Excite games room too - while playing we got to chatting about coffee and I mentioned I liked a particular kind of spiced coffee that a local Arabian coffee shop did.
Except it wouldn't let me say the word 'spiced' as the first four letters were listed as an offensive word. Duh.
If that's your goal that the WHO is one of the worst choices you could make. They are a political organization with a political agenda, and as such their conclusions should be considered suspect, if not highly suspect
So no more reliable than a commercial organisation with a commercial agenda then?
I wonder how this new domain will affect the plans for the UK's National Electronic Library for Health which seems to have similar aims of providing a way of validating health information on the Internet.
"How many people have been at a meeting that went nowhere because "someone" was "taking thier day"."
Ths could apply just as much to annual leave or sickness as flexitime. Perhaps we should ban those as well...
In the organisation I'm in (UK Government) flexitime is allowed, but is down to the policy of the individual section as to whether they operate it or not. But there are 'core hours' (10am-12pm and 2pm-3:30pm). Most important meetings tend to be held in those hours, with folks getting on with the non-co-operative stuff outside those hours. Although there does seem to be a long hours culture in the organisation, there are supposed to be limits to how long people actually work (not before 7am or after 7pm, and you have to take at least 30 mins lunchbreak) The nice thing is, you can take a 2hour lunchbreak if you make up the time.
On the whole it all works pretty well and I think people are more apprecuiative of the fact they are given the responsibility of managing their own hours, rather than being treated like children who have to be in bed on the dot of a certain hour.
Wouldn't this just serve to drive up prices for copyrighted/patented materials? For instance, a drug company would normally develop a new drug with the hope that the costs would be recovered over the long period of time they would have the patent for the drug. Reducing this would mean the development costs would have to be recovered in the '2 Real World Years' which would probably put it out of the reach, cost wise of most health care organisations, which completely defeats the point of making it avaiable in the first place
Have a look at an issue of the linguist list from 1995 here.
Known as the Muhlenberg vote, it was an attempt by a group of Germans to have all Federal laws printed in German as well as English. From waht I can gather there was a vote on ajournment of the discussion which was carried by one vote, the final result of the discussion was unrecorded (but I can assume it failed!). The story since seems to have acquired urban legend status that the overall referendum on an official language failed by one vote, beleivable since at the time there were a fair number of German speakers in the population and there most wanted to assert their independence from the Brits.
Yes I've had a cat hair problem, but with a mouse (strangely enough), not a keyboard. When my mouse stops working I open it up to find loads of cat hair wound round the rollers. Not helped by the fact my last cat used to come and sit right on the mouse mat when I was at the computer and he wanted attention...
$2M doesn't sound like a whole lot when you take account of the cost of the whole space program.
And, as Frymaster says, this pen is now sold to the public for quite a lot of money as the 'Space Pen' - the fact that you can buy soemthing for a reasonably small amount that the astronauts use must have added to its sales, and i presume it's profitability. I should know, I bought one - its a nice pen to use. (Actually i bought two - after someone liked the first one so much that they stole it)
Ah, but they would probably be able to detect the masking product and then be even MORE suspicious - what are you trying to hide?
I seem to remember some substances on the banned list for athletes are not actually performance-enhancing drugs themselves, but substances that can be used to cover the presence of other performance enhancing drugs.
Enigma is actually pretty strong encryption - if it is used properly. The reason the german Enigma was broken is that they were too confident about its security. For example a change of 'key phrase' was transmitted with each message - but to avoid mistakes it was transmitted twice sequentially (like a system might confirm a password). Also there were regular weather reports that went out at 6am every morning. All the Allies had to do was look for a message transmitted at that time that had the German word 'weather' in it - they could then work out the key for that day which brought the number of possibilities down from billions to a few thousand. Once they'd cracked that all of that day's messages were able to be decrypted.
If the Germans had taken steps to avoid leaving clues in their messages, Enigma might never have been broken
Probably off topic for the main thread but there is another action starting in the UK against McDs and their too-hot coffee. Do they ever learn? See here for details
I agree that the traditioansl online databases are a good source of information. Many people make the mistake of thinking that if information cant be found on the Web it doesnt exist in a searchable form. But librarians know different!
Actually Datastar and Dialog do have web-driven interfaces now.
However you have to be an already registered subscriber as the first thing you get from these sites is a request to log in with your username and password. And I think Datastar is just launching a service that will link to full-text e-journals.
Personally (and this may make me appear a bit of a Luddite) I prefer the command-line driven interface - its quicker, more powerful and more flexible. But then I admit I havn't used the web interface too much so there may be features I'm missing.
(Yeah, I know but someone already said there is a theory which says it might be possible for bacteria to still be viable, even after 11 years in the frozen vacuum of space.)
This is entirely possible - as part of my work only yesterday I had to find a scientific article relating to leptospira (the pathogenic organism which causes Weil's disease) which survived being dried and kept in a frozen vacuum for 10 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they're just worried that when we do find the aliens they'll give us the technology for that unlimited non-polluting and free power source...
