If they are, it's bound to fail. Higher price, and doesn't have the e-ink display that gives the paper-like high quality appearance and long battery life that distinguish products like the Kindle, from any plain old LCD like netbooks, tablets, and indeed the Ipad?
Who cares about e-ink? Sure it does great for long reads of black and white text. The question is whether most of the content most people will want to look at is in color or black and white? The Kindle does unillustrated books. The iPad will do books, movies, web pages, magazines, etc. It's a book reader and much more. I think most people will prefer the feature of color over the feature of B&W e-ink. Most people look at monitors all the time anyway. I don't see them shying away because of something they're already used to. If a good color e-ink comes out, or e-ink does seem to be the killer app, the next version can always have it, but right now I don't see the lack of that feature hurting this version. Most people just aren't going to care.
It will be revolutionary to most people. Because most people have never owned a tablet PC, just like most people hadn't owned a smart phone before getting the iPhone.
I slightly disagree. It will be revolutionary because most people have never had a book reader before. Just like how most people hadn't owned a mp3 player before the iPod. Tablets have their niche, but to be honest, it's less than that of book readers. They're not competing with MS tablets, they're competing with the Kindle and the Nook. They're going to try and show people that owning a book reader is useful and easy just like they did by using the iPod to show that mp3 players were a good thing. It's not going to be just a book reader just as the iPod didn't remain just an mp3 player. It's going to read books, magazines, video, etc. Once people realize they can get and use their media in digital form, if it's easier, cheaper, and more useful than physical form, they'll start switching to digital first just like people are switching to buying mp3s for music instead of CDs.
I think Apple has learned their lesson with the Newton, their digital camera, the MacTV, and others. Don't try and push into an undiscovered field that needs creating. Instead wait for a market to develop that remains small because while functional, it is still a bit too technical or a hassle for the average person, and then develop an easy to use appliance that makes it work for the average person (and others who don't want to have to constantly tinker to get their stuff to work). Then constantly put out new versions with new features that actually work and are also easy to use (not just bullet points), to encourage new and old buyers to get the new version.
Re:to big to fit in pocket, to small for laptop
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
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· Score: 1
Have they made it so it fit in your pocket? No. Then I don't want one. If I am going to have to carry a bag around to put my device in I am going to carry a netbook or laptop. I don't know why anyone would give us RAM, keyboard, HDD space, multitasking, plus plus plus, but to carry the ipad.
I think you are looking at this all wrong. Don't think of the iPad as an "iPod Touch plus" which wouldn't fit in your pocket, or a "netbook or laptop minus" that still needs to be carried around in a bag or by hand. Think of this as a "book reader plus" that is more supposed to compete with the Kindle or Nook. Do you also bitch about those products? The iPod wasn't the first mp3 player and the iPad isn't the first book reader. It's a fairly new market and Apple is seeking to get in there and redo what they did in the mp3 market. If you don't need one, then don't buy one. If you do but this doesn't have the features you desire, then buy one of the other brands or wait for feature creep to add those in a later version.
Any particle physicists care to illuminate us on the reason why the LHC might make mini-blackholes but not "strangelets"?
The basic argument for anything like this is that the LHC isn't doing anything different than what cosmic rays are doing already and have been doing for billions of years. Cosmic rays are high energy particles from space that are constantly bombarding the earth and its atmosphere. Their energy is in the range of the LHC and some that have been detected are on insane levels much higher. Since, over the billions of years, cosmic rays have not caused any strange matter or any other exotic happening that destroyed the earth, there is no reason to believe that the LHC would do so. The LHC is just doing what happens every day in the upper atmosphere but in a controlled environment where we can study it.
Actually, they are expecting, or at least hoping, to see some micro black holes. Certain branches of theoretical physics predict we will and if we do, then we'll have experimental data for further study. However, it is expected that these black holes will evaporate about as quickly as they are formed and never pose a threat to the earth. Again, if they did pose a threat to the earth, then the earth would have been long destroyed already by those caused by cosmic rays.
At this point, dark matter was simply an hypothesis. MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND [umd.edu]) was another hypothesis with equal weight. But then in 2006 measurements of the Bullet Cluster supported the dark matter hypothesis over the MOND hypothesis.
