OK, so she is in the third grade and has just started doing some homework on her mother's laptop.
But we're still dealing with this business of responsibility. If we don't sign off on her homework in her assignment book, she has to sit 5 minutes on the wall at recess and cannot play with the rest of the students. After about the third time of sitting on the wall, she began to understand that forgetting the assignment book was a bad idea.
I must say, this has put me off completely on cloud computing. Here are my reasons:
The cloud owner can choose to charge for their software.
They can increase the price.
They can delete your data if you don't pay an ever-increasing "storage" or "software use" fee.
They can change the terms of their agreement with you.
They can approve or disapprove of your content, deleting anything they don't like.
You have no recourse to any action they intend to take.
With local storage, you are responsible for backups and if you're smart, you'll be responsible. Your software license doesn't care what content you create or store, neither does your local hard drive. And there are no possible "cloud ate my research paper" excuses.
But I'll bet college professors hear about a lot more hard drive crashes than anyone else ever does.
Did nobody read Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital? I think I re-read his book once every two years just to remind myself why this computing stuff is not intuitive and to remember that I have developed a skill set that does not relate to any reality other than that of the computer.
I don't want to take anything away from physicians. They're smart people and every one I have been to recently is capable of dealing with a personal computer. Some have dedicated touchscreen systems to help to record patient information and to write prescriptions. Others use computers to reduce the need for office staff to push paperwork. Still others have gone "paperless," and are trying to keep all records electronically so that they don't have to have a room just for patient records.
I also don't want to take anything away from hospital administrators who have to handle the tremendous losses of an emergency room with 9 to 12% of cases coming in with no insurance and no ability to pay for necessary treatment, combined with a mandate that they take all comers, regardless of whether or not the hospital will wind up picking up the tab. They're trying to reduce the steps necessary to manage a pretty large organization that must be large in order to be able to stay afloat.
But I'm looking at this Harvard study in the same way that I've been looking at the Women's breast exam and mammography study as well as the recent pap smear study where statistics are being slightly misused. And the end result of this study will be used to invalidate the Administration's claims that computerization will result in a savings, just as the last two studies have been used to claim that any health insurance reform that passes the House and Senate will be used to limit care. Never mind that it's false.
The administration's computerization proposal is all about patient care and not administration. The Harvard study covered computerization of administrative tasks. Will there be a savings? That is yet to be seen.
A computer application needs to be easy to use. It needs to be so analogous to the types of everyday tasks that the nurses, doctors and support staff does that they can readily understand and work with it. That's Negroponte's point. Furthermore, any application (and user interface) written to streamline patient care needs to actually make things easier to provide patient care than the methods currently being used. If this is not the case, it will take a long time for any savings to be seen because adoption will be very slow.
If you are a programmer and you are working on something like this, you need to spend a day with a nurse. You need to spend a day with a doctor. You need to observe their procedures and really understand them, which means they need to explain things that they did to you. And that's a problem because no nurse or doctor really has time in their day "for this nonsense." So, what's probably needed here is a programmer who actually studied medicine, which is probably a seriously small subset of all programmers out there.
I work in television. And I remember when the first computerized video editors came out that changed the editing paradigm for us. they were pretty slow. It took a long time to load material into them and then the end result had such low resolution that you could not determined whether or not the camera's focus was properly pulled. You had to take the end result and go into a very expensive suite and reassemble everything with a computer list created for that purpose. Of course personal computers got faster. And their capabilities got better. And compression of pictures got a lot better. Today, there are a number of video editing tools out there that enable us to do our jobs very well and everyone understands the worth of loading material into the systems. Additionally, there are different editing systems available that use different paradigms for e
I used to work at a company that decided to install large, monolithic UPS systems after the power company hit them with a spike that took the entire system down for over a half hour. As they're a broadcasting company, they (rightly) felt that feeding their network affiliates nothing was not a good idea.
As a result, they have these UPS "rooms" that hum like the dickens when you're passing them in the hall, all with batteries that will need to be replaced regularly (just like the Google server battery systems, so it's the same problem no matter what). Reason for the hum?
The hum is caused by these giant transformers that step the power from DC to AC and create 110 volts of AC current at whatever amperage is required for normal devices. But there is a lot of wasted energy in doing that.
Computers and servers all run off of DC power. They plug into AC power and then run that AC through a "power supply" that converts that to DC that the computer can use. That takes power, but power is plentiful when it comes from the power company and you pay your bill on time. But when you take the power from the power company, then change it to DC to charge batteries and then take power from those batteries to change it to AC to power normal wall outlets only to take that through a server's power supply to change it to DC again for the computer to use it, you're looking at lots of wasted energy in just changing from AC to DC, back and then back again, as well as changing to the kind of voltage and amperage needed to run the microprocessor, power the memory and power the drive arrays.
So this is all about lowering consumption. And if you lower consumption, you lower your electricity costs.
The hobbyist magazines were all aflutter some years ago about using photovoltaic (solar) energy to power a house. But what everyone had to do (early on) was to change their appliances (or order special ones) to run on DC -- not because you couldn't make AC current from the DC output of the photovoltaic systems but because it took a lot of energy to do that and these hobbyists were all about trying to save so much energy that they could take themselves off the grid.
Here, on a large scale, you see the same idea. It's just more efficient to do this. And one of the big arguments in the early years of electrification was between DC power distribution (Thomas Edison) and AC power distribution (George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla). We may wind up fighting these battles again in the near future.
Only wealthy landowners were considered "citizens" in Athens. The "masses" were never allowed to vote -- they were considered "represented" by the land owners.
Freedom of Speech devolves from the pamphletting started around the time of King James I (of England) from Holland through James II and William of Orange. William, of course, was somewhat implicated in their distribution as a means by which he could influence the English people prior to his landing there and taking over the government. This started limited rule in England and William of Orange was as annoyed by these published tracts as his predecessor was after he became King of England.
Obviously these pamphlets were designed to "preach to the choir," but they were also written to persuade some of the population that there were alternatives to a Catholic King who was increasingly suspicious of the overwhelmingly Protestant subjects he ruled. In other words, there were people increasingly "wanting to listen."
