> Care to lend parts of your body for experimentation?
OK, that's a good point - experimentation on humans is tricky, there are days when I'd be tempted to offer my left foot to science if it stood a reasonable chance of a cure, but that's probably just the pain talking. However there are alternatives to human testing, like cell culture, other less ethically tidy options.
> We're bound by ethics to try things only when we're almost completely sure they will work and "do no harm".
Personally I feel there should be an Asimov-esque rider on that one. "No harm except where inaction will cause more harm". Harm comes in active and passive forms, and the passive form doesn't get the representation it should IMO.
> I find it amusing how you can compare say coronary artery bypass grafting, or a laparoscopic hernia reduction, with Egyptians drilling holes in people's heads. They did it, yes. Now how many people survived the procedure?
I did no such thing. There are some modern procedures that clearly require an amazing level of technical skill and understanding, although I'd be curious to see how many non-elective operations these days are the cutting edge ones, and how many are things we've been doing for ~100yrs or longer like the appendectomy? There are records of the ancient Egyptians lancing abscesses with knives - which is exactly the same treatment we use today. Archaelogical evidence suggests that some of those patients survived too;)
> As for the X rays and film... CT... MRI
OK, and what's still the #1 diagnostic imaging technique, even in "developed" nations? X-ray and film. Can the newer techniques detect and diagnose all internal issues? No. We still can't effectively image many things - hence the need for exploratory surgery. Despite that much vaunted and often seriously expensive technology (MRI or PET anyone?) we're back to cutting people with knives again;)
> The most common method for curing infections? Actually penicillin is hardly used nowadays
That might illustrate a difference between our healthcare systems. Here in the UK Penicillin is still #1 or #2 in the prescription antibiotic charts. We are, alledgedly, a "developed" nation here.
> Pain relief? Aspirin you say? [snip long list of NSAIDs and others]
Yes, there are many newer painkillers out there. Yet how many are available over the counter, and what's the most commonly used painkiller, even in the US? Paracetamol/acetominophen? That's over 100 years old too.
> There are lots of diseases we still can't treat or cure, but now we understand why.
Do we really? So, we understand the exact reason why Scott Adams lost the ability to speak? Maybe you understand why my foot's swollen and painful - if so, perhaps you'd care to work here;) There are still thousands of barely understood "syndromes" on the books, the causes of which appear to be pretty much in "here be dragons" territory, even today.
> The cure, however, is sometimes impossible due to the very nature of the disease. Many diseases are the manifestation of intracellular problems: abnormal gene expression, deficient receptors or intracellular messengers,etc. There's no way we can reach inside every single cell and fix what is wrong. So we make do with medications that block certain metabolic pathways or receptors, increase certain substances in the cells or body, or decrease others, to compensate for the defect.
Actually, I think it should be possible to cure many/most of those eventually - the question is, how far off is it? Decades? Centuries? Wherever there's an anomaly it should be theoretically possible to develop something to recognise it and latch onto it, because by the very nature of it, it's in some ways different to the surrounding normal cells.
> Problems fixed, problems created. Still, entropy will win in the end, and we will all die sooner or later, no matter how advanced medicine has become.
First up, congratulations to my favourite cartoonist for getting his voice back!
I'm curious though. These days we can image individual atoms, and build things on a molecular scale. Yet in many ways medicine is still in the dark ages - there's so much we don't know or even begin to understand about the human body.
Why? Hard to say. Sure the human body is extremely complex, but it seems to me that modern medicine seems almost archaic at times.
Most common technique for fixing people? A person with a sharp blade - a method most likely pioneered by the ancient Egyptians nearly 5000 yrs ago.
Most common technique for finding out what's happening inside someone? Firing X-rays at a piece of film - a process pretty much unchanged since the late 1800's.
Most common method for curing bacterial infection? Penicillin, a drug over 50 years old.
Pain relief? Aspirin - again nearly 100 years old.
Why isn't medicine evolving as quickly as, say, computing has over the last 100 years? What's holding it back? There are so many "syndromes" and untreatable things out there - why? I can't help feeling we should know and understand far more than we do. Anyone else have any thoughts?
The menu bar can be temporarily revealed by holding down the Alt key, or permanently enabled by selecting it via Tools/MenuBar.
Another useful trick is enabling a different search provider - right click the dropdown next to the search magnifying glass, and select Find More Providers.
