This is correct. I've been in the OR for open, laparoscopic, and robotic surgeries. The advantages to the robot, versus standard laparoscopy include: 1) The robotic instruments have numerous articulated joints (i.e. wrists) whereas laparoscopic instruments are straight and more unwieldy in some circumstances. 2) The robotic camera is high-definition and stereoscopic, so the surgeon can see everything in three dimensions, adding additional safety beyond laparoscopy.
The robots are not a panacea - don't bother asking your surgeon to perform a transplant robotically - but under certain circumstances, they make operations easier and safer. An excellent example is when the prostate is removed for cancer. The robot makes it much easier to operate in the pelvis, which is normally an awkward region of the body to access.
So you would rather open a hole in someone's abdomen large enough to get your hands in, just to remove the grape sized growth on their liver, rather than opening a pea sized hole and using a machine? Barbaric. I think you need to rethink things. The decision to perform an operation laparoscopically versus open is not as straightforward as you suggest. The overriding goal is patient safety, but smaller incisions do not necessarily imply safer operations. Laparoscopic surgeries almost always take longer than their open counterparts, which means the patient might remain under the effects of anesthesia and numerous other drugs for 6 hours rather than 2 - this is not benign. Also, visibility tends to be greater during open operations, so vital structures may be less likely to be injured than in laparoscopic operations.
Sure, surgery requires skill and dedication. It will for quite some time to come. But in the end, it is a common technician type of job: Cut, remove, splice, stitch. Ummm... No.
The parent said, "America isn't the world. With HIV being such a high profile disease, there is no way an effective vaccine will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit." I value the idealism behind this remark, but it just isn't true.
Rotavirus kills millions of people, particularly children, worldwide. An effective vaccine called Rotashield was pulled from the market because a few people - less than 5, I believe - experienced intussusception. A vaccine that isn't considered safe in America will not see the light of day elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, effective vaccines can and will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit. Similarly, this HIV vaccine still has a long road ahead to become approved for widespread use.
The parent inappropriately obfuscates the original quote: It is absolutely critical that, when a scientist interprets findings and speaks with authority, they must acknowledge any preconceived biases they might have.
Data are data - they are what they are. But the process of interpreting data is always subjective and may be affected by a person's biases.
Her study methodology was prone to over-fitting: She used the same data for training and validation of the model, so no comment can be made on how well her model would predict future wars. Here's what she should have done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation
As far as I understand, source code can be placed under the GPL, but an algorithm cannot be. An algorithm is just a concept - it can be patented of course, but that's aside the matter here. Unless I'm mistaken, you could write your own implementation of BitFast and use it for commercial purposes, closed-source projects, whatever you want as long as you don't use their source code.
Longer Answer: in an economic sense, and assuming that the firm seeks to maximize profits, the only "justification" necessary for a price is the fact that customers are willing to pay it - so, no
This is where the law of diminishing returns kicks in...
Many people, when shown a 60" screen at a reasonable viewing distance, can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. The added resolution of UHDTV would only be of benefit on a large movie screen from a close viewing distance. But movies implemented the ideal screen resolution decades ago... It's called film.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
You may recognize this text, from our Declaration of Independence. The framers of the Constitution were protecting these inalienable rights when they wrote our Constitution. You will notice that *privacy* is not among those rights listed.
The wiretapping law was passed with the intent of protecting our rights, particularly life and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, turbulent times with violent acts by religious and political radicals have made it become necessary for our government to be vigilant in protecting us. Your post smacks of an it-will-never-happen-to-me attitude towards terrorism. I suspect that you would take a different tone if you were, or someday will be, directly affected by a sensational, violent act.
I sincerely hope that never happens to you, or anyone else. Fortunately, as illustrated by the article, the government is taking steps to protect you.
When I downloaded and installed iTunes 7, I was rather stunned to see the new interface. It doesn't even remotely resemble a standard Mac OS X Aqua application. It looks... well, almost like a gray Windows application. Or a Java application. Yuck. Dear Apple, please bring back the old, standard look and feel. Enough said!
The parent comment had the HTML truncated for some reason... But According to Matlab, the above expression tallies up to a very large number. Now I'm satisfied.
I was at first skeptical when Apple said there are "millions of configurations" for the new Mac Pros. So I tested it out...
Based on the options from the Apple Store configuration page, the total combinations possible is given by 3 * 6 * 3 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 6 * 4 * 4 * 2 * 4 * 2 * 2 * 4 * 2 * 3 * 5 * 2
Multiple dates have been claimed as the birthday for the internet - so let's settle this by checking Wikipedia.
According to Wikipedia - the gold standard for such important questions - the internet was conceived on October 12, 1492. (Also worth noting, Carl Friedrich Gauss was the first person to hold the title of "webmaster".)
