Do you all realize that everything else is getting more expensive? Fuel, electricity, pension funds, supplies. In fact, I can't think of anything actually getting cheaper of late. Maybe Internet connectivity.
So, in light of this generalized inflation, the fact that yet another vendor raises their price doesn't strike me as much of anything except a bit more of the same.
Certainly some companies will migrate off MS products, just not all that many. Again and again it's Exchange. Unfortunately, unless you want to fund IS to rejigger the base of corporate communications (while doing else for less money than last year), you need a drop in replacement.
And to the person suggesting (even tongue in cheek) replacing Exchange with Lotus Notes - you owe me another keyboard.
It's not hard to put two and two together on that. Adobe and Autodesk are scared Microsoft might start competing with them If they go all in on Linux. Think about it. The heavyweights in the software industry that develop for Linux in addition to Windows and OSX almost to a man are being competed with by MS. VMWare, Oracle, Google, Adobe's Flash runtime, and so on. Steering clear of Linux can mean staying off that radar at least for a while. And people don't think Microsoft is scared shitless of their open source OS competition. They are and they will do whatever it takes tostave off the inevitable. And Linux is inevitable. Just check market share practically everywhere other than the desktop. Heard of a little thing called Android? Linux, bitch. Hahahahaha!
Oh come off it. Microsoft can't get much past Paint.exe, no chance in Hell it will be able to compete with the dozens of programs offered by Adobe / Autodesk (may they both roast in Eternal Fire). The big problems with Linux are 1) 'which Linux'? and 2) Does it make sense to spend millions of dollars of development and support time on yet another OS? The first problem can probably be solved (Adobe Linux - yeah, they'd love that). The second, not so much.
Oxygen is, wait for it, a wicked oxidizer. Current life forms have evolved multiple processes to mitigate damage caused by having such a reactive chemical in the atmosphere.
But it's an energy source. Gotta have those electrons.
You're forgetting something - while your thesis that food costs are directly associated with fuel costs is correct, the reason that this is true is because fossil fuels comprise a large portion of the energy budget of food production.
Doing away with food imports could be seen as understandable if international transport played a dominant role in the food chain's greenhouse gas emissions.
But in the UK 's case -- where much of the research into the "food miles" concept has taken place -- that doesn't seem to be the case. A sturdy 85 percent of UK food transport-related emissions actually derive from domestic road deliveries according to the DFID. Road freight traffic in the UK grew by 67 percent between 1980 and 2001, with the average journey length also increasing by 40 percent.
By comparison, international freight contributes 11 percent of UK food transport-related emissions -- that's less than one-tenth of one percent of the UK 's overall emissions, the DFID says.
Transportation as a whole contributes 2.5 percent of the food chain's emissions, says FCRN. Food refrigeration, on the other hand, accounts for as much as 18 percent (and notably 3.5 percent of the UK 's entire greenhouse gas emissions).
The whole transport issue initially came to the fore after the "food miles" concept was coined in Europe to illustrate how fossil fuel-intensive the global food distribution network had become.
But the relative blame that the transport sector should be taking for this is debatable.
In the U.S., up to 20 percent of the country's fossil fuel consumption goes into the food chain, according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which points out that fossil fuel use by the food systems in the developed world "often rivals that of automobiles".
To feed an average family of four in the developed world uses up the equivalent of 930 gallons of gasoline a year -- just shy of the 1,070 gallons that same family would use up each year to power their cars.
The average developed world diet uses 1,600 liters of fossil fuels each year, according to the U.S. based Organic Consumers Association (OCA). Only 256 of those liters come from transporting the food, says OCA.
By contrast, a whopping 496 liters goes into the chemical fertilizers used during the food growing stage, representing well over one third of the food chain's entire fossil fuel consumption.
Re:If a Medical Doctor was involved in the collect
on
Who Owns Your Health Data?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I think that this is the correct thinking. The location of the data collecting device and the means of transmission make no difference. Whether or not it goes through a 'physician' makes little difference - if it's personally identifiable data, it should be protected.
If you are creating, say a smartphone app that follows your heart beat and respiration over time. Or your weight. Or your level of depression. Or whatever, the company creating the app needs to make it clear who has the data, who can get to the data and for how long. If they want to sell the data to an advertising company, fine, but it has to be upfront (in fact, you might want a cut of the pie).
People toss their private medical data all over the web. I'm always impressed about the number of patients I've seen who want me to take a picture of the large gash on their buttocks so they can put it on Facebook to amuse their friends. That's fine, it's their butt. Everybody else needs written and carefully drafted permissions. Including the implanted stuff.
