What if I have legally obtained, copyrighted content at home and stream it to my device in another location. It is for me only, but I am streaming copyrighted works in an unauthorized manner.
Does that make me a felon? (Not counting the number of laws I have inadvertently broken in this screwed up country).
Don't know about that one, but MLB has indicated that recording and streaming a baseball game is an unauthorized rebroadcast, even for personal use.
Ouch got modded down. Not sure why as Apple did get preferential treatment by the administration, so either I offended an Apple fan or an Obama fan. Either way, If it is illegal to stream the next logical step is to ban devices capable of streaming. Look at illegal drugs and related paraphernalia, in many jurisdictions, you can be charged just for possessing a bong, whether or not it has ever been used to smoke pot.
Content owners want nothing more than to control who watches what, when, and as long as you can stream and what what you want, whenever you want, they are upset. Whoever modded me down might think I was simply jabbing Apple, but if you look at who is supports all of the DRM and DMCA stuff, time after time, Apple's name is on the list. Does anybody really think if such a law as this were proposed, they would let the iPad or iPhone be listed as being used in the commission of a felony? Of course not, so yes, they would seek an exemption from the administration. If the administration felt that banning sale of the iPad or iPhone because of patent infringement would be harmful to the economy, how would they not also rule that banning their sale would under this new proposal would also not be harmful?
As such, it brings me back to my original post that the logical next step of the proposed bill is to ban devices that can actually stream the content and that Apple will get exempted from it.
If this is approved the next step will be to ban any device that can actually stream the content. Well, that would be be to ban any device other than those sold by Apple. Evidently they get preferential treatment by the current administration in the US.
I can actually speak from experience when I say it doesn't catch fire quickly. The heating elements just don't get enough power to really do anything horrible unless you leave it sitting, active, for multiple hours. At the rate it was going the one time my thermistor misreported temperatures, it would've probably taken a few hours for it to even melt away the PEEK nozzle holder. Not sure what the combustion points of PLA or ABS are, and I assume that of PEEK and brass will be quite a bit higher.. but yeah.
The only way it could reasonably cause a fire in the time it'd take for an average print is probably if you shorted some of the 12v wires. The 4pi electronics board I use has a ton of safety features built in. Shorting the heater wires would probably just blow the fuse, and I could replace that easily. The Arduino+RAMPS electronics that most RepRap users have are a bit easier to get in trouble with, I guess.
Though you do have a point. If it did catch fire, I'd probably be screwed. But the same would go for any other interesting tinkering experiment.
Most likely, the risk is minimal, however, the hobby grade printers do work by melting plastic. Complex jobs can take hours to print, so the print head is on for quite some time. The likelihood of fire is not from catching the plastic on fire directly, but from something unexpected coming in contact with the device. For instance, it used to be quite common to use real candles on a christmas tree. Most people never had a problem. However, for those who did, it was usually catastrophic.
Soldering irons fall in the same category, however, it's never wise to leave one unattended, because if it falls off the table onto the carpet, it can do severe damage. Again, that is why the manufacturers recommend not leaving the 3d printers alone while in operation. Well, that and the fact that if something did happen while it was unattended they can say they warned you, so they aren't liable.
People can download files made by others, so they don't have to design everything they want to print themselves. That said, I do easily spend about $80 worth of time, mindlessly staring at a print in progress. Mostly because it's damn near hypnotizing, not because my printer really needs babysitting when I'm printing PLA with it.
RepRap Mendel90 with 4pi electronics, by the way.
While PLA is lower temp than ABS, you might want to check with your home owners insurance to see if they would cover a fire from an unattended 3D printer. Many won't, which is why most manufacturers warn that you need to monitor the printing process (sounds better than if it malfunctions it might set your house on fire).
As for safety razors, what about the blades? Last time I checked, you couldn't 3D print those.
They set the retail price for the safety razor at $78!!! I'm pretty sure that for $78 in the store you'll get razors included, but the rep-rap certainly won't print any.
but I seriously doubt a working iPhone dock could be made. Last time I checked, you had to get all of those connectors to be able to plug into your iPhone..
