While I generally agree with your point, a lot of the details are really, really wrong:
The fluorine isotope you mentioned (F-18) can be made on a cyclotron, but has a half-life of 108 minutes, not 6 hours.
Iodine 131 is used to treat thyroid cancer, but is generally a waste product of nuclear reactors, not made with a cyclotron and it has an 8 day halflife. It can be volatilized and cause thyroid damage and cancer induction (think people hundreds of miles downwind of Chernobyl).
Molybdenum (again, reactor byproduct, not cyclotron made), decays into Technecium-99m, which is used in nuclear medicine scintillation studies, but has a half-life of 6 horus.
Finally, the cyclotron is not radioactive, you are correct, but after a while, the shielding, etc, is bombarded with so many particles that it itself can become radioactive (the inner surfaces). It's still perfectly safe to be outside the shielding, but removing the shielding down the road can be a pain.
Overall, if he were doing it correctly, I'd say it's probably perfectly safe for his neighbors. However, if he plans to run it as a production cyclotron for diagnostic imaging, he should be doing it the right way and putting it someplace zoned for commercial use and with adequate electrical infrastructure.
Having worked as a physician at multiple hospitals with varying levels of electronic medical record/ordering systems, I can say, without a doubt, that the VA system is the best out there. I can order any test/med/etc, read any progress note (entered at any VA in the country), check all results all from the same thin client terminal. Pretty much everything else in the VA system is a horrible mess, but the computer system is absolutely amazing and head and shoulders above any of the (ludicrously expensive) commercial alternatives. If I worked at one of the commercial alternatives, I would be very nervous...
The last time I was sendout out resumes (a lot of places want a doc file), I opened it in multiple versions of word. The file always opened, but the formating got changed. Sometimes it all fit on one page as intended, other times it would spill over onto two pages, etc. So for times when formatting is critical, word is not truly backwards compatible. You are better off exporting to pdf...
they already got my name and address on the things
Yeah, but you can keep that private by doing something radical like putting the bottle in your pocket where curious eyes can't see the label. With an RFID, it can be read at some distance even when squirreled away in a bag or pocket.
I really do think this could be a big deal. There has been an increasing trend in pharmacy to just dispense full, prepackaged bottles of pills (why it still takes 30 minutes to fill is a mystery since all they do is stick a label on). If these things have RFIDs it certainly poses privacy concerns. If I had a pharmacy I would worry about it. The stupid HIPPA laws provide for $10,000 fine and 10 years in prison for disclosing someones protected health information. If you have some technology on the prescriptions that makes it possible for someone's medical information to be gleaned even though that person took reasonable pains to hide it (ie. putting the bottle where it's not out in the open), you could be liable.
Ukrainian language is more or less invention of nationalists politics from West Ukraine.
Ukrainian is the native language of, suprisingly, Ukraine. Russian being widely spoken in Ukraine is the invention (to use your word) of many years of Russian oppression and of a Soviet aim to completely stamp out all semblences of nationalism and heritage. Even now when the USSR is finally gone, there is a strong push from Moscow to make Russian the official language of many of their former oppressees (which is necessary since aside from aggressive colonialism and a little oil, Russia has few natural resources and needs its former conquests for things like agriculture). Apparently you are one of the victims of their ridiculous propaganda if you really believe the Ukrainian language is some kind of a scam.
Analogy: groups in Texas, southern California and Florida band together on a marketing campaign to make Spanish the official language of the U.S. Campaing spokesman says, "English is more or less an invention of nationalists from the northern U.S. Look at southern Florida: most people here speak Spanish better than English!"
from selling anything else. For millenia, when you went to the market and bought a bunch of the same thing, the vendor would charge per item. Why is software any different? How is charging a company a per employee fee for software any different from the per employee fee the company pays for health insurance, catered food at a meeting, desks, etc?
If the patent office is going to treat software as a product and treat each copy of the software as a unique, saleable item, then they need to compare software patents with any other item.
As exciting as it is that the patent office has done this, I can't help but be suspicious that it has a heck of a lot to do with MS's lobbying power and less to do with some sudden fundamental gain of basic common sense in the patent office.
Time will tell whether the patent office will be willing to look reasonably at other ridiculous patents, or just ones that could cost behemoths like microsoft some money.
This happened to me when I bought a Clie a few years ago. It was the first color model (N-710)and only supported 4096 colors. However, I bought it anyway because they promised a forthcoming upgrade to OS 4 that would support a more robust 65k colors. Sure enough, a few weeks later the upgrade came out--in the form of a newer model (N-760). The upgraded OS was the only appreciable difference. A firmware update for the 710 never appeared. I will never again trust a promise of forthcoming features, at least not on some functionality I really want.
The problem is that MS includes media player with the default windows install. In fact, there is no way to remove it. Furthermore, they have put their own add on software into the OS at a very low level and load at system boot (ala IE) to make their software appear much faster. Unless they agree to do that with iTunes, musicmatch, etc, then they are abusing their monopoly.
