Forgive my bad math. I originally had $100, not $150. So 267 patients to pay off the machine at $150. Of course, you have to consider maintenance and training and other costs, but whatever... I know someone's going to jump on me about the bad math if I don't speak up now...
$40K is chump change. A decent MRI machine costs at least a couple of million dollars. Just starting up the machine can cost $100,000 (you don't turn them off when you're done). Upgrades generally run hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly, like x-rays, MRIs and CT-Scanners, not every doctor needs one. A specialist would have it or a radiology center would have it and the doctor sends you there to get the work done, just like x-rays, MRIs and CT scans.
If they charged say $150 per use you only need to use it on 400 patients before you make your money back. That's nothing... Assuming a patient a day on average, it'd be paid for in about a year. That's just really cheap my medical standards in developed countries.
Just about any relatively complicated software has dozens of available command-line options.
That should probably be rephrased to "Just about any relatively complicted software that inflicts command-lines on its users..."
This is clearly a very unix oriented post as there are relatively few command-line windows apps and few window GUI apps that accept command-lines. But this is also a topic that's about as old as programming itself and clearly something that takes the "new" out of "news".
Personally, I find the whole cell phone thing amusing more than anything else. Maybe I'm just getting old and not the gadget geek I used to be. My cousin is on maybe his 3rd or 4th phone in 2 years. I bought one 3 years ago with NO extras and it's all I need.
I don't get it. It's a phone. That's all I want from it. I don't want to take pictures, browse the web, send e-mail or anything else. That's what cameras and computers are for. I don't need a phone that can brew beer and drive my car.
I'm going back to college part-time and it amazes me how much the kids today are absolutely hooked on their phones. They may as well just have them surgically attached to the sides of their heads. Want to know why kids aren't getting an education? Because they're not paying attention to the teachers, they're texting each other. I'm sick of seeing every driver around me with a phone to their head. For God's sake people, hang up and drive already.
I know some people actually can improve their productivity with a phone with lots of features, but for a lot of people it just seems to be a waste. A waste of their money and a waste of God knows how much time dicking around with their toys. It's great to be social and all, but being social has a time and place. A classroom, in line next to me at the bank/grocery store/wherever, driving in traffic, these are not appropriate times. I don't want to hear your conversation and I don't want to die because you're so busy talking on the phone you didn't notice the red light.
Call me a troll, but I think the world has gone cell phone insane.
Man, you're going to get modded -100 flamebait for that kind of opinion. God forbid you don't think everything about Linux is just a friggin' home run. I would just make one minor correction: Linus is from Finland, not Sweden. But they're certainly close to each other...
Oh hey, I'm absolutely not pointing a finger at you... I just find it kind of funny... On top of which, twice in my post I mentioned that it was "my personal opinion" and emphasized at the end that others might have had different experiences. On top of which I mentioned it was great for some things and that I use it myself as a firewall, file server, video editor, and a few other things. And yet, it's clearly flamebait because it's not 100% pro-linux. Just the typical Slashdot slant. Windows=bad, Linux=good, anyone who disagrees is clearly trying to start a flame war.
Interesting... You make a post saying how it works great for you. I write a post which I think was well thought out, pointing out problems I've seen, making it clear that it's my personal opinion. Nothing of it, I thought, was outlandish or uncalled for. You get rated +5 interesting. I get rated flamebait.
Thank you for your support. It's precisely this kind of attitude about Linux that holds it back. It's precisely this kind of "screw the user's opinion, I like it the way it is," kind of attitude that is holding Linux back. And this is the kind of thing I get flamed for on support forums for apps. I'll go in and offer some UI suggestions that I think will make the app more user-friendly (and I do have 20 years of professional software development experience, so it's not like I'm a complete neophyte) and generally the attitude is, "Screw you."
And like I said, this isn't confined to Linux. I've seen it with certain apps for Windows. The e-mule developers, for instance, are pretty damn hostile as well. But I simply find it far more frequently with Linux developers than with Windows developers.
Everyone has a take on it. Haven't we had this discussion a hundred times on Slashdot?
