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User: aethelrick

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  1. Re:Not Really 'CEOs': look at data on Are CEOs Overpaid? Not Compared With College Presidents (cbsnews.com) · · Score: 1

    The validity of a price is ultimately decided by the purchaser. High prices are only high because someone is prepared (how ever reluctantly) to pay them. If your market genuinely does not have the money to pay the price being asked then the price must fall if the seller wants to actually sell. If you don't pay salaries that are "expected" by the people you want to employ then they tend to overlook your organization in favour of those organisations that do.

    Of course exceptions exist, but they ARE exceptions. The only way this sort of thing is controlled is with price-fixing that favours the sellers (read employers get together and decide to limit the maximum salary they're prepared to pay as a group dare I say cartel). Not a very capitalist way of working, but hey I call 'em like I see 'em. I ask... is it fair to limit anybodies salary artificially? What happens if your job is next in line for the salary-cartel treatment?

    If people are able to command high salaries for the work they do they good luck to them. If organizations are stupid enough to pay ridiculous salaries to their CEO that leaves them out of pocket then they need to either FAIL fast to make way for a better replacement or get better at what they do by learning from their mistakes.

  2. AKI is typically not diagnosed in the ER. It is diagnosed by comparing serum creatinine changes over a number of days. I suspect this is why it gets missed; because doctors don't get to see the stream of data in time, they only get to see the latest observation and results scrawled in had written notes that often get lost, misplaced or shuffled lower into the patients notes than the doctor has time to look. I think (having skimmed the article) that this software simply looks for the pattern in the results over the last couple of days and lets a doctor know.

  3. The software in the NHS is already provided by the private sector, already all outsourced and this was not done for any political reasons any more than the NHS buys bandages from private companies or drugs from private companies or bed sheets from private companies etc. Would you have doctors weaving their own bed sheets? perhaps smelting iron and making steel to make scalpels?

    I was working in healthcare IT when the national program for IT (NPFit) was burning handfuls of cash by the minute for no good reason and this was an excellent example of why government should stay out of this sort of initiative, the people in the NHS did not call for NPFit, it was thrust upon them by government (incidentally a Labour government). The NHS wanted to spend their budgets on the systems that worked that they were buying from (wait for it) private companies, but were unable to do so because of the insane levels of government bureaucracy that forced them to provision everything through 1 of five large government backed LSPs who had been handed regional monopolies over healthcare IT often without the first clue of what was needed to deliver it on the ground.

    I for one would rather local healthcare organizations looked after their budgets and commissioned what was needed from private companies that have a clue about what healthcare software needs due to their many long years of involvement in healthcare provision. Where individual hospitals get it right they can then share the knowledge with their colleagues around the country, rather than the "it's ok if we fail as long as we're all failing equally" mentality associated with the delivery of public services.

    It is ridiculous to assume that anything be it product or service cannot or should not be considered for out sourcing, after all, why the hell not?

  4. Re:Kubuntu is better than Ubuntu on Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS Officially Released · · Score: 1

    I use LTS 14.04 on my desktop. As a software and hardware developer I want a stable and productive environment that isn't changing all the time. I value things "not going wrong" more than I value having the latest version of something. I also use Gnome as it happens, but I'm running flashback so I have what is basically a Gnome 2 experience on my Ubuntu installation.

    I don't like or want Unity, I find it to be a jarringly odd place to work (and I've tried on more than one occasion to use it for weeks at a time and always eventually removed it in favour of something else that stays out of my way). I was once a long time KDE user but I jumped off that band wagon when they broke it in the move to KDE 4 and I've never gone back.

  5. Last time I looked... Ubuntu was the most popular Linux on AWS, not sure about OpenStack, but I got the impression it was doing well there as well. I think it's a bit harsh to say "It's not like anyone uses woobuntu in serious environments."

  6. Re:Finally! on Kim Jong-Un Found To Be Mac User · · Score: 1

    female norse offspring of a bad metal guitarist?

  7. Re:Groundwork for future research on Video Gamers From the '90s Have Turned Out Mostly OK (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    (In my humble opinion) I think the key difference between response to a game and response to reality is the fact that the player knows one is make-believe before they engage in it. This fore-knowledge that you're in a simulation coupled with a desire to be there goes a long way to blunt the response your mind has to the input.

    If it's possible for games to cause PTSD, then I imagine it would be possible to get PTSD from film and books as well. I'm not suggesting that this isn't the case however; But I do think it likely that people who are prone to being overly stressed by experiencing traumatic events would be more likely to try to avoid them. This leads me to suppose that someone avoiding violent games/books/films etc won't be traumatised by them in a PTSD sort of way because erm... they're avoiding them. If on the other hand we force everyone to experience all the hard core violent games/films/books out there then maybe we would be able to traumatise a few of them. We probably shouldn't do this :)

  8. Re:It will not be dropped from java 9 on Oracle To Drop Java Browser Plugin In JDK 9 (softpedia.com) · · Score: 1

    um... no I think they meant deprecate. The term works well when describing parts of a system that are still their but not worthy of praise in light of the new shiny version that is better.