I hate to say it, but I've been running Firefox 2.0 RC versions for a while, but under Vista at least I prefer IE7. I much preferred Firefox to IE6 under XP though.
Why read The Da Vinci Code 16x? That's easy!
on
The eBook, Mark 2
·
· Score: 1
> FTA: Authentic performed as well as 15 human volunteers who were each given a small segment of a painting to study
So, those volunteers - random people, or skilled forgery hunters? If the former then they've basically said "our program is as good as dumb luck at detecting forgeries".
I'm running this box on RC1, and Firewire support is alive and well here. It installed automatically during setup without any hiccups. Transfer rates seem significantly better than XP/SP2 too.
Which other brands need a battery replacement service? Proprietary batteries are completely unnecessary IMO.
My Rio uses a generic AAA battery. My girlfriend's Sandisk also uses a AAA battery. Battery dead? Open the hatch, replace. Using a new NiMH that's a cost of 2USD max, or if we'd used a disposable just a few cents. I get about 18hrs per charge, and my AAA has lasted a couple of years.
Conversely Apple charges you 65USD a pop. I fail to see how that's good in any way. Sorry!
If MS has shown an interest in your product there are two likely options, one they buy you, or two they compete with you.
Since MS is the 800lb gorilla, going into competition with them is likely to be a losing stratagem. That leaves the "take the cash and run" option, which at least may result in some money heading your way... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There are a few companies whose exec's have made money that way.
> The truth is, Microsoft has _always_ lied about amount of ram needed since win95 at least. Their definition of minimum amount of ram needed is "it boots but can't do anything else" kinda numbers.
I agree that MS were a little economical with their system requirements back in the 95/NT4 days, but I think the minimum system requirements are far more realistic now. I'm running Vista RC1, and this box is 1Gb - Vista Premium minimum system requirement: 1Gb. I'm not having any performance issues here, even when editing print size images in Photoshop.
Minimum system requirements are a tricky game though - too low and people will be unhappy with their "user experience", too high and the bean counters will have an apoplexy;)
Of course, that doesn't stop the thief from merely changing the IMEI.
Sure it's an extra step, and on some handsets it will require a bit of soldering, but on most it's doable with a data cable and the relevant software. Here in the UK it's also illegal to change the IMEI, but if you've already stolen the handset... http://www.unlockme.co.uk/blacklist.html
OK, I'm confused... Anti-virus software clearly isn't locked out at the moment - this Vista RC1 box is running AVG as we speak, and I haven't seen any MS anti-virus software of the conventional sort at all - at the moment they've just beefed up the default security a bit.
Anti-spyware, they might be upset about, since Vista ships with Windows Defender - but as far as I can remember, it's not enabled by default - you get the option to enable it during install. You can install any third party anti-spyware you wish though at any time. As it happens I'm also running Spybot S&D as a second line of defence on this Vista system.
So... Can anyone explain what's up with McAfee/Symantec? It's not making any sense to me at the moment. Sure MS may change something in the future, but so far it looks like it's pretty much business as usual?
We're talking about dynamic range, which isn't related to the aperture range of the camera/lens combo except that both are usually measured in f-stops.
Dynamic range in this context is the range of intensities that the sensor can capture accurately in one image.
For example, say you're shooting into the sun, and have something silhouetted in front of it. If you have enough dynamic range you can pull detail from all parts of the silhouetted area, and the sky at the same time. If you have insufficient dynamic range you'll clip either the shadows/highlights or both, resulting in areas with no real image information - flat white or solid black in other words.
Generally speaking larger photosites should result in better dynamic range, as the signal to noise ratio should be better with larger photosites - all else being equal.
Actually it's not alarmist bullshit at all IMO. In my area we have the RFID tagged wheelie bins (the labels say chip id=...), and the council will only pick up the contents of those RFID bins, anything else they won't touch with a 60ft pole. So it's not like a few households can throw a huge amount away, even if they wanted to - since the council would then refuse to collect it.
If this is an attempt to reduce waste the government is going about things the wrong way. The best solution would be to reduce packaging at source - and for most people that's the supermarkets. Want to buy some peaches? Well locally they're only available in a pack of four, with a polystyrene base (non-recycleable in this area), clear plastic lid (also non-recyclable) and then shrink wrapped (also not recycleable). Is it any small wonder we have mountains of rubbish? A simple brown paper bag would do the job just fine... Can I get them to provide my fruit in a brown paper bag? No. I probably could if I went to the market (i.e. the outside place with stalls and independent sellers), but that's closed when I'm not at work.
