All I can really tell you is my experience. I made the switch into health IT 3 years ago from specialising in international security analysis. I had no experience or qualifications other than enthusiasm and a willingless to learn, yet I've found promotion easy and rewarding, the conditions are good and the work is interesting. Speaking as an insider, clinical knowledge gives you an enormous advantage. Most programmers don't know the first thing about the ins and outs of an effective patient administration system, or any of the dozens of specialised softwares that exist in hospotals. More importantly, they also don't appreciate what is likely to be required, therefore you have insights there which you could capitalise on.
The health IT field is also somewhat different to the main. Contracts tend to be longer (for example in my company we typically have 15 year contracts to run, upgrade and support our software on site), thus health IT is not as prone to jitters in the market as more consumer-orientated software development tends to be. Furthermore, health IT is actually in a fairly ropey state, with hospitals typically having lots of very specialised softwares, one for each department, all trying to talk to each other using interfaces or the like, with a varying degree of technology, typically some 10 or so years behind average IT development.
Regarding outsourcing, we absolutely wouldn't and couldn't dream of it in my company. Maybe it does happen in other medical IT companies, but the reality with us is that we provide exceptionally strong support for our product, with penalties if we don't resolve critical bugs within 4 hours of being notified, 24/7 - it simply wouldn't work relying on a development team working in a different timezone.
As a game administrator myself, I can tell you that it's actually virtually impossible to stop people selling stuff; players display a remarkable ability to find loopholes and ways to cheat against every law. To totally prevent it, you'd have to prevent transfer of all EQ, and how could you reasonably stop people giving stuff away?
Wearing a game administrator hat, as far as I'm concerned, just let them. However, wearing a finance hat, I'd want to make some money off those trades, so if I were Sony I'd probably make it a supported game feature (ability to buy and sell for money), add some functionality that makes it much easier to do so in a Sony-sponsored marketplace (forum,ecommerce setup, whatever), but skim some money off the top.
We've had a similarish situation in the UK where the large car manufacturers are terribly terribly upset at people buying online cutting out the middleman. Both instances seem silly: if these guys, with the resources behind them were to set up their own eCommerce sites they would, if anything, grow their business and intercept the entrepeneurs that stand to make millions due to corporate inefficiency and institutional inertia.
Unless the item in question can only ever be used for nefarious purposes, common sense dictates that it's the user that's culpable, surely. It's kinda like a kitchen knife: in the wrong hands it becomes a murder weapon.
... Whilst the idea of "fermenting" animals for use as a power source seems ethically revolting, smacking of uber-speciesism (I can think of any number of tyrants, dictators and maniacs that would love the potential of this technology) the ironic fact remains that it's a lot more ecologically sound that using pesticides or messing up ecologies by adding predators like our Australian cousins with their introduction of the particularly hidious Cane Toad which has now become a pest in its own right.
... anything that increases participation in democracy must be a good thing, so making it easy by allowing it online seems like a smart move. Also, anything which lowers the cost of voting so that we don't have such big tax bills is also good.
Some caveats though: I hope that they don't get too carried away with this. Not everyone has net access, and I'd hate to see a person's right to vote depend on their having a computer. Also, I think it'll be a while before it catches on globally: here in the UK Internet access, although growing, still costs a fair bit (local phone rates and monthly ISP charge), so one could argue that such a mechanism would favour the better off...
... one problem I have with that sort of instant answers site is that I don't know the qualifications of the person who is at the other end./. makes up for that by its self-moderating nature, but it's going to be a while before I turn to omeone I don't know with qualifications that I can't verify to answer a vital question for me...
That may, of course, change in the medium term (ie reputations can be established) and people generally go for the easiest solution (ie why do work, think or look something up if someone can will do it for you for a few bucks), but for the time being it's the credibility of the other end that would make me think twice....
Basically, it's all to do with the changing times and new threat perceptions.
In 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the bilateral Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, it was the age of balance thanks to 'Mutually Assured Destruction' (MAD). In a nutshell, since both protagonists could blow each other to kingdom come (and following classical deterrence theory, therefore neither was likely to do so), the introduction of technology that would undermine that condition was considered destabilising and dangerous, so they signed ABM to prevent it.
