But Hospitals are modifying their procedures as needed to deal with those new threats.
The Dallas hospital with the Ebola patient had recently been trained for Ebola, but a guy shows up from Liberia and they sent him home with antibiotics for two days before he came back and they realized what he had. This does not reassure me.
Dell thinks they can be Apple, but don't have the walled garden that makes it work.
So, how does the "walled garden" make the MacBook Air such a popular laptop?
I've read that the semen of Ebola survivors can transmit Ebola for months after their clinical recovery.
You're way into [ citation needed ] territory there.
In 2009, Dell caught headlines with its premium Adamo slim laptop, which was considered a competitor to the MacBook Air at the time.
Yes. "at the time." And remember the Dell competitor to the iPod? There are several problems for Dell here. 1) They are a maker of commodity hardware trying to move upmarket. But the fewer units they sell, the worse their economies of scale, so how to really make something special, without having to charge too much? Apple doesn't have that problem, in part because they sell 6-8 figures of even their high-end products. 2) Sure, Slashdot readers may be an exception, but most people who want Android and Windows machines rarely want expensive ones. So most of their target market will either want a cheaper Android tablet, or, if they want to spend more, they'll get an iPad.
I think the best Dell can hope for is to be a niche player, a slightly bigger version of their subsidiary Alienware. 15 years ago, Dell and Microsoft both seemed unstoppable, but both have repeatedly stumbled since then. My, how the mighty have fallen.
But how many people in the U.S. acquire HIV or AIDS in a hospital setting? That's a much better comparison for how Ebola is transmitted.
Not at all. HIV is relatively hard to catch for various reasons. Ebola you can get from a cough or sneeze from an infected person (a small bit of saliva doesn't count as "airborne," apparently), or by touching something an infected person sweated on. It only takes a few virus particles. I read about reporters given a tour of a hospital in one infected country, and they were told "Don't touch the walls!"
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals, and that's just pneumonia, C. difficile, MRSA, and other things much less scary that Ebola, which you can get from touching something with just a few virus particles in it. I think the people who are claiming Ebola is only a problem in Africa due to ignorance and substandard medical care are fooling themselves: if it gets to the U.S., the hospitals here are unlikely to perform up to the standards required.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
Some technologies just don't make sense. At least with our current battery and silicon constraints.
A nice tablet at $500 didn't make sense... until the iPad came out. (Some early speculation had it priced at @$1,000). An expensive smartphone without a keyboard didn't make sense... until the iPhone. A laptop that is
Apple has a track record of pushing limits, and of not releasing products that aren't highly refined. If they come out with an "iWatch," I'd bet it will be something special. And the following iterations will only improve it.
This time there is no SJobs.
True, but I think that's overrated as a problem for Apple. Jobs was there long enough to leave his mark, and he knew for a while that he was dying. He taught a lot to many people there, including starting the little-talked-about Apple University. Apple now (and for a long time) has been far more than Jobs. I think they'll be a bit different than when Jobs was in control, but those differences are more likely to be positive than negative.
Let's admit it: all these smart watches are like MP3 players, pre-iPod: early pioneers, but destined to be forgotten. Once Apple enters the field, the category will take off. You don't have to be an Apple fanboi to see that coming.
Also predictable: Apple's entry will not be cheap, will be criticized for lacking features and openness, but buyers won't care. Samsung will rush a copycat revision of their entry, and the press will laud various "iWatch killers," but they won't be terribly successful.
iPod, IPhone, iPad: we've seen this story before.
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred. -- Superchicken
