AJWM (19027) sez: "For the several earlier posters who seem to think that this is the Holy Grail of Earth-to-orbit transportation -- well, maybe they're right in that it's about equally unattainable. Rockets work a hell of a lot better - as has been demonstrated by almost 47 years of orbital flight."
Rockets only work better if you consider the mechanical efficiency. If you throw cost into the deal, rockets fall apart. They're disposable for the most part.
A hypersonic air breathing first stage could carry a self-contained second stage to a speed and altitude that would make reaching orbit much easier, and do it far cheaper than can be done now.
The cheapest single disposable booster space shot so far was the Pegasus XL, for $13.5M. The estimate for the (cancelled) X-34 was $4M.
Interesting reading on the subject; Buzz Aldrin's patent for vertical launch flyback booster with orbital second stage: http://tinyurl.com/394qq
Trillian_1138 (221423) sez (a bunch of stuff; I'll take it a bit at a time): "You sound like someone who, while not involved in a directly emotional sense, might have an opinion on cochlear implants and the entire idea of deaf culture."
I'm not deaf (small d, as in hearing loss), but I was a "terp", and before that hung out with Deaf (capital D, as in the culture) poeple and did ASL enough that they and I considered me to be Deaf.
"My understanding is that deaf culture revolves around the idea of deafness not being a disability, and deaf people (specifically those born deaf) have developed their own unique culture in the same way that more regularly recognized cultures have...Deafness, if my understanding is correct, isn't even viewed as a disability."
To many this is the case. While undoubtedly people could rationalize themselves into believing this because they're stuck with the condition, I think there are other aspects to consider. How hard is it for you to talk to one person on the other side of a crowded room? How hard is it for you to talk with someone in a loud party? And if someone is hanging around you blabbering on endlessly about something you don;t want to hear, how hard is it for you to close your ears? In these respects, and others you can probably think of, people who don't use ASL are hampered -- they are the disabled ones. At the risk of sounding politically correct, in these respects, the deaf are really "differently abled".
"I have very mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I can emotionally understand how a group such as deaf individuals could see themselves as a seperate culture than everyone else... On the other hand, when I view it from a more removed position, I can't think of deafness as anything other than a disability."
Now, some adhere to the Deaf culture and dislike anything that impinges on it. Others would prefer not to have to have the condition. In my experience it is more often the former who have a problem with other people doing one thing or the other -- getting artificial assitance or staying away from it. They react more strongly. They even get upset of the parents of a child born deaf get it an implant without giving it the chance to become Deaf and make up its own mind.
Then again, they view this as an attempt by a dominant culture to enforce their mores and decisions on them and those like them. Being Native American, I can relate to this also. Despite what may (or may not) be the best of intentions, it's still paternalism.
The nature of the problem seems to come down to the same point as gun control and abortion -- some people wanting others to do one thing, while the others want to be able to do what they choose. Such things probably aren't solveable without giving each their own space to do as they wish with the understanding they can express their opinion but cannot enforce it on others.
In practical terms, someone born completely nerve deaf will probably never benefit from an implant. They might gain a new sensation, but it's not very likely they can turn it into a useful perception. Children, or the newly (or slowly) deaf, can probably benefit. They should be allowed to decide for themselves, and that includes being exposed to both sides, the oto/neuro people who can give them hearing, and the Deaf who could accept them as they are.
One last thing: consider how ASL works. There's a hand sign, and it can be modified by where it is in relation to the body, movement, and associated body language and facial expressions. These can all happen simultaneously (I usually use the example of the sign for "standing around for a long time, not paying attention"). In such instacnes there is communication going on in parallel, whereas with speech it is by necessity serial. If one can be taught to communicate over several parallel channels, might this not be beneficial brain exercise? I. and others, are of the opinion that teaching ASL to all young children for precisely this reason is a good idea. They could learn
quantum bit (225091) sez: "It's still a quite interesting effect though, and shows promise for building propulsion devices with no moving parts. The debate is still on as to whether it requires a dielectric medium (i.e. air), or can work in a vacuum as well."
Brown tested his devices in a vacuum chamber at GE in 1959. The results are not publically available. However, the design he was working on at the time involved using a gas jet as the generator of the electrostatic charge as well as the carrier necessary to create the effect. If so, yes, it is an ionic flow effect, but this does not mean it's restricted to atmospheric use. His patent on this design is US# 3,022,430.
plasticpixel (323537) sez: "I'm recalling this from memory but, I think Lazar got the idea for Element 115 from a Popular Science magazine article from the 1960's."
Could this be it?: April 1969 (pages 57-67) issue of "Scientific American" by Dr. Glenn Seaborg Discusses transuranics, #114 in depth, but includes others.