During the US Revolution against King George III, these exact issues became doctrine in the American Colonies. Anyone today who reads "Common Sense," written by John Payne, will sagely nod their head at how important it was to quit the (seemingly) "despotic rule of an overbearing European tyrant." But, taken in the context of his time, this was just shy of blasphemous, as Kings were assumed to have certain, divine rights that placed them above the masses, and Payne was arguing for mass rule -- something that had never been tried.
Another George -- Washington was roundly discomfited by this "free press," which, in opposition, roundly criticized him and impugned his motives as our first President. I'm fairly sure he would have enjoyed a discussion about this wide freedom with William of Orange.
But in all of these cases, the "speech," was being written for people who were either open to persuasion or more than happy to receive the content.
The Internet is a completely new medium that almost completely democratizes "freedom of speech." I say "almost" because there are areas of the US and income levels here in this country that make access to the Internet pretty close to impossible. And there are areas of the world where Internet access is absolutely impossible and access is carefully limited, as in Saudi Arabia and China.
That said, Internet "Spam" is being touted as free speech. And I have to ask about this ideal of either "openness to persuasion," or "happiness to receive content." Surely George Washington didn't want to read the Philadelphia Aurora publishing their take on his (mis)deeds. I'll bet King James II read some of the published works circulated against him that culminated in what the English call "The Glorious Revolution." I'm also positive that Alan Ralsky and Dmitriy Guzner would style themselves modern day Thomas Paynes.
But this issue does not fall into this area of "free speech."
Where this area ought to fall is in another area, and I like to quote the justification of the law used to prohibit "junk faxes." You send out business cards with your fax number on it and you'll start receiving them. And according to federal law, prohibiting unsolicited faxes, the justification lies in the costs that you have to incur.
You have to buy paper. And if someone sends you a ream's worth of junk faxes yearly, you have to go out and spend more money on paper. Additionally, you have to buy toner (or whatever kind of ink your fax uses, be it thermal paper or whatever) to print those faxes. Also, members of Congress tend to have fax machines in their own offices and they were offended by these same "junk fax" senders. So the law says, each fax sending machine must put its real telephone number on the top of the fax. And the law says that a fax sender cannot keep sending a fax to someone who says they don't want the advertisement. After a few pretty high-profile suits, lots of tho
I jailbroke my iPhone before the App Store started up. Then I un-jailbroke it. I just didn't see the need, even though it is really easy.
But I cannot figure out how to pirate anything off the App Store and I didn't know it was possible. I also don't know how anyone could subvert iTunes to steal applications for one's (or one's friends') iPhone or iPod Touch.
Now I'm not looking for anyone to list the steps to steal stuff on slashdot, but people can pirate apps from the App Store?! I thought Apple had it pretty much locked up.
The vast majority of my apps are free. I did buy two chess games and I bought a very good WiFi finder. Most of what I do on my iPhone is read news, email, Facebook and slashdot. Maybe I'm just too old to be tempted...
OK, TFA suggests that Martian soil could harbor dessicated bacterial spores that don't do anything. They don't reproduce, they aren't active, they're just sitting there inert. And that's pretty cool from the standpoint that we can dig up the remains of a former Martian ecosystem that existed long ago and far away.
But, for the average taxpayer interested in funding missions, NASA, rocketry, exploration and grand scale achievements, that is pretty much a yawner.
There is no way at all that anyone representing the USA, NASA, the Russian Federation and China would be willing to take back any microbes to Earth for further study unless those microbes were in a sealed environment and definitely rendered incapable of infecting anyone and anything on Earth.
(For you young whippersnappers out there, I watched all of the Moon landings and I recall the disappointment of having to wait until the World Famous Astronauts emerged from their custom-made Windstream Mobile Home to actually see them in person and live and doing well after their trip to the sterile Moon.)
And, while I appreciate the wonderous MSL "Action Hero" robot (Transformer?!) we're about to send up there, there is nothing aboard that gizmo that will actually prove the existence of a microbe on Mars. Because if said microbes are dormant, they're not going to be emitting methane or any other byproduct of active organisms. And any results of the testing will be circumstantial and easily explained away as "possibly life or possibly something else we don't yet understand about the Martian environment."
We won't settle this issue until a human being with a microscope, or an electron microscope actually goes there and sees those little dormant Martian neighbors with human eyes and some other human reproduces that experience. And that is not going to happen under current NASA funding. Ever.
While I'm not in the camp saying "all these Martian rovers are misspent money," I don't agree that anything they find out will be conclusive, where life is concerned. Unless, of course, some Martian happens to stroll by one of our cameras on his or her way to work.
Pystar is probably highly commoditizing their computers and spending most of its R&D efforts on trying to make Apple's OS X boot on them.
Which proves the points all ready made that the clones were set to kill Apple -- only several things have happened since.
Jobs re-introduced the All-In-One Mac with the iMac. It was minimally user-expandable internally and it was set up to get on the Internet (which then was the Brave New World) in seconds. In doing this, Jobs was adding experiential value to his "more expensive" computers. This was something Scully never really understood.
As for the current price of Apple's offerings, I would have to say that they are presently on par with other first-tier vendors. By first-tier, I don't mean Acer or some other Pacific Rim company that does not support its products. If you compare Apple's Mac Pro with Hewlett Packard's Pavilion Elite e9280t series, you're entirely in the same price range. And I would argue, based on personal experience, that an Apple computer will be productive longer than other brands (due to the close fit between operating system software and the hardware it runs on). My personal experience is based on my recent upgrade from a G4-400 (with an upgraded processor) that I purchased in 1999 to the Mac Pro I currently have bought this year. One does not expect 9 to 10 years of useful life out of an HP.
I'm not saying Pystar should win. I'm also not urging Apple to bring back the Clone market. I'm saying that I am illogically rooting for Pystar, knowing that people who buy their computers will get the experience of Apple's operating system and may well switch to an Apple-branded product as a result, just as I did with the Power Computing (legal) clone.