The iphone 5 dock is priced at $30, and the iPhone 4 dock $40. I don't know what they are printing that they think is comparable to those, but it certainly won't be functional.
And let's not forget the time involved. These low-end printers aren't supposed to be left unattended while operating, so at a an estimate of 4 hours per object created, assuming each design is perfectly designed and no clean up time, there is 80 hours. If you estimate your time is worth $10/hour, that is another $800 of cost. Or put differently, those shower curtain hooks may cost $0.50 of ABS plastic, but $40 of time. Then there is the time involved to sit down and design all of the stuff you want to print.
Of course, most people don't have that skill, so what they design, will look like crap if it even is printable or they will have to purchase designs. We went through all of this when inkjet and laserjet printers became cheap enough for consumers to own. All of a sudden, all of the print shops and graphic design houses were going to go out of business. It never happened because 1) consumer devices don't have the quality that professionals demand and 2) most people don't have the skill set to even make the consumer devices perform.
But, hey, people can fabricate a study much easier than they can fabricate good looking consumer goods with a 3D printer, and a lot cheaper, too.
The full list of 20 items: iPhone 5 dock iPhone 4 dock iPhone 5 case Jewelry organizer Garlic press Caliper Wall plate 12 x Shower curtain rings Shower head Key hanger (3 hooks) iPad stand Orthotic Safety razor Pickup Train track toy Nano watchband iPhone tripod Paper towel holder Pierogi mold Spoon holder
Orthotics, really? Why not include eyglasses, too? As for safety razors, what about the blades? Last time I checked, you couldn't 3D print those. A carppy iPhone case is a possibility, but I seriously doubt a working iPhone dock could be made. Last time I checked, you had to get all of those connectors to be able to plug into your iPhone..
But as long as they are including things that aren't really possilbe to make, why not 3D print an iPhone? A family of 4, each printing their own phone, without having to lock into a contract would save the cost of a printer many times over.
The difference is if they lie, there's not much you as an employee can do about it. However, if you lie, they can fire you.
Uhm, you can "fire" them any day you decide to do so.
I assume you mean quit instead of fire. They are not the same. Quit means you left voluntarily. It may not be wise to quit, but usually somebody else will pick you up. OTOH, if you are fired, your future prospects in your field diminish dramatically.
Paper books can be used over the course of several years with several classes of students. I wonder if the licenses in this case will only apply to a single student.
The problem is not with the needle and it is not with the nurse, it is with the patient's vein
The patient's vein is what it is, and the goal is to put a needle in it. The problem is with the entire process, but it sure ain't the patient's fault.
If their is a problem drawing blood because the patient has "bad" veins, it isn't the blood drawer's fault, now is it? That is not to say the patient caused the problem, but, the fact of the matter is that people should accept that their own medical conditions make some treatments more difficult than others. If you are overweight, it will be more difficult to draw blood. If you are dehydrated, it will be more difficult to draw blood. If you are diabetic, it will be more difficult to draw blood. Those difficulties arise from the overall health condition of the patient so in a broad sense, yes, it is the patient's fault. This is not a blame game, but a recognition that there are natural consequences to certain physical conditions that we have and whether a human or robot is drawing the blood, it does not change those consequences. Most humans do not have a problem "finding" the vein, it is the condition of the vein that causes difficulty. So, unless a robot can somehow deal with that, from outside the body, the outcome will be similar regardless of how the blood is drawn.
Nurses, and whomever tries to take blood from me has a hell of a time and usually costs me a bit of pain. Recently I had to go to ER for some chest pains. It took them 2+ hours to get blood out of me. They never put an IV in me like they were planning.
So yes, I'd take a robot doing this. Technology has advanced far enough that machines can be responsible enough to do stuff like this, imo.
If it took 2 hours to get blood from you while they thought you were having a heart attack a robot won't do any better. See, that's the problem with robots, if the patient is outside the tolerance level of what it can do for a successful stick, it won't do it and a human being will need to make the stick. Of course, if the robot is now doing 80% of the sticks, exactly how much expertise will the human being have?
The fun part comes with old people who have calcified veins that resist the needle so much you actually end up pushing the vein around instead of poking it. I wonder how the robot would handle that, heheh.