Conversely, I'm running the pre-RC1 build (5536), and it seems pretty quick here - in some respects it seems faster than XP.
This box is:
3.6GHz P4 (560J), nV 6600/256Mb, i915, 1Gb PC3200, 200Gb 7200rpm SATA.
Obviously an older machine isn't going to get big scores on the hardware rating tool - but remember the rating has to be somewhat futureproof, so you can't expect even the fastest current machine to get the top scores.
I think on balance I can live with Vista - in some respects it's definitely better than XP, in others it isn't. It seems quite different though, much more so than say NT4 > 2000 or particularly 2000 > XP.
Maybe you're lucky, or perhaps I'm just unlucky, but I have a number of CD-Rs from ~1999 that are unreadable. Failure mode is that the discs just can't be mounted - if you try running recovery tools over them and you just get a buckletload of non-recoverable errors.
I also have some discs from the same era that are fine. The difference? The brand. The good discs are Imation branded, the bad discs are all unbranded.
Storage conditions also play a critical role in data longevity though - more on that in this PDF
To summarise:
Keep the discs in the dark
Low humidity
Do not write on directly to the disc surface, write on the box
Store them vertically
Keep cool but above freezing
I'd add: Use branded discs from a reputable manufacturer with stated lifespan data
Having bought a Fujitsu MPG, followed by a pair of IBM Deathstar 60GXP's (in RAID0 no less), guess what I took delivery of this morning... Yup, a 200Gb Maxtor.
On the upside I do have some nice nomex/kevlar gloves;)
Can you imagine trying to support something like that?
Yes, I'd like you to click on the Start buttton... Oh, you don't have one. Press WindowsKey-R? You have a goldfish swimming around you say..? Ummm. Perhaps we'd better reformat and reinstall.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, but do you know how many lives could be saved by preventing the spread of Milli Vanilli?!?
> Care to lend parts of your body for experimentation?
;)
... CT ... MRI
;)
;) There are still thousands of barely understood "syndromes" on the books, the causes of which appear to be pretty much in "here be dragons" territory, even today.
OK, that's a good point - experimentation on humans is tricky, there are days when I'd be tempted to offer my left foot to science if it stood a reasonable chance of a cure, but that's probably just the pain talking. However there are alternatives to human testing, like cell culture, other less ethically tidy options.
> We're bound by ethics to try things only when we're almost completely sure they will work and "do no harm".
Personally I feel there should be an Asimov-esque rider on that one. "No harm except where inaction will cause more harm". Harm comes in active and passive forms, and the passive form doesn't get the representation it should IMO.
> I find it amusing how you can compare say coronary artery bypass grafting, or a laparoscopic hernia reduction, with Egyptians drilling holes in people's heads. They did it, yes. Now how many people survived the procedure?
I did no such thing. There are some modern procedures that clearly require an amazing level of technical skill and understanding, although I'd be curious to see how many non-elective operations these days are the cutting edge ones, and how many are things we've been doing for ~100yrs or longer like the appendectomy? There are records of the ancient Egyptians lancing abscesses with knives - which is exactly the same treatment we use today. Archaelogical evidence suggests that some of those patients survived too
> As for the X rays and film
OK, and what's still the #1 diagnostic imaging technique, even in "developed" nations? X-ray and film. Can the newer techniques detect and diagnose all internal issues? No. We still can't effectively image many things - hence the need for exploratory surgery. Despite that much vaunted and often seriously expensive technology (MRI or PET anyone?) we're back to cutting people with knives again
> The most common method for curing infections? Actually penicillin is hardly used nowadays
That might illustrate a difference between our healthcare systems. Here in the UK Penicillin is still #1 or #2 in the prescription antibiotic charts. We are, alledgedly, a "developed" nation here.
> Pain relief? Aspirin you say? [snip long list of NSAIDs and others]
Yes, there are many newer painkillers out there. Yet how many are available over the counter, and what's the most commonly used painkiller, even in the US? Paracetamol/acetominophen? That's over 100 years old too.
> There are lots of diseases we still can't treat or cure, but now we understand why.
Do we really? So, we understand the exact reason why Scott Adams lost the ability to speak? Maybe you understand why my foot's swollen and painful - if so, perhaps you'd care to work here
> The cure, however, is sometimes impossible due to the very nature of the disease. Many diseases are the manifestation of intracellular problems: abnormal gene expression, deficient receptors or intracellular messengers,etc. There's no way we can reach inside every single cell and fix what is wrong. So we make do with medications that block certain metabolic pathways or receptors, increase certain substances in the cells or body, or decrease others, to compensate for the defect.