I don't think you could really say MOND had equal weight until 2006. I got my physics degree in the late 80's/early 90's and while MOND was often mentioned along with dark matter, it was usually as a footnote of other possiblities. Very few considered it a serious contender as it was complicated and failed to describe all but ideal models. Physicists like elegant physics which is the ability of simple equations to describe a complex situations. MOND required complex equations to describe simple situations.
So er we're talking a foot of water every 60 years? Sounds almost scary, except when you put it into context [wikipedia.org].
Actually, that is pretty scary once you put it into context. That's ten meters every two thousand years. Or rather as much rise in sea level in the next two thousand years as we've seen in the last eight thousand years. The sea level rise rate would essentially be back to the steep slope that it was when the ice age glaciers were melting as opposed to the shallow slope that it has been for the last eight thousand years according to that graph.
Well it's awfully damn convienient that whenever someone starts a socialist or communist government, they always happen to end up a dictator. So they've killed and starved perhaps hundreds of millions over the past century, but hey, they just didn't do it right, is that it? Lets give 'em another chance?
I think the real issue is that it's awfully damn convienient that when ever someone starts a government, they always happen to end up a dictator. Imagine that, when somebody has the chance to put themselves in charge with absolute authority, they do. Communism/Socialism/Democratic/Religion is usually just an excuse to get the people to fall in behind and help them overthrow the other guy first.
I haven't heard of Stonkers but The Ancient Art of War (and the Ancient Art of War at Sea was the first RTS game I remember from 1984. You conquered cities which produced units of types you devised while also moving your armies in real time against an opponent. There were no resources besides cities to manage but the game was probably pushing what computers could handle at the time anyway.
Well, you aren't going to have a paperless office without a paperless workflow first. Yes, people can still print stuff out but only when there is a need to. In many of these cases, it's where the workflow is originating from or going to a non-paperless workflow in another department, or when there are problems and things need to be gathered together and at that point the workflow is already broke. I keep hearing about "people will always want to hold documents" but honestly, I don't really see it in real life. We had radiologists that swore they would always want to read films. We heard the same thing with the doctors in the ORs that need x-rays for operations. In the first case, it was the director head that ordered them to go filmless. In the second, we just installed PACS workstations but also provided the doctors with films if they wanted them. Within three weeks the most die hard resisters had not only stopped complaining but had begun to complain about how much space the (now) 'useless' film viewers were taking up in their reading rooms and ORs. The same thing is happening with paper. With just the advent of a plain old file server, no version controls or anything like that, lots of paper has disappeared from the administrative workflow. All meeting agendas and documents are now kept on the server with hyperlinks to any files they might reference. Meeting minutes are kept in the same folder once the meeting is over as they are typed up on a laptop by the administrative assistant. Sure, when they started this, everybody still got those packets of papers that were printed out for each meeting. Now they don't even bother to print them out because everybody just threw them away once the meeting was over anyway and everything is avialable to those that want to read it. Yes, it's just a paperless workflow, but once you have it, you can determine the other reasons people actually need to print paper and correct them. Once that happens, its more trouble to print it out than not so people just stop.
On the other side though, we have made significant attempts to use tablets, and frankly, they suck. They're big, expensive, typically slow, and the handwriting recognition blows. Plus, only about one out of twenty people even bother to use the tablet functions anyway and nobody wants to carry it around with them all the time. I still carry around a steno pad for taking notes and listing support issues for when I walk from computer to computer and person to person. However, I do notice that some things that used to go onto that steno pad now go onto my smart phone. After a while, I see that there will be more and more paperless workflow and people will eventually just stop using paper. Sure, we still need some tools in place and probably developed before that happens, but I think it is happening. Tablets probably aren't the answer, but cheap slate devices like the iPad might be, or foldable epaper, or something we haven't dreamed up yet because most people's workflows aren't to the point that whatever it is is needed yet.
