In Nashville, TN. I switched from Comcast to ATT Uverse internet and my effective download speed doubled. That was about 3 years ago and I don't remember having a tier option for Comcast. I have no need for really fast downloads. The reason I switched was the frequent service outages with Comcast. Zero upload and download is intolerable. Outages are much less frequent with ATT and those outages have so far been solved by a hard reset of my modem/router. ATT has its flaws but for me in a head to head with Comcast it is the lesser bad.
I guess you never buy anything online. Online purchases and motel reservations are the main reason I got two credit cards but now charge a lot of things for the convenience.
As far as I can see all traffic enforcement is about revenue generation. Everybody speeds, everybody rolls through stop signs. We do this because most of the time there is little danger in doing so. Fewer people blow through red lights because that is more dangerous. Traffic laws and policing have nothing to do with safety. We have the police and technology to assure that most of us do not speed or consistently break any other traffic laws, but if they were consistently applied the political pressure would result in a change in the laws. As it is, they give enough tickets to generate revenue without causing public outcry.
I used to think it was terrible that most first encounters with the legal system was this obvious money grab under the guise of safety. As I've had more experience with our legal system as a whole, traffic enforcement looks to be a good primer.
In a fit of pique at Comcast bricking my Motorola modem I signed up for ATT Uverse including digital voice. Overall I've been pleased with the speed and reliability of the internet and can't say I've noticed much decreased call quality but now none of my fax equipment works and caller ID is hit and miss. Not that fax is a big deal, scan and email is much better, but some institutions require that I accept a fax. I really miss the caller ID. Both are known issues ATT seems to have no interest in fixing. maybe if everyone was last mile digital folks would finally stop faxing, or less likely, the telcos would fix it. Up time has been as reliable as POTS, much better than Comcast whose "qualified technicians" were always in need.
I changed my wife from ATT/Yahoo just yesterday. She seldom uses email so when we got ATT Uverse I left here with the att.net email address. It's been constant trouble. I was one of those who adopted Yahoo back about 2003 as a disposable email account for such things as registering software etc. and wound up using it quite a bit for its access anywhere facility. With most ISPs of that time email only worked when you were logged in on their service. I changed to Gmail about 4 years ago when all my Yahoo contacts got phished. Don't know if it was me or Yahoo. It took me three days to update my registered email address for 90% of banks and merchants. Ten per cent were unchangeable and required a new account. Changing a decades old email address is not trivial.
Before undergoing a very high risk surgical procedure my mother, a retired nurse, gave written and verbal advanced directives to her children. She did not wake up from the anesthesia. Terminating the vent had already been agreed upon so our only decision was whether or not to comply with Mom's directive. I'm an MD with extensive experience dealing with end of life decisions. It was still hard.
In my first career as an engineer working in Oak Ridge in the 60's I did some contract work for NASA. We had a bit of tech they needed for a small part. We at the K-25 were amazed by the money NASA could toss around. Getting into the moon did not seem so easy or cheap while we were doing it.
Now I'm a retired ER physician, most of the time in direct patient care but was also involved in managing an ER staffing corporation. I can say with certainty that if you left finding the solution to current "best experts in health care and economics" you'd wind up with even more money in the hands of health care brokers with precious little more health care delivered. I have not a clue how to improve health care delivery in the USA.
The website issue is much ado about nothing. I'm no coder now but did some 40 years ago and was always impressed by how easily someone else could find my mistakes. Error trapping is hard.
While it is true that no parent is so liberal that a daughter can't find some intolerable music or boyfriend, every year there are fewer new pieces of music I want to hear again.
My schedule does not allow for watching a series in anything like real time. Very busy for several months, then a few weeks of off time. Series with definite story lines can't be viewed now and again or out of sequence so I accumulate them and watch them as a block. Wonder how common this is and how it affects the ratings. That said, i did view the first series of Caprica and found it boring. Of course not so much as Wrestling or ghost hunting.
I've personally wondered why telemetry of black box data was not the norm and if anyone was considering it. Good to know someone is. Even considering the number of flights it would not seem the amount of data would tax the current communications system. I'm saying to replace the black box, just augment it.