I am also saying that Apple does need to compete and ought to be pushed by these upstart operations like Pystar. Because Pystar is not Apple's real competition. HP is. And if Apple doesn't continue to innovate to keep ahead of HP, companies like Pystar ought to be able to utilize any and all of Apple's decent innovations and add their own (if Apple won't).
I love my Mac Pro. I paid gobs of bucks for it but it does everything I need and more. I don't think I would buy a Pystar computer, no matter what extremely pleasing price point they attain because (just like Coca-Cola clones) it ain't the Real Thing. And only the Real Thing is guaranteed to work with Apple's OS upgrades and all of the software available for Macintosh computers.
Nonetheless, I root for Pystar. I hope they win somehow. I hope they win outright (highly unlikely from TFA) or they win on some really lame, outlying technicality that nobody ever realized anyone could win on. And the reason why I'm rooting for them is not logical.
Apple doesn't seem to remember that the first computer I bought -- along with many others -- that ran their System Software was a Clone. Mine was made by Power Computing and it ran faster than anything Apple had released at that point. That introduction to the Apple experience was a good one and I'll bet the folks at Pystar are introducing other non-Apple OS users to the experience in a similar way. And what Apple also doesn't realize is that the second computer I bought that would give me that experience was an Apple-branded computer. Even if Apple had not killed the clone market, I still would have bought an Apple because I wanted assurances that my computer would flawlessly run everything that runs on Apple's system software.
When Steve Jobs killed the clone market, he offered nothing to the companies that made clones. There is no more Power Computing, Inc. and the other companies that made the clones don't make computers any more. There wasn't so much as a handshake. It was "sorry, can't be bothered" and boom! The companies folded. I have to say that, during these economic times, I have a lot of trouble having any sympathy towards someone who causes job loss like that.
I recognize that Jobs' argument is solid. If there are Mac clones out there, the brand gets diluted and the experience of using Apple's software may not always work out the way it should.
But I root for Pystar. They don't stand a chance but I would really like to see them keep going.
AT&T doesn't have that option until the point in time the FCC magically pulls more frequencies out of their ass.
All ready done.
They auctioned them off last year. Verizon bought most of them.
This doesn't mean that Verizon gets them all. This means that Verizon gets first choice. And someone with a different signaling method (like AT&T) may be able to "piggyback" on the Verizon frequencies (I'm sure with proper payment to Verizon).
Today, with compression, you can fit an entire HD video stream in the same hard disk space (and bandwidth) as a regular NTSC or PAL signal used to sit. You can do the same thing with radio.
Doesn't it bother anyone that, in the "choose your browser" window, the application is Internet Exploiter that is offering you the choice and is branded with the Internet Exploder "E?" Ought not the EU demand that logos be removed from that initial browser window?
Everyone here is looking askance at AT&T. And their policies may be problematic. But AT&T has incentive to build more towers and that incentive is called "Verizon." Of course in the iPhone-only world, there is no incentive but AT&T actually sells more than just the iPhone.
Their contract with Apple ends next year, unless the two companies want to renew. Problem is that since Verizon uses different signaling than does AT&T, if you want to switch to Verizon, you would have to purchase a different, Verizon-capable iPhone. Winner here is Apple, because they pocket the money for the phone.
I grew up in an era when all telephone calls, local or long-distance cost money and AT&T was the only telephone company. You had to rent your phone from the phone company and you had to pay for every call. That system tended to cause people to use the telephone for messages, not to chat. AT&T dropped local calling rates in the 1960s and stay-at-home moms everywhere started to carry on long conversations on the telephone with their neighbors. Long-distance remained a medium of message.
What changed? I believe that AT&T realized that there was pressure from their subscribers (nearly everyone in the US) to change. You still had to pay per call, but you didn't have to pay per minute. And the cost per call was pretty cheap. So long conversations over local calls became the norm. I don't recall hearing that the infrastructure was, somehow, overloaded.
I'll bet the real reason for this change was an overall computerization of the system. Since AT&T had introduced some pretty killer automation on their system, it was cost-effective to do this. When telephone companies started doing VOIP, the cost of long-distance came down and the era of unlimited long distance calling was ushered in. They're still using the same lines, folks, they're just packing the data in better.
The deal with radio signaling is that the costs are decreasing all of the time. Back when the government proposed digital television, there was no way that stations could broadcast a full high-definition signal in the bandwidth allocation offered by the FCC. Television companies immediately came up with encoding schemes that would compress the signal so that it would fit within the available bandwidth. In fact, it was discovered that the spectrum offered by the FCC was a real boon: Television stations could actually broadcast three separate stations within the digital bandwidth allocation and Congress had to come down on the Networks to require that they broadcast a 16x9 HD signal when the Networks announced that they had no specific plans to transition to HD and that they might use the extra two channels to make their O&Os more money.
Sure, the radio spectrum is limited. But digital compression keeps getting better and that opens up those limits. A great example is how cable systems are able to send many more channels (and many of them HD channels) over the same coax cable as they used to use when it was limited to some 90 channels (all standard definition). Additionally, they're also able to do high-speed internet at the same time over the same cable. Frankly, I think the bandwidth is more limited on that coax cable than is in the spectrum for cellular telephony. So I think arguments about lack of bandwidth are missing the point. Also arguments about building more cellular receivers and towers are, likewise missing the point. AT&T wants to compete with the other cell phone companies
The iPhone is a real money maker for AT&T (as well as Apple). AT&T keeps adding subscribers and pulling them away from other carriers because of the iPhone. If your iPhone suddenly cannot connect, or data slows a little, you will eventually get it, so AT&T can "throttle" data and keep happy customers. Additionally, Apple might have a s
Apple hasn't done docking ports for a long time, but there are third-party add-ons for that. There are also any number of hot-swappable drives you can buy for a Macbook. They're external Firewire and USB drives.
The philosophy here is that you can take a lightweight portable anywhere and it stays lightweight. Add peripherals and they're external to the notebook. If you're traveling around, you can just take the basics. Apple's really beautiful 24" Cinema Display monitor is specifically designed to power your laptop while you are using it at home. Detach your Macbook and you have a smaller screen in a lightweight package that doesn't cause your arm to grow 3" longer.