The same way as a human does. The problem is not with the needle and it is not with the nurse, it is with the patient's vein and unless the robot has a way to immobilize it, the vein will continue to roll and require a re-stick.
Your car was built by robots, yeah some parts are still done by hand. But a huge part of the manufacture process is done by robots. People are happy to assume the car is not going to break and risk their life every day.
So why not a needle?
And yet there are still quite a few defects in cars.
Machines and computers are ideally suited to many of the tasks that make up medical care. Autonomous systems are already omnipresent throughout medicine and its only a matter of time before we trust them ahead of error-prone humans, especially for tasks that require fast reaction, repetition, or precision.
Future generations may gasp at the thought that at one point in our history we went under the knife to mortal hands.
Many of the machines and computers used in medicine today do not necessarily provide better care or more efficient care. In the US, there is a culture in medicine that new technology is better, even if it is not. 10 years ago, if you twisted your ankle, you maybe got an x-ray. Today you get a CT scan or an MRI. Studies show that the CT Scan and MRIs tend to occur if one has insurance and the x-ray if one does not. One Harvard Medical (I think) study showed that the prognosis/recovery rate was the same regardless of which diagnostic tool was used. It created quite a flurry of discussion, because the implication was that expensive tests were being done to increase the bottom line and not for real medical benefit.
There is no doubt that the US has the best health care in the world, it's also the most expensive. What's the old slogan, the best health care money can buy.
They used to jab the tip of your finger. That's just about the most sensitive, painful place they could choose to get a blood sample. Fingertips have the greatest concentration of nerves. Being medical professionals, they of all people should know that. So why couldn't they prick some other spot, like the forearm? It really seemed like they were at best indifferent to causing their patients unnecessary pain. At worst, I wondered if some of them were sadists.
Some years ago, a change in this procedure came along. Now, they prick the side of the finger, not the tip. Much, much less painful.
When using a lancet on the fingertip, the proper procedure is to twist it so it makes a small cut. Jabbing it, while making a cut, also bruises the underlying tissue, which causes lasting pain. As for causing unnesessary pain, well, I never knew a nurse or phlebotomist who went around sticking people without a doctor's order, so unless you know of a way to obtain a blood sample to fulfill that doctor's order that is painless, it is hardly unnecessary pain.
For me, it's not the human error aspect, but rather the increased sensory equipment.
I went through chemotherapy a few years ago. One of its (many) side effects was to obliterate my veins. Every time I need to have my blood taken (which is once a year at the very least), my usual nurse first breaths a heavy sigh, then asks me where would I like to be repeatedly stabbed.
If the robot's extra sensors allowed it to stab just once, I'd take the risk of malfunction. Assuming proper hardware design, my robot's worst case cannot be all that worse than my human's typical case.
Shachar
But that is the issue, your bad sticks aren't the fault of the nurse, but your own scarred veins. The robot can't fix your veins, so that problem will persist. The robot worst case may not be any worse than the human's, but if the veins are bad, it may not be any better, either. Face it, on good veins, either one should do fine. On bad veins, both will have problems. The only place it will make a difference are those in the middle.
And chances are, in your case, where the veins are heavily scarred the robot will declare it is outside its tolerance level and nurse will still need to draw the blood. Of course by then, they will only be drawing blood once and awhile, so they will no longer be very experienced and when they do it, it will be even more painful than it is now.
"If there is a bug". I doubt very much you'll see buggy equipment on hospital wards. Not in the medical profession. There's no shortage of money to buy machines that really work, versus massive company-breaking lawsuits for machines that are "buggy". And to be honest (I was just in the hospital last week), phlebotomy is a skill few people know how to exercise correctly. It took 4 pokes to get a single IV in my arm, and an average of 2 pokes for every blood test. When you're getting blood tests 2/3 times a day, you start to appreciate the guy/gal who knows where to do it. I'd take the machine, if it were proven to be better than a human.
