Comment Re:Makes sense (Score 1) 232
And Cluj specifically is in Transylvania
And Cluj specifically is in Transylvania
I'm sorry --- how is this insightful?
As long as the system is so clearly corrupted by money, though, people aren't going to trust health care professionals.
Is the system "clearly corrupted by money" in all countries? In most of the developed world, medicine is government-funded and often fairly tightly-regulated to keep costs low.
As long as big pharma is taking meds off the market and replacing them with inferior versions in order to drive down demand for a generic and force people to continue to pay them, we're all going to know it's a scam.
[citation needed]
As long as doctors continue to prescribe whatever drugs the reps are wining and dinind them over, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Again, in most developed nations, there are pretty tight regulations against doctors accepting "gifts" from pharmaceutical reps. The main exception I know of is "assistance" with going to conferences (which coincidentally may be in Las Vegas or Hawaii, say). That said, a doctor who would chance losing their high-paying job in exchange for a trip worth a few thousand dollars has a rather poor assessment of risk vs reward, in my opinion.
As long as hospitals continue to charge whatever the market will bear, we're all going to know it's a scam.
Ahh... okay. So your argument doesn't apply to most of the developed world. In fact, it doesn't apply to Wales, where this outbreak occurred, and thus provides no insight into this actual case.
If you want to learn nothing about the Toughpad, but have fun while doing so, I suggest the following article: http://lookrobot.co.uk/2013/01/14/the-panasonic-toughpad-press-conference/
A subtler prank that I pulled on a friend who left himself logged in to one of the public undergrad labs (where there was the risk that an actual asshole would delete your stuff, send email as you, or something similarly cruel) was to add "echo 'sleep 1' >>
A week later, when it was 5 minutes before a submission deadline and he was yelling at the terminal to finish logging in (since it was taking 2-3 minutes for the prompt to appear by that point), I realized that I had probably gone too far.
If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
To be fair, one of the "new colours" should be used to indicate Smoke on the Water.
Nice cover story... what are you really looking to do with that other hand while coding?
Maybe he's using functors in Haskell.
When there is no electricity supply in the villages, this is an innovative way of giving 'power' to the people!
A few years ago, I read about a tangentially-related (mobile phones without in-home electricity) situation with Mennonites using cell phones. (Apologies for any factual errors in my recollection below -- it was an article I vaguely remember from reading an in-flight magazine maybe six years ago.)
Like the Amish, the Mennonites are nominally supposed to live simple lives free of modern trappings. However, some Mennonite farmers have devised a rationalization for using cell phones. In particular, they can be really handy to be able to communicate short messages across the fields, without having to trek on foot or by horse. (They had some religious argument, where they didn't really own the phones -- but were just "borrowing" them from outsiders, or some such other way of resolving the cognitive dissonance.) In this article I read, they explained that, while the farmers didn't have electricity in their own homes, they would regularly travel to nearby "modern" shops to sell their produce or buy supplies. While there, they would leave their phones with the shopkeepers to charge up. In theory, the shopkeepers could have charged them a small fee for this service, but usually would just offer it up as a nice way to help their loyal customers.
So, that said, there are ways to charge cell phones without fully electrifying a village. If there's a single, shared charging point (either in a shop or in some public building), it should be enough. Furthermore, it's a lot easier to install a single mobile phone charging station than it is to run power lines and/or land line phone service to the entire village. Strictly speaking, the charging point doesn't even have to be in the village, as long as someone can be trusted to take everyone's free phones to the nearest charging spot (which could be a few hours away) ~once/week.
It takes generations to break the cycle (if in fact the cycle will be broken).
Exactly. I'm a Canadian living in Romania for the past five years, and have been following Romanian politics as well as I can (as an "outsider") during this time. Of course, since I also have no long-term stake in the outcome of Romania's political chaos (as I will move home eventually, and could just move home sooner if things get really bad), I like to think that I'm a little more objective (though I'm undoubtedly somewhat influenced by friends and coworkers who do have a vested interest).
Here are some relevant background tidbits for this story:
As the parent alluded to, the root problem is that both sides of this particular farce are backed by people who got their power under the former communist regime. Nastase and Basescu were both well-connected prior to the revolution. Ponta was a child in 1989, and hence has no connections of his own to the old regime, but was trained through his political career by Nastase.
As a foreigner, I mostly shake my head at the current situation, and am not terribly optimistic about either outcome in the upcoming referendum. Politics in Romania truly does seem to be a choice between a giant douche and a turd sandwich. I would like to see things improve, as the country and people are fantastic. I am confident that Romanian politics will eventually get better, but probably not within my time here.
Assuming the blog post was indeed written by the real Steve Mann, a guy who has been doing this wearable computing stuff for a while, I think we can trust that it's true. (And if he didn't write it, I would expect to hear something from him, saying that it's a fake.)
It's also not his first altercation related to his wearable stuff. See, for example, this Slashdot story from 2002.
When asked for comment, I hear one of the lawyers replied "ORA-01337: Message 1337 not found".
But how do they get the laser there? If it were near the surface, a laser could be used. But deeper in the body, liver, brain, etc., how do you get laser light in there to cause the drug bomb to be dropped?
It's been a while since I studied optical therapy (before dropping out a PhD program in medical biophysics), but I'm pretty sure I remember that you can use fiber-optics. I think it's relatively "easy" (and not too invasive) to poke the patient with a fine fiber-optic cable (guided by ultrasound, I suppose) that delivers the laser light at the target site. In theory, I suppose they might be able to leave the fiber-optics in the patient for a while to deliver treatment over a few days/weeks (like a sort of "optical catheter").
Now, I only had about four weeks of classes on optical therapy 6 years ago (as part of a course that also covered thermal and radiation therapies), so I'm only barely more qualified to write on the subject than most anonymous internet jackasses. That said, I do have a clear memory of slides from class with patients with fiber-optic cables poking into their heads or other parts of their bodies, so I remember that it can be done.
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to invent it.