My personal opinion, after having used Linux quite a bit, is simply that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. While many apps have easy to install packages, a lot of apps don't. Particularly smaller, single-developer shareware kind of apps. Many of these require getting source and compiling, something my mother or grandmother won't be able to do.
Speaking of my mother and grandmother, the other thing they already find confusing enough is the Windows directory layout. Linux is FAR more complicated in that department. They'd find organizing their documents much more difficult.
Finally, frankly, I don't find the UIs all that intuitive to use. I've used Gnome and KDE. I prefer KDE, but I have issues with both. It took me a while to figure out how to drag and drop gzip compressed files from KDE. I can't even remember how it works off the top of my head, I'd have to go do it again. But it definitely wasn't as intuitive as drag and drop from say WinZip to a folder in Windows.
The fact is, Linux just isn't ready for the desktop. Don't get me wrong, huge strides have been made over the past few years in usability and I suspect it'll get there eventually, but it's not there.
Another issue is the community, which in many places is hostile to newbies. I've been insulted on more Linux support forums for asking question than I've ever been on Windows support forums. There are places to get good support for Linux, but there are a lot of really hostile ones too. Windows may have some hostile ones, but I just run into it far less frequently.
This is just my personal opinion, based on my experiences with it. Other people may have had different experiences. I still love Linux for certain things and I run a Linux box as a file server, firewall, database server and for video editing. I'd never trust connecting a Windows box directly to the internet, but I've always trusted Linux for that. But as a desktop environment, it just doesn't work for me.
This isn't the first myoelectric (muscle-powered) prosthesis to make it to market. There have been a few. These devices basically work by detecting electrical signals in muscles near the end of the remaining limb. What's really cool is the stuff in development using actual nerve signals instead. These could prove to be much more powerful because the nerves carry much more information and would allow for much finer control than you can get with myoelectric prostheses. Still, myoelectric is significantly better than passive prostheses.
I personally gave up HFCS and MSG to the best of my ability about 9 months ago. I'm still too fat
I gave up HFCS and most processed foods, myself. I also gave up beer. I've lost 55lbs and feel better than I've ever felt in my life. I prepare almost all of my own meals. It's more work, but God I feel so much better, I can't imagine ever going back to processed foods and sodas. Not to mention, the food I eat tastes SO much better than prepared foods.
The way I figured out what I wanted to do was to actually take a year off after my freshman year of college (majoring in Chemistry) and I kind of fell into a job as a programmer. I had been doing it as a hobby since the age of 10 but had never really considered doing it for a living until I fell into that job. But that's when I decided that's what I wanted to do. I never finished my degree. I did go back, but ended up dropping out again several years later. And now, here I am 15 years later and I'm back in school studying Chemistry and Biochemistry and planning on med school. So, just remember, it's never too late to change careers!
The last place I'd ever take advice is from the Yahoo Stock message boards. Everyone is a zealot for one stock or another there. Who cares if people are dumb enough to take investment advice there. I suspect anyone who actually knows anything about the market and Yahoo stock message boards knows this. I suspect anything he wrote had little if any effect on the performance of the stock.
"I can't help but think that this a move to slyly demonize FOSS by scaring businesses into thinking they don't know what's on their PCs."
To add to what the parent poster said, I actually think this could help OSS. Businesses might be surprised to find out how much FOSS software they're using and to realize how dependent they already are on it. That might actually ease some of their concerns about choosing FOSS options in the future.
It doesn't really matter. DNA degrades over time, even if preserved in this fashion. It's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to find any viable DNA for cloning. There might be enough pieces in good enough shape for determining a lot about their genetic makeup, but that's likely going to come in the form of DNA fragments.
From the article:...and they're inspired by tobacco's deadly active ingredient: nicotine.
Nicotine is one of the least dangerous ingredients of tobacco smoke. People think nicotine is this horrible thing. Granted, it is somewhat addictive, but not terribly addictive. I say that as someone who's smoked for over 20 years and has tried to quit a number of times. I can easily break the "nicotine addiction" aspect of it. That only takes a couple days. It's the habit of smoking that's a bitch. I can go without nicotine for weeks or months (well beyond the time it takes to break the addiction), but it's the psychological habit I can't seem to kick.