How true, but then again, we will replace a $7.00 charge for a blood draw with a $40.00 charge for the robotic blood draw to cover the cost of the equipment and then some. If you are averaging 2 pokes for every blood test, there is something wrong. At the local hospital here, the statistic is 1.2 sticks per draw. That's not bad considering that includes everything from newborns to elderly. I wonder how much better the robot will be and at what cost?
Humans make quite a lot of errors when extracting blood, they put puncture the backside of the vein, they miss the vein - and this is on healthy adults with fairly visible veins. When it comes to getting a vein on a child or elderly, it can take them many tries, if a robot can find the vein faster and with less complications involved, then it could ultimately save lives.
Personal experience: when I was a child they had 5 goes at my right hand and another 6 at my left, before hitting a vein. As an adult donating blood, I've had them miss my vein because they where too busy thinking about something else, I've had them puncture the backside of the vein, resulting in quite a huge "bruise" (the blood will flow out and collect in the elbow, which looks absolutely grim, but is not dangerous).
A robot can do the same task over and over, never make mistakes due to personal problems etc. Sure, a malfunction *could* happen, but we have used robots along side humans for ages and we use them for surgeries now, with very few problems.
Most of the problems you describe aren't the problem of the person sticking you but a problem with the veins in the person. Veins roll, they collapse, people involuntarily twitch and all sorts of other factors come into play. A robot sticking a patient will not be immune to that, nor would this be something as simple as a robot doing a repetetive task over and over as each and every stick will be different and unique, even on the same patient from one day to the next as you can't use the same site twice in a row.
Robots and computers are great for doing the exact same thing over and over again. However, differences in peoples anatomy, although similar, adds a layer of complexity that either will lower the efficiency of the automated process to account for it, or will still result in misses.
I'll always take a robot over a human when my safety is in question. I want a human involved, but predictable error that can be controlled is far preferable to unknowable error modes of humans.
And your safety is in question by getting a needle, how? Besides, how is your arm going to get lined up for the robot to stick you? Will another robot do that or will a person be involved, whether you yourself or another person?
The problem with sticking people is not with finding the vein with the best blood flow, it is with the vein rolling to the side or collapsing. How is the robot going to improve upon that? It can't, it can only deal with it, like the nurse or phlebotomist and will do so most likely in the same way, by sticking you again.
"US promises not to torture or kill Snowden." Yeah, right. They also promised they weren't spying on their own citizens until Snowden disclosed that they were. They also promise that they don't assasinate their own citizens, but maybe that missle that killed Anwar al-Awlaki fired itself. Numerous groups, including the International Red Cross have charged the US with torturing prisoners at numerous facilities, but the US denies the charges, but not the techniques used. Why? Because they have classified the techniques in question as interregation techniques, but not torture.
So, yes, the US may promise not to torture or kill Snowden, but when the US changes the definition of torture to suit its purpose and has a recent history of outright dishonesty in related matters, why should anybody believe them? And what if Russia does turn Snowden over and the US is lying? Can Russia get Snowden back? No, of course not.
The US may promise not to torture or kill Snowden, but actions speak louder than words. The words of the US say one thing, the actions something totally different.
Or maybe Congress can rescind the order that the USPS has to fund their pensions up front. It's one thing to have to record the liability (like most businesses do). It's a whole different thing to actually have to pre-fund the full amount up front. Not even congress does that for their own pensions, nor do corporations. Most analysts see the move as a means to break up the postal union.
If congress wants the USPS to operate more efficiently, then they should quit messing with how the USPS works. Does it cost less to deliver non-profit, governmental, political and religious mail? No, then don't discount it. UPS and FedEx don't. Same thing for bulk mail. The problem is that the USPS doesn't have the final say on its rates and services.
The USPS has submitted numerous savings plans over the years, but congress has denied most of them. Congress should decide if they want a cheaper or a more efficient postal system. The two are not neccesarily the same.
Slashdot Mirror
What if I have legally obtained, copyrighted content at home and stream it to my device in another location. It is for me only, but I am streaming copyrighted works in an unauthorized manner.
Does that make me a felon? (Not counting the number of laws I have inadvertently broken in this screwed up country).
Don't know about that one, but MLB has indicated that recording and streaming a baseball game is an unauthorized rebroadcast, even for personal use.