Developed countries have very careful protocols in place to ensure that human subjects are treated carefully. I work in medical research, and I have filled out many proposals for human research. They will *not* begin using prisoners or other "disposable" subjects. By rules of the National Institutes of Health, medical students are not even allowed to willingly volunteer to be research subjects, for the possibility that they might be pressured by their attending physicians.
The Institutional Review Board (as we use in the States, other countries have similar safeguards) makes it an order of magnitude harder to have research approved if it involves prisoners or other "vulnerable populations", as they are called in this context.
There may, however, be an increase in the price necessary to recruit volunteers.
It's true that many games are altered to be easier, between their Japanese and US releases. By contrast, note one game that became harder when released in the US - Final Fantasy VII. The American release featured the never-before-seen Ruby and Emerald Weapons, the super-hard optional monsters that you could fight solely for the purpose of glory. They were not available in the Japanese release, and many hard-core gamers, myself included, spent some frustrating (but ultimately gratifying) time trying to defeat them. The good response to Ruby and Emerald prompted Square to include optional uber-monsters in many of their subsequent games.
I'm willing to hazard a guess on the nature of the redesigned enclosure.
Have you noticed how Apple likes a certain symmetry between applications (iTunes brushed aluminum, Safari brushed aluminum) and the Pro enclosure (G5 brushed aluminum)? Apple seems to be experimenting with a lighter, smooth metal theme as seen in the current Mail.app. I hereby conjecture that the new Pro Mac enclosure will likewise be a very light-colored, smooth metal with a similar look.
The issue is not whether Microsoft thinks they are "entitled" to this market. The issue is whether they have the capability to prevent Google from "taking food off their plate". In a competitive world, that's all that matters.
Your point is true about scientists having non-rational fundamentally held beliefs, and in my opinion this is not off-topic. The fundamentally held belief pertinent to this thread is, "The universe obeys certain unchanging laws which may be deduced through systematic observations."
The idea that constants are really "constant" is a long-held assumption - one that has generally held up to questioning, and this assumption is necessary for most real work to be conducted. However, it is just that - an assumption.
I am a scientist and I have learned the importance in clearly stating your assumptions prior to any analysis or conclusion. Generally, however, it is quite difficult for people to be aware of their own biases and assumptions. The key thing we need to do, in order to remain agile and open-minded, is to avoid thinking that our assumptions are invariant laws of the universe.
I installed Parallels on an Intel iMac recently. I created virtual machines with Ubuntu, Fedora Core, and FreeDOS (no reason, just because I can). All of them seem to work fine, except FreeDOS, but then in my experience DOS never worked well on my parents' Tandy either.
I installed Windows XP today and everything seems just fine and peppy. The IT guy who installed it commented that the installation took less time than on some of the Dells he worked with. My favorite part is the backup mechanism - I now have a fresh, no-spyware installation of Windows XP with Matlab, SPSS, and Access all installed. All of my documents will be stored on a Mac hard disk by a shared folder. So I went to the Finder and made a copy of the disk image, and when I want to revert to a fresh image, all I do is delete the working hard drive, and rename "image copy" to "image" and I'm back as good as new. 8)
I have one question for the forum - like many others, I wish there was native hardware acceleration. Wouldn't it be feasible by installing a Windows graphics driver that sends the hardware calls to Parallels, which then uses Mac native OpenGL to do hardware rendering? It doesn't seem that different from ordinary rendering in a window. This could be straightforward for PC OpenGL games, and for the DirectX games, perhaps the calls can be mapped to OpenGL functions. Perhaps with a speed penalty, but it should almost certainly be better than software rendering. You folks who know more about graphics rendering than I do - might this be possible?
I have long supported vendor liability for software. I believe that it would allow commercial software and OSS to coexist better. And by the way, for those of you who didn't RTFA, the author doesn't imply that open-source contributors should be liable for bugs. Here's my take on the idea:
1. Open-source software generally costs nothing, and no warranty is made on the function of the product.
2. Commercial software generally costs money, and no warranty is made on the function of the product.
As of right now, there seems to be little difference - except that someone gets paid for making commercial products, which may or may not function as the consumer is led to believe. So let commercial software companies voluntarily increase the value of their products by making certain guarantees on performance.
For commercial software to stay relevant, I believe that every product needs to include a basic guarantee of the functions that it must perform. Note that when I say "guarantee", I don't mean that the company ensures that there are zero bugs - this is unrealistic for complicated products. By "guarantee" I mean that when the product fails to perform its specified functions, resulting in damage, the company should accept liability for the damages.
This wouldn't kill open source software. It would enhance the ability of end users to choose according to their needs. The "software guarantee" would be like a form of insurance. Customers for whom a product failure might be very costly would opt for the commercial product, in a risk-averse fashion. Customers for whom product failure would cause small-claims damage would likely opt for a free, no-guarantee product instead. There's my two cents.