Nicotine has a number of pharmacological properties that can be beneficial, however, so it's no surprise that nicotine derivatives might be found that can also have positive effects.
I RTFA and the guy is off his rocker. Computer science isn't math and I don't think anyone (except maybe the author) confuses it with math. It uses math as a tool, but it's certainly not math. It's almost like saying a biochemist would be better off without knowing biology or chemistry. They're both tools of the biochemist, but he/she is neither a biologist nor a chemist. Many professions use math as part of the job. An accountant isn't a mathematician, yet an accountant also uses math as a tool. A mechanical engineer isn't a mathematician, but a mechanical engineer also uses math as a tool. I could go on and on all day.
Personally, I hate math. I've been writing software for 28 years. Math, at least algebra, is something I accept as a necessary evil to do the job, but I've rarely needed more advanced forms of math to do the job. Algebra is simply one of many necessary tools used by the computer scientist. But logic isn't strictly a mathematical concept, and logic is definitely a bigger part of computer science.
Most of the programmers I've worked with don't really spend a great deal of time thinking about math. They spend time thinking about object oriented design and interactions between components. These aren't mathematical concepts at all.
I hate to get into the technobabble nonsense, but I think they're called tentacles (or testicles, if you're a pretty, French foreign-exchange student).
Others have enumerated the reasons why mainframes are simply better suited to certain tasks than others. But here's a big difference I notice in software on PCs vs. mainframes: On a mainframe, if the software works for 1 user, it works for all users with few exceptions. So you only have to get it working on 1 machine! You don't have to worry about different users with different hardware, different OS upgrades, different OS versions.
There were aspects of mainframe programming that I really miss (my first 4 jobs were mostly mainframe work) and it was definitely the coolest environment I've ever written assembly code for, but in terms of UI, it definitely sucked.
First of all, this doesn't seem like a huge deal. By the time you get to the hospital, most of the cells that are going to die are already undergoing apoptosis (BTW, that's programmed cell death and not necessarily unwanted cell death). The other issue is that hypoxia also causes cell necrosis, which is another form of cell death that's completely different from apoptosis and wouldn't be saved by this kind of drug.
The major issue, however, is simply that most of the cells that are going to die are irreparably damaged byt he time you get to the hospital. They ER will likely give you drug thinners and do whatever else is needed to get oxygen supply back. Not that this drug wouldn't be somewhat helpful, but I'd be really surprised if there's any great improvement in the % of lives saved. And any life saved is certainly worth the effort, but I just don't see this as a major breakthrough.
Now, show me a drug that can selectively induce apoptosis in certain cells, and then we'd have a cure for most forms of cancer (most forms of cancer are the result of cells whose apoptosis pathway is failing for some reason), and that would be a big deal.
what gets the ball rolling? very different: direct chemical interjection versus sensory stimulus
That's not the difference between alcohol and a video game. In the case of alcohol, you drink and, assuming you drink enough, you get drunk. In the case of a video game, you play, and dopamine and endorphins start pumping. It doesn't matter that the latter was caused by a sensory stimulus. It's like a drug injection and about as fast-acting.
So no, I don't see a difference between one being a valid addiction and the other not. They're both chemical addictions. How you got the "injection" doesn't matter.
I was recently watching The Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973). When discussing evolution, Dr. Bronowski says something to the effect of, "Of course, today, almost nobody denies evolution." All I could think was, "How far backwards have we gone that in 1973 the issue was pretty much considered a fact by the general population and now..." It's scary, really.
Slashdot Mirror
Forgive my bad math. I originally had $100, not $150. So 267 patients to pay off the machine at $150. Of course, you have to consider maintenance and training and other costs, but whatever... I know someone's going to jump on me about the bad math if I don't speak up now...
$40k for medical equiptment isn't bad.