Onto the late 1990s, when the global ballistic missile proliferation scene and Washington's threat perceptions have changed. Specifically, Washington wants to help two allied nations desperately seeking this ABM technology: Japan (vs. North Korean ballistic missiles) and Israel.
Since the treaty is just a bilateral agreement between two consenting parties, all Washington has to do to give it up is to give notice to the other party (6 months I think), and it is done. It is nothing to do with the USSR's mutation into the CIS, just straightforward diplomacy.
In fact, if you look at things like Israel's 'Arrow' system or the USA's Asian 'THAAD' programme, the ABM Treaty is prettymuch history already anyway.
Hope that helps, Johan Jane's Intelligence Review.
- Am doing an exceptionally short story for Jane's Intelligence Review on this. SPOT is 10m pan, the Russians (Kate) is 2.5 m pan and Ikonos is 1m pan. The restrictions on the latter are sensitive US sites and Israel, where the data is downgraded to 2m. Interesting enough, Saddam has just bought a whole slew of imagery of his neighbours (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria) from the Russians.
... Cringely advocates a 'publish first, worry about its accuracy later' policy. In our business, we follow a strict 'check the facts first, then publish' philosophy.
Johan J Ingles-le Nobel, Jane's Intelligence Review.
... In fact, for me, a large part of the attraction of asking the site for comments was the fact that here you have 100,000 people moderating themselves, which cuts out the dross. Of course it's not perfect, but if you compare it with the open-source intelligence collection model, a crucial step in which is expert review, the similarities are there for all to see.
Johan J Ingles-le Nobel Jane's Intelligence Review
... We also invite you to visit the many other PEZ related web sites created by some very talented and dedicated PEZ collectors.
Reading between the lines, they don't care about PEZ pages, but they care about people passing themselves off as PEZ. If that's their intention - good for them. I hope it leads to lawsuits against those greedy, irresponsible webmasters that have the gall to use metatags such as this to attract children, something I abhor as a parent. It is also something that the press have latched on to as yet another example of why the Internet is intrinsically evil, so I say good for them.
According to my favourite search engine, doing a search for Pez:
53579 documents found - 0.0040 seconds search time
... which is obviously a non-starter for these guys. My guess is that they're covering their back as such, for a future time when either some online candy merchant tries to latch onto pez traffic or if they find porn sites that use pez to misdirect children. I'm no lawyer, but that seems like a good thing to me.
Yes, you do get to see it. I also get nauseous when the C word is applied to situations, being why I'm asking Slashdot readers. Thanks for the link, I'll look at it.
Hi, The name 'Jane's' comes from Fred T. Jane, an eccentric Englishman who started a sketchbook of warships, which he called "Ironclads of the World." More at http://www.janes.com/company/about/about_home.html Regards, Johan J Ingles-le Nobel, Jane's, England.
Slashdot Mirror
This is silly. Everone KNOWS that the answer to scratched CDs is nosewax.
All I can really tell you is my experience. I made the switch into health IT 3 years ago from specialising in international security analysis. I had no experience or qualifications other than enthusiasm and a willingless to learn, yet I've found promotion easy and rewarding, the conditions are good and the work is interesting. Speaking as an insider, clinical knowledge gives you an enormous advantage. Most programmers don't know the first thing about the ins and outs of an effective patient administration system, or any of the dozens of specialised softwares that exist in hospotals. More importantly, they also don't appreciate what is likely to be required, therefore you have insights there which you could capitalise on.
The health IT field is also somewhat different to the main. Contracts tend to be longer (for example in my company we typically have 15 year contracts to run, upgrade and support our software on site), thus health IT is not as prone to jitters in the market as more consumer-orientated software development tends to be. Furthermore, health IT is actually in a fairly ropey state, with hospitals typically having lots of very specialised softwares, one for each department, all trying to talk to each other using interfaces or the like, with a varying degree of technology, typically some 10 or so years behind average IT development.
Regarding outsourcing, we absolutely wouldn't and couldn't dream of it in my company. Maybe it does happen in other medical IT companies, but the reality with us is that we provide exceptionally strong support for our product, with penalties if we don't resolve critical bugs within 4 hours of being notified, 24/7 - it simply wouldn't work relying on a development team working in a different timezone.