Actually, I think it should be possible to cure many/most of those eventually - the question is, how far off is it? Decades? Centuries? Wherever there's an anomaly it should be theoretically possible to develop something to recognise it and latch onto it, because by the very nature of it, it's in some ways different to the surrounding normal cells.
> Problems fixed, problems created. Still, entropy will win in the end, and we will all die sooner or later, no matter how advanced medicine has become.
On that final note I'm in 100% agreement!
First up, congratulations to my favourite cartoonist for getting his voice back!
I'm curious though. These days we can image individual atoms, and build things on a molecular scale. Yet in many ways medicine is still in the dark ages - there's so much we don't know or even begin to understand about the human body.
Why? Hard to say. Sure the human body is extremely complex, but it seems to me that modern medicine seems almost archaic at times.
Most common technique for fixing people? A person with a sharp blade - a method most likely pioneered by the ancient Egyptians nearly 5000 yrs ago.
Most common technique for finding out what's happening inside someone? Firing X-rays at a piece of film - a process pretty much unchanged since the late 1800's.
Most common method for curing bacterial infection? Penicillin, a drug over 50 years old.
Pain relief? Aspirin - again nearly 100 years old.
Why isn't medicine evolving as quickly as, say, computing has over the last 100 years? What's holding it back? There are so many "syndromes" and untreatable things out there - why? I can't help feeling we should know and understand far more than we do. Anyone else have any thoughts?
The menu bar can be temporarily revealed by holding down the Alt key, or permanently enabled by selecting it via Tools/MenuBar.
Another useful trick is enabling a different search provider - right click the dropdown next to the search magnifying glass, and select Find More Providers.
I hate to say it, but I've been running Firefox 2.0 RC versions for a while, but under Vista at least I prefer IE7. I much preferred Firefox to IE6 under XP though.
He was looking for the plot!
*ba da boom*
> FTA: Authentic performed as well as 15 human volunteers who were each given a small segment of a painting to study
So, those volunteers - random people, or skilled forgery hunters? If the former then they've basically said "our program is as good as dumb luck at detecting forgeries".
So, it's like an RFID tag, only faster and with greater capacity - and it'll be released in a few years time. That's news how exactly?
Unless technology suddenly stops advancing I'm sure every other RFID tag launched in a few years time will also have those sort of specs.
I'm running this box on RC1, and Firewire support is alive and well here. It installed automatically during setup without any hiccups. Transfer rates seem significantly better than XP/SP2 too.
Which other brands need a battery replacement service? Proprietary batteries are completely unnecessary IMO.
My Rio uses a generic AAA battery. My girlfriend's Sandisk also uses a AAA battery. Battery dead? Open the hatch, replace. Using a new NiMH that's a cost of 2USD max, or if we'd used a disposable just a few cents. I get about 18hrs per charge, and my AAA has lasted a couple of years.
Conversely Apple charges you 65USD a pop. I fail to see how that's good in any way. Sorry!
If MS has shown an interest in your product there are two likely options, one they buy you, or two they compete with you.
Since MS is the 800lb gorilla, going into competition with them is likely to be a losing stratagem. That leaves the "take the cash and run" option, which at least may result in some money heading your way... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There are a few companies whose exec's have made money that way.
> The truth is, Microsoft has _always_ lied about amount of ram needed since win95 at least. Their definition of minimum amount of ram needed is "it boots but can't do anything else" kinda numbers.
;)
I agree that MS were a little economical with their system requirements back in the 95/NT4 days, but I think the minimum system requirements are far more realistic now. I'm running Vista RC1, and this box is 1Gb - Vista Premium minimum system requirement: 1Gb. I'm not having any performance issues here, even when editing print size images in Photoshop.
Minimum system requirements are a tricky game though - too low and people will be unhappy with their "user experience", too high and the bean counters will have an apoplexy
Of course, that doesn't stop the thief from merely changing the IMEI.