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
Let me tell you, it's nice to work in a dreamland. I work in Radiology Healthcare and despite people telling us that we couldn't go filmless, we did it, so we have ignored the people that are telling us we can't go paperless and doing well. Our reqs get faxed to our fax server. The schedulers bring them up on their computer and schedule the exams from the digital req which is now associated with that exam. From there it goes directly to the queue of a doctor, sometimes in another building, to protocol. Once protocoled, it goes to the radtech's queue to have the exam preformed. This all regularly happens in a time quicker that it would have taken the scheduler to walk over to the fax machine and get the paper requisition to begin with. The req doesn't get lost and is available to anybody at anytime in the process with the click of a button.
Radiology has some pretty nice systems built to do all this, and we had to give a good number of people dual monitors (but monitors are cheap and even the cheapo computers we buy are ready for dual monitor support these days). However, the number of printers we have is half what it was several years ago and they break down less often because they get used less. That's less support I have to do. We also got rid of sticker printers. Those were even worse. We still have to print for this or that but our main workflow is paperless. I suspect that the main reasons that offices can't go paperless is inertia of the people who don't want to, poor workflow, and insufficent tools to do so rather than any actual cost or usefullness of paper.
At ~1 cent per page, how many reams of paper would it take to pay off a single tablet/eBook reader for a single person?
Answer: "Too many"
But there are other benefits from going paperless, one being time. time saved from printing things. Time saved moving bits of paper around the office. Time saved looking for that bit of paper that was supposed to be on somebodies desk but isn't. I work in Radiology Healthcare and despite people telling us that we couldn't go filmless, we did it, so we have ignored the people that are telling us we can't go paperless and doing well. Our reqs get faxed to our fax server. The schedulers bring them up on their computer and schedule the exams from the digital req which is now associated with that exam. From there it goes directly to the queue of a doctor, sometimes in another building, to protocol. Once protocoled, it goes to the radtech's queue to have the exam preformed. This all regularly happens in a time quicker that it would have taken the scheduler to walk over to the fax machine and get the paper requisition to begin with. The req doesn't get lost and is available to anybody at anytime in the process with the click of a button.
Radiology has some pretty nice systems built to do all this, and we had to give a good number of people dual monitors (but monitors are cheap and even the cheapo computers we buy are ready for dual monitor support these days). However, the number of printers we have is half what it was several years ago and they break down less often because they get used less. That's less support I have to do. We also got rid of sticker printers. Those were even worse. We still have to print for this or that but our main workflow is paperless. I suspect that the main reasons that offices can't go paperless is inertia of the people who don't want to, poor workflow, and insufficent tools to do so rather than any actual cost or usefullness of paper.
...or it could just be that you are used to incandescent and find anything different as ugly. I switched to CFLs years ago and like their lighting better. Now I find incandescent to be ugly and make everything in their light ugly.
Certainly and since you work in healthcare IT, you know that it's more complicated than can be spelled out in a few paragraphs. You have clinical apps and devices, administrative apps and devices, vendor apps and devices, the EMR, the RIS, the HIS, all sorts of billing sections, etc. etc. etc. Its needed and probably good to set firm guidelines, but the main point of failure I usually see is those firm guidelines being set without discussing it with the rest of the hospital first. If the IT departments actually communicated with the various departments, then those guidelines could be set up with less arbitrary boundries and could be worked into the RFPs to vendors.
As the person who supported that 25% of the hospital while I was working for that IT department, you still need someone to help the users with application support. How do I set up email? How do I do something in MS Word? The answers to all those questions is pretty much "the same way you do in Windows" but the Windows guys would just shrug and go "I don't know Macs".
Possibly, but I find it usually boils down to that the IT bigwigs know Microsoft and not the other stuff. They don't want to have to hire people with different skill sets than what they currently use or what they personally know. While there is something to be said for keeping the core skill set needed similar between the workers of a department, it usually boils down to more of a 'here be dragons' thing rather than actual money.
It's entirely possible that your hospital signed a deal with Microsoft...by exclusively using their products, they would get a discount.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time...