Thinkit4 (745166) sez: "I've been looking into various aspects of neuroscience. Do you work for an implant maker?"
No, I work for dept. of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, and don't have anything to do with implants here. I used to work with research related to implants and language in general at NIH. Details in my journal.
The theory of possible climate reversal from warming to ice age is over 30 years old. What's new, and worth emphasizing, is the possibility of abrupt change. We don't know at what point warming can become a runaway self-enforcing process, but we know it can. We'd probably prefer not to find out by experience.
If they're going to suck down the whole thing, plan for it.
Offer it pre-zipped. This would reduce the bandwidth and download time. A plus for everyone.
Make it easy for people who do this to obtain updates/additions by date.
As part of accessing the zipped version, ask people to mirror it. If they're going to carry it all, offer it all. Arrange dynamic mirror updating with those willing.
Find one or more secondary storage site for the archive. Ask people to use these (put them highest on the list).
If people persist on sucking down the whole thing and don't go for the archive, arrange a throttle with the sysadmin, and advertise it. Let people know that if they try to wget everything, things will start going real slow for them.
Set up a small version without the files, in parallel to the real one, with a note saying "files temporarily unavailable". Allow the system owner to switch to the small version during times of high traffic so as not to bog down his other users, or alterntaively, switch it yourself according to the owner's estimates of his traffic and times.
I'm a neuroscientist by trade (well, no, actually I paid good money). I used to work for the Language Section of the National Institute on Deafness and Communications Disorders. I had to know a lot about these things technically and biologically. Also, my field of interest happens to be signal analysis, and that's at the heart of these devices. Also, I was an sign language interperator and considered myself a member of the Deaf community, a social distinction which might have bearing here. I'm not a physician, but I reckon I know enough to give my opinion mand have it considered informed.
You say she's profoundly deaf. Since when? If a long time, she may not adapt well no matter how good the device. The less sophisticated may be good enough then.
If she's been deaf a long time, does she socialize with other deaf people? If so, be aware some of them look on implants as a kind of betrayal. Those whose first language was American Sign Language consider themselves a unique culture and consider their condition and method of communication to be equally good as any other. Some very vocal (pardon the pun) types become quite irrate if someone they know steps outside their culture by getting an implant. I don't claim to understand exactly, but I've observed it.
Technically, these two devices probably perform equally well. The Clarion has superior characteristics, but the difference may be measureable in the lab but not the ear. The Clarion has more channels, that is more different frequency bands, and so would probably produce more "natural" sound. (To think of channels, consider the slider switches on an equalizer on a stereo. Each handles a specific range of frequencies. The more sliders there are, the finer the divisions across the sound spectrum.)
As mentioned elsewhere, Rush Limbaugh has a Clarion. I know he's pleased with the results, and he's a professional communicator.
The Nucleus has a removeable magnet. This could be important should your mother ever need to have an MRI. With either device, she'll need to wear a medical alert bracelet saying she has some implanted metal. An MRI uses a large, powerful moving magnet. If you expose a piece of metal to the field it can turn into a little food processor blade spinning around where it ought not. Should she ever be sent to the emergency room unconscious, they'll need to know not to do this to her. The Nucleus will give them the ability to should she need it.
If I were getting one and they cost the same, I'd get the Clarion. In a given ear, the end result will probably be better with that device. However, the differences between ears and neural systems are so much grteater that this may hardly matter. It may be better than the ear can make use of. Think of stereo systems. An amplifier with.01 total harmonic distorion is good. One with.001 THD is better. But your average stereo speaker has about 3% THD, making the point moot. If the cost between the devices were great, I'd consider the cheaper.
A last thought: learning or relearning to hear will require a lot of exercise in order for neural plasticity to do its job. That means exposure. Also, if she's been reading sign language, those whove; been communicating with her should continue to use it even though she may now be able to hear. The resulting associations will help her learn/relearn faster.
Feel free to check my/. journal for my email should you wish to email with questions.
Switching from medicine to CS/IT mjust to do it is like switching cars from Ford to GM for no other reason than to do it. Without a reason and plan, you'd end up throwing yourself into the pool with everyone else.
Consider how you could best serve yourself and the field by combining the two. Medical Informatics is already overloaded, due to the fact that it's worth the enormous prices charged and which medical systems can pay. What else can be done which is not as advanced?
How about telemedicine? Send the nurses out on the road to remote patients, with networked laptops that carry various digital versions of physio measurements. They collect the data, network it back to the doctor at the office, he tells them what to do, job is done. I did a master's thesis on this, and the field hasn't progressed significantly in the 10 years since.
Don't throw away your edge is all I'm saying. Use it.