Parent either is full of it or lives in a parallel universe.
1. Cost is not a barrier? Our EMR costs each physician many tens of thousands a dollar a year in application support, licensing, databases, and for a phalanx of IS personnel in various departments (local, regional, EMR, hospital IS).
2. MD's have a monopoly? What planet are you on? DO's have had precisely equivalent standing for decades in medical practice in the United States, and NP's are far from being "wiggled in." As a primary care physician, when I send a patient to the cardiologist or pulmonologist, half the time the entire consult is done by a PA or NP.
3. Please direct me to the land you describe where I can have control over my care environment and take home most of the money. I can't get a contracting pregnant lady into labor and delivery without asking for permission from two nurses, and I'm not aware that the balance of power in any health system I've worked in has been any different before and after transition from paper records. Medical care in most locales in the US has long been collaborative, team-based system, even if you've met a few physicians who are jerks or drive nice cars. (I am looking forward to upgrading my '94 Corolla by 2014.)
EMR systems have poor market penetration, in my direct experience over the last 9 years, because:
1. Many, if not most, suck in a medium to large way;
2. They are incredibly expensive;
3. They can often be hard to use, and are typically more labor-intensive than paper charts for most physicians in the US;
4. They don't inter-operate. (When I request old records from other physicians with electronic charts, I enter the pertinent data into my electronic chart by typing it in.)
If any skilled group of software engineers were to write a decent, usable EMR that was extensible, and didn't cost an arm and a leg, with an eye to being excellent first and profitable as a consequence, they could be up for a Nobel prize.
TFA refers to cardiac CT to prevent heart attacks. The author, too, lives in a dream world - contrary to her thesis, this test has been shown to help with the boat payments of radiologists and equipment manufacturers, but there is no evidence it helps prevent heart attacks.
Ok, You wrote my comment for me. But I'll add my bit. My background is Chemical Engineer, Internal Medicine (because they were easy and fun to study), then Emergency Medicine (because it was fun to do) for the past 30 years. During that time I was mostly in direct patient care but did have various administrative duties. Naturally, as a Slashdotter I had a continual involvement with computers. After evaluating numerous awful EMR systems for our hospital I checked to see why. Generally there was little clinical input at the levels that mattered, but I agree it is harder than it looks to do it right.
Getting long in the tooth for the ER, I thought to apply to some of the software companies for employment. The response was, "We only have openings in marketing."
I second all the comments here regarding lack of any conspiracy. None of us are that good.
I'm and ER doc. It is increasingly difficult to care for patients when the electronic system is down. Lab, xray and even such basic things as getting vital signs are all tied into the system.
As an ER Doc and a Chemical Engineer Undergrad I must say the data available to physicians is abysmal compared to that of the hard sciences. We don't hate science but we fundamentally distrust most studies.
Lord Kelvin elucidated the principle that we know more about anything one can measure. That's true but much of medicine is very difficult to measure. We fear mandated standards because many past touted best practices have been subsequently discredited.
Defensive medicine, patient expectations, marketing by drug and appliance companies, and profit motive all play a part in our practice patterns but mostly we just don't know.
Bruce
"His Share of Glory, The Complete Short Science Fiction of CM Kornbluth." Contains the very classic "Marching Morons" which is even more relevant today than in the 1950's. Some of the stories are weak but some are great and thought provoking.
The venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has two book review sections each month. Past issue reviews can be viewed on line. http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
The magazine itself is worth a subscription since Gordon Van Gelder became the editor.
The point of the article seems to be that religious belief makes acceptance of evolution more difficult. I agree that the need to fabricate gods to explain unknown phenomina is hardwired into humanity. This probably has something to do with our love of a good story. As far as not intuiting evolution, most people just don't think at all.
The best example of sysem evolution in my memory was the old Napster. You could see the poor quality or incomplete files diminish.
Slashdot Mirror
I had to check my calendar to be sure.
In Nashville, TN. I switched from Comcast to ATT Uverse internet and my effective download speed doubled. That was about 3 years ago and I don't remember having a tier option for Comcast. I have no need for really fast downloads. The reason I switched was the frequent service outages with Comcast. Zero upload and download is intolerable. Outages are much less frequent with ATT and those outages have so far been solved by a hard reset of my modem/router. ATT has its flaws but for me in a head to head with Comcast it is the lesser bad.