$40K is chump change. A decent MRI machine costs at least a couple of million dollars. Just starting up the machine can cost $100,000 (you don't turn them off when you're done). Upgrades generally run hundreds of thousands of dollars. More importantly, like x-rays, MRIs and CT-Scanners, not every doctor needs one. A specialist would have it or a radiology center would have it and the doctor sends you there to get the work done, just like x-rays, MRIs and CT scans.
If they charged say $150 per use you only need to use it on 400 patients before you make your money back. That's nothing... Assuming a patient a day on average, it'd be paid for in about a year. That's just really cheap my medical standards in developed countries.
Just about any relatively complicated software has dozens of available command-line options.
That should probably be rephrased to "Just about any relatively complicted software that inflicts command-lines on its users..."
This is clearly a very unix oriented post as there are relatively few command-line windows apps and few window GUI apps that accept command-lines. But this is also a topic that's about as old as programming itself and clearly something that takes the "new" out of "news".
She sure looks like a spook!
Personally, I find the whole cell phone thing amusing more than anything else. Maybe I'm just getting old and not the gadget geek I used to be. My cousin is on maybe his 3rd or 4th phone in 2 years. I bought one 3 years ago with NO extras and it's all I need.
I don't get it. It's a phone. That's all I want from it. I don't want to take pictures, browse the web, send e-mail or anything else. That's what cameras and computers are for. I don't need a phone that can brew beer and drive my car.
I'm going back to college part-time and it amazes me how much the kids today are absolutely hooked on their phones. They may as well just have them surgically attached to the sides of their heads. Want to know why kids aren't getting an education? Because they're not paying attention to the teachers, they're texting each other. I'm sick of seeing every driver around me with a phone to their head. For God's sake people, hang up and drive already.
I know some people actually can improve their productivity with a phone with lots of features, but for a lot of people it just seems to be a waste. A waste of their money and a waste of God knows how much time dicking around with their toys. It's great to be social and all, but being social has a time and place. A classroom, in line next to me at the bank/grocery store/wherever, driving in traffic, these are not appropriate times. I don't want to hear your conversation and I don't want to die because you're so busy talking on the phone you didn't notice the red light.
Call me a troll, but I think the world has gone cell phone insane.
Man, you're going to get modded -100 flamebait for that kind of opinion. God forbid you don't think everything about Linux is just a friggin' home run. I would just make one minor correction: Linus is from Finland, not Sweden. But they're certainly close to each other...
Oh hey, I'm absolutely not pointing a finger at you... I just find it kind of funny... On top of which, twice in my post I mentioned that it was "my personal opinion" and emphasized at the end that others might have had different experiences. On top of which I mentioned it was great for some things and that I use it myself as a firewall, file server, video editor, and a few other things. And yet, it's clearly flamebait because it's not 100% pro-linux. Just the typical Slashdot slant. Windows=bad, Linux=good, anyone who disagrees is clearly trying to start a flame war.
Interesting... You make a post saying how it works great for you. I write a post which I think was well thought out, pointing out problems I've seen, making it clear that it's my personal opinion. Nothing of it, I thought, was outlandish or uncalled for. You get rated +5 interesting. I get rated flamebait.
Glad to see the regular Slashdot slant...
Flamebait? What the fuck is wrong with you??
Thank you for your support. It's precisely this kind of attitude about Linux that holds it back. It's precisely this kind of "screw the user's opinion, I like it the way it is," kind of attitude that is holding Linux back. And this is the kind of thing I get flamed for on support forums for apps. I'll go in and offer some UI suggestions that I think will make the app more user-friendly (and I do have 20 years of professional software development experience, so it's not like I'm a complete neophyte) and generally the attitude is, "Screw you."
And like I said, this isn't confined to Linux. I've seen it with certain apps for Windows. The e-mule developers, for instance, are pretty damn hostile as well. But I simply find it far more frequently with Linux developers than with Windows developers.
Everyone has a take on it. Haven't we had this discussion a hundred times on Slashdot?