Which for a hospital often can directly impact health care. I see this all the time working for a hospital. The IT department doesn't know anything but Windows, doesn't want to support anything but Windows, and summarily declares anything but Windows 'not their problem'. The trouble is that patient care is often determined by the tools that do the job. We'll use Radiology as an example as they have been computerized due to the nature of their work for longer than most other departments in the hospital. Back in the day (10 years ago or more), most radiology was all Macintosh. Macs were built to do graphics and had networking abilities built in. It made sense that they would be used by many companies doing radiology apps and devices for use in hospitals. However, the hospital I worked at IT's department doesn't do Mac. Therefore, Radiology got no IT support. At that time, about 25% of the departments and clinics at the hospital were Macintosh. They all got no IT support simply because the people the IT department decided they'd rather support what they knew rather than what was required for their job. From talking to the networking guys, the situation was the same a few years earlier when the hospital was 50% Mac. Unfortunately, nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft. Today, there are many Radiology apps are on either linux or the Mac. IT still ignores that they exist or that patient care depends on those apps running and often talking to the rest of the hospital.
Of course, what this means is that the Radiology department just had to go and hire their own IT department. The hospital IT department keeps trying to take over but is never willing to actually do the work that is needed to run things.
Well, there is form factor and desirable characteristics. The iPad is half the weight and thickness as most of the netbooks I've looked at. That's important if only using it to watch movies and read while on vacation and I'm wanting to lighten my carry on bag even more. I also think the slate form makes for a batter movie watcher and text reader than the laptop form factor. Especially if wanting to put it on the little shelf of the exercise machine at the gym so I can watch a show during my 40 minute workout or desire a rotating screen for different layouts of PDFs. The netbook would probably be better for text editing and file storage of photos which are things I would need if replacing my current laptop while on vacation. A lighter, thinner tablet netbook would be better than the iPad, but I doubt it would still be cheaper.
Screw the iPhone. This would actually make me want an iPad (and was actually the killer app I was expecting to be previewed when the iPad was demonstrated).
Get over it. We were never going to Mars or the Moon again anyway. It was all just PR from the Bush administration. Did you really expect that giving NASA the goal of getting to Mars via the moon while not altering their budget significantly would ever actually result in anything? It was all just part of a Presidential speech to placate the liberals with a pipe dream.
I read it on a plane trip earlier this month and was fairly disappointed with it. In fact, the entire issue made me decide to never bother with Discover magazine again. I have a physics degree and used to not getting any actual math with my physics in mainstream culture. However, everything it in was pretty much uninformative if you've ever even heard of the subject before. Seriously, wikipedia does a better job and is probably more up to date than Discover magazine.
Real rules for time travellers? Einstein's theories currently say that a time machine is possible but you can't go back in time to a point before the time machine was.turned on'. Entropy is in there so if you are going back in time it's going to take energy to reverse it. What happens when you go back in time to kill your father is an interesting question, but not one that the article actually addresses in any way that actual addresses physics of the subject. My personal hypothesis is that either you can't change history, only fulfill it because it has already happened, or you end up in a different time line. Yay! now we have a testable hypothesis and science. We just need a way to test it.
Christ almighty, it is 1986 all over again. "Yeah, Apple doesn't need all those people who just want to plug in any all video card. We aspire to a higher class of user." which, roughly translated meant "Okay, IBM and clone manufacturers, we seed 90%+ of market share to you to assure our purity."
Back in 1986, there was no 'any ol' video card' as each platform was separate hardware and most home computers probably still had built in chips and connected to the TV. Microsoft was an insignificant player who was starting to screw over IBM in favor of the clone manufactures. As for the Macintosh back then, it was built to do graphics so its no surprise that they were different from IBM clones that only did text. They did things like have two monitors for more desktop space for desktop publishing. I think you are inflicting 1996 on 1986.
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If they are, it's bound to fail. Higher price, and doesn't have the e-ink display that gives the paper-like high quality appearance and long battery life that distinguish products like the Kindle, from any plain old LCD like netbooks, tablets, and indeed the Ipad?
Who cares about e-ink? Sure it does great for long reads of black and white text. The question is whether most of the content most people will want to look at is in color or black and white? The Kindle does unillustrated books. The iPad will do books, movies, web pages, magazines, etc. It's a book reader and much more. I think most people will prefer the feature of color over the feature of B&W e-ink. Most people look at monitors all the time anyway. I don't see them shying away because of something they're already used to. If a good color e-ink comes out, or e-ink does seem to be the killer app, the next version can always have it, but right now I don't see the lack of that feature hurting this version. Most people just aren't going to care.