Ouch got modded down. Not sure why as Apple did get preferential treatment by the administration, so either I offended an Apple fan or an Obama fan. Either way, If it is illegal to stream the next logical step is to ban devices capable of streaming. Look at illegal drugs and related paraphernalia, in many jurisdictions, you can be charged just for possessing a bong, whether or not it has ever been used to smoke pot.
Content owners want nothing more than to control who watches what, when, and as long as you can stream and what what you want, whenever you want, they are upset. Whoever modded me down might think I was simply jabbing Apple, but if you look at who is supports all of the DRM and DMCA stuff, time after time, Apple's name is on the list. Does anybody really think if such a law as this were proposed, they would let the iPad or iPhone be listed as being used in the commission of a felony? Of course not, so yes, they would seek an exemption from the administration. If the administration felt that banning sale of the iPad or iPhone because of patent infringement would be harmful to the economy, how would they not also rule that banning their sale would under this new proposal would also not be harmful?
As such, it brings me back to my original post that the logical next step of the proposed bill is to ban devices that can actually stream the content and that Apple will get exempted from it.
If this is approved the next step will be to ban any device that can actually stream the content. Well, that would be be to ban any device other than those sold by Apple. Evidently they get preferential treatment by the current administration in the US.
I can actually speak from experience when I say it doesn't catch fire quickly. The heating elements just don't get enough power to really do anything horrible unless you leave it sitting, active, for multiple hours. At the rate it was going the one time my thermistor misreported temperatures, it would've probably taken a few hours for it to even melt away the PEEK nozzle holder. Not sure what the combustion points of PLA or ABS are, and I assume that of PEEK and brass will be quite a bit higher.. but yeah.
The only way it could reasonably cause a fire in the time it'd take for an average print is probably if you shorted some of the 12v wires. The 4pi electronics board I use has a ton of safety features built in. Shorting the heater wires would probably just blow the fuse, and I could replace that easily. The Arduino+RAMPS electronics that most RepRap users have are a bit easier to get in trouble with, I guess.
Though you do have a point. If it did catch fire, I'd probably be screwed. But the same would go for any other interesting tinkering experiment.
Most likely, the risk is minimal, however, the hobby grade printers do work by melting plastic. Complex jobs can take hours to print, so the print head is on for quite some time. The likelihood of fire is not from catching the plastic on fire directly, but from something unexpected coming in contact with the device. For instance, it used to be quite common to use real candles on a christmas tree. Most people never had a problem. However, for those who did, it was usually catastrophic.
Soldering irons fall in the same category, however, it's never wise to leave one unattended, because if it falls off the table onto the carpet, it can do severe damage. Again, that is why the manufacturers recommend not leaving the 3d printers alone while in operation. Well, that and the fact that if something did happen while it was unattended they can say they warned you, so they aren't liable.
People can download files made by others, so they don't have to design everything they want to print themselves. That said, I do easily spend about $80 worth of time, mindlessly staring at a print in progress. Mostly because it's damn near hypnotizing, not because my printer really needs babysitting when I'm printing PLA with it.
RepRap Mendel90 with 4pi electronics, by the way.
While PLA is lower temp than ABS, you might want to check with your home owners insurance to see if they would cover a fire from an unattended 3D printer. Many won't, which is why most manufacturers warn that you need to monitor the printing process (sounds better than if it malfunctions it might set your house on fire).
As for safety razors, what about the blades? Last time I checked, you couldn't 3D print those.
They set the retail price for the safety razor at $78!!! I'm pretty sure that for $78 in the store you'll get razors included, but the rep-rap certainly won't print any.
but I seriously doubt a working iPhone dock could be made. Last time I checked, you had to get all of those connectors to be able to plug into your iPhone..
The iphone 5 dock is priced at $30, and the iPhone 4 dock $40. I don't know what they are printing that they think is comparable to those, but it certainly won't be functional.