My personal opinion, after having used Linux quite a bit, is simply that Linux isn't ready for the desktop. While many apps have easy to install packages, a lot of apps don't. Particularly smaller, single-developer shareware kind of apps. Many of these require getting source and compiling, something my mother or grandmother won't be able to do.
Speaking of my mother and grandmother, the other thing they already find confusing enough is the Windows directory layout. Linux is FAR more complicated in that department. They'd find organizing their documents much more difficult.
Finally, frankly, I don't find the UIs all that intuitive to use. I've used Gnome and KDE. I prefer KDE, but I have issues with both. It took me a while to figure out how to drag and drop gzip compressed files from KDE. I can't even remember how it works off the top of my head, I'd have to go do it again. But it definitely wasn't as intuitive as drag and drop from say WinZip to a folder in Windows.
The fact is, Linux just isn't ready for the desktop. Don't get me wrong, huge strides have been made over the past few years in usability and I suspect it'll get there eventually, but it's not there.
Another issue is the community, which in many places is hostile to newbies. I've been insulted on more Linux support forums for asking question than I've ever been on Windows support forums. There are places to get good support for Linux, but there are a lot of really hostile ones too. Windows may have some hostile ones, but I just run into it far less frequently.
This is just my personal opinion, based on my experiences with it. Other people may have had different experiences. I still love Linux for certain things and I run a Linux box as a file server, firewall, database server and for video editing. I'd never trust connecting a Windows box directly to the internet, but I've always trusted Linux for that. But as a desktop environment, it just doesn't work for me.
This isn't the first myoelectric (muscle-powered) prosthesis to make it to market. There have been a few. These devices basically work by detecting electrical signals in muscles near the end of the remaining limb. What's really cool is the stuff in development using actual nerve signals instead. These could prove to be much more powerful because the nerves carry much more information and would allow for much finer control than you can get with myoelectric prostheses. Still, myoelectric is significantly better than passive prostheses.
I personally gave up HFCS and MSG to the best of my ability about 9 months ago. I'm still too fat
I gave up HFCS and most processed foods, myself. I also gave up beer. I've lost 55lbs and feel better than I've ever felt in my life. I prepare almost all of my own meals. It's more work, but God I feel so much better, I can't imagine ever going back to processed foods and sodas. Not to mention, the food I eat tastes SO much better than prepared foods.
The way I figured out what I wanted to do was to actually take a year off after my freshman year of college (majoring in Chemistry) and I kind of fell into a job as a programmer. I had been doing it as a hobby since the age of 10 but had never really considered doing it for a living until I fell into that job. But that's when I decided that's what I wanted to do. I never finished my degree. I did go back, but ended up dropping out again several years later. And now, here I am 15 years later and I'm back in school studying Chemistry and Biochemistry and planning on med school. So, just remember, it's never too late to change careers!
The last place I'd ever take advice is from the Yahoo Stock message boards. Everyone is a zealot for one stock or another there. Who cares if people are dumb enough to take investment advice there. I suspect anyone who actually knows anything about the market and Yahoo stock message boards knows this. I suspect anything he wrote had little if any effect on the performance of the stock.
Dangerous Java Flaw Threatens 'Virtually Everything'
I figured it wouldn't be long before a stupid software bug came along that would threaten the very existence of the universe itself. I knew it!
"I can't help but think that this a move to slyly demonize FOSS by scaring businesses into thinking they don't know what's on their PCs."
To add to what the parent poster said, I actually think this could help OSS. Businesses might be surprised to find out how much FOSS software they're using and to realize how dependent they already are on it. That might actually ease some of their concerns about choosing FOSS options in the future.
It doesn't really matter. DNA degrades over time, even if preserved in this fashion. It's extremely unlikely that they'd be able to find any viable DNA for cloning. There might be enough pieces in good enough shape for determining a lot about their genetic makeup, but that's likely going to come in the form of DNA fragments.
From the article: ...and they're inspired by tobacco's deadly active ingredient: nicotine.