... if you use your account for business. Not just if it's a line dedicated to a business, but if you read your email from work at home.
When we signed up for my wife's telecommuting, we got a good deal. Nobody asked us what we'd use it for. Nor did anybody say anything about limits or restrictions. And statements on a web site don't mean a darn thing when you call and sign up strictly by voice, which you'd have to do if you'd just moved in.
On our first service call (bad line outside, nobody's fault and quickly fixed) I made the mistake of mentioning having a router and firewall. Luckily when they asked me if we were using it for business, they didn't wait for the answer before telling me they charge more for business users. I asked whether that applied to someone using it at home who just happens to check their email from work, and they said yes.
If my wife weren't telecommuting full time, with the companmy paying the broadband portion of the cable bill, I'd be going back to DSL and getting "the dish".
SOME consumers ALLOW themselves to be lied to. The rest of us should not have to expect it just because of them. I demand honesty from those I deal with. If someone's lying to me, they're lying, and the fact that they gtet away with it with some idiots is no reason to excuse it.
Re:Symantec says worm attacks 25% of the time
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pilkul (667659) sez: "IMHO, this is an unfounded rumor; it _will_ attack sco.com. Check out this excerpt from Symantec's report (scroll down about 1/4, to the "notes" section): Due to the logic used to verify the date, the DoS only occurs 25% of the time."
Yes it does. But F-Secure and McAffe say nothing about a 25% firing rate. Did only Symantiec test it? Did only McAffe and F-Secure test it? Did nobody test it and just assume they could read the disassembly?
Time will tell (about another 48 hours) whether this thing will actually launch DoS against anyone. Even if it does, that still leaves unexplained variance between different AV companies' stories, and no explicit statements regarding actual testing and results except for "just one guy". If I had an isolated machine to play with, I'd be running tests myself instead of asking whether anyone else actually did. There's plenty of disassemblies already. Testing doesn't require that.
Re:Who Said It'll Attack SCO? & A FUDworm?
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interiot (50685) sez: "Okay, let's go over some of the facts:"
Yes, let's.
"The idea that the payload is inert comes from a single post on the internet by some random guy, and is now being quoted all over slashdot without anyone checking or verifying."
It's the sole instance apparent here of someone actually testing it. It's a case study with hard data which can be verified.
"Norton Antivirus believes... So does F-Secure. So does McAfee."
Believes. That hardly indicates results of empirical investigation. Did they test it? Is there anything they've done that can be verified? If not, I'll take "just one guy's" statements rather than that of companies who make money from these things.
"You can look at the worm yourself..." and "The partial dissassembly that people have posted so far indicates"
Yes, I've looked at it. I can see what it appears it's supposed to do. What I cannot see is evidence it's actually going to do it. I've seen one statement that it doesn't, and several that make claims without specifiying whether they tested it.
Worst yet, I've seen The Register claim in headlines the B variant "Attacks Microsoft.com" as though it were doing it already, and in the body of the story claim it's going to without saying anyone's tested it.
OgdEnigmaX sez: "Am I the only one who misread that as Janet Reno? Whew!:)"
Skeered the hell outta me too, at first. Then I thought "You know, I'll bet she could kick some serious ass in her time." And then I caught myself thinking that and skeered the hell outta myself all over again.
"Bose-Einstein condensates are collections of thousands of ultracold particles that occupy a single quantum state -- they all essentially behave like a single, huge superatom. But Jin says these Bose-Einstein condensates are made with bosons, which like to act in unison."
Well, they're not. BECs are made of atoms too.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/BEC_ ba ckground.htm
"Predicted in 1924 by Albert Einstein, who built on the work of Satyendra Nath Bose, the condensation occurs when individual atoms meld into a "superatom" behaving as a single entity at just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero." "The team led by Cornell and Wieman used laser and magnetic traps to create the BEC, a tiny ball of rubidium atoms that are as stationary as the laws of quantum mechanics permit."
If something were formed from a collection of bosons that were quantally entangled, it wouldn't be a form of matter. Bosons are the force-carrying quanta, such as photons. They are energy, not matter.
I've had several surgeries for wrist reconstruction from a military injury. As a result I have what amounts to carpal tunnel to an extent that you can't develop without artificial aid. Now, this is in one hand, so I have another to compare with.
My biggest problem was the mouse. Particularly holding it in a half-closed grasp for such long periods while moving it all around the table. My solution was to get a thumbwheel mouse.
