Working in an hospital IT, too, I have a few points to make:
It is true that the UI may be improved in many systems. Our IT manager would like to configure our system to use it with tablet pcs, but as things go now, there is not budget for neither the configuration, the tablets nor the secure Wi-Fi to use it. For a long time the main interest was in reliability / process / speed. Now that these are more or less settled, vendors and buyers are starting to focus in it.
Apart from that, a lot of doctors need to stop thinking of themselves as Gods and get back to Earth. I mean, recognizing the care is not provided by them but by the organization they work for. And the organization needs not only their expertise as physicians, but also that they provide some data back to the organization. They need to see that the data they have may be needed later by rehab, for example, or for another physician when the pacient comes back for another or the same ailment (and no, handwritten notes in a folder is not a good way of sharing information).
Another issue is that sometimes the trouble is due to a organizative trouble: those at the top wants all the data available, while those at the bottom do not want to spend a second filling it. And when a new system comes (and today that means a IT system), those at the top just decide to make mandatory introducing some data, ignoring if it can be done without overworking/stressing workers. Later those at the bottom blame the EHR system while it is not its fault, and the managers are just happy to have an scapegoat while changing nothing.
Personally, as a pacient, I'll trust more a doctor who puts his orders into an EHR system that on a scrap paper with bad handwritting, that can be "lost" in case something goes wrong.
What you want is a PACS. These are generally expensive. I can't recommend any specific vendors, but you want to be very careful with HIPAA. They're also FDA regulated, so you also want to be careful about hacking anything together that could be functionally confused with a PACS.
That said, I'd be really surprised if a radiology clinic didn't already have one (that "telerad" you alluded to?). I'd call up the vendor and ask what they can do; any modern system will speak DICOM, and a lot (if not most) of them can grab images from outside the facility.
I have heard good things about K-Pacs, which is free. It also has utilities to receive HL7 with worklists and uses DICOM to comunicate with modalities (the x-ray machines). DISCLAIMER: I have just used it for a couple of personal trials, as I work in a public health administration and they are opposed to add systems for which they don't have support. But for your single organization, it might be a valid tool.
I bet this is the reason, in the same way that sales taxes are easier to implement because people get used to it (as opposed to filling a form once a year and looking at the final result).
The second thing I find most appaling of politics and democracy is the way elected politicians try to deceive people about what they really do. I mean, you get a tax for the politically correct services (emergency services), so if you protest you look like the grumpy odd man who is against PD and FD.
Well, the question is: Doesn't PD and FD budget come from the same taxes everything else does? Putting a tax like that is just a excuse (because PD and FD budgets will be the same whatever this tax gets to them, the only difference is that with that tax they will receive less money from the "general fund" (and the benefit will end in the "general fund"). A tax like this adds offense to the injury, it means "we will tax you like an adult while treating you like a child who can't add two and two together. Suck it up dumbass!"
If you have to tax a service, then in my book, one of two:
It is really an externality and gets used to it: v.g. "tax to recycle used cell towers", "tax to recicle used cell phones", "tax for healthcare from accidents caused by a driver who has talking in the phone". Whatever.
You are honest about it and just put it as "Local/State/Whatever Tax". Then we can speak later if it is appropiate to fund the government through this way, or there are other ways or things to be taxed that would be more sense.
And BTW, the most appaling thing about democracies is that politicians get to treat their electors as if they were idiots, and they keep getting reelected. One ends wondering if they are if the politicians are, after all, right.
I am working as an extra project with the local 112 (european equivalent to 911) and here location of mobile calls do not require extra equipment, neither.
When a cell call is issued to 112, the carrier sends a bunch of bytes to one of our servers, who just parses them. It is even a standard for all national (maybe european?) carriers, the typical message is about 128 bytes of ASN.1
And, BTW, nothing like the typical spy movie where you see a dot blinking and moving. The localization info we receive is basically the coordinates of the cell tower they are using as the center of a circular sector where the user maybe located. The standard allows for two such sectors to be delivered, but we never receive "triangulation" information; at most two overlapping sectors centered at the same cell tower (the bigger with a biggest % of having the user in it).