If that wasn't enough for the world already, then what is? ;)
Him doing the same to for the publishing companies so we also get DRMless books and magazines through cheap and easy to navigate stores.
It will be revolutionary to most people. Because most people have never owned a tablet PC, just like most people hadn't owned a smart phone before getting the iPhone.
I slightly disagree. It will be revolutionary because most people have never had a book reader before. Just like how most people hadn't owned a mp3 player before the iPod. Tablets have their niche, but to be honest, it's less than that of book readers. They're not competing with MS tablets, they're competing with the Kindle and the Nook. They're going to try and show people that owning a book reader is useful and easy just like they did by using the iPod to show that mp3 players were a good thing. It's not going to be just a book reader just as the iPod didn't remain just an mp3 player. It's going to read books, magazines, video, etc. Once people realize they can get and use their media in digital form, if it's easier, cheaper, and more useful than physical form, they'll start switching to digital first just like people are switching to buying mp3s for music instead of CDs.
I think Apple has learned their lesson with the Newton, their digital camera, the MacTV, and others. Don't try and push into an undiscovered field that needs creating. Instead wait for a market to develop that remains small because while functional, it is still a bit too technical or a hassle for the average person, and then develop an easy to use appliance that makes it work for the average person (and others who don't want to have to constantly tinker to get their stuff to work). Then constantly put out new versions with new features that actually work and are also easy to use (not just bullet points), to encourage new and old buyers to get the new version.
Have they made it so it fit in your pocket? No. Then I don't want one. If I am going to have to carry a bag around to put my device in I am going to carry a netbook or laptop. I don't know why anyone would give us RAM, keyboard, HDD space, multitasking, plus plus plus, but to carry the ipad.
I think you are looking at this all wrong. Don't think of the iPad as an "iPod Touch plus" which wouldn't fit in your pocket, or a "netbook or laptop minus" that still needs to be carried around in a bag or by hand. Think of this as a "book reader plus" that is more supposed to compete with the Kindle or Nook. Do you also bitch about those products? The iPod wasn't the first mp3 player and the iPad isn't the first book reader. It's a fairly new market and Apple is seeking to get in there and redo what they did in the mp3 market. If you don't need one, then don't buy one. If you do but this doesn't have the features you desire, then buy one of the other brands or wait for feature creep to add those in a later version.
Any particle physicists care to illuminate us on the reason why the LHC might make mini-blackholes but not "strangelets"?
The basic argument for anything like this is that the LHC isn't doing anything different than what cosmic rays are doing already and have been doing for billions of years. Cosmic rays are high energy particles from space that are constantly bombarding the earth and its atmosphere. Their energy is in the range of the LHC and some that have been detected are on insane levels much higher. Since, over the billions of years, cosmic rays have not caused any strange matter or any other exotic happening that destroyed the earth, there is no reason to believe that the LHC would do so. The LHC is just doing what happens every day in the upper atmosphere but in a controlled environment where we can study it.
Actually, they are expecting, or at least hoping, to see some micro black holes. Certain branches of theoretical physics predict we will and if we do, then we'll have experimental data for further study. However, it is expected that these black holes will evaporate about as quickly as they are formed and never pose a threat to the earth. Again, if they did pose a threat to the earth, then the earth would have been long destroyed already by those caused by cosmic rays.
At this point, dark matter was simply an hypothesis. MOdified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND [umd.edu]) was another hypothesis with equal weight. But then in 2006 measurements of the Bullet Cluster supported the dark matter hypothesis over the MOND hypothesis.
I don't think you could really say MOND had equal weight until 2006. I got my physics degree in the late 80's/early 90's and while MOND was often mentioned along with dark matter, it was usually as a footnote of other possiblities. Very few considered it a serious contender as it was complicated and failed to describe all but ideal models. Physicists like elegant physics which is the ability of simple equations to describe a complex situations. MOND required complex equations to describe simple situations.
So er we're talking a foot of water every 60 years? Sounds almost scary, except when you put it into context [wikipedia.org].