As for keyboards, some are better for me than other. The ergo-keyboards never made much difference. The best one I found is the small keyboard that came with my Apple IIgs (also came with some Macs around 1990 or so). It's about 3/4 the size of others, and so it takes less movement to get to any given key. It's easier on my hands and faster for me. I consider it to be the Fender Stratocaster of keyboards; the Strat was a favorite for lead guitars in part due to it's 3/4 normal size.
johnshirley writes "How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chaucer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe--the predecessor to the sextant."
Hypatia of Alexandria wrote a manual for the use of, and for the construction of, an astrolabe. That was 1,000 years before Chaucer's book.
Who Said It'll Attack SCO? & A FUDworm?
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Zeriel writes "After much discussion on a mailing list discussing trojan horses, some people have reached the conclusion that MyDoom doesn't accomplish its stated goal of DDOSing SCO at all! Choice quote from the analysis: "I have the new critter in a test environment where we conducted a preliminary and rudimentary functionality and threat analysis...I have played with the date, etc, but still no activity directed toward www.sco.com." The link also includes disassembly and analysis of the worm code."
If it turns out that the DDOS payload is inert:
Who was it that FIRST said it WOULD attack SCO, and how did they determine this? And who else quoted them without checking? (Not including normal media outlets, who'll quote anyone that can form a coherent sentence, if it'll fill white space.)
If this thing doesn't perform as advertised, what we are seeing is the first (purposeful or not) FUDworm. It definitely is spreading virus-like and causing traffic problems, but also it's spreading FUD, and using all of us as vectors. We will all have been infected with a socially engineered disease. If this is the case, it's a master stroke of psyops. If not, considering its success so far, its example will be repeated for this purpose.
... and why should I trust what they say? My prior experience with the NIPC was that they were way behind the learning curve as well as any useful time frame? Can someone point out some independent evidence saying it's worth my time to listen to these people? I'm sure their own site says so, but if I read that there I'd probably just laugh.
Cynical? If that's what you want to call it. I call it ex-federal employee.
The Mayor (6048) sez: "I see a few issues with this advice...But the eye is most sensitive to green."
The eye IS most sensitive (ie. has lowest threshhold to fire) to green. There are more green receptors or the green receptors are more sensitive than the red, and definitely more so than the blue.
But yellow (slightly to the green side) is the brightest apparent color, because of the overlap of red and green cones. It sounds like it contradicts what you said, but it doesn't. Yellow can be from yellow (wavelength) photons that stimulate either red or green cones, or from a mix of red and green photons stimulating those cones. Either way, it's a more efficient process because more receptors are available for stimulation.
Look at it this way: What color becomes closest to white (ie lightest grey) when the color is turned all the way down to plain black-and-white (like the color control on a TV)? Green is definitely grey, yellow is lighter, most like white.
And he sez: "From my experience, the polarization of LCD monitors is usually at a 45 degree angle to the polarization of most sunglasses."
Excellent. I didn't know that they had polarized output. Doing a polarization mod and others not being able to see it, now that sounds like a cool hack.
chadma sez: "Would a white background with black text be most appropriate?"
You'll get the higest contrast with the brightest and darkest color. Black is, of course, the darkest. The brightest is that slightly chartruse yellow you see on some emergency vehicles and safety gear. It's the brightest because it stimulates the most receptors in the eye (the maximum overlap between the red receptors and green receptors). For the same reason, it'd also be the most efficient for a given visual level.
Higher contrast is harder on the eyes, but you'll be fighting sunlight so the contrast of the screen will be relatively much less than that of the environment.
To keep the glare from the screen down, wear polarized sun glasses You might even be abloe to combine them with a polarizing filter on the screen to make it more visible while the environment appears darker.
I've enjoyed playing with muLinux (http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/). It's designed to run on old machines, completely from floppy disk if necessary. It runs entirely in RAM so you can swap between floppies for the app you need. It can also be cloned to CD. I installed and ran it as a UMSDOS app cloned to the hard drive under Win95 and it ran great. The complete install, including all docs and archives of the 5 floppies, took up 30 MB of Win95 drive space.
Disconnect the main cable from the car's battery. Get a handful of likely looking wires which could have come from the car. Wait.
"Sweetheart? The car won't start."
"I know. I thought about what you said about the wires on the computers and decided you were right. They're an eyesore. So when I was working on the car, I decided all those ugly wires under the hood had to go. See?" [Hold up handful of wires].
"But the car won't run without those!"
"I know. Neither will the computers."
If she's not fully convinced yet, walk over to the TV and start fiddling around with the coax cable.
Slashdot Mirror
If P2P makers are liable, then so is SCO. They own the rights to Unix, right? Doesn't UUCP allow two peers to share files?
AJWM (19027) sez: "For the several earlier posters who seem to think that this is the Holy Grail of Earth-to-orbit transportation -- well, maybe they're right in that it's about equally unattainable. Rockets work a hell of a lot better - as has been demonstrated by almost 47 years of orbital flight."