This would basically represent the exact anti-trust case which they lost. The justice department could just replace all instances of IE with Media Player and resubmit the lawsuit. And just to be consistent, after the DoJ won the case, they would have to roll over and give MS a sweetheart deal.
Problem is, there are always going to be customers who feel like they're getting screwed. When these people bought their first generation iPod, Apple said it was a Mac only product with no plans to support windows.
Since then, apple has released free utilities to convert an iPod to windows (wouldn't be necessary if windows would just support HFS+), released a musicmatch plugin for windows, and now has released the best (IMHO) jukebox software for windows (again for free).
These folks are crying because a 3+ year old device doesn't work with flawlessly using a third-party utility. I think Apple has done a pretty good job of making older iPods work well with new updates and with iTunes for windows and if these people would reformat their device in the way apple suggests (but has always said they don't support), it would probably work just fine. It's like trying to plug a US computer into an English outlet and when it doesn't fit screaming that Dell screwed you...
I don't understand why people are so hung up on the no PIM issue. Aside from glaring security issues, Outlook is a very usable PIM, but I rarely (if ever) notice/use/desire its integration with the other MS-Office programs (in fact, it's ridiculously annoying that it wastes the memory to load word as its default editor of e-mail messages). I am perfectly happy using my PIM as a standalone piece of software (eg. Evolution) and not having to tolerate an entire (annoying) office suite just to have a PIM. Besides, so much integration and interoperability is being done on the OS level that it should not be necessary to buy all the programs you need as a suite for them to work well together.
On the font topic, this has plagued linux in general for a long time and is not exclusive to StarOffice, though it is (slowly) improving.
I remember reading an interview with Scott where he said giving away StarOffice was killing it. CIOs were too nervous to do company-wide transition to a free office suite because they feared that Sun could just abandon it/stop supporting it on a whim. Hence, the spin-off of OpenOffice. By charging an nominal amount (comapred to MS Office) for StarOffice, Sun has given it a "corporate legitimacy" that gives IT departments reassurance that Sun is committed to supporting it. They are both great products, they are both far cheaper than MS Office, but they appeal to different groups with different needs, so one won't kill the other.
Imagine a country where someone declares bankruptcy, then goes to the mall with his wife to buy some treats (that's when he bought AO). Then, the person is a week from eviction, but has a modern computer, internet access, and the disposable income to pay $13 a month for a game. Is it any wonder that communism failed?
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While I generally agree with your point, a lot of the details are really, really wrong:
The fluorine isotope you mentioned (F-18) can be made on a cyclotron, but has a half-life of 108 minutes, not 6 hours.
Iodine 131 is used to treat thyroid cancer, but is generally a waste product of nuclear reactors, not made with a cyclotron and it has an 8 day halflife. It can be volatilized and cause thyroid damage and cancer induction (think people hundreds of miles downwind of Chernobyl).
Molybdenum (again, reactor byproduct, not cyclotron made), decays into Technecium-99m, which is used in nuclear medicine scintillation studies, but has a half-life of 6 horus.
Finally, the cyclotron is not radioactive, you are correct, but after a while, the shielding, etc, is bombarded with so many particles that it itself can become radioactive (the inner surfaces). It's still perfectly safe to be outside the shielding, but removing the shielding down the road can be a pain.
Overall, if he were doing it correctly, I'd say it's probably perfectly safe for his neighbors. However, if he plans to run it as a production cyclotron for diagnostic imaging, he should be doing it the right way and putting it someplace zoned for commercial use and with adequate electrical infrastructure.
Having worked as a physician at multiple hospitals with varying levels of electronic medical record/ordering systems, I can say, without a doubt, that the VA system is the best out there. I can order any test/med/etc, read any progress note (entered at any VA in the country), check all results all from the same thin client terminal. Pretty much everything else in the VA system is a horrible mess, but the computer system is absolutely amazing and head and shoulders above any of the (ludicrously expensive) commercial alternatives. If I worked at one of the commercial alternatives, I would be very nervous...
The last time I was sendout out resumes (a lot of places want a doc file), I opened it in multiple versions of word. The file always opened, but the formating got changed. Sometimes it all fit on one page as intended, other times it would spill over onto two pages, etc. So for times when formatting is critical, word is not truly backwards compatible. You are better off exporting to pdf...
Yeah, but you can keep that private by doing something radical like putting the bottle in your pocket where curious eyes can't see the label. With an RFID, it can be read at some distance even when squirreled away in a bag or pocket.
I really do think this could be a big deal. There has been an increasing trend in pharmacy to just dispense full, prepackaged bottles of pills (why it still takes 30 minutes to fill is a mystery since all they do is stick a label on). If these things have RFIDs it certainly poses privacy concerns. If I had a pharmacy I would worry about it. The stupid HIPPA laws provide for $10,000 fine and 10 years in prison for disclosing someones protected health information. If you have some technology on the prescriptions that makes it possible for someone's medical information to be gleaned even though that person took reasonable pains to hide it (ie. putting the bottle where it's not out in the open), you could be liable.