Actually, that is pretty scary once you put it into context. That's ten meters every two thousand years. Or rather as much rise in sea level in the next two thousand years as we've seen in the last eight thousand years. The sea level rise rate would essentially be back to the steep slope that it was when the ice age glaciers were melting as opposed to the shallow slope that it has been for the last eight thousand years according to that graph.
Well it's awfully damn convienient that whenever someone starts a socialist or communist government, they always happen to end up a dictator. So they've killed and starved perhaps hundreds of millions over the past century, but hey, they just didn't do it right, is that it? Lets give 'em another chance?
I think the real issue is that it's awfully damn convienient that when ever someone starts a government, they always happen to end up a dictator. Imagine that, when somebody has the chance to put themselves in charge with absolute authority, they do. Communism/Socialism/Democratic/Religion is usually just an excuse to get the people to fall in behind and help them overthrow the other guy first.
I haven't heard of Stonkers but The Ancient Art of War (and the Ancient Art of War at Sea was the first RTS game I remember from 1984. You conquered cities which produced units of types you devised while also moving your armies in real time against an opponent. There were no resources besides cities to manage but the game was probably pushing what computers could handle at the time anyway.
Well, you aren't going to have a paperless office without a paperless workflow first. Yes, people can still print stuff out but only when there is a need to. In many of these cases, it's where the workflow is originating from or going to a non-paperless workflow in another department, or when there are problems and things need to be gathered together and at that point the workflow is already broke. I keep hearing about "people will always want to hold documents" but honestly, I don't really see it in real life. We had radiologists that swore they would always want to read films. We heard the same thing with the doctors in the ORs that need x-rays for operations. In the first case, it was the director head that ordered them to go filmless. In the second, we just installed PACS workstations but also provided the doctors with films if they wanted them. Within three weeks the most die hard resisters had not only stopped complaining but had begun to complain about how much space the (now) 'useless' film viewers were taking up in their reading rooms and ORs. The same thing is happening with paper. With just the advent of a plain old file server, no version controls or anything like that, lots of paper has disappeared from the administrative workflow. All meeting agendas and documents are now kept on the server with hyperlinks to any files they might reference. Meeting minutes are kept in the same folder once the meeting is over as they are typed up on a laptop by the administrative assistant. Sure, when they started this, everybody still got those packets of papers that were printed out for each meeting. Now they don't even bother to print them out because everybody just threw them away once the meeting was over anyway and everything is avialable to those that want to read it. Yes, it's just a paperless workflow, but once you have it, you can determine the other reasons people actually need to print paper and correct them. Once that happens, its more trouble to print it out than not so people just stop.
On the other side though, we have made significant attempts to use tablets, and frankly, they suck. They're big, expensive, typically slow, and the handwriting recognition blows. Plus, only about one out of twenty people even bother to use the tablet functions anyway and nobody wants to carry it around with them all the time. I still carry around a steno pad for taking notes and listing support issues for when I walk from computer to computer and person to person. However, I do notice that some things that used to go onto that steno pad now go onto my smart phone. After a while, I see that there will be more and more paperless workflow and people will eventually just stop using paper. Sure, we still need some tools in place and probably developed before that happens, but I think it is happening. Tablets probably aren't the answer, but cheap slate devices like the iPad might be, or foldable epaper, or something we haven't dreamed up yet because most people's workflows aren't to the point that whatever it is is needed yet.
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
Let me tell you, it's nice to work in a dreamland. I work in Radiology Healthcare and despite people telling us that we couldn't go filmless, we did it, so we have ignored the people that are telling us we can't go paperless and doing well. Our reqs get faxed to our fax server. The schedulers bring them up on their computer and schedule the exams from the digital req which is now associated with that exam. From there it goes directly to the queue of a doctor, sometimes in another building, to protocol. Once protocoled, it goes to the radtech's queue to have the exam preformed. This all regularly happens in a time quicker that it would have taken the scheduler to walk over to the fax machine and get the paper requisition to begin with. The req doesn't get lost and is available to anybody at anytime in the process with the click of a button.