The OP suggests that the computer is for code. With a Mac, you get the advantage of Apple's code tools built in and free. And if he wants to code for the iPhone, for free he can download that SDK and distribute his applications for a one-time price of $99.
Can't do that on a Dell.
I don't want to knock Dell's philosophy here. It's as valid as anyone's. But when I work and just need to get somewhere with a minimum of gear, leaving a cable harness, large monitor, unneeded drive, etc behind really works for me. There's just less shoulder strain.
Now of course, you're going to tell me you played football four years for the Big 10 and a laptop with a couple of extra internal components, a docking port and other dongles, weighing in at 34 pounds doesn't cause you any trouble and, were I to meet you, I'd be happy to agree. But I'm more along the lines of a skinny geek.
Firstly, I read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in my English Lit class in my Sophomore year in High School. So its inclusion may well be unneeded, assuming the curriculum is fairly decent in your school district. Problem is, you are going to need a number of short stories if you plan to do anything in any depth.
I would love to suggest Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, which uses a great artifice to tell the story, and that's done all throughout the book until the story lines collide wonderfully at the end. Dickens did that in A Tale of Two Cities, which also ought to be in your High School English Lit class. Might be a good thing to contrast the storytelling styles of Dickens and LeGuin.
If you do such a class, you need to start at the beginning and the first internationally recognized science fiction novel was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, a story that your class will be familiar with but will not have read. Nobody remembers the beginning or the ending.
You should choose one or two "Space Opera" short stories of the Pulp era, because they're quick reads and they're great examples of that genre. You ought to do a story by HP Lovecraft because those are wonderfully crafted. You should include some fantasy and I would mention that many Sci Fi writers today say that they make more money with this part of the genre.
I did write a paper on a University level where my proposal was one where science fiction (at least the future world variety) placed today's man in "tomorrow's setting," as we were able to identify that at the time. So if the class starts to gripe about this futuristic pap, you should have them identify what the overall feelings of the characters are and how they reflect the actual time of publication. Certainly Asimov's Foundation series (not recommended for a class, as it's way too much reading) and the character's love for portable atomic energy devices and lack of fear of radiation is a pretty good indication of their 1950s and 1960s publication dates.
Were I tasked with this, I'd head to the beach and start up some really fun summertime reading. It was in a class that you plan to teach that I read (on purpose) everything Frank Herbert wrote, then sent a letter (through the publisher) to Mr. Herbert. He wrote me back about 3 months after the term ended. My questions were not about Dune but about a number of his other novels.
Get in touch with your state's Attorney General, saying that they only notified you about their non-compliance after you had all ready committed to them. CourtesyCopy the FCC, which seems actually interested in regulating monopolistic corporations on the Internet.
Attach as much material support of your trials and tribulations as possible. The paper trail will provide these lawyers with the material support to begin the attack.
A 13" MacBook Pro will run any flavor of Linux, Windows (with Bootcamp) and will also run Apple's Mac OS. Frankly, I'd want a 15" one, but you can always buy a 23" cinema display later if you start making some serious money from your programming efforts.
Here's what you get at your price point:
13-inch: 2.26GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB Memory (You'll want to add more later)
160GB hard drive
SD card slot
Built-in 7-hour battery
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
You cannot touch Apple's battery life anywhere. And the processor is completely modern and sets you up to code for more than one core (commonplace on PCs today). And you get operating systems that will allow you the freedom to develop for any modern platform out there, save a mainframe.
To add to your very insightful post, I would suggest that this corporate "right" of free speech is also illusory. This has never been tested before the Supreme Court, nor has the fiction created by the 14th Amendment (that allowed African American former slaves to be citizens) giving "personhood" to corporations.
And, frankly, were there to be such a test, I would like to see Justice Thomas impeached or deceased first with a majority of the Supreme Court disposed to protect the rights of individuals in this country as opposed to the "rights" of big business.
Big Business told us that they have a right to free speech. And when tobacco companies' ads were noticed everywhere pointing right at children and very close to play spaces and other attractions (like candy) for children to familiarize them with the brands for cigarettes from toddler on up, as well as cartoon characters familiar to children, there were legal means used to stop that (despite claims of corporate free speech).
Spammers always hide their true identities. When I send out an email, I don't. The reason is because I do not fear the response to messages I send. Spammers, somehow, always have. So they have no legal leg to stand on.
The original article is full of misstatements, half-truths and Barney-Fife impersonations. Frankly, the good people on Slashdot who have been around the block a few times will recall that in the 1990s, the "threat of taxing your internet" was a reoccurring theme and absolute nonsense.
There is nobody better-versed in Internet speeds and access than slashdot readers. And the FCC is open to comments for the next sixty days. In my article, I am urging people to comment to the FCC during this period and I am hoping they have lots of really good suggestions from people who are well-informed rather than ill-informed.
I do note that the FCC has an "acting" director, which means Republicans in the Senate have held up confirmation of yet another Obama appointee for political (read not-useful) reasons.
I am trying to get a webhost (AT&T, incidentally) to give me permission to move a client's domain name onto one of my servers. AT&T is saying that they have to push the domain to my server.
I contacted my technical people and they confirm that.
Without explicit cooperation from both sides, CMG is SOL because his web hosting provider cannot push diddly in a "blackout" situation where the FBI agents have removed power pending the conclusion of their investigation.
Apparently, these days, "Macintosh" is a little too generic. One could say that "Macintosh" relates to an experience, not an individual product.
For mid-range, how about this? The 24" 3.06GHz iMac at $2200.00 hits your price point. If you have to have something that is expandable, the $2500.00 Mac Pro may be in the sweet spot. Essentially I'm saying, do you need two or four processor cores and maybe a little more expandability with four.
But I don't think Apple is going to be selling anything in the $800 price range in the near future, outside of the Mac Mini.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so she is in the third grade and has just started doing some homework on her mother's laptop.
But we're still dealing with this business of responsibility. If we don't sign off on her homework in her assignment book, she has to sit 5 minutes on the wall at recess and cannot play with the rest of the students. After about the third time of sitting on the wall, she began to understand that forgetting the assignment book was a bad idea.
I must say, this has put me off completely on cloud computing. Here are my reasons:
The cloud owner can choose to charge for their software.
