Do you mind elaborating? If you honestly found software enjoyable (and presumably you had a decent lifestyle and good hours, or could have found it) why did you leave it for medicine?

Do you regret it? Have you been able to use any skills from your previous life in your new career?

I'm facing a similar choice. Thanks.

I think your argument is valid for Israel but when you are talking about the US the dynamics change. There's really only three places you can launch cheap rockets at the US from: Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. These countries are in our back yard and sphere of influence and we would definitely stop attackers before they launched (see: cuban missile crisis). That means the only remaining place to hit us from is across the ocean. You CANNOT build something cheaply that will be able to cross the Atlantic or Pacific and still be aimed at a target when it gets here. Plus the intercepting missiles won't have to fly as far so they might actually be cheaper. We also have systems to detect ICBM launches since hurling a nuke halfway across the planet takes a LOT of launch energy and is easily detectable from space. Cruise missiles are harder to detect in the launch phase but no one would argue that they will ever be cheaper than interceptors. Cruising 3,000 miles without being shot down is way more expensive than shooting down what is basically a fast aircraft.

It doesn't amaze you that you can pay over 60 times as much but it STILL is cheaper to operate? And what's the cost of 100 million of those bulbs going 24/7 in terms of military spending to secure energy supply or carbon pollution?

The difference is that one you have to physically break into, the other you can break into over the internet through Tor or a botnet or a virus.

Everyone who works in a medical office is required to be educated about and sign a HIPAA compliance form. Every employee is liable.

Phone lines are more difficult to break into than a protocol that is passed over the public internet. At least for now.

Damnit, I just read through the whole manual and there was nothing about satellites. You have disappointed me sir.

Exactly. Email is NOT secure. You don't know how many servers your email passes through or what they do with it, and you can't guarantee the receiver is protecting the information. Encrypted email is far harder to implement in your network of contacts than a fax machine. Even then, if public key vendors can be hacked/spoofed/compromised, then how can you say encrypted email on a private small business server won't be? Doctors pretty much are obligated to use fax or they will almost certainly end up violating HIPAA.

The IT industry has not been able to provide a superior or even equal solution to fax yet.

Because you still have to figure out during what hours your colleagues on the other side of the world are asleep and at work. You'd probably have to look up the conversion to local solar time anyway to figure this out.

Care to start naming names? My friend's phone would experience extreme UI lag then crash every few days to the point where she had to remove the battery to fix it (simple power cycle didn't remove the lag). Went away after I uninstalled Advanced Task Killer.

I think you are applying the lessons of the past a bit too liberally. For the last 15 years or so, "the web changes fast" has been quite good advice. But now it is maturing. The web has found a lot of roles that it fills quite well and, more importantly, has developed its own institutions. Amazon, Google, EBay, Slashdot (whatever their corporate overlords are called, I forget) - these companies have all been around for a while and they all have reason to keep innovating to stay on top.

Like it or not, parts of the web have become so ingrained into our lives that they have become more like utilities than luxury brands. Facebook is here to stay. It has critical mass and it offers really good features- and is working hard on offering features you don't even know you want yet. You see, that's the key. The internet's modern institutions are making money, and they certainly have the motivation and resources to create (or buy) the next best thing. Gone are the days when some guy in his garage could topple the current leader overnight.

The critical difference between Facebook and AOL? It's the same as the difference between Facebook and MySpace. Both thought they were content companies, but then competing content came out and they were made obselete (ie, AOL->Yahoo and the rest of the internet, MySpace->YouTube and then Facebook). Both missed the real opportunities in their niche- for AOL it was offering (broadband) internet access and for MySpace it was social networking.

The beauty of Facebook is that they don't pretend to be a content company. Rather, they are a utility, one that will integrate and improve the presentation and accessibility of any future content type. I'm not saying Facebook is invincible, because its income looks a bit small for the number of eyeballs it has and there's always the risk of mass user revolt over privacy concerns, but I'd give it a better than even chance.

Oh great, the old "education is much better in the 3rd world" argument. Please. If their education systems were better than ours, they would have better economies.

Here's the reality. In third world countries they sit around memorizing things all day. So when it comes time to take a math or history or english test, they blow it out of the water. But when it comes time to solve a problem, take risks, or do something new, they're... at a complete loss because they don't know what "creativity" is.

The American system is actually pretty damn good. Maybe not in terms of the worst students, but certainly in terms of the best students.

If you haven't already realized, Slashdot is a terrible place to ask this kind of question. People here have a strong individualistic, anti-government slant.

Anyway, I think the best thing you can do is install some red lights, then post police officers in motorcycles around these lights. Every time they see someone break the red light rule, flag them down and give them a ticket. At first the officers will be constantly busy and will be raking in a lot of revenue. Word will spread fast, and eventually you will see people obeying the rules, at least in the intersections where police are known to be. Videotape the intersection with an HD camera for documentation. Later you can buy radar guns for the traffic officers.

You have to make sure the money from tickets goes to the general fund, NOT the police department. Otherwise this will cause all sort of problems.

Beyond that, you should hire a company (or start your own) that can work with you and the city council to implement technological solutions like red light cameras and speeding cameras. The best solution however, is policing because it is proven and the simplest to implement off the bat.

Not nearly as hard as some of the other proposals such as shooting it down with lasers or sending up robotic ships to collect the debris.

One idea would be to spray large amounts of even smaller debris- fine dust- into these orbits. Perhaps from the moon. It would increase drag for everything, and anything that didn't have active boosting capability (ie, anything that wasn't an active satellite) would eventually fall back to earth, including all debris. The downside would be that satellites would have to carry more propellant to maintain their orbits, increasing the needed booster size and thus overall cost. Not pretty but feasible, effective and fairly benign. If enough debris accumulates up there in the next century we just may have to do this by virtue of not having any other choice.

Another option might be to require that all satellite components be made of or be alloyed with iron so that future satellites and spacecraft could generate magnetic fields to deflect the debris.