    Deprecate from Latin deprecari de (expressing reversal) and precari (to pray for or praise)

    So to deprecate is to literally anti-praise something. I don't think that deprecated APIs 'lose value over time' in the sense of depreciate, I think a point is reached beyond which the advice from the language writers is to not use the deprecated thing any more, they advise instead to use the new version that has replaced it. They literally advise people to stop using/teaching the old deprecated way by writing deprecated across the top of the manual pages, their is nothing gradual about this, this is not depreciation, this is immediate instruction to no longer favour this way of working.

    Of course, deprecated bits of languages hang around in the system for years to come in order to provide compatibility for old code bases running on new JVMs, and to the users of these deprecated parts of the system they clearly hold great, sustained value over time, the opposite of depreciation

    You should step down from your presidency, worthy of deprecation as you are due to your inappropriate promotion to depreciate that which is clearly deprecated.

  9. You only get rapid heat build up in Li-ion cells if they are gaining or losing charge RAPIDLY. The current safety systems work quite well except where they are not fitted by the battery manufacturer (as is often the case for fast discharge protection) or where the battery is physically damaged (causing a massive short and a circumvention of the safety systems). It is arguably reasonable for a battery manufacturer to leave limiting the discharge rate to the hardware developer because they can't be expected to know in advance what the discharge requirements in the final application will be and it's in the hardware developers interest to limit the current draw with adequate resistance in order to prolong battery life between recharges.

    In the 40000 real world missions our battery powered devices have undertaken in conditions ranging from Arctic to tropical, we haven't had a single incidence of Li-ion battery fire even when our devices have been battered by idiots with sledge hammers, over charged, under charged, badly charged etc

    Thermistors for the win!

    That said though, if these thing come to market and they're cheaper with equivalent or better performance then of course I'm interested :) until then however I'm a bit meh...

  10. Re:Recharging or on load? on Explosion-Proof Lithium-Ion Battery Shuts Down At High Temperatures (thestack.com) · · Score: 1

    The trouble is how to define "full" it's a moving target that changes with ambient temperature, battery age etc. You can count coulombs as you put them into the battery (which costs you some of them of course) and you can report on how many of them depart as you discharge, but no system is 100% efficient and the charge and discharge rates are also non-linear so you always "seems" to put in more than you get out and during continuous current draw by the system the output voltage of the battery fluctuates in response to use, temperature. You also have to calibrate these coulomb counting "fuel gauges" by fully discharging and recharging the battery from time to time.

    Not wanting to waste power where we can help it; The approach we take in our lithium-ion powered systems (that operate for many months at a time in the field in a wide range of harsh conditions -40C to +40C) is to measure output voltage from the battery and to stop charging when we hit a safe peak. We also use thermistors in charging to control the input voltage and we have a fail safe timer that gives up after a fixed period of charging irrespective of output voltage from the battery, we also slow charge batteries that are on very low output voltages or very high output voltages as this is when they are most likely to go bang (low output voltage has a risk of charging too quickly, high output voltage has a risk of overcharging, both of these make things get uncomfortably warm at worst and lower your battery life at best). We built all of this smart into our devices themselves so that you don't have to care about the charger being brainy, just that it's brawny enough to provide enough voltage at the current load you need.

    The cheap chargers I've had the misfortune to use ONLY use a timer at best as a fail-safe, this can cause a fire if you inadvertently over-charge a battery with it.

  11. I was thinking the same thing. A passive film won't do a damn thing to stop a short involving a "puncture wound". As pointed out by an earlier poster, most (if not all these days) lithium-ion packs come with one or more a built-in thermistors that inhibits current flow as the battery picks up heat during charging and discharge operations.

  12. Why are you so intent on dictating how others should live and who they should be with? Can you not afford others the very courtesy you are demanding? Just get on with your life and stop worrying about these inconsequential things. If the guy next door is black and his wife is white IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. Also, where did your ancestors come from? Did they magically arise from the ground right where you live? No, they didn't, your ancestors migrated to where you live, and no-one is telling you to "go back to where you came from" are they? Typically migration is good for economies and gene pools alike, it's the idle lay-abouts that sit at home moaning about how people are taking away their privileges, demanding that the universe give them their due that present the largest burden to society. Migrants are largely risk-taking and adventurous, the less-adventurous ones in their societies are typically still at home (or dead because they didn't move fast enough). These adventurous spirits make excellent small business owners and they build nations with their efforts (look at the US, a nation literally built by immigrants).

  13. who mentioned elves, dwarves and halflings?

  14. GDP even...

  15. The sentiment is great, I agree with spending more on the things you mention and a little as possible on military. But your figures are way off, the US military budget is between 3 and 4 percent of GDB (depending on who's figures you believe) http://www.sipri.org/research/... which is fairly high I suppose (around 1.5 to 3 times higher than other NATO members).