It's actually not that hard to have a 90% customer satisfaction rate when you have zero mainstream users. The small number of people who have bought a Windows Phone 7 device right now own Xbox, Windows 7 Ultimate, have Zune passes, and a pretty good chunk of them actually work for Microsoft or one of their partners. It's like iPhone's 90% customer satisfaction rating in 2007 did not really tell us it would have a 90% customer satisfaction rating today. Apple had to do a ton of work to carry that satisfaction from the 6 million who bought the 2007 iPhone at least in part on faith and the 200 million who use iOS today. Maybe Microsoft will do that work over the next few years, but 2 million licenses sold to handset makers in the first quarter in 2010 smartphone numbers, that is not a lot of faith. That's like 7 days of iOS or 5 days of Android. That is less than Windows Mobile 6. The Nokia deal is already a reboot.
The GP talks about satisfaction of Nokia users (now, per WM7)
Of course, not that carefully understanding what are you talking about is needed for successfully trolling/fanboying (in fact it should be avoided to enter any relevant, verifiable data into the discussion).
(off topic) With "Hombrewing" and "J. C. Penny" [sic] on the front page, it seems that today's Slashdot is definitely not brought to you by the letter "E".
Anyway... Kudos to HP!
Almost every comment posted so far is bashing Microsoft or Windows for being an insecure OS but I can't find any mention of either in the article. It doesn't give any information about what kind of system the Ambulance Service was running.
It said, 'Virus'. That means Windows.
I hate to be the pee on your your empiricism, but the preponderance of evidence accumulated over the last 15 years leads to the conclusion that Windows is a necessary precondition for a virus to take down an entire system (as opposed to a single PC).
That also can mean "We still do not know what hit us" or "We know what did hit us, and it was our fault and we do not want it to be known".
You do your job, you company pays you for it. WM7 people keep their jobs, if they want it.
If you get to make a hobby from your job, the better for you. But do not forget it is not your babies, but your companies. Continuing the child analogy, it is all the better for everyone if the babysitter you hire likes your babies and the babies like her. But if the babysitter thinks they are her babies, that's a serious problem.
As I said before, the trouble is not MS but the fault of a successful "vision" (I would call it management).
MS is just a boat they pick up in hope to avoid sinking, while the boat captain allow them onboard while they can pay. You know that in this world (bussiness world), there are no such things like free meals.
Now they can spend their time in the boat trying to build a raft or even a new boat, trying to find ways to pay for the passage a little more, or lying in a hammock taking the sun. If their money ends before the raft is ready, they are going to be put back into sea.
So, if that days comes, someone will be culping the captain's orders to throw out a company that he has no use for. But, IMHO, it will not be the captain's fault, but Nokia.
Put in other words: Nokia has tons of executives, upper managers, consultants, analysts, etc. So, if you say MS is a danger, one of two (or exclusive) happens:
They do not do their job and are going into a trap with a big smile thinking that the got into a love date.
They did not do their job and need whatever way out they can get even if it is risky (specially because it is risky, because no changes mean unavoidable doom).
In either case, I fail to see MS "fault". If Nokia does not know how to do bussiness, then they should close, isn't it?
Yeah, they are going to spend more development time ($$$), make the hardware more complex ($$$) and face more complex suport issues for something their sellers (mobile operators) do not want because it is a door to unlocking phones.
Because all manufacturers are desperate to reach the market of those people who look at their smartphone and think "I wish I could install another OS here in dual boot".
Why it was MS fault? From you account, L&H decided to sell "in bulk" the technology to MS (avoiding the need for marketing and delivery channels) and got the money for the product. Then L&H did not produce anymore interesting enough and it had to close.
I would say the cause was one of the following:
short sighted management: "- Hurry, lets get a lot of money with this one so we fund our other products? -Which other products? -I do not know, buy maybe we have some".
executives and investors seeing a lot of money, and plundering the enterprise while it has it.
management/marketing/engineering failling at trying to get a new product that is good enough for profits.