+1 for iview
I guess you never buy anything online. Online purchases and motel reservations are the main reason I got two credit cards but now charge a lot of things for the convenience.
Just ask to friend the former owner on Facebook. A lot easier and you'll get more data.
As far as I can see all traffic enforcement is about revenue generation. Everybody speeds, everybody rolls through stop signs. We do this because most of the time there is little danger in doing so. Fewer people blow through red lights because that is more dangerous. Traffic laws and policing have nothing to do with safety. We have the police and technology to assure that most of us do not speed or consistently break any other traffic laws, but if they were consistently applied the political pressure would result in a change in the laws. As it is, they give enough tickets to generate revenue without causing public outcry. I used to think it was terrible that most first encounters with the legal system was this obvious money grab under the guise of safety. As I've had more experience with our legal system as a whole, traffic enforcement looks to be a good primer.
In a fit of pique at Comcast bricking my Motorola modem I signed up for ATT Uverse including digital voice. Overall I've been pleased with the speed and reliability of the internet and can't say I've noticed much decreased call quality but now none of my fax equipment works and caller ID is hit and miss. Not that fax is a big deal, scan and email is much better, but some institutions require that I accept a fax. I really miss the caller ID. Both are known issues ATT seems to have no interest in fixing. maybe if everyone was last mile digital folks would finally stop faxing, or less likely, the telcos would fix it. Up time has been as reliable as POTS, much better than Comcast whose "qualified technicians" were always in need.
I changed my wife from ATT/Yahoo just yesterday. She seldom uses email so when we got ATT Uverse I left here with the att.net email address. It's been constant trouble. I was one of those who adopted Yahoo back about 2003 as a disposable email account for such things as registering software etc. and wound up using it quite a bit for its access anywhere facility. With most ISPs of that time email only worked when you were logged in on their service. I changed to Gmail about 4 years ago when all my Yahoo contacts got phished. Don't know if it was me or Yahoo. It took me three days to update my registered email address for 90% of banks and merchants. Ten per cent were unchangeable and required a new account. Changing a decades old email address is not trivial.
When a discussion of financial monitoring gets this detailed on Slashdot it's time for me to cash out of the market.
Before undergoing a very high risk surgical procedure my mother, a retired nurse, gave written and verbal advanced directives to her children. She did not wake up from the anesthesia. Terminating the vent had already been agreed upon so our only decision was whether or not to comply with Mom's directive. I'm an MD with extensive experience dealing with end of life decisions. It was still hard.
In my first career as an engineer working in Oak Ridge in the 60's I did some contract work for NASA. We had a bit of tech they needed for a small part. We at the K-25 were amazed by the money NASA could toss around. Getting into the moon did not seem so easy or cheap while we were doing it. Now I'm a retired ER physician, most of the time in direct patient care but was also involved in managing an ER staffing corporation. I can say with certainty that if you left finding the solution to current "best experts in health care and economics" you'd wind up with even more money in the hands of health care brokers with precious little more health care delivered. I have not a clue how to improve health care delivery in the USA. The website issue is much ado about nothing. I'm no coder now but did some 40 years ago and was always impressed by how easily someone else could find my mistakes. Error trapping is hard.
While it is true that no parent is so liberal that a daughter can't find some intolerable music or boyfriend, every year there are fewer new pieces of music I want to hear again.
Modern Advocacy Organizations Call it "Getting the word out."
By Mike Resnik is my most recent. 1984, Childhood's End, and Cat's Cradle were pretty much downer's when I read them.
No Aussie would waste time on such a project. Wait! Was beer involved?
DVD FAB has a "Rewind" option. Must be a hold over from the VHS FAB version.
My schedule does not allow for watching a series in anything like real time. Very busy for several months, then a few weeks of off time. Series with definite story lines can't be viewed now and again or out of sequence so I accumulate them and watch them as a block. Wonder how common this is and how it affects the ratings. That said, i did view the first series of Caprica and found it boring. Of course not so much as Wrestling or ghost hunting.