The move itself is akin to splitting off persons who have compulsive tendency in their personalities from those diagnose-able with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and as such seems to be a reasonable change in categorization.
This is one of the most controversial aspects of psychiatry. Human behavior is all a spectrum. All of us (well, most of us anyway) have personality traits. One may be a bit tightly wound, or a bit too laid back, or sloppy or overly neat, or insensitive or smotheringly kind. The combination of those traits make us who we are.
The classical definition of a personality disorder has been when one or more of those traits becomes a dominant part of a persons personality and becomes 'harmful' to that person or society at large. We've all seen the psychopathic boss, the obsessive person who drives family and coworkers away, the very dependent person who wrecks relationships. But when do you call it a disorder? The first time someone complains about the boss? The first divorce? The first time you get into a fight?
It's a fluid distinction. Our favorite disordered personality, Stephen P. Jobs, might well have been banished to an Ashram if we had any sort of effective treatment. Balmer and Gates might have been turned into, well, dunno, I have nothing here. Anyway, it is at the heart of how we define normal (or at least acceptable). In many ways, we don't really want to get to the point where we can treat it or even understand it.
Kodak still has a large medical imaging business. However, they have lots of competition and it's a fairly niche industry at that. Their stuff is OK, but nothing terribly special.
You beat me to it. I don't know HOW that abstract made it through. The ACS kept telling me that they could only maintain their current level of quality publishing if I kept giving them money, but I didn't realize they actually meant it!
"Subscribe to our journal or the article gets it!"
Direct imaging becomes important when the knowledge at few/single molecule level is requested and where the diffraction does not allow to get structural and functional information. Here we report on the direct imaging of double stranded (ds) -DNA in the A conformation, obtained by combining a novel sample preparation method based on super hydrophobic DNA molecules self-aggregation process with transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The experimental breakthrough is the production of robust and highly ordered paired DNA nanofibers that allowed its direct TEM imaging and the double helix structure revealing.
It appears that this was translated poorly from the original Italian. A strand of DNA could be a single polymer of DNA or double stranded - where complementary sequences are bound together in the traditional 'double helix' - 'strand' being a poor choice of words in this context. It's not clear where the tunneling electron microscope idea came from.
It's also not clear that the picture represents and image of either single or double stranded DNA. It appears to be a linear polymer of a number of double stranded DNA molecules. You can see a helical structure, but it appears that that you are looking at a group of DNA molecules bound together. Unfortunately, the paucity of information in the abstract and the poor translation make it unclear what, if anything, we learn with this technique.
The cancer rate is increasing because of three major trends: improved diagnostics. improved treatments and longer life spans in general (you have to die of something). As numerous posters have pointed out, uncontrolled cell division - AKA cancer - is a common occurrence in the human body. So, roughly 100% of people would screen positive for cancer if we had a sensitive enough test and we tested enough people enough times.
We are also getting better at treating many, but certainly not all cancers. So you expect both the rate diagnoses and number of cancer patients in total to increase. Without any additional causal factors. Now, it's likely that some chemicals in the environment ARE causing 'additional' cancers and we should continue to look for and mitigate them - not doing that is kinda stupid.
But let's not get all wound up about modern life. In aggregate, people are living longer (and better). We are spending way to much, the cost structure appears not to be sustainable (at least in the US). We have to deal with lots of arguments about how to deliver medical care on a rational basis. And, as I pointed out, we should work on cleaning up our act - both for ourselves and the rest of the planet. But think through the reasons. And don't feel bad about not buying the little pink ribbons.
Likely the only thing that is going to prevent cancer is the death of the organism. With enough basic research it might be possible to find a single or at least a small number, of molecular mechanisms that trigger abnormal cell growth. Then again, it might not. Even if you find them, it doesn't mean you can interrupt or modify them on an organismal level.
So doctors do what they CAN do. And cancer treatments are certainly better than before - less toxic, more effective. But we don't know enough cell and molecular biology to even state that there is a small number of mechanisms that cause cancer. It might be thousands.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Two keyboards in one day. Slashdot is getting expensive.
Do you all realize that everything else is getting more expensive? Fuel, electricity, pension funds, supplies. In fact, I can't think of anything actually getting cheaper of late. Maybe Internet connectivity.
So, in light of this generalized inflation, the fact that yet another vendor raises their price doesn't strike me as much of anything except a bit more of the same.
Certainly some companies will migrate off MS products, just not all that many. Again and again it's Exchange. Unfortunately, unless you want to fund IS to rejigger the base of corporate communications (while doing else for less money than last year), you need a drop in replacement.
And to the person suggesting (even tongue in cheek) replacing Exchange with Lotus Notes - you owe me another keyboard.