Slashdot Mirror
This is correct. I've been in the OR for open, laparoscopic, and robotic surgeries. The advantages to the robot, versus standard laparoscopy include: 1) The robotic instruments have numerous articulated joints (i.e. wrists) whereas laparoscopic instruments are straight and more unwieldy in some circumstances. 2) The robotic camera is high-definition and stereoscopic, so the surgeon can see everything in three dimensions, adding additional safety beyond laparoscopy.
The robots are not a panacea - don't bother asking your surgeon to perform a transplant robotically - but under certain circumstances, they make operations easier and safer. An excellent example is when the prostate is removed for cancer. The robot makes it much easier to operate in the pelvis, which is normally an awkward region of the body to access.
The parent said, "America isn't the world. With HIV being such a high profile disease, there is no way an effective vaccine will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit." I value the idealism behind this remark, but it just isn't true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotavirus#Vaccines
Rotavirus kills millions of people, particularly children, worldwide. An effective vaccine called Rotashield was pulled from the market because a few people - less than 5, I believe - experienced intussusception. A vaccine that isn't considered safe in America will not see the light of day elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, effective vaccines can and will be slowed or stopped by politics and bullshit. Similarly, this HIV vaccine still has a long road ahead to become approved for widespread use.
The parent inappropriately obfuscates the original quote: It is absolutely critical that, when a scientist interprets findings and speaks with authority, they must acknowledge any preconceived biases they might have.
Data are data - they are what they are. But the process of interpreting data is always subjective and may be affected by a person's biases.
Her study methodology was prone to over-fitting: She used the same data for training and validation of the model, so no comment can be made on how well her model would predict future wars. Here's what she should have done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation
The how-to guide for female stimulation. Here is a game that actually was made - and will NEVER see the light of day! http://news.spong.com/article/9372?cb=195
As far as I understand, source code can be placed under the GPL, but an algorithm cannot be. An algorithm is just a concept - it can be patented of course, but that's aside the matter here. Unless I'm mistaken, you could write your own implementation of BitFast and use it for commercial purposes, closed-source projects, whatever you want as long as you don't use their source code.
Short Answer: no
Longer Answer: in an economic sense, and assuming that the firm seeks to maximize profits, the only "justification" necessary for a price is the fact that customers are willing to pay it - so, no
This is where the law of diminishing returns kicks in...
Many people, when shown a 60" screen at a reasonable viewing distance, can't tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. The added resolution of UHDTV would only be of benefit on a large movie screen from a close viewing distance. But movies implemented the ideal screen resolution decades ago... It's called film.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
You may recognize this text, from our Declaration of Independence. The framers of the Constitution were protecting these inalienable rights when they wrote our Constitution. You will notice that *privacy* is not among those rights listed.
The wiretapping law was passed with the intent of protecting our rights, particularly life and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, turbulent times with violent acts by religious and political radicals have made it become necessary for our government to be vigilant in protecting us. Your post smacks of an it-will-never-happen-to-me attitude towards terrorism. I suspect that you would take a different tone if you were, or someday will be, directly affected by a sensational, violent act.
I sincerely hope that never happens to you, or anyone else. Fortunately, as illustrated by the article, the government is taking steps to protect you.
When I downloaded and installed iTunes 7, I was rather stunned to see the new interface. It doesn't even remotely resemble a standard Mac OS X Aqua application. It looks... well, almost like a gray Windows application. Or a Java application. Yuck. Dear Apple, please bring back the old, standard look and feel. Enough said!
AFAIK, garbage collection may be enabled or disabled as a compiler option. If you don't like it, then just disable it and carry on.
The parent comment had the HTML truncated for some reason... But According to Matlab, the above expression tallies up to a very large number. Now I'm satisfied.
I was at first skeptical when Apple said there are "millions of configurations" for the new Mac Pros. So I tested it out...
Based on the options from the Apple Store configuration page, the total combinations possible is given by 3 * 6 * 3 * 2 * 2 * 2 * 6 * 4 * 4 * 2 * 4 * 2 * 2 * 4 * 2 * 3 * 5 * 2
Multiple dates have been claimed as the birthday for the internet - so let's settle this by checking Wikipedia.
According to Wikipedia - the gold standard for such important questions - the internet was conceived on October 12, 1492. (Also worth noting, Carl Friedrich Gauss was the first person to hold the title of "webmaster".)
The Helsinki Declaration is an international guideline governing the use of human subjects in research:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki_Declaration
Developed countries have very careful protocols in place to ensure that human subjects are treated carefully. I work in medical research, and I have filled out many proposals for human research. They will *not* begin using prisoners or other "disposable" subjects. By rules of the National Institutes of Health, medical students are not even allowed to willingly volunteer to be research subjects, for the possibility that they might be pressured by their attending physicians.