I have worked previously in an startup with only a commercial product, and when it became clear that the product was not the solution out customers needed, it lingered a few years looking for a new way (and it got to have those years only thanks to I+D funds from the EC). And it was not fault of the customers who bought our product.
In fact, it does more sense make sure that those small towns have access to transport, than the people in the big cities who already have more options (airports with more flights).
Also, while probably Chicago-Seattle and backwards is the single most used route, also probably if you combine Chicago/Seattle-MoN (Middle of Nowhere) and MoN1-MoN2 for every MoN, you'll get the great majority of customers. In England, they started cutting the accessory routes that linked to small cities in order to cut costs, but later found that people from those cities where also a lot of the traffic of the main routes (so the main routes revenues went down too).
Of course, nothing in my post or yours means that you can't have some regional trains that stop everywhere and some express than have fewer stops. In fact, it is how is probably mounted, and the 44 stops are set not by political pressure but for maximizing profits.
But, hey! Let's blame politicians, they are always wrong while free market is always right...
The missiles were designed for intercontinental flight... launching a manned capsule to the moon requires way more thrust.
Of course, technology designed for missiles was useful when building space rockets, but there is more to it.
Also, I find the assumption that "had not been than the URSS was ruled by a dictator, there would have been no weapons arm race". Nonsense. The second comer is always the next adversary, let it be military or economically. Even UK and France, being allies to the USA, chose to develop their nukes in order to mantain some autonomy. And yes, probably they had help from the USA, but that was offered only because the URSS was the great danger.
Next we can debate the definition of an island and put it to a vote.
Or discuss what shades of turquoise are blue and which are green.
Language is imprecise.
And debating the meaning of words is not science, and even worse, it's not interesting.
Is America an island? By some definitions, it is (a surfaced body surrounded by water).
If you need to do some experiment with light and color is relevant, you won't find turqoise but "light between wavelengths x and y"
Current day language may be imprecise, and more about not current day definitions. Scientific language must be precise.
What is the use of a term that applies to all things? You already have the word "thing"
So what about lakes and ponds?
I think people are too quick to rush to naming and categorizing stuff (in Astronomy and in life)... can't all bodies floating in space be called something like Things? Bound and unbound, just like landlocked and non-locked bodies of water. Earth would be a Bound Thing where "Bound" was a term used for something with a regular orbit.
Definitions are useful so we know what we are talking about. If the term gives us no information, then it is just useless.
Atomic elements are clear cut by the number of protons. If you say that "a galaxy will have at least 1+e6 stars", you can be sure that there can be a "dwarf galaxy" with 999999 stars that will behave exactly as a galaxy of 1+e6.
The fact that we like our lives to be ordered and with clear definitions does not mean that the universe has to agree.
What next? A vote to decide how best to define the kilogram? A vote to decide whether homeopathy is scientifically sound?
Apples and oranges (definitions and scientific theory).
Definitions: You can define a different unit of mass and it does not affect nature and/or science (you might have to change a few constants in some formulas, no big deal). Science can be done (and has been done) in pounds, celemines, and whatever. The inventors of gunpowder or the builders of the sphinx didn't know what a kilo, but could manage masses in their own measuremet systems.
Scientific theory: You propose how the nature works, and check it with experiments. Two masses have been attracted by a force of G*m*M/d^2 since the beginning of time, but had egipcians discovered it, they would have used a different unit for the masses and hence G would have been different.
That's because you don't have a definition of heap. You see some structure and "by instinct", you recognize it as a heap, and then you alter it and afther that you don't recognize it anymore.
Had you had a formal definition, then you would know exactly when you are treating with a heap and when you are not.
Of course, it is better if the definition is useful (as in, I can check easily if this is a heap or not, and if the definition tells that this is a heap, I can know a lot of properties of this to be known because it is a heap).
So, they have found that galaxy definition is not so clear-cut as thought before and they want to refine it. It happens all the time.