And let's not forget the time involved. These low-end printers aren't supposed to be left unattended while operating, so at a an estimate of 4 hours per object created, assuming each design is perfectly designed and no clean up time, there is 80 hours. If you estimate your time is worth $10/hour, that is another $800 of cost. Or put differently, those shower curtain hooks may cost $0.50 of ABS plastic, but $40 of time. Then there is the time involved to sit down and design all of the stuff you want to print.
Of course, most people don't have that skill, so what they design, will look like crap if it even is printable or they will have to purchase designs. We went through all of this when inkjet and laserjet printers became cheap enough for consumers to own. All of a sudden, all of the print shops and graphic design houses were going to go out of business. It never happened because 1) consumer devices don't have the quality that professionals demand and 2) most people don't have the skill set to even make the consumer devices perform.
But, hey, people can fabricate a study much easier than they can fabricate good looking consumer goods with a 3D printer, and a lot cheaper, too.
The full list of 20 items:
iPhone 5 dock
iPhone 4 dock
iPhone 5 case
Jewelry organizer
Garlic press
Caliper
Wall plate
12 x Shower curtain rings
Shower head
Key hanger (3 hooks)
iPad stand
Orthotic
Safety razor
Pickup
Train track toy
Nano watchband
iPhone tripod
Paper towel holder
Pierogi mold
Spoon holder
Orthotics, really? Why not include eyglasses, too? As for safety razors, what about the blades? Last time I checked, you couldn't 3D print those. A carppy iPhone case is a possibility, but I seriously doubt a working iPhone dock could be made. Last time I checked, you had to get all of those connectors to be able to plug into your iPhone..
But as long as they are including things that aren't really possilbe to make, why not 3D print an iPhone? A family of 4, each printing their own phone, without having to lock into a contract would save the cost of a printer many times over.
The difference is if they lie, there's not much you as an employee can do about it. However, if you lie, they can fire you.
Uhm, you can "fire" them any day you decide to do so.
I assume you mean quit instead of fire. They are not the same. Quit means you left voluntarily. It may not be wise to quit, but usually somebody else will pick you up. OTOH, if you are fired, your future prospects in your field diminish dramatically.
The active membership rolls contain people you've heard of; the incoming class list provides a more manageable glimpse of the society's breadth."
I wonder how many of them have embellished their accomplishments, too? Seems pretty common in academia these days.
As long as companies lie in the job description and promises of packages and benefits, I'll lie in my CV and my skills.
Turnabout is only fair!
The difference is if they lie, there's not much you as an employee can do about it. However, if you lie, they can fire you.
Paper books can be used over the course of several years with several classes of students. I wonder if the licenses in this case will only apply to a single student.
Yes
The problem is not with the needle and it is not with the nurse, it is with the patient's vein
The patient's vein is what it is, and the goal is to put a needle in it. The problem is with the entire process, but it sure ain't the patient's fault.
If their is a problem drawing blood because the patient has "bad" veins, it isn't the blood drawer's fault, now is it? That is not to say the patient caused the problem, but, the fact of the matter is that people should accept that their own medical conditions make some treatments more difficult than others. If you are overweight, it will be more difficult to draw blood. If you are dehydrated, it will be more difficult to draw blood. If you are diabetic, it will be more difficult to draw blood. Those difficulties arise from the overall health condition of the patient so in a broad sense, yes, it is the patient's fault. This is not a blame game, but a recognition that there are natural consequences to certain physical conditions that we have and whether a human or robot is drawing the blood, it does not change those consequences. Most humans do not have a problem "finding" the vein, it is the condition of the vein that causes difficulty. So, unless a robot can somehow deal with that, from outside the body, the outcome will be similar regardless of how the blood is drawn.
Nurses, and whomever tries to take blood from me has a hell of a time and usually costs me a bit of pain. Recently I had to go to ER for some chest pains. It took them 2+ hours to get blood out of me. They never put an IV in me like they were planning.
So yes, I'd take a robot doing this. Technology has advanced far enough that machines can be responsible enough to do stuff like this, imo.
If it took 2 hours to get blood from you while they thought you were having a heart attack a robot won't do any better. See, that's the problem with robots, if the patient is outside the tolerance level of what it can do for a successful stick, it won't do it and a human being will need to make the stick. Of course, if the robot is now doing 80% of the sticks, exactly how much expertise will the human being have?