Rockets only work better if you consider the mechanical efficiency. If you throw cost into the deal, rockets fall apart. They're disposable for the most part.
A hypersonic air breathing first stage could carry a self-contained second stage to a speed and altitude that would make reaching orbit much easier, and do it far cheaper than can be done now.
The cheapest single disposable booster space shot so far was the Pegasus XL, for $13.5M. The estimate for the (cancelled) X-34 was $4M.
Interesting reading on the subject; Buzz Aldrin's patent for vertical launch flyback booster with orbital second stage: http://tinyurl.com/394qq
Trillian_1138 (221423) sez (a bunch of stuff; I'll take it a bit at a time): "You sound like someone who, while not involved in a directly emotional sense, might have an opinion on cochlear implants and the entire idea of deaf culture."
I'm not deaf (small d, as in hearing loss), but I was a "terp", and before that hung out with Deaf (capital D, as in the culture) poeple and did ASL enough that they and I considered me to be Deaf.
"My understanding is that deaf culture revolves around the idea of deafness not being a disability, and deaf people (specifically those born deaf) have developed their own unique culture in the same way that more regularly recognized cultures have...Deafness, if my understanding is correct, isn't even viewed as a disability."
To many this is the case. While undoubtedly people could rationalize themselves into believing this because they're stuck with the condition, I think there are other aspects to consider. How hard is it for you to talk to one person on the other side of a crowded room? How hard is it for you to talk with someone in a loud party? And if someone is hanging around you blabbering on endlessly about something you don;t want to hear, how hard is it for you to close your ears? In these respects, and others you can probably think of, people who don't use ASL are hampered -- they are the disabled ones. At the risk of sounding politically correct, in these respects, the deaf are really "differently abled".
"I have very mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I can emotionally understand how a group such as deaf individuals could see themselves as a seperate culture than everyone else... On the other hand, when I view it from a more removed position, I can't think of deafness as anything other than a disability."
Now, some adhere to the Deaf culture and dislike anything that impinges on it. Others would prefer not to have to have the condition. In my experience it is more often the former who have a problem with other people doing one thing or the other -- getting artificial assitance or staying away from it. They react more strongly. They even get upset of the parents of a child born deaf get it an implant without giving it the chance to become Deaf and make up its own mind.
Then again, they view this as an attempt by a dominant culture to enforce their mores and decisions on them and those like them. Being Native American, I can relate to this also. Despite what may (or may not) be the best of intentions, it's still paternalism.
The nature of the problem seems to come down to the same point as gun control and abortion -- some people wanting others to do one thing, while the others want to be able to do what they choose. Such things probably aren't solveable without giving each their own space to do as they wish with the understanding they can express their opinion but cannot enforce it on others.
In practical terms, someone born completely nerve deaf will probably never benefit from an implant. They might gain a new sensation, but it's not very likely they can turn it into a useful perception. Children, or the newly (or slowly) deaf, can probably benefit. They should be allowed to decide for themselves, and that includes being exposed to both sides, the oto/neuro people who can give them hearing, and the Deaf who could accept them as they are.
One last thing: consider how ASL works. There's a hand sign, and it can be modified by where it is in relation to the body, movement, and associated body language and facial expressions. These can all happen simultaneously (I usually use the example of the sign for "standing around for a long time, not paying attention"). In such instacnes there is communication going on in parallel, whereas with speech it is by necessity serial. If one can be taught to communicate over several parallel channels, might this not be beneficial brain exercise? I. and others, are of the opinion that teaching ASL to all young children for precisely this reason is a good idea. They could learn
quantum bit (225091) sez: "It's still a quite interesting effect though, and shows promise for building propulsion devices with no moving parts. The debate is still on as to whether it requires a dielectric medium (i.e. air), or can work in a vacuum as well."
Brown tested his devices in a vacuum chamber at GE in 1959. The results are not publically available. However, the design he was working on at the time involved using a gas jet as the generator of the electrostatic charge as well as the carrier necessary to create the effect. If so, yes, it is an ionic flow effect, but this does not mean it's restricted to atmospheric use. His patent on this design is US# 3,022,430.
plasticpixel (323537) sez: "I'm recalling this from memory but, I think Lazar got the idea for Element 115 from a Popular Science magazine article from the 1960's."
Could this be it?:
April 1969 (pages 57-67) issue of "Scientific American" by Dr. Glenn Seaborg
Discusses transuranics, #114 in depth, but includes others.
Thinkit4 (745166) sez: "I've been looking into various aspects of neuroscience. Do you work for an implant maker?"