A definition is, by definition, arbitrary. Of course, if you chose a well-thought definition, usually it will be more useful to work with it. To put an absurd example, you could say that a meter has 100 cms expect on sundays, when it has 55 cms. Then every measurement would have to specify which day it was taken, so it would be more complicated that our current definition of centimeter.
It's the same way we define fundamental properties like distance in terms of fundamental constants. Distance is defined relative to the speed of light, for example.
No it isn't. That a meter is the length the light travels in a certain time, or the length between two marks in a platinium-iridium bar, is exactly equally (un)scientific. The only advantage of the former is that it is supposed to not vary with time, and to be easier to reproduce. There is no "scientific" reason to how long a meter is (*). If you still do not get it, tell me which is the scientific base under the Imperial (or metrical) system of units.
And, of course, the better our science is, the more we can see "the fine grain" and then it comes to a moment when the previous definition is no longer that useful. When we only had optical telescopes, considering Pluto as a planet was ok because the number was kept down, and in the telescope they all looked almost the same. Now with more data, we know that keeping Pluto as a planet means a dozen more planet, and that there are substantial differences between Pluto and all of the others that justify to create a differen group.
(*) I know it was supposed to be 1/1+E7 of a quadrant of the Earth. But the fact that it is based in a property of Earth does not make it less arbitrary than the old costum of using the King's feet length as base for the feet. Just more democratic and stable.
I'll have to repeat this posts because looks like "not so bright" people get extra excited with environmental issues...
I do not know why with environmental posts, the IQ shown in some posts drops so sharply...
So, someone does that video and you automatically asume that "this exposes the environmental mindset".
Let me play it too... all the people in the USA are mass murderers and rapist. That's right because I know of someone in the USA who was a rapist and murderer.
Do you get to understand it? If not, I think you should show your post to your boss in order to show him/her how smart you are...
And now, LISTEN AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND: The resources we use are finite and have to be managed (in the same way you manage how you spend your finite amount of money). If we do not manage them, we will end wihtout them. Life will continue after that (as you'd be still alive if you are out of money), but it might now be so pleasant to you.
Now you can close your ears again and continue trolling...
I do not know why with environmental posts, the IQ shown in some posts drops so sharply...
So, someone does that video and you automatically asume that "this exposes the environmental mindset".
Let me play it too... all the people in the USA are mass murderers and rapist. That's right because I know of someone in the USA who was a rapist and murderer.
Do you get to understand it? If not, I think you should show your post to your boss in order to show him/her how smart you are...
Now, you are forgetting about China, Russia, those pesky African and South American that are in constant risk of revolution/inestability, and so on.
Sad thing, you won't be able to get their oil, labour, minerals that you consume so cheaply (compared to your own labour) today.
Also, when you are alone in the world with Canada, you'll find that they are also the most different people from you and you'll want to exterminate them as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Working in an hospital IT, too, I have a few points to make:
What you want is a PACS. These are generally expensive. I can't recommend any specific vendors, but you want to be very careful with HIPAA. They're also FDA regulated, so you also want to be careful about hacking anything together that could be functionally confused with a PACS.
That said, I'd be really surprised if a radiology clinic didn't already have one (that "telerad" you alluded to?). I'd call up the vendor and ask what they can do; any modern system will speak DICOM, and a lot (if not most) of them can grab images from outside the facility.
I have heard good things about K-Pacs, which is free. It also has utilities to receive HL7 with worklists and uses DICOM to comunicate with modalities (the x-ray machines). DISCLAIMER: I have just used it for a couple of personal trials, as I work in a public health administration and they are opposed to add systems for which they don't have support. But for your single organization, it might be a valid tool.
I bet this is the reason, in the same way that sales taxes are easier to implement because people get used to it (as opposed to filling a form once a year and looking at the final result).
The second thing I find most appaling of politics and democracy is the way elected politicians try to deceive people about what they really do. I mean, you get a tax for the politically correct services (emergency services), so if you protest you look like the grumpy odd man who is against PD and FD.
