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Submission + - Child Death Sparks Post-PC Era at Seattle Hospital (wsj.com) 2

Submitted by kye4u
kye4u writes: The wall street journal reports that 'At Seattle Children’s Hospital, the death of an infant spurred its CIO, Wes Wright, to install a new generation of PCs providing faster boot-up times. Called zero clients because they contain no conventional operating system of their own and instead rely almost entirely on data and applications transmitted from a server, the new devices can shave almost an hour per day of wasted time per employee. Wright won’t be going back to traditional PCs, even for employees who don’t handle critical cases. “The speed and ubiquity the staff now has – if I took that away I’d have a riot on my hands,” Wright tells CIO Journal.' The CIO claims that making the switch to dumb terminals will save the hospital 6 million over 5 years. I don't see that savings. Is the hospital really better off?

Comment Weakest link principle (Score 2) 335

by kye4u (#41387093) Attached to: TSA Spending $245 Million On "Second Generation" Body Scanners
Why are they expending money on new versions of the scanners when not all airports have the first version?

Even if one assumed that the scanners could detect everything (which they can't), it would make since to at least have a version 1 scanner at all the airports.

So TSA purchases version 2 scanners that go into some airports. Terrorists just go to airports that have version 1. Oh wait, they can just go to airports that don't have any scanners. Weakest link principle.
Android

Submission + - FBI vs. Google: The Legal Fight to Unlock Phones (allthingsd.com)

Submitted by kye4u
kye4u writes: Even with passwords, full disk encryption, and/or any other methods that is used to secure data on a mobile device, uses may be at the mercy of mobile os makers. Law enforcement agencies want to be able to get Google, Apple, and other mobile os makers to unlock the phones and access the data.

According to WSJ, "Google earlier this year defied the FBI’s demand to unlock an alleged pimp’s cellphone powered by its Android software—even after the agency obtained a search warrant, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Angwin. The refusal underscores a battle brewing between technology companies and the U.S. government over whether law-enforcement agents have the right to obtain passwords to crack into smartphones of suspects, particularly because those passwords are often the keys to a wide assortment of content troves, including email, calls, address lists and text messages."

Comment Dynamic pricing is a new word for and old concept (Score 1) 294

by kye4u (#41251583) Attached to: Google Patents Profit-Maximizing Dynamic Pricing
This dynamic pricing idea is an extension of something that have been practiced by merchants for a very long time. Dynamic pricing is just price discrimination among different types of customers.

One method to discriminate is in favor of the most loyal customers. Airlines and hotels are examples of businesses that provide loyalty reward points that can be redeemed for discounts and fringe benefits.

Another method is to discriminate in favor of least loyal or new customers. Cable companies like Comcast do this. Here is how. They offer ridiculously low discounts for their cable packages for first time customers for the first x amount of months. The customers that threaten to leave, which would be the least loyal customers, are offered discounts on their current plans and packages if they stay. The people who don't get any discount are the most loyal. In fact, they can expect their cable bill to increase each month for channels/services that they don't really need or want.

Comment Re:Irrelevance and mediocrity (Score 2) 112

by kye4u (#41232879) Attached to: Leaked Photo Shows Touch-Screen BlackBerry 10 Phone

The entire reason I loved my blackberry was its keyboard-centeredness. Why the heck do I want a business phone that has a crappy touch keyboard? Theres android and iPhone for that.

I guess we still get the BES stuff, but which users are actually going to want a blackberry? If youre going to mandate a business phone, why mandate one that sucks at being a business phone?

I mean, I guess what they had wasnt selling phones, and their market share was shrinking-- seems logical to make a change, right? Except they just killed 80% of what made blackberry so popular to begin with. Being just another touch-device clone isnt really the way to claw your way back into the game.

This is the classic innovator's dilemma. It is how once great companies can miss the boat on new markets. They are constrained and encumbered by the demands and wants of their current customer base, which are responsible for the huge profits. Satisfying current customer demands can result in not allocating enough resources needed to develop technologies for emerging/new markets. It is easy to ignore new markets as they do not initially provide the profit opportunities that the companies current market provides.

Comment Lego mindstorm and programming (Score 1) 307

by kye4u (#41228871) Attached to: Estonia To Teach Programming In Schools From Age 6
Although I applaud the initiative of Estonia, I think that using the lego mindstorm would be a better first step to introducing your kids to programming. Here is why. (By the way, I am a grad student who is working with kids at a local middle school with the mindstorm)
1) Motivation: Many kids are naturally excited about seeing stuff move and do stuff, and therefore robotics is a very nice programming application for kids.
2) Logic: Mindstorm GUI has a nice interface that is easy for kids to use because the GUI uses visual logic blocks. It is pretty much like flow diagram that the kids can build to represent the logic. This flow diagram is of course is compiled into real code behind the scenes.
3) Problem solving skills: Kids can do really neat experiments with the mindstorm such line following and wall following. These experiments are fun and allow the kids to really fine-tune their problem solving skills.

Comment Innovation is often a relative term (Score 1) 287

by kye4u (#41181117) Attached to: Is Innovation the Most Abused Word In Business?
What is innovative shouldn't be relative in theory, but in practice it almost always is.
When people use the word innovative to describe something, it is based on their prior knowledge and insight. Joe-average may see some technology or device as innovative and requiring huge intellectual leaps, while Joe-tech may see the same technology as a minor incremental improvement or perhaps obvious.
The difference is that Joe-tech may have domain expertise in areas related to that technology and is aware of similar technologies that others in the field have created. Joe-tech may also see that the intellectual leaps needed to create this technology are really very small steps based on prior art and the fact that joe-tech is also skilled in the art.

Comment Patent system broken (Score 5, Insightful) 1184

The patent system is broken. The real question is should the patents that Apple claims Samsung infringed upon been granted. Imagine if this happened in the car industry. Only the first car company to put anti-lock brakes on their cars would ever be allowed to use the technology. Good ideas get copied. That is what is called progress. Only the specific implementation of that idea should be patented.

Comment Re:Why the link to nutbag Breitbart instead of AP? (Score 2) 1184

Thanks Timothy... not.

In the case of Apple, it's clear that Samsung was directly copying Apple on many fronts - hell, look at their Samsung Stores or their power adapters. This case however, will immediately be appealed and this is nowhere near the last we'll hear of it.

Copying happens in every industry (i.e. fashion, auto industry, etc...). It is what smart companies do. The real question is are the patents really valid.

Comment Patent system broken (Score 1) 216

by kye4u (#41116933) Attached to: Apple and Samsung Both Get South Korea Bans
The patent system is broken. The real question is should the patents that Apple claims Samsung infringed upon been granted. Imagine if this happened in the car industry. Only the first car company to put anti-lock brakes on their cars would ever be allowed to use the technology. Good ideas get copied. That is what is called progress. Only the specific implementation of that idea should be patented.

Comment Re:This differs from CrowdRE how, exactly? (Score 1) 37

by kye4u (#40963905) Attached to: Georgia Tech Launches "Titan" Malware Analysis System
"The Georgia Tech version sounds like a 'me too' thing" Georgia Tech released its beta version in May. See the FTA or http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?nid=132601 "I don't know that I'd trust a university to ensure the functional privacy of something" Titan is run by GTRI, which is a non-profit entity. I think that a non-profit entity at a University is more likely to be considerate of privacy issues than a for profit startup, CrowdRE, who has to report to investors that have invested 26 million dollars in venture capital.

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