No, I work for dept. of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, and don't have anything to do with implants here. I used to work with research related to implants and language in general at NIH. Details in my journal.
The theory of possible climate reversal from warming to ice age is over 30 years old. What's new, and worth emphasizing, is the possibility of abrupt change. We don't know at what point warming can become a runaway self-enforcing process, but we know it can. We'd probably prefer not to find out by experience.
If they're going to suck down the whole thing, plan for it.
Offer it pre-zipped. This would reduce the bandwidth and download time. A plus for everyone.
Make it easy for people who do this to obtain updates/additions by date.
As part of accessing the zipped version, ask people to mirror it. If they're going to carry it all, offer it all. Arrange dynamic mirror updating with those willing.
Find one or more secondary storage site for the archive. Ask people to use these (put them highest on the list).
If people persist on sucking down the whole thing and don't go for the archive, arrange a throttle with the sysadmin, and advertise it. Let people know that if they try to wget everything, things will start going real slow for them.
Set up a small version without the files, in parallel to the real one, with a note saying "files temporarily unavailable". Allow the system owner to switch to the small version during times of high traffic so as not to bog down his other users, or alterntaively, switch it yourself according to the owner's estimates of his traffic and times.
...and as long as they follow through on the promised support, especially migration support, I'll be satisfied.
I'm a neuroscientist by trade (well, no, actually I paid good money). I used to work for the Language Section of the National Institute on Deafness and Communications Disorders. I had to know a lot about these things technically and biologically. Also, my field of interest happens to be signal analysis, and that's at the heart of these devices. Also, I was an sign language interperator and considered myself a member of the Deaf community, a social distinction which might have bearing here. I'm not a physician, but I reckon I know enough to give my opinion mand have it considered informed.
.01 total harmonic distorion is good. One with .001 THD is better. But your average stereo speaker has about 3% THD, making the point moot. If the cost between the devices were great, I'd consider the cheaper.
/. journal for my email should you wish to email with questions.
You say she's profoundly deaf. Since when? If a long time, she may not adapt well no matter how good the device. The less sophisticated may be good enough then.
If she's been deaf a long time, does she socialize with other deaf people? If so, be aware some of them look on implants as a kind of betrayal. Those whose first language was American Sign Language consider themselves a unique culture and consider their condition and method of communication to be equally good as any other. Some very vocal (pardon the pun) types become quite irrate if someone they know steps outside their culture by getting an implant. I don't claim to understand exactly, but I've observed it.
Technically, these two devices probably perform equally well. The Clarion has superior characteristics, but the difference may be measureable in the lab but not the ear. The Clarion has more channels, that is more different frequency bands, and so would probably produce more "natural" sound. (To think of channels, consider the slider switches on an equalizer on a stereo. Each handles a specific range of frequencies. The more sliders there are, the finer the divisions across the sound spectrum.)
As mentioned elsewhere, Rush Limbaugh has a Clarion. I know he's pleased with the results, and he's a professional communicator.
The Nucleus has a removeable magnet. This could be important should your mother ever need to have an MRI. With either device, she'll need to wear a medical alert bracelet saying she has some implanted metal. An MRI uses a large, powerful moving magnet. If you expose a piece of metal to the field it can turn into a little food processor blade spinning around where it ought not. Should she ever be sent to the emergency room unconscious, they'll need to know not to do this to her. The Nucleus will give them the ability to should she need it.
If I were getting one and they cost the same, I'd get the Clarion. In a given ear, the end result will probably be better with that device. However, the differences between ears and neural systems are so much grteater that this may hardly matter. It may be better than the ear can make use of. Think of stereo systems. An amplifier with
A last thought: learning or relearning to hear will require a lot of exercise in order for neural plasticity to do its job. That means exposure. Also, if she's been reading sign language, those whove; been communicating with her should continue to use it even though she may now be able to hear. The resulting associations will help her learn/relearn faster.
Feel free to check my
Switching from medicine to CS/IT mjust to do it is like switching cars from Ford to GM for no other reason than to do it. Without a reason and plan, you'd end up throwing yourself into the pool with everyone else.
Consider how you could best serve yourself and the field by combining the two. Medical Informatics is already overloaded, due to the fact that it's worth the enormous prices charged and which medical systems can pay. What else can be done which is not as advanced?
How about telemedicine? Send the nurses out on the road to remote patients, with networked laptops that carry various digital versions of physio measurements. They collect the data, network it back to the doctor at the office, he tells them what to do, job is done. I did a master's thesis on this, and the field hasn't progressed significantly in the 10 years since.
Don't throw away your edge is all I'm saying. Use it.
... if you use your account for business. Not just if it's a line dedicated to a business, but if you read your email from work at home.
