Comment Player Pianos... (Score 1) 117
The soundtrack for Steampunk.
Comment I'm one of those repairmen... (Score 5, Interesting) 211
After being laid off from the high-tech industry a few years back, I ended up working as a maintenance man at a large retirement facility. Our facility includes independent living, assisted living, and full-time managed care.
Since we're a not-for profit facility, there's a lot of incentive to do things in a cost effective manner, but at the same time, safety and well being of our residents is paramount. I've found myself having to repair all manner of medical equipment with little or no help from the manufacturer or seller. Things as simple as wheelchairs and walkers, to moderately complex like lift chairs and adjustable beds, to stuff like oxygen generators and emergency nurse-call equipment.
My employer would never be able to afford vendor reps to fix all this stuff, and so its left to myself and the rest of our small department. I'm the only one with a college education, and the only one from a high-tech background. The other guys have backgrounds in things like HVAC and carpentry. Simply put, the cost of health care equipment has far outstripped the ability for many facilities to support it and still provide affordable care. I was used to working with engineers, programmers, and big budgets until recently. The future of health care is not more tech, but taking the tech we have and making it cheaper and easier to maintain.
Since we're a not-for profit facility, there's a lot of incentive to do things in a cost effective manner, but at the same time, safety and well being of our residents is paramount. I've found myself having to repair all manner of medical equipment with little or no help from the manufacturer or seller. Things as simple as wheelchairs and walkers, to moderately complex like lift chairs and adjustable beds, to stuff like oxygen generators and emergency nurse-call equipment.
My employer would never be able to afford vendor reps to fix all this stuff, and so its left to myself and the rest of our small department. I'm the only one with a college education, and the only one from a high-tech background. The other guys have backgrounds in things like HVAC and carpentry. Simply put, the cost of health care equipment has far outstripped the ability for many facilities to support it and still provide affordable care. I was used to working with engineers, programmers, and big budgets until recently. The future of health care is not more tech, but taking the tech we have and making it cheaper and easier to maintain.
Comment Octopi are Awesome! (Score 5, Interesting) 482
I think that by understanding a creature as alien to us as an octopus, we're learning more about what is 'intelligence'. While they're not going to be developing a civilization any time soon, its cool to have an invertebrate that on many levels is closer to primate intelligence than many mammals.
Submission + - Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84
Shifty Jim writes: "Author Kurt Vonnegut died at the age 84 last night in his home in Manhattan. A literary and comic icon through most of his life, due mostly in part to his novels like "Slaughterhouse-five, Vonnegut was a prolific author, playwright, and essayist revered by American counter-culture. He will be missed."
Submission + - UK gamers charged more for inferior PS3
Jagdeep Poonian writes: "It appears as though Sony is laying the smack down on it's European launch:
"British gamers wanting to get their hands on the new Playstation 3 will have to pay £100 more than their American counterparts for an inferior machine. Sony today announced that the European version of its games console will only play a "limited number" of old Playstation 2 titles when it goes to sale next month.The American model, in contrast, has much better "backwards compatibility" and plays almost all the old Playstation games.The revelation has infuriated British computer games enthusiasts who say they are repeatedly treated like second class citizens by Sony."
URL: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2007/02/23/nplaystation123.xml
Go Sony, Go? I don't think this will vibe well with the gamers of Europe. Hmm."
Submission + - IBM won't support Unbreakable Linux
head_dunce writes: "It looks like
IBM is making Oracle back up their support claim for Unbreakable Linux. From the article,
"This means that if IBM software programs turn out to be incompatible with Oracle Enterprise Linux, then it will be up to Oracle — and not IBM — to resolve the issue," said IBM spokesman Matthew McMahon.
Will this force Oracle's Unbreakable Linux to be tested for compatibility certifications?"
Will this force Oracle's Unbreakable Linux to be tested for compatibility certifications?"
Journal SPAM: Class Warfare, with an Unarmed Opponent 1
Sanders's office came up with some interesting numbers here. If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Does the Internet Need a Major Capacity Upgrade? 357
wiggles writes "According to the Chicago Tribune, the recent surge of video sites such as Youtube and Google video are pushing the limits of the Internet's bandwidth, or soon will be. Pieter Poll, chief technology officer at Qwest Communications, says that traffic volumes are growing faster than computing power, meaning that engineers can no longer count on newer, faster computers to keep ahead of their capacity demands. Further, a recent report from Deloitte Consulting raised the possibility that 2007 would see Internet demand exceed capacity. Admittedly, this seems a bit sensationalist, but are we headed for a massive slowdown of the whole internet?"
Feed Hacking My Child's Brain, Part 4 (wired.com)
Submission + - Opera CTO hits back at Microsoft's standards push
Michael writes: "Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie hit back today at Microsoft's push to fast track Office Open XML into an ISO standard in a
blistering article on CNET. He also took a swipe at Open Document Format: "I'm no fan of either specification. Both are basically memory dumps with angle brackets around them. If forced to choose one, I'd pick the 700-page specification (ODF) over the 6,000-page specification (OOXML). But I think there is a better way.". The better way being the existing universally understood standards of HTML and CSS. Putting this to the test, Håkon has published a book using HTML and CSS."
Submission + - MP3 Patent Troubles
Vengance Daemon writes: "The New York Times and many other sources are reporting that Microsoft lost the patent case regarding "...the way the Windows Media Player software from Microsoft plays audio files using MP3..." They go on to say "If the ruling stands, Apple and hundreds of other companies that make products that play MP3 files, including portable players, computers and software, could also face demands to pay royalties to Alcatel."
At first glance, it appears that Fedora, and the other distributions that did not include MP3 capabilities in their products because of patent concerns were quite right. Ogg Vorbis works great for music, and many commercial players support it."
At first glance, it appears that Fedora, and the other distributions that did not include MP3 capabilities in their products because of patent concerns were quite right. Ogg Vorbis works great for music, and many commercial players support it."
Submission + - Creative Commons Licenses Version 3.0 Released
lithis writes: "A new version of the Creative Commons licenses has been released. What's new: “we have spun off the "generic" license to be the CC US license and created a new generic license ... we are ensuring that all CC jurisdiction licenses and the CC unported license have consistent, express treatment of the issues of moral rights and collecting society royalties ... [the license now explicitly declares that] a person may not misuse the attribution requirement of a CC license to improperly assert or imply an association or relationship with the licensor or author ... licenses will now include the ability for derivatives to be relicensed under a "Creative Commons Compatible License" ... the licenses include minor clarifications to the language of the licenses to take account of the concerns of Debian and MIT.”"
Submission + - With Google Apps, It's Game On
w1z4rd writes: "The Economic Time's reports that when Google released its Google Apps Premier Edition, it sent a clear message to Microsoft that the market for office software was up for grabs. What remains to be seen are how Microsoft will respond, whether users will adopt Google's offerings in significant enough numbers, and how the competitive landscape may unfold over the next few years."
Journal Journal: Control America
"I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it."
-- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to cabinet member Shimon Peres, October 3rd, 2001, as reported on Kol Y'Israel radio.
Submission + - Duct tape & tranquilizers for pyschotic astron
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/23/astronaut .plan.ap/index.html
"It turns out NASA has detailed, written procedures for dealing with a suicidal or psychotic astronaut in space. The documents, obtained this week by The Associated Press, say the astronaut's crewmates should bind his wrists and ankles with duct tape, tie him down with a bungee cord and inject him with tranquilizers if necessary." — CNN