Radiology has some pretty nice systems built to do all this, and we had to give a good number of people dual monitors (but monitors are cheap and even the cheapo computers we buy are ready for dual monitor support these days). However, the number of printers we have is half what it was several years ago and they break down less often because they get used less. That's less support I have to do. We also got rid of sticker printers. Those were even worse. We still have to print for this or that but our main workflow is paperless. I suspect that the main reasons that offices can't go paperless is inertia of the people who don't want to, poor workflow, and insufficent tools to do so rather than any actual cost or usefullness of paper.
At ~1 cent per page, how many reams of paper would it take to pay off a single tablet/eBook reader for a single person? Answer: "Too many"
But there are other benefits from going paperless, one being time. time saved from printing things. Time saved moving bits of paper around the office. Time saved looking for that bit of paper that was supposed to be on somebodies desk but isn't. I work in Radiology Healthcare and despite people telling us that we couldn't go filmless, we did it, so we have ignored the people that are telling us we can't go paperless and doing well. Our reqs get faxed to our fax server. The schedulers bring them up on their computer and schedule the exams from the digital req which is now associated with that exam. From there it goes directly to the queue of a doctor, sometimes in another building, to protocol. Once protocoled, it goes to the radtech's queue to have the exam preformed. This all regularly happens in a time quicker that it would have taken the scheduler to walk over to the fax machine and get the paper requisition to begin with. The req doesn't get lost and is available to anybody at anytime in the process with the click of a button.
Radiology has some pretty nice systems built to do all this, and we had to give a good number of people dual monitors (but monitors are cheap and even the cheapo computers we buy are ready for dual monitor support these days). However, the number of printers we have is half what it was several years ago and they break down less often because they get used less. That's less support I have to do. We also got rid of sticker printers. Those were even worse. We still have to print for this or that but our main workflow is paperless. I suspect that the main reasons that offices can't go paperless is inertia of the people who don't want to, poor workflow, and insufficent tools to do so rather than any actual cost or usefullness of paper.
...or it could just be that you are used to incandescent and find anything different as ugly. I switched to CFLs years ago and like their lighting better. Now I find incandescent to be ugly and make everything in their light ugly.
Certainly and since you work in healthcare IT, you know that it's more complicated than can be spelled out in a few paragraphs. You have clinical apps and devices, administrative apps and devices, vendor apps and devices, the EMR, the RIS, the HIS, all sorts of billing sections, etc. etc. etc. Its needed and probably good to set firm guidelines, but the main point of failure I usually see is those firm guidelines being set without discussing it with the rest of the hospital first. If the IT departments actually communicated with the various departments, then those guidelines could be set up with less arbitrary boundries and could be worked into the RFPs to vendors.
As the person who supported that 25% of the hospital while I was working for that IT department, you still need someone to help the users with application support. How do I set up email? How do I do something in MS Word? The answers to all those questions is pretty much "the same way you do in Windows" but the Windows guys would just shrug and go "I don't know Macs".
Possibly, but I find it usually boils down to that the IT bigwigs know Microsoft and not the other stuff. They don't want to have to hire people with different skill sets than what they currently use or what they personally know. While there is something to be said for keeping the core skill set needed similar between the workers of a department, it usually boils down to more of a 'here be dragons' thing rather than actual money.
It's entirely possible that your hospital signed a deal with Microsoft...by exclusively using their products, they would get a discount.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time...
Which for a hospital often can directly impact health care. I see this all the time working for a hospital. The IT department doesn't know anything but Windows, doesn't want to support anything but Windows, and summarily declares anything but Windows 'not their problem'. The trouble is that patient care is often determined by the tools that do the job. We'll use Radiology as an example as they have been computerized due to the nature of their work for longer than most other departments in the hospital. Back in the day (10 years ago or more), most radiology was all Macintosh. Macs were built to do graphics and had networking abilities built in. It made sense that they would be used by many companies doing radiology apps and devices for use in hospitals. However, the hospital I worked at IT's department doesn't do Mac. Therefore, Radiology got no IT support. At that time, about 25% of the departments and clinics at the hospital were Macintosh. They all got no IT support simply because the people the IT department decided they'd rather support what they knew rather than what was required for their job. From talking to the networking guys, the situation was the same a few years earlier when the hospital was 50% Mac. Unfortunately, nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft. Today, there are many Radiology apps are on either linux or the Mac. IT still ignores that they exist or that patient care depends on those apps running and often talking to the rest of the hospital.