When we signed up for my wife's telecommuting, we got a good deal. Nobody asked us what we'd use it for. Nor did anybody say anything about limits or restrictions. And statements on a web site don't mean a darn thing when you call and sign up strictly by voice, which you'd have to do if you'd just moved in.
On our first service call (bad line outside, nobody's fault and quickly fixed) I made the mistake of mentioning having a router and firewall. Luckily when they asked me if we were using it for business, they didn't wait for the answer before telling me they charge more for business users. I asked whether that applied to someone using it at home who just happens to check their email from work, and they said yes.
If my wife weren't telecommuting full time, with the companmy paying the broadband portion of the cable bill, I'd be going back to DSL and getting "the dish".
AnonyCow sez: "Consumers demand to be lied to."
WRONG.
SOME consumers ALLOW themselves to be lied to. The rest of us should not have to expect it just because of them. I demand honesty from those I deal with. If someone's lying to me, they're lying, and the fact that they gtet away with it with some idiots is no reason to excuse it.
pilkul (667659) sez: "IMHO, this is an unfounded rumor; it _will_ attack sco.com. Check out this excerpt from Symantec's report (scroll down about 1/4, to the "notes" section): Due to the logic used to verify the date, the DoS only occurs 25% of the time."
Yes it does. But F-Secure and McAffe say nothing about a 25% firing rate. Did only Symantiec test it? Did only McAffe and F-Secure test it? Did nobody test it and just assume they could read the disassembly?
Time will tell (about another 48 hours) whether this thing will actually launch DoS against anyone. Even if it does, that still leaves unexplained variance between different AV companies' stories, and no explicit statements regarding actual testing and results except for "just one guy". If I had an isolated machine to play with, I'd be running tests myself instead of asking whether anyone else actually did. There's plenty of disassemblies already. Testing doesn't require that.
interiot (50685) sez: "Okay, let's go over some of the facts:"
... So does F-Secure. So does McAfee."
Yes, let's.
"The idea that the payload is inert comes from a single post on the internet by some random guy, and is now being quoted all over slashdot without anyone checking or verifying."
It's the sole instance apparent here of someone actually testing it. It's a case study with hard data which can be verified.
"Norton Antivirus believes
Believes. That hardly indicates results of empirical investigation. Did they test it? Is there anything they've done that can be verified? If not, I'll take "just one guy's" statements rather than that of companies who make money from these things.
"You can look at the worm yourself..." and "The partial dissassembly that people have posted so far indicates"
Yes, I've looked at it. I can see what it appears it's supposed to do. What I cannot see is evidence it's actually going to do it. I've seen one statement that it doesn't, and several that make claims without specifiying whether they tested it.
Worst yet, I've seen The Register claim in headlines the B variant "Attacks Microsoft.com" as though it were doing it already, and in the body of the story claim it's going to without saying anyone's tested it.
OgdEnigmaX sez: "Am I the only one who misread that as Janet Reno? Whew! :)"
Skeered the hell outta me too, at first. Then I thought "You know, I'll bet she could kick some serious ass in her time." And then I caught myself thinking that and skeered the hell outta myself all over again.
They're claiming this is the 6th form of matter, and that BEC's were the fifth, based on the fact that BECs are made of bosons, right?
= 57 0&ncid=753&e=3&u=/nm/20040128/sc_nm/science_matter _dc
_ ba ckground.htm
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid
"Bose-Einstein condensates are collections of thousands of ultracold particles that occupy a single quantum state -- they all essentially behave like a single, huge superatom. But Jin says these Bose-Einstein condensates are made with bosons, which like to act in unison."
Well, they're not. BECs are made of atoms too.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/BEC
"Predicted in 1924 by Albert Einstein, who built on the work of Satyendra Nath Bose, the condensation occurs when individual atoms meld into a "superatom" behaving as a single entity at just a few hundred billionths of a degree above absolute zero." "The team led by Cornell and Wieman used laser and magnetic traps to create the BEC, a tiny ball of rubidium atoms that are as stationary as the laws of quantum mechanics permit."
If something were formed from a collection of bosons that were quantally entangled, it wouldn't be a form of matter. Bosons are the force-carrying quanta, such as photons. They are energy, not matter.
I've had several surgeries for wrist reconstruction from a military injury. As a result I have what amounts to carpal tunnel to an extent that you can't develop without artificial aid. Now, this is in one hand, so I have another to compare with.
My biggest problem was the mouse. Particularly holding it in a half-closed grasp for such long periods while moving it all around the table. My solution was to get a thumbwheel mouse.