  16. Re:LFTR on Why James Hansen Is Wrong About Nuclear Power (thinkprogress.org) · · Score: 2

    Yes! Absolutely! Why don't our politicians get behind this technology? Well... I can't imagine it has anything to do with Thorium reactors being crap at making weapons grade fuel yet fantastically safe and cheap for making electricity. :P

  17. Re:End-To-End Encrytion is the Issue on Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo Balk At UK's Investigatory Powers (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    I just read the draft bill... they don't seem to be demanding back-doors to anything, in fact they seem to be saying that they are interested in understanding connection logs rather than communication content. i.e. they want to see something like an itemized phone bill showing who called who, when and for how long. This applies to email and IM as well and also they want to see a big list of sites you visited and when.

    I personally object to any information like this being gathered in bulk. I'm less bothered by having this sort of probing done on a case by case basis where a warrant is issued.

  18. Re:End-To-End Encrytion is the Issue on Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo Balk At UK's Investigatory Powers (betanews.com) · · Score: 1

    Firstly I'd like to go on record and say, I value my privacy and I advocate against the government having the power to bulk-snoop on the country because their bound to upload their findings to a notebook and leave it on a train or something equally stupid. I also appreciate that being able to conduct warranted surveillance of known (or at least reasonably suspected) criminals in order to bring them to justice is a useful tool for our law enforcement agency.

    However, regarding your assertion that the law "seems to be banning end-to-end encryption", I would say, go read the draft bill. They actually explicitly rule out looking at communication data content, they are explicitly interested in the point-to-point connection data i.e. who spoke/typed/mailed who and when, not what was actually communicated. They also go as far to state that this should only be possible if you have a warrant issued by an non-political, vetted, transparent, independent authority who's job it is to thwart those who overstep the bounds.

    While I agree with the sentiment of your post and I certainly don't want to live in a society where the privacy of it's citizens is routinely invaded. I don't think you're helping the debate by posting spurious assertions

  19. Re:Perfect Illustration on A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    It is indeed a good and very fair idea to have a rule that applies equally to all people on Earth, but we don't have any sensible way of making this happen quickly enough to make a difference. We can however lead by example and stop our own bad habits and at least begin to reduce the parts of the problem we can do something about. Waiting for global consensus is a cop-out and a stalling tactic more worthy of the playground than parliament. I don't think it's a problem we can solve over night and their are no easy fixes given the scale of the change required in our economic dependency on fossil fuels for energy. I actually think our best hope is to come up with something cheaper for most of our domestic and industrial energy supply.

  20. Re: Sad to see Kerry... on A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com) · · Score: 2, Informative

    No actually, in the numbers I was looking at, suicide was listed separately from homicide. Even Wikipedia has a page on this topic... here take a peek, they have references to their information sources and they broadly agree with my ballpark figure. 0.06 gun homicides per 100000 population in the UK (2011) compared to 3.55 gun homicides per 100000 population in the US (2013). Considering violent crime has been generally falling in both countries, the two year difference in the measurements should bias in favour of your argument and it still shows nearly a 60:1 ratio.

    List of countries by firearm related death

    Even allowing for crap in the stats, bad data the gap is still very large for two civilized countries. Do you really honestly believe that the ready availability of guns in the US has no contributing effect here?

  21. Re: Sad to see Kerry... on A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com) · · Score: 0

    Compare the gun stats for US and UK. There are around 50 times more gun murders in the US per 100000 population. Owning guns is a bad idea and totally unnecessary in a civilised society.

  22. Re: Sad to see Kerry... on A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com) · · Score: 0

    you should compare the US and UK gun homicide statistics per capita. They speak for themselves. The US has about 50 times more murders with guns per 100000 members of the population than the UK. Our gun crime in the UK is tiny can compared to the states.

  23. Re: Sad to see Kerry... on A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com) · · Score: 0

    funny thing that... if no-one has guns, they're pretty hard to steal.

  24. Re:Perfect Illustration on A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hrmmm... isn't that kinda like saying, "why should I stop shitting on the pavement, other people do it?". Someone has to make a start! Also, somebody needs to provide energy in a sustainable clean manner that isn't fossil fuel. Isn't this a massive opportunity for the true capitalists out there to steal a march on the energy market? It strikes me that governments and businesses should be getting behind research into new clean electricity-centric nuclear power plants, like the LFTR. I guess whoever figures out a way to wean themselves off of fossil fuel first is going to redefine their economy (and maybe grow it hugely selling cheap energy to the rest of us?)

  25. Re:LibreOffice on Mozilla May Separate Itself From Thunderbird Email Client (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 1

    Yes there is an "email interface". Look up the meaning of the words "email" and "interface", then try a bunch of email programs and it's immediately very clear what the AC up above meant when he typed "standard email interface". It's the layout and operation of the pretty much every program you use to compose and send email. It almost does not matter which email program you try, they all have a familiar feel, to/cc/bcc at the top, then a subject, then a big-assed box-o-text for the body. This is a pretty standard approach to the interface between user and the mail server and has been for a very long time.

    Did you have a point worth discussing or were you just baiting the guy? Wait, hang on, this is /. I already know the answer never mind :P