or New Age conspiracy theories.
I'll give you the example of breast cancer:
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/age.htm
I could go on with more examples, but considering that I'm right, and I have to get back to work, I can't really be bothered.
Right... he also doesn't have to have a roof over his head, and doesn't have to eat.
We live in a country where some cities are topping 20% unemployment, much of it middle-class white-collar jobs.
Employers don't HAVE TO do anything now, because they can yawn, pick up the phone, and replace you in 24 hours with someone who doesn't mind dropping $2k to buy a shitty computer from the company's approved supplier to check work email at home, because they want to eat sometime this week.
What universe do you live in? Cause it's not the same one I live in. Unfunded mandates are the future, man...
Except when responding to email within time period X is part of your job requirements.
The thing is that it doesn't replace the annual salary of anyone. As I mentioned, it is rather unlikely that a hospital that has the requisite specialist on staff will go for a machine instead.
Nothing replaces being on site, and looking and touching the patient in medicine... and any hospital that has the specialist on staff has sufficient number of cases for that surgeon to operate on. Therefore, rather than eliminating surgical jobs, it would likely add some, by allowing a larger center to staff surgeons who will now subspecialize in remote surgery in their field.
What the technology WILL do, is reduce the necessity to transport very sick patients hundreds of miles, and as you said, will increase the productivity of specialists.
As soon as robots can perform multivariable analysis and perceive and identify objects. By then, we'll all be wired and the concept will be irrelevant.
It's not the equipment, it's the surgeon. Depending on the type of procedure, some surgeons can be highly specialized in a specific kind of surgery. Even the large medical centers don't always have all the specialists on staff at all times.
So $1'000'000 for the robot is a lot cheaper for a regional-level center than maintaining a dedicated surgical staff who are trained in every kind of specialized surgery. Furthermore, specialists need to practice, and in a smaller hospital they may not get enough cases to maintain their specialization. Remote control would allow a hospital to draw on the the expertise of a much wider variety of specialists than they themselves can staff, even if they limit the operations to a radius of 20ms ping (say 200 miles away).
The above is not "informative" in any way, given that it contradicts both statistical data, and our understanding of the biology of cancer.
I agree with your statement in number 3. With the increasing introduction of new pollutants in our environment as well as the constant move of young generations from raw foods to processed ones, cancer will keep occurring. It is important to remember that with these due to these continual elements, we will see new types of unidentified cancer in the future, therefore making it that much more important to treat them on an individual basis.
1. The most poisonous, cancer causing toxin we can take into our bodies on an every day basis, we need to survive. O2
2. Cancer does not occur due to pollutants. It's a disease of old age. If we all go back to dying at 40 years old, it'll cease to be the problem.
Wth is it with you people coming out of the woodwork today...
and they drug companies are just doing the (relatively cheap) trials, I guess it all balances the fuck out.
Relatively cheap?
It's at least $100 million to take a single drug to stage 3.
I'm very sorry about your family, but you're speaking nonsense.
Bright indeed. The immune system has an amazing ability for specificity. Once we master the art of training the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells the fight will be over. Interestingly, there was a cancer treatment in the late 1800's that relied on injecting cancer tumors with an infectious serum designed to elicit an immune response. The treatment had some success but was dangerous as the patient ran the risk of death from infection. I really think immuno therapy is the future of cancer therapy.
To be honest I find that unlikely. Unfortunately there is a reason why that cancer spread - it has already managed to evade the immune system.
Immune therapy is but one of the treatments that become available once you understand tumor biology. Even more promising are drugs that can have direct effects on the multiple pathways that have been disrupted or bypassed by the cells on their way to becoming cancerous. As we gain more complete understanding of these molecular mechanisms, as well as enhance our ability to identify the mutations or dysfunctions in each individual tumor, we'll be able to target them efficiently. For instance, we may be able to fix the "suicide" pathways (yes, I know it's called apoptosis) that were necessarily disabled in a particular tumor, and by treating the problem cause the tumor cells to destroy themselves and they were programmed to do by evolution.
2. View the #2 in your post. They have to struggle in a market that's immediately artificially saturated by Company A's wonder drug. This is like Pepsi trying to show up and claim "we can quench your thirst", but regulations say that, for the first n number of years, people have to drink a full coke before they can drink a Pepsi. Hope you're still thirsty after that coke, and if you're not, then hopefully the pepsi will quench your thirst when the coke did not!
And there, spelled out in soda, we have the well-meaning recipe for disaster in American healthcare -- the one that isn't fixed by the government plan, but needs to be before the government plan sends us headlong into a depression because of this unresolved bug.
That's not at all a good understanding of the market or of biomedical research.
Anyone else is free to come up with a treatment that works better using the same principles. It just can't be the same exact protocol.
Similarly, to spell it out in soda for you, Pepsi can't produce soda using Coke's recipe and charge less for it.
Drug patents are woefully short-lived in the US, and only give the company a few years (unlikely to reach a decade, even under the fastest FDA review) to make their research money back, make a profit, and finance further research. For all the negative press patents get, the are still essential for stimulating development by rewarding innovation.
Unlike other IP, however, drug patent periods haven't been climbing up in duration, and as a result we can all enjoy levostatin, ezomeprazole, and the rest of the drugs that used to be sought-after prescription drugs, and are now cheap generics.
Several major points:
1. There were 512 people in the trial. Assuming that these were split into two groups, that n=256. Of course it depends on the standard deviation, but you could get your p value very low with an n like that.
2. Human trials of drugs that treat potentially fatal conditions are generally only allowed for patients who've failed "best available" therapy at least once, because it would be unethical to deny standard therapy to someone in a trial. The relative risk reduction may get better when used outside the context of the trial because of that. Or not. Remains to be seen, as usual.
3. As our understanding of the immune system and the molecular processes underlying cancer improves, we will slowly unravel a huge potential for case-by-case-based treatment of cancer. As a matter of fact, I believe a recent study I am too lazy to look up to link has shown that people whose cancer therapies relied on analyzing the biochemistry of each individual tumor resulted in about a 50% increase in 5-year survival, compared to conventional pathology-based treatments. The future is bright for oncology.
4. The caveat of #3 is that such treatments are expensive, and will get progressively more expensive based on the degree of testing and individualization required (until the wide use and technology make them cheaper of course). This will necessarily introduce a further divide into the available treatments for the rich and the poor, and contribute to the class struggle that's already rather inflamed. The problem is that there's no OTHER way - giving everyone $100'000 treatments would bankrupt us rather quickly. Instead, similar to the case with electronics, we will simply have to suffer through the period of expensive first-adopter treatments, until the improvements in laboratory techniques and high-throughput testing make such treatments increasingly affordable.