You could, you know, login.
We would welcome your insights into the industry Mr. Ballmer, we really would.
It's not hard to put two and two together on that. Adobe and Autodesk are scared Microsoft might start competing with them If they go all in on Linux. Think about it. The heavyweights in the software industry that develop for Linux in addition to Windows and OSX almost to a man are being competed with by MS. VMWare, Oracle, Google, Adobe's Flash runtime, and so on. Steering clear of Linux can mean staying off that radar at least for a while. And people don't think Microsoft is scared shitless of their open source OS competition. They are and they will do whatever it takes tostave off the inevitable. And Linux is inevitable. Just check market share practically everywhere other than the desktop. Heard of a little thing called Android? Linux, bitch. Hahahahaha!
Oh come off it. Microsoft can't get much past Paint.exe, no chance in Hell it will be able to compete with the dozens of programs offered by Adobe / Autodesk (may they both roast in Eternal Fire). The big problems with Linux are 1) 'which Linux'? and 2) Does it make sense to spend millions of dollars of development and support time on yet another OS? The first problem can probably be solved (Adobe Linux - yeah, they'd love that). The second, not so much.
Similar discussion about iPhone/iPad in the business while excluding Android. The reason? Android is unix based and can't be trusted.
Then you tell them that that Android is based on the same OS as the iPhone, it's just a bit newer and more advanced.
Come on, you can work your way around those slow folk.
They were much too far ahead of their time, so they were stored for a while until the world caught up to Apple.
Now we know what Arnie set in motion when he slapped his hand down on that plate.
A giant perchlorate heater.
Get your ass to Mars, indeed....
Funny, your post works better if you read in your sig at the end. Makes sense that way.
Oxygen is, wait for it, a wicked oxidizer. Current life forms have evolved multiple processes to mitigate damage caused by having such a reactive chemical in the atmosphere.
But it's an energy source. Gotta have those electrons.
And here it is folks, the real reason you should avoid 'bath salts'.
You're forgetting something - while your thesis that food costs are directly associated with fuel costs is correct, the reason that this is true is because fossil fuels comprise a large portion of the energy budget of food production.
From a CNN article:
Doing away with food imports could be seen as understandable if international transport played a dominant role in the food chain's greenhouse gas emissions.
But in the UK 's case -- where much of the research into the "food miles" concept has taken place -- that doesn't seem to be the case. A sturdy 85 percent of UK food transport-related emissions actually derive from domestic road deliveries according to the DFID. Road freight traffic in the UK grew by 67 percent between 1980 and 2001, with the average journey length also increasing by 40 percent.
By comparison, international freight contributes 11 percent of UK food transport-related emissions -- that's less than one-tenth of one percent of the UK 's overall emissions, the DFID says.
Transportation as a whole contributes 2.5 percent of the food chain's emissions, says FCRN. Food refrigeration, on the other hand, accounts for as much as 18 percent (and notably 3.5 percent of the UK 's entire greenhouse gas emissions).
The whole transport issue initially came to the fore after the "food miles" concept was coined in Europe to illustrate how fossil fuel-intensive the global food distribution network had become.
But the relative blame that the transport sector should be taking for this is debatable.
In the U.S., up to 20 percent of the country's fossil fuel consumption goes into the food chain, according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which points out that fossil fuel use by the food systems in the developed world "often rivals that of automobiles".
To feed an average family of four in the developed world uses up the equivalent of 930 gallons of gasoline a year -- just shy of the 1,070 gallons that same family would use up each year to power their cars.
The average developed world diet uses 1,600 liters of fossil fuels each year, according to the U.S. based Organic Consumers Association (OCA). Only 256 of those liters come from transporting the food, says OCA.
By contrast, a whopping 496 liters goes into the chemical fertilizers used during the food growing stage, representing well over one third of the food chain's entire fossil fuel consumption.
Another false positive.
I think that this is the correct thinking. The location of the data collecting device and the means of transmission make no difference. Whether or not it goes through a 'physician' makes little difference - if it's personally identifiable data, it should be protected.
If you are creating, say a smartphone app that follows your heart beat and respiration over time. Or your weight. Or your level of depression. Or whatever, the company creating the app needs to make it clear who has the data, who can get to the data and for how long. If they want to sell the data to an advertising company, fine, but it has to be upfront (in fact, you might want a cut of the pie).
People toss their private medical data all over the web. I'm always impressed about the number of patients I've seen who want me to take a picture of the large gash on their buttocks so they can put it on Facebook to amuse their friends. That's fine, it's their butt. Everybody else needs written and carefully drafted permissions. Including the implanted stuff.
It's really pretty much of a no brainer.
