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Comment My 4.5 year loves the iPad (Score 2) 165

In fact, she's not a fan of computers that have those old clunky "mice" anymore... Here's the best of the apps we've found:

Monkey Preschool Lunchbox https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monkey-preschool-lunchbox/id328205875?mt=8

Of course, the "Cut the Rope" and "Fruit Ninja" games are good in there "can't lose" modes.

Starfall app (same as the website)

PBS.org (warning - essentially streaming video - you need to moderate use of this one!)

Comment Re:Transparency=good, "dumbing down"=bad (Score 1) 211

Possibly, although I'm less pessimistic about their potential. I could see sites like WebMD and others revived a bit with this kind of "premier" EMR-interpretation service, although it would be entirely optional. As with other subscription services, customers will only pay if they feel the content is worthwhile, and a brand gets damaged if this is abused. For instance, use of TurboTax doesn't result in an influx of spam for dubious financial investments.

Comment Transparency=good, "dumbing down"=bad (Score 1) 211

There are some obvious benefits, and a number of potential drawbacks to this trend. I personally would like to have electronic access to my medical records, however I'm concerned about what the implications would be for health care quality and costs. I work in a sector that is involved in standardization of medical records, so take this with 2 grains of semi-informed salt, and call me in the morning:

Benefits

  • Some patients may have the interest, background, and temperament to actually improve their health by exploring their records and trends
  • Physicians will be held to a high level of scrutiny (by the patients) on the quality of their EMR entries

Drawbacks

  • Some patients may be confused or upset by what is in their records, costing more either in clarification or (in extreme cases) legal challenges
  • Physicians may feel compelled to either "dumb down" or "soften" established clinical terminology (e.g. obese), making it less efficient (and more error-prone) for medical professionals to interchange information about the patient through the EMR
  • In the longer run, assuming that patient portals to EMR data allow users access to the standardized EMR formats (a myriad of standards, really), I expect to see some new companies developing software to help patients interpret and track their healthcare (beyond what the portal provides). These sites would require patient approval, but would be free to analyze and recommend the EMR outside of the constraints of the "healthcare entity" policies. That is, the EMR is the raw "spreadsheet" of health statistics, and I would expect to see Intuit (Quicken) or Mint-like companies and services come along to make more sense of it.

Comment Re:Good luck keeping it on (Score 1) 92

I suspect my 8 year old, low-functioning ASD son would also not keep on a wrist bracelet, but I'm intrigued enough in this article that I'm going to buy him a cheap watch and see what he does. The form-factor may be an issue. Given my son's level of functioning (barely verbal), if there was a safe implant tech available (and affordable) that would let me track him within ~1/2 mile, and had a failsafe to start transmitting a locator signal to authorities once he exceeded the range of one of the families smartphones (or some device), I'd buy it, and I suspect many other parents of low-functioning ASD kids would as well.
Earth

New Batfish Species Found Under Gulf Oil Spill 226

eDarwin writes "Researchers have discovered two previously unknown species of bottom-dwelling fish in the Gulf of Mexico, living right in the area affected by the BP oil spill. Researchers identified new species of pancake batfishes, a flat fish rarely seen because of the dark depths they favor. They are named for the clumsy way they 'walk' along the sea bottom, like a bat crawling."

Comment Some != Most (except for large values of some) (Score 4, Interesting) 416

The problem is that, for most people, they grasp at straws and try to find some observable "cause" they can link with autism. It's quite possible that it has more to do with environmental and/or emotional stresses on the mother but people try to put the cart before the horse and "prove" that a vaccine - which may have been due to travel (hint - enviro/emo stress) or bad health conditions (same) - was the cause.

OK - as a parent of a six-year old with "primary" autism (e.g. low-functioning), I'd like to clear the air on a few points:

  • "Most" of the parents of autistic kids don't buy into the vaccine-causes-autism bunk - only a very vocal minority, which unfortunately our media amplifies
  • The mechanism behind autism is, as you undoubtedly know, not well-understood. In the absence of a good understanding, this kind of uninformed speculation thrives.
  • Lives have been lost as a result due to botched "Chelation" therapies, and money is being made by the self-styled DAN doctors who tell desperate parents what they want to hear

Please, move on, you're just embarrassing yourselves.

I have met a number of other parents of autistic kids. Those that are desperate enough to by into these theories are (often) otherwise rational, intelligent people. They are desperate for hope, and feel they owe it to their child to attempt some kind of cure. Whether this is due to denial (of the permanent disability) or unrelenting hope and a moral code that says "anything is better than nothing", I don't know. I do know I can relate to this, to a point, and was frustrated at the limited medical treatments available for my own son. Please have some sympathy for these misguided parents, as the real culprits are the alt-medicine charlatans who claimed to have found the cure, and the DAN doctors who really ought to know better.

Intel

Submission + - Newegg Customers Receiving Fake Intel Core 17 920 (overclock.net) 4

An anonymous reader writes: This first surfaced on TribalWar around seven o'clock last evening and on Overclock.net around midnight last night. Newegg still hasn't commented on this. It's not known whether this happened as fraud by another Newegg customer or it happened in shipping. The "processors" are made of Aluminum, and the "fans" look to be made of some kind of synthetic molded material. The "factory seal" was printed onto the box. The holographic stickers on the boxes were also faked.

More links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDU7Xoju4LM

http://www.tribalwar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=606966

Firefox

Submission + - Web Browser Grand Prix (tomshardware.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Tom's Hardware has put Apple Safari 4.04, Google Chrome 4.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla FireFox 3.6, and Opera 10.50 through a gauntlet of speed tests and time trials to find out which Web browser is truly the fastest. How does your favorite land in the rankings?

Feed Engadget: iPad launches on April 3rd, pre-orders begin March 12th (engadget.com)

Word from Apple is out -- so get your credit cards ready. The iPad will be launching on Saturday April 3rd, but you'll be able to plunk down cold, hard cash for it in just a week. Pre-orders will begin on March 12th for the US version (non-3G) for that April street date, with the 3G version coming in late April along with iPads for eager buyers in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK. US pricing will be as follows (just in case you need to figure out how many piggy banks to smash):
  • 16GB WiFi only -- $499
  • 32GB WiFi only -- $599
  • 64GB WiFi only -- $699
  • 16GB WiFi + 3G -- $629
  • 32GB WiFi + 3G -- $729
  • 64GB WiFi + 3G -- $829

iPad launches on April 3rd, pre-orders begin March 12th originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Upgrades

NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games 155

After a group of StarCraft II beta testers reported technical difficulties following the installation of NVIDIA driver update 196.75, Blizzard tech support found that the update introduced fan control problems that were causing video cards to overheat in 3D applications. "This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic graphics." NVIDIA said they were investigating the problem, took down links to the new drivers, and advised users to revert to 196.21 until the problem can be fixed.
Role Playing (Games)

Looking Back At Dungeons & Dragons 189

An anonymous reader sends in a nostalgic piece about Dungeons & Dragons and the influence it's had on games and gamers for the past 36 years. Quoting: "Maybe there was something in the air during the early '70s. Maybe it was historically inevitable. But it seems way more than convenient coincidence that Gygax and Arneson got their first packet of rules for D&D out the door in 1974, the same year Nolan Bushnell managed to cobble together a little arcade machine called Pong. We've never had fun quite the same way since. Looking back, these two events set today's world of gaming into motion — the Romulus and Remus of modern game civilization. For the rest of forever, we would sit around and argue whether games should let us do more or tell us better stories."
Games

Game Endings Going Out of Style? 190

An article in the Guardian asks whether the focus of modern games has shifted away from having a clear-cut ending and toward indefinite entertainment instead. With the rise of achievements, frequent content updates and open-ended worlds, it seems like publishers and developers are doing everything they can to help this trend. Quoting: "Particularly before the advent of 'saving,' the completion of even a simple game could take huge amounts of patience, effort and time. The ending, like those last pages of a book, was a key reason why we started playing in the first place. Sure, multiplayer and arcade style games still had their place, but fond 8, 16 and 32-bit memories consist more of completion and satisfaction than particular levels or tricky moments. Over the past few years, however, the idea of a game as simply something to 'finish' has shifted somewhat. For starters, the availability of downloadable content means no story need ever end, as long as the makers think there's a paying audience. Also, the ubiquity of broadband means multiplayer gaming is now the standard, not the exception it once was. There is no real 'finish' to most MMORPGs."

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