The Institutional Review Board (as we use in the States, other countries have similar safeguards) makes it an order of magnitude harder to have research approved if it involves prisoners or other "vulnerable populations", as they are called in this context. There may, however, be an increase in the price necessary to recruit volunteers.
"But then why not just get a dvr?"
Have you ever seen a DVR that you can fit in your pocket?
It's true that many games are altered to be easier, between their Japanese and US releases. By contrast, note one game that became harder when released in the US - Final Fantasy VII. The American release featured the never-before-seen Ruby and Emerald Weapons, the super-hard optional monsters that you could fight solely for the purpose of glory. They were not available in the Japanese release, and many hard-core gamers, myself included, spent some frustrating (but ultimately gratifying) time trying to defeat them. The good response to Ruby and Emerald prompted Square to include optional uber-monsters in many of their subsequent games.
I'm willing to hazard a guess on the nature of the redesigned enclosure.
Have you noticed how Apple likes a certain symmetry between applications (iTunes brushed aluminum, Safari brushed aluminum) and the Pro enclosure (G5 brushed aluminum)? Apple seems to be experimenting with a lighter, smooth metal theme as seen in the current Mail.app. I hereby conjecture that the new Pro Mac enclosure will likewise be a very light-colored, smooth metal with a similar look.
The issue is not whether Microsoft thinks they are "entitled" to this market. The issue is whether they have the capability to prevent Google from "taking food off their plate". In a competitive world, that's all that matters.
Your point is true about scientists having non-rational fundamentally held beliefs, and in my opinion this is not off-topic. The fundamentally held belief pertinent to this thread is, "The universe obeys certain unchanging laws which may be deduced through systematic observations."
The idea that constants are really "constant" is a long-held assumption - one that has generally held up to questioning, and this assumption is necessary for most real work to be conducted. However, it is just that - an assumption.
I am a scientist and I have learned the importance in clearly stating your assumptions prior to any analysis or conclusion. Generally, however, it is quite difficult for people to be aware of their own biases and assumptions. The key thing we need to do, in order to remain agile and open-minded, is to avoid thinking that our assumptions are invariant laws of the universe.
I installed Parallels on an Intel iMac recently. I created virtual machines with Ubuntu, Fedora Core, and FreeDOS (no reason, just because I can). All of them seem to work fine, except FreeDOS, but then in my experience DOS never worked well on my parents' Tandy either.
I installed Windows XP today and everything seems just fine and peppy. The IT guy who installed it commented that the installation took less time than on some of the Dells he worked with. My favorite part is the backup mechanism - I now have a fresh, no-spyware installation of Windows XP with Matlab, SPSS, and Access all installed. All of my documents will be stored on a Mac hard disk by a shared folder. So I went to the Finder and made a copy of the disk image, and when I want to revert to a fresh image, all I do is delete the working hard drive, and rename "image copy" to "image" and I'm back as good as new. 8)
I have one question for the forum - like many others, I wish there was native hardware acceleration. Wouldn't it be feasible by installing a Windows graphics driver that sends the hardware calls to Parallels, which then uses Mac native OpenGL to do hardware rendering? It doesn't seem that different from ordinary rendering in a window. This could be straightforward for PC OpenGL games, and for the DirectX games, perhaps the calls can be mapped to OpenGL functions. Perhaps with a speed penalty, but it should almost certainly be better than software rendering. You folks who know more about graphics rendering than I do - might this be possible?
This would be a disaster on the order of the AOL-Time Warner merger. Kiss your market cap goodbye.
That's it! I've finally found a name for my firstborn son! 8)
I have long supported vendor liability for software. I believe that it would allow commercial software and OSS to coexist better. And by the way, for those of you who didn't RTFA, the author doesn't imply that open-source contributors should be liable for bugs. Here's my take on the idea:
1. Open-source software generally costs nothing, and no warranty is made on the function of the product.
2. Commercial software generally costs money, and no warranty is made on the function of the product.
As of right now, there seems to be little difference - except that someone gets paid for making commercial products, which may or may not function as the consumer is led to believe. So let commercial software companies voluntarily increase the value of their products by making certain guarantees on performance.
For commercial software to stay relevant, I believe that every product needs to include a basic guarantee of the functions that it must perform. Note that when I say "guarantee", I don't mean that the company ensures that there are zero bugs - this is unrealistic for complicated products. By "guarantee" I mean that when the product fails to perform its specified functions, resulting in damage, the company should accept liability for the damages.
This wouldn't kill open source software. It would enhance the ability of end users to choose according to their needs. The "software guarantee" would be like a form of insurance. Customers for whom a product failure might be very costly would opt for the commercial product, in a risk-averse fashion. Customers for whom product failure would cause small-claims damage would likely opt for a free, no-guarantee product instead. There's my two cents.