The fun part comes with old people who have calcified veins that resist the needle so much you actually end up pushing the vein around instead of poking it. I wonder how the robot would handle that, heheh.
The same way as a human does. The problem is not with the needle and it is not with the nurse, it is with the patient's vein and unless the robot has a way to immobilize it, the vein will continue to roll and require a re-stick.
Your car was built by robots, yeah some parts are still done by hand. But a huge part of the manufacture process is done by robots. People are happy to assume the car is not going to break and risk their life every day.
So why not a needle?
And yet there are still quite a few defects in cars.
Machines and computers are ideally suited to many of the tasks that make up medical care. Autonomous systems are already omnipresent throughout medicine and its only a matter of time before we trust them ahead of error-prone humans, especially for tasks that require fast reaction, repetition, or precision.
Future generations may gasp at the thought that at one point in our history we went under the knife to mortal hands.
Many of the machines and computers used in medicine today do not necessarily provide better care or more efficient care. In the US, there is a culture in medicine that new technology is better, even if it is not. 10 years ago, if you twisted your ankle, you maybe got an x-ray. Today you get a CT scan or an MRI. Studies show that the CT Scan and MRIs tend to occur if one has insurance and the x-ray if one does not. One Harvard Medical (I think) study showed that the prognosis/recovery rate was the same regardless of which diagnostic tool was used. It created quite a flurry of discussion, because the implication was that expensive tests were being done to increase the bottom line and not for real medical benefit.
There is no doubt that the US has the best health care in the world, it's also the most expensive. What's the old slogan, the best health care money can buy.
They used to jab the tip of your finger. That's just about the most sensitive, painful place they could choose to get a blood sample. Fingertips have the greatest concentration of nerves. Being medical professionals, they of all people should know that. So why couldn't they prick some other spot, like the forearm? It really seemed like they were at best indifferent to causing their patients unnecessary pain. At worst, I wondered if some of them were sadists.
Some years ago, a change in this procedure came along. Now, they prick the side of the finger, not the tip. Much, much less painful.
When using a lancet on the fingertip, the proper procedure is to twist it so it makes a small cut. Jabbing it, while making a cut, also bruises the underlying tissue, which causes lasting pain. As for causing unnesessary pain, well, I never knew a nurse or phlebotomist who went around sticking people without a doctor's order, so unless you know of a way to obtain a blood sample to fulfill that doctor's order that is painless, it is hardly unnecessary pain.
For me, it's not the human error aspect, but rather the increased sensory equipment.
I went through chemotherapy a few years ago. One of its (many) side effects was to obliterate my veins. Every time I need to have my blood taken (which is once a year at the very least), my usual nurse first breaths a heavy sigh, then asks me where would I like to be repeatedly stabbed.
If the robot's extra sensors allowed it to stab just once, I'd take the risk of malfunction. Assuming proper hardware design, my robot's worst case cannot be all that worse than my human's typical case.
Shachar
But that is the issue, your bad sticks aren't the fault of the nurse, but your own scarred veins. The robot can't fix your veins, so that problem will persist. The robot worst case may not be any worse than the human's, but if the veins are bad, it may not be any better, either. Face it, on good veins, either one should do fine. On bad veins, both will have problems. The only place it will make a difference are those in the middle.
And chances are, in your case, where the veins are heavily scarred the robot will declare it is outside its tolerance level and nurse will still need to draw the blood. Of course by then, they will only be drawing blood once and awhile, so they will no longer be very experienced and when they do it, it will be even more painful than it is now.
"If there is a bug". I doubt very much you'll see buggy equipment on hospital wards. Not in the medical profession. There's no shortage of money to buy machines that really work, versus massive company-breaking lawsuits for machines that are "buggy". And to be honest (I was just in the hospital last week), phlebotomy is a skill few people know how to exercise correctly. It took 4 pokes to get a single IV in my arm, and an average of 2 pokes for every blood test. When you're getting blood tests 2/3 times a day, you start to appreciate the guy/gal who knows where to do it. I'd take the machine, if it were proven to be better than a human.