They can increase the price.
They can delete your data if you don't pay an ever-increasing "storage" or "software use" fee.
They can change the terms of their agreement with you.
They can approve or disapprove of your content, deleting anything they don't like.
You have no recourse to any action they intend to take.
With local storage, you are responsible for backups and if you're smart, you'll be responsible. Your software license doesn't care what content you create or store, neither does your local hard drive. And there are no possible "cloud ate my research paper" excuses.
But I'll bet college professors hear about a lot more hard drive crashes than anyone else ever does.
Did nobody read Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital ? I think I re-read his book once every two years just to remind myself why this computing stuff is not intuitive and to remember that I have developed a skill set that does not relate to any reality other than that of the computer.
I don't want to take anything away from physicians. They're smart people and every one I have been to recently is capable of dealing with a personal computer. Some have dedicated touchscreen systems to help to record patient information and to write prescriptions. Others use computers to reduce the need for office staff to push paperwork. Still others have gone "paperless," and are trying to keep all records electronically so that they don't have to have a room just for patient records.
I also don't want to take anything away from hospital administrators who have to handle the tremendous losses of an emergency room with 9 to 12% of cases coming in with no insurance and no ability to pay for necessary treatment, combined with a mandate that they take all comers, regardless of whether or not the hospital will wind up picking up the tab. They're trying to reduce the steps necessary to manage a pretty large organization that must be large in order to be able to stay afloat.
But I'm looking at this Harvard study in the same way that I've been looking at the Women's breast exam and mammography study as well as the recent pap smear study where statistics are being slightly misused. And the end result of this study will be used to invalidate the Administration's claims that computerization will result in a savings, just as the last two studies have been used to claim that any health insurance reform that passes the House and Senate will be used to limit care. Never mind that it's false.
The administration's computerization proposal is all about patient care and not administration. The Harvard study covered computerization of administrative tasks. Will there be a savings? That is yet to be seen.
A computer application needs to be easy to use. It needs to be so analogous to the types of everyday tasks that the nurses, doctors and support staff does that they can readily understand and work with it. That's Negroponte's point. Furthermore, any application (and user interface) written to streamline patient care needs to actually make things easier to provide patient care than the methods currently being used. If this is not the case, it will take a long time for any savings to be seen because adoption will be very slow.
If you are a programmer and you are working on something like this, you need to spend a day with a nurse. You need to spend a day with a doctor. You need to observe their procedures and really understand them, which means they need to explain things that they did to you. And that's a problem because no nurse or doctor really has time in their day "for this nonsense." So, what's probably needed here is a programmer who actually studied medicine, which is probably a seriously small subset of all programmers out there.
I work in television. And I remember when the first computerized video editors came out that changed the editing paradigm for us. they were pretty slow. It took a long time to load material into them and then the end result had such low resolution that you could not determined whether or not the camera's focus was properly pulled. You had to take the end result and go into a very expensive suite and reassemble everything with a computer list created for that purpose. Of course personal computers got faster. And their capabilities got better. And compression of pictures got a lot better. Today, there are a number of video editing tools out there that enable us to do our jobs very well and everyone understands the worth of loading material into the systems. Additionally, there are different editing systems available that use different paradigms for e
I used to work at a company that decided to install large, monolithic UPS systems after the power company hit them with a spike that took the entire system down for over a half hour. As they're a broadcasting company, they (rightly) felt that feeding their network affiliates nothing was not a good idea.
As a result, they have these UPS "rooms" that hum like the dickens when you're passing them in the hall, all with batteries that will need to be replaced regularly (just like the Google server battery systems, so it's the same problem no matter what). Reason for the hum?
The hum is caused by these giant transformers that step the power from DC to AC and create 110 volts of AC current at whatever amperage is required for normal devices. But there is a lot of wasted energy in doing that.
Computers and servers all run off of DC power. They plug into AC power and then run that AC through a "power supply" that converts that to DC that the computer can use. That takes power, but power is plentiful when it comes from the power company and you pay your bill on time. But when you take the power from the power company, then change it to DC to charge batteries and then take power from those batteries to change it to AC to power normal wall outlets only to take that through a server's power supply to change it to DC again for the computer to use it, you're looking at lots of wasted energy in just changing from AC to DC, back and then back again, as well as changing to the kind of voltage and amperage needed to run the microprocessor, power the memory and power the drive arrays.
So this is all about lowering consumption. And if you lower consumption, you lower your electricity costs.
The hobbyist magazines were all aflutter some years ago about using photovoltaic (solar) energy to power a house. But what everyone had to do (early on) was to change their appliances (or order special ones) to run on DC -- not because you couldn't make AC current from the DC output of the photovoltaic systems but because it took a lot of energy to do that and these hobbyists were all about trying to save so much energy that they could take themselves off the grid.
Here, on a large scale, you see the same idea. It's just more efficient to do this. And one of the big arguments in the early years of electrification was between DC power distribution (Thomas Edison) and AC power distribution (George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla). We may wind up fighting these battles again in the near future.
Only wealthy landowners were considered "citizens" in Athens. The "masses" were never allowed to vote -- they were considered "represented" by the land owners.
Freedom of Speech devolves from the pamphletting started around the time of King James I (of England) from Holland through James II and William of Orange. William, of course, was somewhat implicated in their distribution as a means by which he could influence the English people prior to his landing there and taking over the government. This started limited rule in England and William of Orange was as annoyed by these published tracts as his predecessor was after he became King of England.
Obviously these pamphlets were designed to "preach to the choir," but they were also written to persuade some of the population that there were alternatives to a Catholic King who was increasingly suspicious of the overwhelmingly Protestant subjects he ruled. In other words, there were people increasingly "wanting to listen."
During the US Revolution against King George III, these exact issues became doctrine in the American Colonies. Anyone today who reads "Common Sense," written by John Payne, will sagely nod their head at how important it was to quit the (seemingly) "despotic rule of an overbearing European tyrant." But, taken in the context of his time, this was just shy of blasphemous, as Kings were assumed to have certain, divine rights that placed them above the masses, and Payne was arguing for mass rule -- something that had never been tried.