Well, the question is: Doesn't PD and FD budget come from the same taxes everything else does? Putting a tax like that is just a excuse (because PD and FD budgets will be the same whatever this tax gets to them, the only difference is that with that tax they will receive less money from the "general fund" (and the benefit will end in the "general fund"). A tax like this adds offense to the injury, it means "we will tax you like an adult while treating you like a child who can't add two and two together. Suck it up dumbass!"
If you have to tax a service, then in my book, one of two:
And BTW, the most appaling thing about democracies is that politicians get to treat their electors as if they were idiots, and they keep getting reelected. One ends wondering if they are if the politicians are, after all, right.
Exaclyt like that.
I am working as an extra project with the local 112 (european equivalent to 911) and here location of mobile calls do not require extra equipment, neither.
When a cell call is issued to 112, the carrier sends a bunch of bytes to one of our servers, who just parses them. It is even a standard for all national (maybe european?) carriers, the typical message is about 128 bytes of ASN.1
And, BTW, nothing like the typical spy movie where you see a dot blinking and moving. The localization info we receive is basically the coordinates of the cell tower they are using as the center of a circular sector where the user maybe located. The standard allows for two such sectors to be delivered, but we never receive "triangulation" information; at most two overlapping sectors centered at the same cell tower (the bigger with a biggest % of having the user in it).
It's actually not that hard to have a 90% customer satisfaction rate when you have zero mainstream users. The small number of people who have bought a Windows Phone 7 device right now own Xbox, Windows 7 Ultimate, have Zune passes, and a pretty good chunk of them actually work for Microsoft or one of their partners. It's like iPhone's 90% customer satisfaction rating in 2007 did not really tell us it would have a 90% customer satisfaction rating today. Apple had to do a ton of work to carry that satisfaction from the 6 million who bought the 2007 iPhone at least in part on faith and the 200 million who use iOS today. Maybe Microsoft will do that work over the next few years, but 2 million licenses sold to handset makers in the first quarter in 2010 smartphone numbers, that is not a lot of faith. That's like 7 days of iOS or 5 days of Android. That is less than Windows Mobile 6. The Nokia deal is already a reboot.
The GP talks about satisfaction of Nokia users (now, per WM7)
Of course, not that carefully understanding what are you talking about is needed for successfully trolling/fanboying (in fact it should be avoided to enter any relevant, verifiable data into the discussion).
(off topic) With "Hombrewing" and "J. C. Penny" [sic] on the front page, it seems that today's Slashdot is definitely not brought to you by the letter "E". Anyway... Kudos to HP!
kyboar rror
Almost every comment posted so far is bashing Microsoft or Windows for being an insecure OS but I can't find any mention of either in the article. It doesn't give any information about what kind of system the Ambulance Service was running.
It said, 'Virus'. That means Windows.
I hate to be the pee on your your empiricism, but the preponderance of evidence accumulated over the last 15 years leads to the conclusion that Windows is a necessary precondition for a virus to take down an entire system (as opposed to a single PC).
That also can mean "We still do not know what hit us" or "We know what did hit us, and it was our fault and we do not want it to be known".
You do your job, you company pays you for it. WM7 people keep their jobs, if they want it.
If you get to make a hobby from your job, the better for you. But do not forget it is not your babies, but your companies. Continuing the child analogy, it is all the better for everyone if the babysitter you hire likes your babies and the babies like her. But if the babysitter thinks they are her babies, that's a serious problem.
As I said before, the trouble is not MS but the fault of a successful "vision" (I would call it management).
MS is just a boat they pick up in hope to avoid sinking, while the boat captain allow them onboard while they can pay. You know that in this world (bussiness world), there are no such things like free meals.
Now they can spend their time in the boat trying to build a raft or even a new boat, trying to find ways to pay for the passage a little more, or lying in a hammock taking the sun. If their money ends before the raft is ready, they are going to be put back into sea.
So, if that days comes, someone will be culping the captain's orders to throw out a company that he has no use for. But, IMHO, it will not be the captain's fault, but Nokia.