Good luck =)
As a game administrator myself, I can tell you that it's actually virtually impossible to stop people selling stuff; players display a remarkable ability to find loopholes and ways to cheat against every law. To totally prevent it, you'd have to prevent transfer of all EQ, and how could you reasonably stop people giving stuff away?
Wearing a game administrator hat, as far as I'm concerned, just let them. However, wearing a finance hat, I'd want to make some money off those trades, so if I were Sony I'd probably make it a supported game feature (ability to buy and sell for money), add some functionality that makes it much easier to do so in a Sony-sponsored marketplace (forum,ecommerce setup, whatever), but skim some money off the top.
We've had a similarish situation in the UK where the large car manufacturers are terribly terribly upset at people buying online cutting out the middleman. Both instances seem silly: if these guys, with the resources behind them were to set up their own eCommerce sites they would, if anything, grow their business and intercept the entrepeneurs that stand to make millions due to corporate inefficiency and institutional inertia.
Unless the item in question can only ever be used for nefarious purposes, common sense dictates that it's the user that's culpable, surely. It's kinda like a kitchen knife: in the wrong hands it becomes a murder weapon.
Get armour (snail)
Whatever next?
Some caveats though: I hope that they don't get too carried away with this. Not everyone has net access, and I'd hate to see a person's right to vote depend on their having a computer. Also, I think it'll be a while before it catches on globally: here in the UK Internet access, although growing, still costs a fair bit (local phone rates and monthly ISP charge), so one could argue that such a mechanism would favour the better off...
That may, of course, change in the medium term (ie reputations can be established) and people generally go for the easiest solution (ie why do work, think or look something up if someone can will do it for you for a few bucks), but for the time being it's the credibility of the other end that would make me think twice....
In 1972, when the USA and the USSR signed the bilateral Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty, it was the age of balance thanks to 'Mutually Assured Destruction' (MAD). In a nutshell, since both protagonists could blow each other to kingdom come (and following classical deterrence theory, therefore neither was likely to do so), the introduction of technology that would undermine that condition was considered destabilising and dangerous, so they signed ABM to prevent it.
Onto the late 1990s, when the global ballistic missile proliferation scene and Washington's threat perceptions have changed. Specifically, Washington wants to help two allied nations desperately seeking this ABM technology: Japan (vs. North Korean ballistic missiles) and Israel.
Since the treaty is just a bilateral agreement between two consenting parties, all Washington has to do to give it up is to give notice to the other party (6 months I think), and it is done. It is nothing to do with the USSR's mutation into the CIS, just straightforward diplomacy.
In fact, if you look at things like Israel's 'Arrow' system or the USA's Asian 'THAAD' programme, the ABM Treaty is prettymuch history already anyway.
Hope that helps,
Johan
Jane's Intelligence Review.
- Am doing an exceptionally short story for Jane's Intelligence Review on this. SPOT is 10m pan, the Russians (Kate) is 2.5 m pan and Ikonos is 1m pan. The restrictions on the latter are sensitive US sites and Israel, where the data is downgraded to 2m. Interesting enough, Saddam has just bought a whole slew of imagery of his neighbours (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Syria) from the Russians.
Johan J Ingles-le Nobel,
Jane's Intelligence Review.
Johan J Ingles-le Nobel
Jane's Intelligence Review
Darn, is that true? If so, have you got any references/links that I can follow up please? Johan J Ingles-le Nobel Jane's Intelligence Review
... We also invite you to visit the many other PEZ related web sites created by some very talented and dedicated PEZ collectors.
Reading between the lines, they don't care about PEZ pages, but they care about people passing themselves off as PEZ. If that's their intention - good for them. I hope it leads to lawsuits against those greedy, irresponsible webmasters that have the gall to use metatags such as this to attract children, something I abhor as a parent. It is also something that the press have latched on to as yet another example of why the Internet is intrinsically evil, so I say good for them.
53579 documents found - 0.0040 seconds search time
Yes, you do get to see it. I also get nauseous when the C word is applied to situations, being why I'm asking Slashdot readers. Thanks for the link, I'll look at it.
Johan.
Hi, The name 'Jane's' comes from Fred T. Jane, an eccentric Englishman who started a sketchbook of warships, which he called "Ironclads of the World." More at http://www.janes.com/company/about/about_home.html Regards, Johan J Ingles-le Nobel, Jane's, England.