Another George -- Washington was roundly discomfited by this "free press," which, in opposition, roundly criticized him and impugned his motives as our first President. I'm fairly sure he would have enjoyed a discussion about this wide freedom with William of Orange.
But in all of these cases, the "speech," was being written for people who were either open to persuasion or more than happy to receive the content.
The Internet is a completely new medium that almost completely democratizes "freedom of speech." I say "almost" because there are areas of the US and income levels here in this country that make access to the Internet pretty close to impossible. And there are areas of the world where Internet access is absolutely impossible and access is carefully limited, as in Saudi Arabia and China.
That said, Internet "Spam" is being touted as free speech. And I have to ask about this ideal of either "openness to persuasion," or "happiness to receive content." Surely George Washington didn't want to read the Philadelphia Aurora publishing their take on his (mis)deeds. I'll bet King James II read some of the published works circulated against him that culminated in what the English call "The Glorious Revolution." I'm also positive that Alan Ralsky and Dmitriy Guzner would style themselves modern day Thomas Paynes.
But this issue does not fall into this area of "free speech."
Where this area ought to fall is in another area, and I like to quote the justification of the law used to prohibit "junk faxes." You send out business cards with your fax number on it and you'll start receiving them. And according to federal law, prohibiting unsolicited faxes, the justification lies in the costs that you have to incur.
You have to buy paper. And if someone sends you a ream's worth of junk faxes yearly, you have to go out and spend more money on paper. Additionally, you have to buy toner (or whatever kind of ink your fax uses, be it thermal paper or whatever) to print those faxes. Also, members of Congress tend to have fax machines in their own offices and they were offended by these same "junk fax" senders. So the law says, each fax sending machine must put its real telephone number on the top of the fax. And the law says that a fax sender cannot keep sending a fax to someone who says they don't want the advertisement. After a few pretty high-profile suits, lots of tho
I jailbroke my iPhone before the App Store started up. Then I un-jailbroke it. I just didn't see the need, even though it is really easy.
But I cannot figure out how to pirate anything off the App Store and I didn't know it was possible. I also don't know how anyone could subvert iTunes to steal applications for one's (or one's friends') iPhone or iPod Touch.
Now I'm not looking for anyone to list the steps to steal stuff on slashdot, but people can pirate apps from the App Store?! I thought Apple had it pretty much locked up.
The vast majority of my apps are free. I did buy two chess games and I bought a very good WiFi finder. Most of what I do on my iPhone is read news, email, Facebook and slashdot. Maybe I'm just too old to be tempted...
OK, TFA suggests that Martian soil could harbor dessicated bacterial spores that don't do anything. They don't reproduce, they aren't active, they're just sitting there inert. And that's pretty cool from the standpoint that we can dig up the remains of a former Martian ecosystem that existed long ago and far away.
But, for the average taxpayer interested in funding missions, NASA, rocketry, exploration and grand scale achievements, that is pretty much a yawner.
There is no way at all that anyone representing the USA, NASA, the Russian Federation and China would be willing to take back any microbes to Earth for further study unless those microbes were in a sealed environment and definitely rendered incapable of infecting anyone and anything on Earth.
(For you young whippersnappers out there, I watched all of the Moon landings and I recall the disappointment of having to wait until the World Famous Astronauts emerged from their custom-made Windstream Mobile Home to actually see them in person and live and doing well after their trip to the sterile Moon.)
And, while I appreciate the wonderous MSL "Action Hero" robot (Transformer?!) we're about to send up there, there is nothing aboard that gizmo that will actually prove the existence of a microbe on Mars. Because if said microbes are dormant, they're not going to be emitting methane or any other byproduct of active organisms. And any results of the testing will be circumstantial and easily explained away as "possibly life or possibly something else we don't yet understand about the Martian environment."
We won't settle this issue until a human being with a microscope, or an electron microscope actually goes there and sees those little dormant Martian neighbors with human eyes and some other human reproduces that experience. And that is not going to happen under current NASA funding. Ever.
While I'm not in the camp saying "all these Martian rovers are misspent money," I don't agree that anything they find out will be conclusive, where life is concerned. Unless, of course, some Martian happens to stroll by one of our cameras on his or her way to work.
I wish you had not chosen to be an AC.
Pystar is probably highly commoditizing their computers and spending most of its R&D efforts on trying to make Apple's OS X boot on them.
Which proves the points all ready made that the clones were set to kill Apple -- only several things have happened since.
Jobs re-introduced the All-In-One Mac with the iMac. It was minimally user-expandable internally and it was set up to get on the Internet (which then was the Brave New World) in seconds. In doing this, Jobs was adding experiential value to his "more expensive" computers. This was something Scully never really understood.
As for the current price of Apple's offerings, I would have to say that they are presently on par with other first-tier vendors. By first-tier, I don't mean Acer or some other Pacific Rim company that does not support its products. If you compare Apple's Mac Pro with Hewlett Packard's Pavilion Elite e9280t series, you're entirely in the same price range. And I would argue, based on personal experience, that an Apple computer will be productive longer than other brands (due to the close fit between operating system software and the hardware it runs on). My personal experience is based on my recent upgrade from a G4-400 (with an upgraded processor) that I purchased in 1999 to the Mac Pro I currently have bought this year. One does not expect 9 to 10 years of useful life out of an HP.
I'm not saying Pystar should win. I'm also not urging Apple to bring back the Clone market. I'm saying that I am illogically rooting for Pystar, knowing that people who buy their computers will get the experience of Apple's operating system and may well switch to an Apple-branded product as a result, just as I did with the Power Computing (legal) clone.
I am also saying that Apple does need to compete and ought to be pushed by these upstart operations like Pystar. Because Pystar is not Apple's real competition. HP is. And if Apple doesn't continue to innovate to keep ahead of HP, companies like Pystar ought to be able to utilize any and all of Apple's decent innovations and add their own (if Apple won't).
Doesn't appear to have infected my Mac. :P
I love my Mac Pro. I paid gobs of bucks for it but it does everything I need and more. I don't think I would buy a Pystar computer, no matter what extremely pleasing price point they attain because (just like Coca-Cola clones) it ain't the Real Thing. And only the Real Thing is guaranteed to work with Apple's OS upgrades and all of the software available for Macintosh computers.