Put in other words: Nokia has tons of executives, upper managers, consultants, analysts, etc. So, if you say MS is a danger, one of two (or exclusive) happens:
In either case, I fail to see MS "fault". If Nokia does not know how to do bussiness, then they should close, isn't it?
Yeah, they are going to spend more development time ($$$), make the hardware more complex ($$$) and face more complex suport issues for something their sellers (mobile operators) do not want because it is a door to unlocking phones.
Because all manufacturers are desperate to reach the market of those people who look at their smartphone and think "I wish I could install another OS here in dual boot".
Why it was MS fault? From you account, L&H decided to sell "in bulk" the technology to MS (avoiding the need for marketing and delivery channels) and got the money for the product. Then L&H did not produce anymore interesting enough and it had to close.
I would say the cause was one of the following:
"- Hurry, lets get a lot of money with this one so we fund our other products?
-Which other products?
-I do not know, buy maybe we have some".
I have worked previously in an startup with only a commercial product, and when it became clear that the product was not the solution out customers needed, it lingered a few years looking for a new way (and it got to have those years only thanks to I+D funds from the EC). And it was not fault of the customers who bought our product.
In fact, it does more sense make sure that those small towns have access to transport, than the people in the big cities who already have more options (airports with more flights).
Also, while probably Chicago-Seattle and backwards is the single most used route, also probably if you combine Chicago/Seattle-MoN (Middle of Nowhere) and MoN1-MoN2 for every MoN, you'll get the great majority of customers. In England, they started cutting the accessory routes that linked to small cities in order to cut costs, but later found that people from those cities where also a lot of the traffic of the main routes (so the main routes revenues went down too).
Of course, nothing in my post or yours means that you can't have some regional trains that stop everywhere and some express than have fewer stops. In fact, it is how is probably mounted, and the 44 stops are set not by political pressure but for maximizing profits.
But, hey! Let's blame politicians, they are always wrong while free market is always right...
The missiles were designed for intercontinental flight... launching a manned capsule to the moon requires way more thrust.
Of course, technology designed for missiles was useful when building space rockets, but there is more to it.
Also, I find the assumption that "had not been than the URSS was ruled by a dictator, there would have been no weapons arm race". Nonsense. The second comer is always the next adversary, let it be military or economically. Even UK and France, being allies to the USA, chose to develop their nukes in order to mantain some autonomy. And yes, probably they had help from the USA, but that was offered only because the URSS was the great danger.
Whatever...
I somewhat doubt that they worry about what you or me think about them, their only trouble is the Streissand effect in Kuwait.
Next we can debate the definition of an island and put it to a vote. Or discuss what shades of turquoise are blue and which are green. Language is imprecise. And debating the meaning of words is not science, and even worse, it's not interesting.
Is America an island? By some definitions, it is (a surfaced body surrounded by water).
If you need to do some experiment with light and color is relevant, you won't find turqoise but "light between wavelengths x and y"
Current day language may be imprecise, and more about not current day definitions. Scientific language must be precise.
What is the use of a term that applies to all things? You already have the word "thing"
So what about lakes and ponds?
I think people are too quick to rush to naming and categorizing stuff (in Astronomy and in life)... can't all bodies floating in space be called something like Things? Bound and unbound, just like landlocked and non-locked bodies of water. Earth would be a Bound Thing where "Bound" was a term used for something with a regular orbit.
Definitions are useful so we know what we are talking about. If the term gives us no information, then it is just useless.
But does it exist?
Atomic elements are clear cut by the number of protons. If you say that "a galaxy will have at least 1+e6 stars", you can be sure that there can be a "dwarf galaxy" with 999999 stars that will behave exactly as a galaxy of 1+e6.
The fact that we like our lives to be ordered and with clear definitions does not mean that the universe has to agree.
What next? A vote to decide how best to define the kilogram? A vote to decide whether homeopathy is scientifically sound?
Apples and oranges (definitions and scientific theory).