Nicotine is one of the least dangerous ingredients of tobacco smoke. People think nicotine is this horrible thing. Granted, it is somewhat addictive, but not terribly addictive. I say that as someone who's smoked for over 20 years and has tried to quit a number of times. I can easily break the "nicotine addiction" aspect of it. That only takes a couple days. It's the habit of smoking that's a bitch. I can go without nicotine for weeks or months (well beyond the time it takes to break the addiction), but it's the psychological habit I can't seem to kick.
Nicotine has a number of pharmacological properties that can be beneficial, however, so it's no surprise that nicotine derivatives might be found that can also have positive effects.
I RTFA and the guy is off his rocker. Computer science isn't math and I don't think anyone (except maybe the author) confuses it with math. It uses math as a tool, but it's certainly not math. It's almost like saying a biochemist would be better off without knowing biology or chemistry. They're both tools of the biochemist, but he/she is neither a biologist nor a chemist. Many professions use math as part of the job. An accountant isn't a mathematician, yet an accountant also uses math as a tool. A mechanical engineer isn't a mathematician, but a mechanical engineer also uses math as a tool. I could go on and on all day.
Personally, I hate math. I've been writing software for 28 years. Math, at least algebra, is something I accept as a necessary evil to do the job, but I've rarely needed more advanced forms of math to do the job. Algebra is simply one of many necessary tools used by the computer scientist. But logic isn't strictly a mathematical concept, and logic is definitely a bigger part of computer science.
Most of the programmers I've worked with don't really spend a great deal of time thinking about math. They spend time thinking about object oriented design and interactions between components. These aren't mathematical concepts at all.
...with eight arms...
I hate to get into the technobabble nonsense, but I think they're called tentacles (or testicles, if you're a pretty, French foreign-exchange student).
which appears to translate into avoiding lyrics that glorify 'an anti-learning culture, truancy, knifes, violence, guns, misogyny'.
I have only one question: What are knifes and why is someone glorifying them?
Others have enumerated the reasons why mainframes are simply better suited to certain tasks than others. But here's a big difference I notice in software on PCs vs. mainframes: On a mainframe, if the software works for 1 user, it works for all users with few exceptions. So you only have to get it working on 1 machine! You don't have to worry about different users with different hardware, different OS upgrades, different OS versions.
There were aspects of mainframe programming that I really miss (my first 4 jobs were mostly mainframe work) and it was definitely the coolest environment I've ever written assembly code for, but in terms of UI, it definitely sucked.
First of all, this doesn't seem like a huge deal. By the time you get to the hospital, most of the cells that are going to die are already undergoing apoptosis (BTW, that's programmed cell death and not necessarily unwanted cell death). The other issue is that hypoxia also causes cell necrosis, which is another form of cell death that's completely different from apoptosis and wouldn't be saved by this kind of drug.
The major issue, however, is simply that most of the cells that are going to die are irreparably damaged byt he time you get to the hospital. They ER will likely give you drug thinners and do whatever else is needed to get oxygen supply back. Not that this drug wouldn't be somewhat helpful, but I'd be really surprised if there's any great improvement in the % of lives saved. And any life saved is certainly worth the effort, but I just don't see this as a major breakthrough.
Now, show me a drug that can selectively induce apoptosis in certain cells, and then we'd have a cure for most forms of cancer (most forms of cancer are the result of cells whose apoptosis pathway is failing for some reason), and that would be a big deal.
what gets the ball rolling? very different: direct chemical interjection versus sensory stimulus
That's not the difference between alcohol and a video game. In the case of alcohol, you drink and, assuming you drink enough, you get drunk. In the case of a video game, you play, and dopamine and endorphins start pumping. It doesn't matter that the latter was caused by a sensory stimulus. It's like a drug injection and about as fast-acting.
So no, I don't see a difference between one being a valid addiction and the other not. They're both chemical addictions. How you got the "injection" doesn't matter.
I was recently watching The Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973). When discussing evolution, Dr. Bronowski says something to the effect of, "Of course, today, almost nobody denies evolution." All I could think was, "How far backwards have we gone that in 1973 the issue was pretty much considered a fact by the general population and now..." It's scary, really.