Nonetheless, I root for Pystar. I hope they win somehow. I hope they win outright (highly unlikely from TFA) or they win on some really lame, outlying technicality that nobody ever realized anyone could win on. And the reason why I'm rooting for them is not logical.
Apple doesn't seem to remember that the first computer I bought -- along with many others -- that ran their System Software was a Clone. Mine was made by Power Computing and it ran faster than anything Apple had released at that point. That introduction to the Apple experience was a good one and I'll bet the folks at Pystar are introducing other non-Apple OS users to the experience in a similar way. And what Apple also doesn't realize is that the second computer I bought that would give me that experience was an Apple-branded computer. Even if Apple had not killed the clone market, I still would have bought an Apple because I wanted assurances that my computer would flawlessly run everything that runs on Apple's system software.
When Steve Jobs killed the clone market, he offered nothing to the companies that made clones. There is no more Power Computing, Inc. and the other companies that made the clones don't make computers any more. There wasn't so much as a handshake. It was "sorry, can't be bothered" and boom! The companies folded. I have to say that, during these economic times, I have a lot of trouble having any sympathy towards someone who causes job loss like that.
I recognize that Jobs' argument is solid. If there are Mac clones out there, the brand gets diluted and the experience of using Apple's software may not always work out the way it should.
But I root for Pystar. They don't stand a chance but I would really like to see them keep going.
Now I can look for water on the Moon -- from my iPhone!
AT&T doesn't have that option until the point in time the FCC magically pulls more frequencies out of their ass.
All ready done.
They auctioned them off last year. Verizon bought most of them.
This doesn't mean that Verizon gets them all. This means that Verizon gets first choice. And someone with a different signaling method (like AT&T) may be able to "piggyback" on the Verizon frequencies (I'm sure with proper payment to Verizon).
Today, with compression, you can fit an entire HD video stream in the same hard disk space (and bandwidth) as a regular NTSC or PAL signal used to sit. You can do the same thing with radio.
Dells cannot run OS X.
Dells cannot run an environment that lets you code for the iPhone.
Dells cannot be powered by the Apple monitor and I don't think the USB hub on the monitor would necessarily work with the Dell.
But I like how you're amassing all those muscles!
Doesn't it bother anyone that, in the "choose your browser" window, the application is Internet Exploiter that is offering you the choice and is branded with the Internet Exploder "E?" Ought not the EU demand that logos be removed from that initial browser window?
Just wondering.
Everyone here is looking askance at AT&T. And their policies may be problematic. But AT&T has incentive to build more towers and that incentive is called "Verizon." Of course in the iPhone-only world, there is no incentive but AT&T actually sells more than just the iPhone.
Their contract with Apple ends next year, unless the two companies want to renew. Problem is that since Verizon uses different signaling than does AT&T, if you want to switch to Verizon, you would have to purchase a different, Verizon-capable iPhone. Winner here is Apple, because they pocket the money for the phone.
I grew up in an era when all telephone calls, local or long-distance cost money and AT&T was the only telephone company. You had to rent your phone from the phone company and you had to pay for every call. That system tended to cause people to use the telephone for messages, not to chat. AT&T dropped local calling rates in the 1960s and stay-at-home moms everywhere started to carry on long conversations on the telephone with their neighbors. Long-distance remained a medium of message.
What changed? I believe that AT&T realized that there was pressure from their subscribers (nearly everyone in the US) to change. You still had to pay per call, but you didn't have to pay per minute. And the cost per call was pretty cheap. So long conversations over local calls became the norm. I don't recall hearing that the infrastructure was, somehow, overloaded.
I'll bet the real reason for this change was an overall computerization of the system. Since AT&T had introduced some pretty killer automation on their system, it was cost-effective to do this. When telephone companies started doing VOIP, the cost of long-distance came down and the era of unlimited long distance calling was ushered in. They're still using the same lines, folks, they're just packing the data in better.
The deal with radio signaling is that the costs are decreasing all of the time. Back when the government proposed digital television, there was no way that stations could broadcast a full high-definition signal in the bandwidth allocation offered by the FCC. Television companies immediately came up with encoding schemes that would compress the signal so that it would fit within the available bandwidth. In fact, it was discovered that the spectrum offered by the FCC was a real boon: Television stations could actually broadcast three separate stations within the digital bandwidth allocation and Congress had to come down on the Networks to require that they broadcast a 16x9 HD signal when the Networks announced that they had no specific plans to transition to HD and that they might use the extra two channels to make their O&Os more money.
Sure, the radio spectrum is limited. But digital compression keeps getting better and that opens up those limits. A great example is how cable systems are able to send many more channels (and many of them HD channels) over the same coax cable as they used to use when it was limited to some 90 channels (all standard definition). Additionally, they're also able to do high-speed internet at the same time over the same cable. Frankly, I think the bandwidth is more limited on that coax cable than is in the spectrum for cellular telephony. So I think arguments about lack of bandwidth are missing the point. Also arguments about building more cellular receivers and towers are, likewise missing the point. AT&T wants to compete with the other cell phone companies
The iPhone is a real money maker for AT&T (as well as Apple). AT&T keeps adding subscribers and pulling them away from other carriers because of the iPhone. If your iPhone suddenly cannot connect, or data slows a little, you will eventually get it, so AT&T can "throttle" data and keep happy customers. Additionally, Apple might have a s
Apple hasn't done docking ports for a long time, but there are third-party add-ons for that. There are also any number of hot-swappable drives you can buy for a Macbook. They're external Firewire and USB drives.
The philosophy here is that you can take a lightweight portable anywhere and it stays lightweight. Add peripherals and they're external to the notebook. If you're traveling around, you can just take the basics. Apple's really beautiful 24" Cinema Display monitor is specifically designed to power your laptop while you are using it at home. Detach your Macbook and you have a smaller screen in a lightweight package that doesn't cause your arm to grow 3" longer.