Definitions: You can define a different unit of mass and it does not affect nature and/or science (you might have to change a few constants in some formulas, no big deal). Science can be done (and has been done) in pounds, celemines, and whatever. The inventors of gunpowder or the builders of the sphinx didn't know what a kilo, but could manage masses in their own measuremet systems.
Scientific theory: You propose how the nature works, and check it with experiments. Two masses have been attracted by a force of G*m*M/d^2 since the beginning of time, but had egipcians discovered it, they would have used a different unit for the masses and hence G would have been different.
That's because you don't have a definition of heap. You see some structure and "by instinct", you recognize it as a heap, and then you alter it and afther that you don't recognize it anymore.
Had you had a formal definition, then you would know exactly when you are treating with a heap and when you are not.
Of course, it is better if the definition is useful (as in, I can check easily if this is a heap or not, and if the definition tells that this is a heap, I can know a lot of properties of this to be known because it is a heap).
So, they have found that galaxy definition is not so clear-cut as thought before and they want to refine it. It happens all the time.
A definition is, by definition, arbitrary. Of course, if you chose a well-thought definition, usually it will be more useful to work with it. To put an absurd example, you could say that a meter has 100 cms expect on sundays, when it has 55 cms. Then every measurement would have to specify which day it was taken, so it would be more complicated that our current definition of centimeter.
It's the same way we define fundamental properties like distance in terms of fundamental constants. Distance is defined relative to the speed of light, for example.
No it isn't. That a meter is the length the light travels in a certain time, or the length between two marks in a platinium-iridium bar, is exactly equally (un)scientific. The only advantage of the former is that it is supposed to not vary with time, and to be easier to reproduce. There is no "scientific" reason to how long a meter is (*). If you still do not get it, tell me which is the scientific base under the Imperial (or metrical) system of units.
And, of course, the better our science is, the more we can see "the fine grain" and then it comes to a moment when the previous definition is no longer that useful. When we only had optical telescopes, considering Pluto as a planet was ok because the number was kept down, and in the telescope they all looked almost the same. Now with more data, we know that keeping Pluto as a planet means a dozen more planet, and that there are substantial differences between Pluto and all of the others that justify to create a differen group.
(*) I know it was supposed to be 1/1+E7 of a quadrant of the Earth. But the fact that it is based in a property of Earth does not make it less arbitrary than the old costum of using the King's feet length as base for the feet. Just more democratic and stable.
Yeah... but building it will be one of the ways of improving such technology (and every other way of improving the technology costs money, too).
I'll have to repeat this posts because looks like "not so bright" people get extra excited with environmental issues...
I do not know why with environmental posts, the IQ shown in some posts drops so sharply...
So, someone does that video and you automatically asume that "this exposes the environmental mindset".
Let me play it too... all the people in the USA are mass murderers and rapist. That's right because I know of someone in the USA who was a rapist and murderer.
Do you get to understand it? If not, I think you should show your post to your boss in order to show him/her how smart you are...
And now, LISTEN AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND: The resources we use are finite and have to be managed (in the same way you manage how you spend your finite amount of money). If we do not manage them, we will end wihtout them. Life will continue after that (as you'd be still alive if you are out of money), but it might now be so pleasant to you.
Now you can close your ears again and continue trolling...
I do not know why with environmental posts, the IQ shown in some posts drops so sharply...
So, someone does that video and you automatically asume that "this exposes the environmental mindset".
Let me play it too... all the people in the USA are mass murderers and rapist. That's right because I know of someone in the USA who was a rapist and murderer.
Do you get to understand it? If not, I think you should show your post to your boss in order to show him/her how smart you are...
Just one question:
Are you human or a plant? Do you enjoy CO2?
Maybe it is you who is getting it backwards...
Now, you are forgetting about China, Russia, those pesky African and South American that are in constant risk of revolution/inestability, and so on.
Sad thing, you won't be able to get their oil, labour, minerals that you consume so cheaply (compared to your own labour) today.
Also, when you are alone in the world with Canada, you'll find that they are also the most different people from you and you'll want to exterminate them as well.
Retard