The move itself is akin to splitting off persons who have compulsive tendency in their personalities from those diagnose-able with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and as such seems to be a reasonable change in categorization.
This is one of the most controversial aspects of psychiatry. Human behavior is all a spectrum. All of us (well, most of us anyway) have personality traits. One may be a bit tightly wound, or a bit too laid back, or sloppy or overly neat, or insensitive or smotheringly kind. The combination of those traits make us who we are.
The classical definition of a personality disorder has been when one or more of those traits becomes a dominant part of a persons personality and becomes 'harmful' to that person or society at large. We've all seen the psychopathic boss, the obsessive person who drives family and coworkers away, the very dependent person who wrecks relationships. But when do you call it a disorder? The first time someone complains about the boss? The first divorce? The first time you get into a fight?
It's a fluid distinction. Our favorite disordered personality, Stephen P. Jobs, might well have been banished to an Ashram if we had any sort of effective treatment. Balmer and Gates might have been turned into, well, dunno, I have nothing here. Anyway, it is at the heart of how we define normal (or at least acceptable). In many ways, we don't really want to get to the point where we can treat it or even understand it.
Careful what you ask for, you just might get it.
OTOH, the technology that comes from creating high quality coatings on an industrial scale has applications far beyond photography.
I guess it's not lucrative enough to support the entire company, but they have tried to capitalize on what they know.
Kodak still has a large medical imaging business. However, they have lots of competition and it's a fairly niche industry at that. Their stuff is OK, but nothing terribly special.
They do run Linux, if that's any consolation.
I initially read that as "BSD fetishists" and got a bit confused. BSD isn't all that hard to use these days.
Even a bad day fishing beats a good day at work.
AFAIK Japanese phones uses email instead of SMS.
I thought that was old Korean phones ...
You beat me to it. I don't know HOW that abstract made it through. The ACS kept telling me that they could only maintain their current level of quality publishing if I kept giving them money, but I didn't realize they actually meant it!
"Subscribe to our journal or the article gets it!"
Is this an attempt to Time Cube this thread?
That's a tad confusing, but so is the 'article':
Direct imaging becomes important when the knowledge at few/single molecule level is requested and where the diffraction does not allow to get structural and functional information. Here we report on the direct imaging of double stranded (ds) -DNA in the A conformation, obtained by combining a novel sample preparation method based on super hydrophobic DNA molecules self-aggregation process with transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The experimental breakthrough is the production of robust and highly ordered paired DNA nanofibers that allowed its direct TEM imaging and the double helix structure revealing.
It appears that this was translated poorly from the original Italian. A strand of DNA could be a single polymer of DNA or double stranded - where complementary sequences are bound together in the traditional 'double helix' - 'strand' being a poor choice of words in this context. It's not clear where the tunneling electron microscope idea came from.
It's also not clear that the picture represents and image of either single or double stranded DNA. It appears to be a linear polymer of a number of double stranded DNA molecules. You can see a helical structure, but it appears that that you are looking at a group of DNA molecules bound together. Unfortunately, the paucity of information in the abstract and the poor translation make it unclear what, if anything, we learn with this technique.
Animals without backbones hid from each other, or fell down....
The cancer rate is increasing because of three major trends: improved diagnostics. improved treatments and longer life spans in general (you have to die of something). As numerous posters have pointed out, uncontrolled cell division - AKA cancer - is a common occurrence in the human body. So, roughly 100% of people would screen positive for cancer if we had a sensitive enough test and we tested enough people enough times.
We are also getting better at treating many, but certainly not all cancers. So you expect both the rate diagnoses and number of cancer patients in total to increase. Without any additional causal factors. Now, it's likely that some chemicals in the environment ARE causing 'additional' cancers and we should continue to look for and mitigate them - not doing that is kinda stupid.
But let's not get all wound up about modern life. In aggregate, people are living longer (and better). We are spending way to much, the cost structure appears not to be sustainable (at least in the US). We have to deal with lots of arguments about how to deliver medical care on a rational basis. And, as I pointed out, we should work on cleaning up our act - both for ourselves and the rest of the planet. But think through the reasons. And don't feel bad about not buying the little pink ribbons.
Likely the only thing that is going to prevent cancer is the death of the organism. With enough basic research it might be possible to find a single or at least a small number, of molecular mechanisms that trigger abnormal cell growth. Then again, it might not. Even if you find them, it doesn't mean you can interrupt or modify them on an organismal level.
So doctors do what they CAN do. And cancer treatments are certainly better than before - less toxic, more effective. But we don't know enough cell and molecular biology to even state that there is a small number of mechanisms that cause cancer. It might be thousands.