The OP suggests that the computer is for code. With a Mac, you get the advantage of Apple's code tools built in and free. And if he wants to code for the iPhone, for free he can download that SDK and distribute his applications for a one-time price of $99.
Can't do that on a Dell.
I don't want to knock Dell's philosophy here. It's as valid as anyone's. But when I work and just need to get somewhere with a minimum of gear, leaving a cable harness, large monitor, unneeded drive, etc behind really works for me. There's just less shoulder strain.
Now of course, you're going to tell me you played football four years for the Big 10 and a laptop with a couple of extra internal components, a docking port and other dongles, weighing in at 34 pounds doesn't cause you any trouble and, were I to meet you, I'd be happy to agree. But I'm more along the lines of a skinny geek.
Firstly, I read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 in my English Lit class in my Sophomore year in High School. So its inclusion may well be unneeded, assuming the curriculum is fairly decent in your school district. Problem is, you are going to need a number of short stories if you plan to do anything in any depth.
I would love to suggest Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed, which uses a great artifice to tell the story, and that's done all throughout the book until the story lines collide wonderfully at the end. Dickens did that in A Tale of Two Cities, which also ought to be in your High School English Lit class. Might be a good thing to contrast the storytelling styles of Dickens and LeGuin.
If you do such a class, you need to start at the beginning and the first internationally recognized science fiction novel was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, a story that your class will be familiar with but will not have read. Nobody remembers the beginning or the ending.
You should choose one or two "Space Opera" short stories of the Pulp era, because they're quick reads and they're great examples of that genre. You ought to do a story by HP Lovecraft because those are wonderfully crafted. You should include some fantasy and I would mention that many Sci Fi writers today say that they make more money with this part of the genre.
I did write a paper on a University level where my proposal was one where science fiction (at least the future world variety) placed today's man in "tomorrow's setting," as we were able to identify that at the time. So if the class starts to gripe about this futuristic pap, you should have them identify what the overall feelings of the characters are and how they reflect the actual time of publication. Certainly Asimov's Foundation series (not recommended for a class, as it's way too much reading) and the character's love for portable atomic energy devices and lack of fear of radiation is a pretty good indication of their 1950s and 1960s publication dates.
Were I tasked with this, I'd head to the beach and start up some really fun summertime reading. It was in a class that you plan to teach that I read (on purpose) everything Frank Herbert wrote, then sent a letter (through the publisher) to Mr. Herbert. He wrote me back about 3 months after the term ended. My questions were not about Dune but about a number of his other novels.
Get in touch with your state's Attorney General, saying that they only notified you about their non-compliance after you had all ready committed to them. CourtesyCopy the FCC, which seems actually interested in regulating monopolistic corporations on the Internet.
Attach as much material support of your trials and tribulations as possible. The paper trail will provide these lawyers with the material support to begin the attack.
A 13" MacBook Pro will run any flavor of Linux, Windows (with Bootcamp) and will also run Apple's Mac OS. Frankly, I'd want a 15" one, but you can always buy a 23" cinema display later if you start making some serious money from your programming efforts.
Here's what you get at your price point:
13-inch: 2.26GHz
Intel Core 2 Duo
2GB Memory (You'll want to add more later)
160GB hard drive
SD card slot
Built-in 7-hour battery
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
You cannot touch Apple's battery life anywhere. And the processor is completely modern and sets you up to code for more than one core (commonplace on PCs today). And you get operating systems that will allow you the freedom to develop for any modern platform out there, save a mainframe.
To add to your very insightful post, I would suggest that this corporate "right" of free speech is also illusory. This has never been tested before the Supreme Court, nor has the fiction created by the 14th Amendment (that allowed African American former slaves to be citizens) giving "personhood" to corporations.
And, frankly, were there to be such a test, I would like to see Justice Thomas impeached or deceased first with a majority of the Supreme Court disposed to protect the rights of individuals in this country as opposed to the "rights" of big business.
Big Business told us that they have a right to free speech. And when tobacco companies' ads were noticed everywhere pointing right at children and very close to play spaces and other attractions (like candy) for children to familiarize them with the brands for cigarettes from toddler on up, as well as cartoon characters familiar to children, there were legal means used to stop that (despite claims of corporate free speech).
Spammers always hide their true identities. When I send out an email, I don't. The reason is because I do not fear the response to messages I send. Spammers, somehow, always have. So they have no legal leg to stand on.
You have always owed taxes on goods purchased over the Internet. thing is, the states weren't as desperate for money as they are today. Read here for my full rebuttal to this hysteria-invoking stupid CNet article.
The original article is full of misstatements, half-truths and Barney-Fife impersonations. Frankly, the good people on Slashdot who have been around the block a few times will recall that in the 1990s, the "threat of taxing your internet" was a reoccurring theme and absolute nonsense.
There is nobody better-versed in Internet speeds and access than slashdot readers. And the FCC is open to comments for the next sixty days. In my article, I am urging people to comment to the FCC during this period and I am hoping they have lots of really good suggestions from people who are well-informed rather than ill-informed.
I do note that the FCC has an "acting" director, which means Republicans in the Senate have held up confirmation of yet another Obama appointee for political (read not-useful) reasons.
I am trying to get a webhost (AT&T, incidentally) to give me permission to move a client's domain name onto one of my servers. AT&T is saying that they have to push the domain to my server.
I contacted my technical people and they confirm that.
Without explicit cooperation from both sides, CMG is SOL because his web hosting provider cannot push diddly in a "blackout" situation where the FBI agents have removed power pending the conclusion of their investigation.
My article on this issue is here.
I have been covering this story and hope to talk to the FBI and the CEO of Core IP on Monday. Any questions you want asked?
Story is here.
Apparently, these days, "Macintosh" is a little too generic. One could say that "Macintosh" relates to an experience, not an individual product.
For mid-range, how about this? The 24" 3.06GHz iMac at $2200.00 hits your price point. If you have to have something that is expandable, the $2500.00 Mac Pro may be in the sweet spot. Essentially I'm saying, do you need two or four processor cores and maybe a little more expandability with four.
But I don't think Apple is going to be selling anything in the $800 price range in the near future, outside of the Mac Mini.