Excite games room too - while playing we got to chatting about coffee and I mentioned I liked a particular kind of spiced coffee that a local Arabian coffee shop did.
Except it wouldn't let me say the word 'spiced' as the first four letters were listed as an offensive word. Duh.
If that's your goal that the WHO is one of the worst choices you could make. They are a political organization with a political agenda, and as such their conclusions should be considered suspect, if not highly suspect
So no more reliable than a commercial organisation with a commercial agenda then?
I wonder how this new domain will affect the plans for the UK's National Electronic Library for Health which seems to have similar aims of providing a way of validating health information on the Internet.
Tut, tut, Anonymous Coward!
.health heirachy
If you are going to alert people of such a significant health risk, you could at least include the link so they can find out more information.
You can bet this information won't be given a place in the
"How many people have been at a meeting that went nowhere because "someone" was "taking thier day"."
Ths could apply just as much to annual leave or sickness as flexitime. Perhaps we should ban those as well...
In the organisation I'm in (UK Government) flexitime is allowed, but is down to the policy of the individual section as to whether they operate it or not. But there are 'core hours' (10am-12pm and 2pm-3:30pm). Most important meetings tend to be held in those hours, with folks getting on with the non-co-operative stuff outside those hours. Although there does seem to be a long hours culture in the organisation, there are supposed to be limits to how long people actually work (not before 7am or after 7pm, and you have to take at least 30 mins lunchbreak) The nice thing is, you can take a 2hour lunchbreak if you make up the time.
On the whole it all works pretty well and I think people are more apprecuiative of the fact they are given the responsibility of managing their own hours, rather than being treated like children who have to be in bed on the dot of a certain hour.
Wouldn't this just serve to drive up prices for copyrighted/patented materials? For instance, a drug company would normally develop a new drug with the hope that the costs would be recovered over the long period of time they would have the patent for the drug. Reducing this would mean the development costs would have to be recovered in the '2 Real World Years' which would probably put it out of the reach, cost wise of most health care organisations, which completely defeats the point of making it avaiable in the first place
Have a look at an issue of the linguist list from 1995 here.
Known as the Muhlenberg vote, it was an attempt by a group of Germans to have all Federal laws printed in German as well as English. From waht I can gather there was a vote on ajournment of the discussion which was carried by one vote, the final result of the discussion was unrecorded (but I can assume it failed!). The story since seems to have acquired urban legend status that the overall referendum on an official language failed by one vote, beleivable since at the time there were a fair number of German speakers in the population and there most wanted to assert their independence from the Brits.
Good story though!
Yes I've had a cat hair problem, but with a mouse (strangely enough), not a keyboard. When my mouse stops working I open it up to find loads of cat hair wound round the rollers. Not helped by the fact my last cat used to come and sit right on the mouse mat when I was at the computer and he wanted attention...
$2M doesn't sound like a whole lot when you take account of the cost of the whole space program.
And, as Frymaster says, this pen is now sold to the public for quite a lot of money as the 'Space Pen' - the fact that you can buy soemthing for a reasonably small amount that the astronauts use must have added to its sales, and i presume it's profitability. I should know, I bought one - its a nice pen to use. (Actually i bought two - after someone liked the first one so much that they stole it)
Ah, but they would probably be able to detect the masking product and then be even MORE suspicious - what are you trying to hide?
I seem to remember some substances on the banned list for athletes are not actually performance-enhancing drugs themselves, but substances that can be used to cover the presence of other performance enhancing drugs.
Enigma is actually pretty strong encryption - if it is used properly. The reason the german Enigma was broken is that they were too confident about its security. For example a change of 'key phrase' was transmitted with each message - but to avoid mistakes it was transmitted twice sequentially (like a system might confirm a password). Also there were regular weather reports that went out at 6am every morning. All the Allies had to do was look for a message transmitted at that time that had the German word 'weather' in it - they could then work out the key for that day which brought the number of possibilities down from billions to a few thousand. Once they'd cracked that all of that day's messages were able to be decrypted.
If the Germans had taken steps to avoid leaving clues in their messages, Enigma might never have been broken
Probably off topic for the main thread but there is another action starting in the UK against McDs and their too-hot coffee. Do they ever learn? See here for details
I agree that the traditioansl online databases are a good source of information. Many people make the mistake of thinking that if information cant be found on the Web it doesnt exist in a searchable form. But librarians know different!
Actually Datastar and Dialog do have web-driven interfaces now.
Try
http://www.datastarweb.com
http://www.dialogweb.com
However you have to be an already registered subscriber as the first thing you get from these sites is a request to log in with your username and password. And I think Datastar is just launching a service that will link to full-text e-journals.
Personally (and this may make me appear a bit of a Luddite) I prefer the command-line driven interface - its quicker, more powerful and more flexible. But then I admit I havn't used the web interface too much so there may be features I'm missing.
This is entirely possible - as part of my work only yesterday I had to find a scientific article relating to leptospira (the pathogenic organism which causes Weil's disease) which survived being dried and kept in a frozen vacuum for 10 years.