Ukrainian is the native language of, suprisingly, Ukraine. Russian being widely spoken in Ukraine is the invention (to use your word) of many years of Russian oppression and of a Soviet aim to completely stamp out all semblences of nationalism and heritage. Even now when the USSR is finally gone, there is a strong push from Moscow to make Russian the official language of many of their former oppressees (which is necessary since aside from aggressive colonialism and a little oil, Russia has few natural resources and needs its former conquests for things like agriculture). Apparently you are one of the victims of their ridiculous propaganda if you really believe the Ukrainian language is some kind of a scam.
Analogy: groups in Texas, southern California and Florida band together on a marketing campaign to make Spanish the official language of the U.S. Campaing spokesman says, "English is more or less an invention of nationalists from the northern U.S. Look at southern Florida: most people here speak Spanish better than English!"
from selling anything else. For millenia, when you went to the market and bought a bunch of the same thing, the vendor would charge per item. Why is software any different? How is charging a company a per employee fee for software any different from the per employee fee the company pays for health insurance, catered food at a meeting, desks, etc? If the patent office is going to treat software as a product and treat each copy of the software as a unique, saleable item, then they need to compare software patents with any other item.
As exciting as it is that the patent office has done this, I can't help but be suspicious that it has a heck of a lot to do with MS's lobbying power and less to do with some sudden fundamental gain of basic common sense in the patent office.
Time will tell whether the patent office will be willing to look reasonably at other ridiculous patents, or just ones that could cost behemoths like microsoft some money.
This happened to me when I bought a Clie a few years ago. It was the first color model (N-710)and only supported 4096 colors. However, I bought it anyway because they promised a forthcoming upgrade to OS 4 that would support a more robust 65k colors.
Sure enough, a few weeks later the upgrade came out--in the form of a newer model (N-760). The upgraded OS was the only appreciable difference. A firmware update for the 710 never appeared. I will never again trust a promise of forthcoming features, at least not on some functionality I really want.
The problem is that MS includes media player with the default windows install. In fact, there is no way to remove it. Furthermore, they have put their own add on software into the OS at a very low level and load at system boot (ala IE) to make their software appear much faster. Unless they agree to do that with iTunes, musicmatch, etc, then they are abusing their monopoly.
This would basically represent the exact anti-trust case which they lost. The justice department could just replace all instances of IE with Media Player and resubmit the lawsuit. And just to be consistent, after the DoJ won the case, they would have to roll over and give MS a sweetheart deal.
Problem is, there are always going to be customers who feel like they're getting screwed. When these people bought their first generation iPod, Apple said it was a Mac only product with no plans to support windows.
Since then, apple has released free utilities to convert an iPod to windows (wouldn't be necessary if windows would just support HFS+), released a musicmatch plugin for windows, and now has released the best (IMHO) jukebox software for windows (again for free).
These folks are crying because a 3+ year old device doesn't work with flawlessly using a third-party utility. I think Apple has done a pretty good job of making older iPods work well with new updates and with iTunes for windows and if these people would reformat their device in the way apple suggests (but has always said they don't support), it would probably work just fine. It's like trying to plug a US computer into an English outlet and when it doesn't fit screaming that Dell screwed you...
I don't understand why people are so hung up on the no PIM issue. Aside from glaring security issues, Outlook is a very usable PIM, but I rarely (if ever) notice/use/desire its integration with the other MS-Office programs (in fact, it's ridiculously annoying that it wastes the memory to load word as its default editor of e-mail messages). I am perfectly happy using my PIM as a standalone piece of software (eg. Evolution) and not having to tolerate an entire (annoying) office suite just to have a PIM. Besides, so much integration and interoperability is being done on the OS level that it should not be necessary to buy all the programs you need as a suite for them to work well together.
On the font topic, this has plagued linux in general for a long time and is not exclusive to StarOffice, though it is (slowly) improving.
I remember reading an interview with Scott where he said giving away StarOffice was killing it. CIOs were too nervous to do company-wide transition to a free office suite because they feared that Sun could just abandon it/stop supporting it on a whim. Hence, the spin-off of OpenOffice. By charging an nominal amount (comapred to MS Office) for StarOffice, Sun has given it a "corporate legitimacy" that gives IT departments reassurance that Sun is committed to supporting it.
They are both great products, they are both far cheaper than MS Office, but they appeal to different groups with different needs, so one won't kill the other.
Bud would cost $100 for a sixer, while they'd be passing out pints of Guiness on the street for free. Oh imagine the joy!
Imagine a country where someone declares bankruptcy, then goes to the mall with his wife to buy some treats (that's when he bought AO). Then, the person is a week from eviction, but has a modern computer, internet access, and the disposable income to pay $13 a month for a game. Is it any wonder that communism failed?