How true, but then again, we will replace a $7.00 charge for a blood draw with a $40.00 charge for the robotic blood draw to cover the cost of the equipment and then some. If you are averaging 2 pokes for every blood test, there is something wrong. At the local hospital here, the statistic is 1.2 sticks per draw. That's not bad considering that includes everything from newborns to elderly. I wonder how much better the robot will be and at what cost?
You sir, are an idiot. Plain and simple.
Humans make quite a lot of errors when extracting blood, they put puncture the backside of the vein, they miss the vein - and this is on healthy adults with fairly visible veins.
When it comes to getting a vein on a child or elderly, it can take them many tries, if a robot can find the vein faster and with less complications involved, then it could ultimately save lives.
Personal experience: when I was a child they had 5 goes at my right hand and another 6 at my left, before hitting a vein. As an adult donating blood, I've had them miss my vein because they where too busy thinking about something else, I've had them puncture the backside of the vein, resulting in quite a huge "bruise" (the blood will flow out and collect in the elbow, which looks absolutely grim, but is not dangerous).
A robot can do the same task over and over, never make mistakes due to personal problems etc. Sure, a malfunction *could* happen, but we have used robots along side humans for ages and we use them for surgeries now, with very few problems.
Most of the problems you describe aren't the problem of the person sticking you but a problem with the veins in the person. Veins roll, they collapse, people involuntarily twitch and all sorts of other factors come into play. A robot sticking a patient will not be immune to that, nor would this be something as simple as a robot doing a repetetive task over and over as each and every stick will be different and unique, even on the same patient from one day to the next as you can't use the same site twice in a row.
Robots and computers are great for doing the exact same thing over and over again. However, differences in peoples anatomy, although similar, adds a layer of complexity that either will lower the efficiency of the automated process to account for it, or will still result in misses.
I'll always take a robot over a human when my safety is in question. I want a human involved, but predictable error that can be controlled is far preferable to unknowable error modes of humans.
And your safety is in question by getting a needle, how? Besides, how is your arm going to get lined up for the robot to stick you? Will another robot do that or will a person be involved, whether you yourself or another person?
The problem with sticking people is not with finding the vein with the best blood flow, it is with the vein rolling to the side or collapsing. How is the robot going to improve upon that? It can't, it can only deal with it, like the nurse or phlebotomist and will do so most likely in the same way, by sticking you again.
"US promises not to torture or kill Snowden." Yeah, right. They also promised they weren't spying on their own citizens until Snowden disclosed that they were. They also promise that they don't assasinate their own citizens, but maybe that missle that killed Anwar al-Awlaki fired itself. Numerous groups, including the International Red Cross have charged the US with torturing prisoners at numerous facilities, but the US denies the charges, but not the techniques used. Why? Because they have classified the techniques in question as interregation techniques, but not torture.
So, yes, the US may promise not to torture or kill Snowden, but when the US changes the definition of torture to suit its purpose and has a recent history of outright dishonesty in related matters, why should anybody believe them? And what if Russia does turn Snowden over and the US is lying? Can Russia get Snowden back? No, of course not.
The US may promise not to torture or kill Snowden, but actions speak louder than words. The words of the US say one thing, the actions something totally different.
Now when they can explain the mechanism for the occurance of false memories without having to put electrodes in one's brain that will be real news.
It's not news, even for nerds, when it is reported a week after everybody else reported it.
Or maybe Congress can rescind the order that the USPS has to fund their pensions up front. It's one thing to have to record the liability (like most businesses do). It's a whole different thing to actually have to pre-fund the full amount up front. Not even congress does that for their own pensions, nor do corporations. Most analysts see the move as a means to break up the postal union.
If congress wants the USPS to operate more efficiently, then they should quit messing with how the USPS works. Does it cost less to deliver non-profit, governmental, political and religious mail? No, then don't discount it. UPS and FedEx don't. Same thing for bulk mail. The problem is that the USPS doesn't have the final say on its rates and services.
The USPS has submitted numerous savings plans over the years, but congress has denied most of them. Congress should decide if they want a cheaper or a more efficient postal system. The two are not neccesarily the same.