I've personally wondered why telemetry of black box data was not the norm and if anyone was considering it. Good to know someone is. Even considering the number of flights it would not seem the amount of data would tax the current communications system. I'm saying to replace the black box, just augment it.
Anything, absolutely anything but wrestling and ghost hunting. Hell, the history channel has more scifi than SyFy.
Parent either is full of it or lives in a parallel universe. 1. Cost is not a barrier? Our EMR costs each physician many tens of thousands a dollar a year in application support, licensing, databases, and for a phalanx of IS personnel in various departments (local, regional, EMR, hospital IS). 2. MD's have a monopoly? What planet are you on? DO's have had precisely equivalent standing for decades in medical practice in the United States, and NP's are far from being "wiggled in." As a primary care physician, when I send a patient to the cardiologist or pulmonologist, half the time the entire consult is done by a PA or NP. 3. Please direct me to the land you describe where I can have control over my care environment and take home most of the money. I can't get a contracting pregnant lady into labor and delivery without asking for permission from two nurses, and I'm not aware that the balance of power in any health system I've worked in has been any different before and after transition from paper records. Medical care in most locales in the US has long been collaborative, team-based system, even if you've met a few physicians who are jerks or drive nice cars. (I am looking forward to upgrading my '94 Corolla by 2014.) EMR systems have poor market penetration, in my direct experience over the last 9 years, because: 1. Many, if not most, suck in a medium to large way; 2. They are incredibly expensive; 3. They can often be hard to use, and are typically more labor-intensive than paper charts for most physicians in the US; 4. They don't inter-operate. (When I request old records from other physicians with electronic charts, I enter the pertinent data into my electronic chart by typing it in.) If any skilled group of software engineers were to write a decent, usable EMR that was extensible, and didn't cost an arm and a leg, with an eye to being excellent first and profitable as a consequence, they could be up for a Nobel prize. TFA refers to cardiac CT to prevent heart attacks. The author, too, lives in a dream world - contrary to her thesis, this test has been shown to help with the boat payments of radiologists and equipment manufacturers, but there is no evidence it helps prevent heart attacks.
Ok, You wrote my comment for me. But I'll add my bit. My background is Chemical Engineer, Internal Medicine (because they were easy and fun to study), then Emergency Medicine (because it was fun to do) for the past 30 years. During that time I was mostly in direct patient care but did have various administrative duties. Naturally, as a Slashdotter I had a continual involvement with computers. After evaluating numerous awful EMR systems for our hospital I checked to see why. Generally there was little clinical input at the levels that mattered, but I agree it is harder than it looks to do it right. Getting long in the tooth for the ER, I thought to apply to some of the software companies for employment. The response was, "We only have openings in marketing." I second all the comments here regarding lack of any conspiracy. None of us are that good.
I'm and ER doc. It is increasingly difficult to care for patients when the electronic system is down. Lab, xray and even such basic things as getting vital signs are all tied into the system.
As an ER Doc and a Chemical Engineer Undergrad I must say the data available to physicians is abysmal compared to that of the hard sciences. We don't hate science but we fundamentally distrust most studies. Lord Kelvin elucidated the principle that we know more about anything one can measure. That's true but much of medicine is very difficult to measure. We fear mandated standards because many past touted best practices have been subsequently discredited. Defensive medicine, patient expectations, marketing by drug and appliance companies, and profit motive all play a part in our practice patterns but mostly we just don't know. Bruce
"His Share of Glory, The Complete Short Science Fiction of CM Kornbluth." Contains the very classic "Marching Morons" which is even more relevant today than in the 1950's. Some of the stories are weak but some are great and thought provoking.
The venerable Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has two book review sections each month. Past issue reviews can be viewed on line. http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/ The magazine itself is worth a subscription since Gordon Van Gelder became the editor.
The point of the article seems to be that religious belief makes acceptance of evolution more difficult. I agree that the need to fabricate gods to explain unknown phenomina is hardwired into humanity. This probably has something to do with our love of a good story. As far as not intuiting evolution, most people just don't think at all. The best example of sysem evolution in my memory was the old Napster. You could see the poor quality or incomplete files diminish.