Of course, what this means is that the Radiology department just had to go and hire their own IT department. The hospital IT department keeps trying to take over but is never willing to actually do the work that is needed to run things.
Well, there is form factor and desirable characteristics. The iPad is half the weight and thickness as most of the netbooks I've looked at. That's important if only using it to watch movies and read while on vacation and I'm wanting to lighten my carry on bag even more. I also think the slate form makes for a batter movie watcher and text reader than the laptop form factor. Especially if wanting to put it on the little shelf of the exercise machine at the gym so I can watch a show during my 40 minute workout or desire a rotating screen for different layouts of PDFs. The netbook would probably be better for text editing and file storage of photos which are things I would need if replacing my current laptop while on vacation. A lighter, thinner tablet netbook would be better than the iPad, but I doubt it would still be cheaper.
Screw the iPhone. This would actually make me want an iPad (and was actually the killer app I was expecting to be previewed when the iPad was demonstrated).
Get over it. We were never going to Mars or the Moon again anyway. It was all just PR from the Bush administration. Did you really expect that giving NASA the goal of getting to Mars via the moon while not altering their budget significantly would ever actually result in anything? It was all just part of a Presidential speech to placate the liberals with a pipe dream.
Well, show me the math. Until you have the math, you're just talking philosophy, not physics.
Wow. You're already more informative than that entire issue of Discover!
I read it on a plane trip earlier this month and was fairly disappointed with it. In fact, the entire issue made me decide to never bother with Discover magazine again. I have a physics degree and used to not getting any actual math with my physics in mainstream culture. However, everything it in was pretty much uninformative if you've ever even heard of the subject before. Seriously, wikipedia does a better job and is probably more up to date than Discover magazine.
This aritcle in question, there was no actual discussion of physics. No talk of the lack of time direction in Feynman diagrams. None of the solutions for time travel that can be come up with using Einstein's equations. Nothing really, just a bit like "you can't go back in time and kill your father because then you wouldn't exist to go back and kill your father" logic. Never mind that this isn't actually supported by physics and Tippler showed that acasual time like paths can occur, it completely ignores the many-world interpretation and it's possible relevance to time travel. never mind that you don't have to actually go kill your dad but just showing up is going to cause the same effect simply from your changes in weather do to chaos theory/butterfly effect. I was hoping for a simple article talking about things I already know with the possiblity of a mention of some new development that I could research later, but ended up with no actual physics (and not even a good philosophical discussion) of the subject.
Real rules for time travellers? Einstein's theories currently say that a time machine is possible but you can't go back in time to a point before the time machine was .turned on'. Entropy is in there so if you are going back in time it's going to take energy to reverse it. What happens when you go back in time to kill your father is an interesting question, but not one that the article actually addresses in any way that actual addresses physics of the subject. My personal hypothesis is that either you can't change history, only fulfill it because it has already happened, or you end up in a different time line. Yay! now we have a testable hypothesis and science. We just need a way to test it.
Christ almighty, it is 1986 all over again. "Yeah, Apple doesn't need all those people who just want to plug in any all video card. We aspire to a higher class of user." which, roughly translated meant "Okay, IBM and clone manufacturers, we seed 90%+ of market share to you to assure our purity."
Back in 1986, there was no 'any ol' video card' as each platform was separate hardware and most home computers probably still had built in chips and connected to the TV. Microsoft was an insignificant player who was starting to screw over IBM in favor of the clone manufactures. As for the Macintosh back then, it was built to do graphics so its no surprise that they were different from IBM clones that only did text. They did things like have two monitors for more desktop space for desktop publishing. I think you are inflicting 1996 on 1986.
I'm going to inter-splice book pages of the Terminator and the wizard of Oz. A bit of tape, and I will be famous!
I'm sorry, but there's a Mr. Gysin and a Mr. Burroughs who would like to speak to you about violation of their patent on the cut-up method.