As for keyboards, some are better for me than other. The ergo-keyboards never made much difference. The best one I found is the small keyboard that came with my Apple IIgs (also came with some Macs around 1990 or so). It's about 3/4 the size of others, and so it takes less movement to get to any given key. It's easier on my hands and faster for me. I consider it to be the Fender Stratocaster of keyboards; the Strat was a favorite for lead guitars in part due to it's 3/4 normal size.
johnshirley writes "How old is the oldest known technical manual? About 613 years, it seems. Written in 1391 by Geoffrey Chaucer for his ten year old son Lewis (Lowys), the manual explains in great detail but very rough spelling and grammar, the intricate workings of the Astrolabe--the predecessor to the sextant."
Hypatia of Alexandria wrote a manual for the use of, and for the construction of, an astrolabe. That was 1,000 years before Chaucer's book.
Zeriel writes "After much discussion on a mailing list discussing trojan horses, some people have reached the conclusion that MyDoom doesn't accomplish its stated goal of DDOSing SCO at all! Choice quote from the analysis: "I have the new critter in a test environment where we conducted a preliminary and rudimentary functionality and threat analysis...I have played with the date, etc, but still no activity directed toward www.sco.com." The link also includes disassembly and analysis of the worm code."
If it turns out that the DDOS payload is inert:
Who was it that FIRST said it WOULD attack SCO, and how did they determine this? And who else quoted them without checking? (Not including normal media outlets, who'll quote anyone that can form a coherent sentence, if it'll fill white space.)
If this thing doesn't perform as advertised, what we are seeing is the first (purposeful or not) FUDworm. It definitely is spreading virus-like and causing traffic problems, but also it's spreading FUD, and using all of us as vectors. We will all have been infected with a socially engineered disease. If this is the case, it's a master stroke of psyops. If not, considering its success so far, its example will be repeated for this purpose.
... and why should I trust what they say? My prior experience with the NIPC was that they were way behind the learning curve as well as any useful time frame? Can someone point out some independent evidence saying it's worth my time to listen to these people? I'm sure their own site says so, but if I read that there I'd probably just laugh.
Cynical? If that's what you want to call it. I call it ex-federal employee.
The Mayor (6048) sez: "I see a few issues with this advice...But the eye is most sensitive to green."
The eye IS most sensitive (ie. has lowest threshhold to fire) to green. There are more green receptors or the green receptors are more sensitive than the red, and definitely more so than the blue.
But yellow (slightly to the green side) is the brightest apparent color, because of the overlap of red and green cones. It sounds like it contradicts what you said, but it doesn't. Yellow can be from yellow (wavelength) photons that stimulate either red or green cones, or from a mix of red and green photons stimulating those cones. Either way, it's a more efficient process because more receptors are available for stimulation.
Look at it this way: What color becomes closest to white (ie lightest grey) when the color is turned all the way down to plain black-and-white (like the color control on a TV)? Green is definitely grey, yellow is lighter, most like white.
And he sez: "From my experience, the polarization of LCD monitors is usually at a 45 degree angle to the polarization of most sunglasses."
Excellent. I didn't know that they had polarized output. Doing a polarization mod and others not being able to see it, now that sounds like a cool hack.
chadma sez: "Would a white background with black text be most appropriate?"
You'll get the higest contrast with the brightest and darkest color. Black is, of course, the darkest. The brightest is that slightly chartruse yellow you see on some emergency vehicles and safety gear. It's the brightest because it stimulates the most receptors in the eye (the maximum overlap between the red receptors and green receptors). For the same reason, it'd also be the most efficient for a given visual level.
Higher contrast is harder on the eyes, but you'll be fighting sunlight so the contrast of the screen will be relatively much less than that of the environment.
To keep the glare from the screen down, wear polarized sun glasses You might even be abloe to combine them with a polarizing filter on the screen to make it more visible while the environment appears darker.
I've enjoyed playing with muLinux (http://mulinux.sunsite.dk/). It's designed to run on old machines, completely from floppy disk if necessary. It runs entirely in RAM so you can swap between floppies for the app you need. It can also be cloned to CD. I installed and ran it as a UMSDOS app cloned to the hard drive under Win95 and it ran great. The complete install, including all docs and archives of the 5 floppies, took up 30 MB of Win95 drive space.
Disconnect the main cable from the car's battery. Get a handful of likely looking wires which could have come from the car. Wait.
"Sweetheart? The car won't start."
"I know. I thought about what you said about the wires on the computers and decided you were right. They're an eyesore. So when I was working on the car, I decided all those ugly wires under the hood had to go. See?" [Hold up handful of wires].
"But the car won't run without those!"
"I know. Neither will the computers."
If she's not fully convinced yet, walk over to the TV and start fiddling around with the coax cable.