Sure it's an extra step, and on some handsets it will require a bit of soldering, but on most it's doable with a data cable and the relevant software. Here in the UK it's also illegal to change the IMEI, but if you've already stolen the handset...
http://www.unlockme.co.uk/blacklist.html
So, this would be the same Symantec that's alledgedly been unfairly blocking Spybot S&D for nearly a year?i ndex.html
http://www.safer-networking.org.nyud.net:8080/en/
OK, I'm confused... Anti-virus software clearly isn't locked out at the moment - this Vista RC1 box is running AVG as we speak, and I haven't seen any MS anti-virus software of the conventional sort at all - at the moment they've just beefed up the default security a bit.
Anti-spyware, they might be upset about, since Vista ships with Windows Defender - but as far as I can remember, it's not enabled by default - you get the option to enable it during install. You can install any third party anti-spyware you wish though at any time. As it happens I'm also running Spybot S&D as a second line of defence on this Vista system.
So... Can anyone explain what's up with McAfee/Symantec? It's not making any sense to me at the moment. Sure MS may change something in the future, but so far it looks like it's pretty much business as usual?
You're asking for a pune on Zune?
*ba da boom*
According to the article: "The chips are capable of exchanging data at a terabyte a second"
Obviously that information is not much use without more details though. I'd be particularly curious about the topography.
We're talking about dynamic range, which isn't related to the aperture range of the camera/lens combo except that both are usually measured in f-stops.
Dynamic range in this context is the range of intensities that the sensor can capture accurately in one image.
For example, say you're shooting into the sun, and have something silhouetted in front of it. If you have enough dynamic range you can pull detail from all parts of the silhouetted area, and the sky at the same time. If you have insufficient dynamic range you'll clip either the shadows/highlights or both, resulting in areas with no real image information - flat white or solid black in other words.
Generally speaking larger photosites should result in better dynamic range, as the signal to noise ratio should be better with larger photosites - all else being equal.
More on dynamic range here
> Dynamic range 1 : 2,600 (11 f-stops)"
Which is quite a bit better than most dSLRs, which are usually around 8 stops or so.
> "The prototype generated 16 millinewtons of thrust, using 1 kilowatt"
Is it me or is that a truly microscopic amount of thrust for that much input power?
> "Give me a ballot sheet and a pencil any day"
Sadly that won't help you. Can you guess what counts the paper votes in many states? Here's a hint...
Actually it's not alarmist bullshit at all IMO. In my area we have the RFID tagged wheelie bins (the labels say chip id=...), and the council will only pick up the contents of those RFID bins, anything else they won't touch with a 60ft pole. So it's not like a few households can throw a huge amount away, even if they wanted to - since the council would then refuse to collect it.
If this is an attempt to reduce waste the government is going about things the wrong way. The best solution would be to reduce packaging at source - and for most people that's the supermarkets. Want to buy some peaches? Well locally they're only available in a pack of four, with a polystyrene base (non-recycleable in this area), clear plastic lid (also non-recyclable) and then shrink wrapped (also not recycleable). Is it any small wonder we have mountains of rubbish? A simple brown paper bag would do the job just fine... Can I get them to provide my fruit in a brown paper bag? No. I probably could if I went to the market (i.e. the outside place with stalls and independent sellers), but that's closed when I'm not at work.
Conversely, I'm running the pre-RC1 build (5536), and it seems pretty quick here - in some respects it seems faster than XP.
This box is:
3.6GHz P4 (560J), nV 6600/256Mb, i915, 1Gb PC3200, 200Gb 7200rpm SATA.
Obviously an older machine isn't going to get big scores on the hardware rating tool - but remember the rating has to be somewhat futureproof, so you can't expect even the fastest current machine to get the top scores.
I think on balance I can live with Vista - in some respects it's definitely better than XP, in others it isn't. It seems quite different though, much more so than say NT4 > 2000 or particularly 2000 > XP.
I also have some discs from the same era that are fine. The difference? The brand. The good discs are Imation branded, the bad discs are all unbranded.
Storage conditions also play a critical role in data longevity though - more on that in this PDF
To summarise:
I'd add: Use branded discs from a reputable manufacturer with stated lifespan data
Having bought a Fujitsu MPG, followed by a pair of IBM Deathstar 60GXP's (in RAID0 no less), guess what I took delivery of this morning... Yup, a 200Gb Maxtor.
;)
On the upside I do have some nice nomex/kevlar gloves
Can you imagine trying to support something like that?
;)
Yes, I'd like you to click on the Start buttton... Oh, you don't have one. Press WindowsKey-R? You have a goldfish swimming around you say..? Ummm. Perhaps we'd better reformat and reinstall.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose