I am a full-time software engineer working in Health IT, specialising in in-hospital cross-system integration. Our business is accepting the data feeds from lab systems, radiology systems, ED information systems, and patient administration systems, and then present the results as a cohesive single health record.

Well, you'd think standards and compliance would make it easy, but that assumes when people say they meet the standard... they ACTUALLY meet the standard. Format is one thing, but ensuring correct sequence and field validation is something else entirely. Unlike HTTP and the internet, in health there are no business drivers for integration compliance.

On the contrary - large companies (like Cerner) who can offer an "all-in-one-integrated-solution" benefit from the lack of conformance. The real obstacle is not setting up trusted health vaults, that's the easy part. The difficulty is populating it with live information, from live systems, with full trust.

Of course, that's before you mention terminology. Does a haemoglobin result mean the same thing from two different lab systems? How about normal ranges? Blood glucose or urine glucose? Presenting complaint vs discharge diagnosis? I'm not trying to be overly pessimistic, but this is a much more difficult problem than simply sticking up a database somewhere.

You are incorrect.

Google is not "halting innovation", it is following the advice of Steve Jobs (remember him?) and learning focus.

Google has not pulled money from its autonomous vehicle development.

It has not reduced the spend it has allocated to significant long term investments such as Google+ (there is nothing short-term about investing in a social network, it has taken Facebook 5 years to reach its current valuation)

In fact, Google has assigned one of its two company founders specifically to fostering new innovation.

Focus means that you don't throw a pile of muck at the wall and see what sticks. That leaves customers and users with a bad taste in their mouth: e.g. Google Buzz.

Focus means you put the entire weight of your brand and pocket book behind a single idea, and you make it stick: e.g. iPod.

Focus means having real innovation, and ensuring the market is ready to follow, like Xbox, Android, and iPhone. It takes a lot of innovation and focus to ensure you end up with iOS, not WebOS. With Facebook, not mySpace. You can't do that when you are spreading yourself too thin, and your brand name takes a beating as a result.

Google's reputation and brand has not gained a single benefit from their investment in health. Why would they continue to do so?

Humans like to learn, and our favourite way of learning is by experimenting. We do it when we are little and put toys in our mouth, and we do it as grown ups when we put strange food in our mouth.

It's natural that we would like to learn about different social experiences to our own. Playing or watching a character different to us gives a new perspective on our own life. The more extreme the character, the more we stand to learn. This is the reason people like soaps on TV, and its also the reason we like playing as a sneaky assassin in the renaissance.

Morality (whether actions are good or bad) is without question, a matter of perspective. We need broad experience and a wide understanding of the how the world operates in order to have a healthy moral compass. I know it is a stretch, but sometimes playing the bad guy helps us learn what defines the good guys.

Ask yourself 3 questions:

1) Will the kids want to play computer games? Of course, they are kids, what else are computers for at that age? That means XP.

2) Who will help them with the computer? Answer: other kids, parents and teachers. I bet your bottom dollar kids will get much better teaching from others with XP compared to Ubuntu, purely because of the install base and general familiarity.

3) Is the 2 year limit on XP relevant? Of course not, in 2 years as an XP machine it'll be due for a re-install anyway (if not before).

With half a minute of google searching, I found half a dozen references to experiments already using Electromyography to drive computer behaviour.

I remembered that most of the new work on prosthetic arms these days focuses on using EMG to drive the arm behaviour (including Dean Kamen's new bionic arm), and there's a bunch of stuff done (and papers released) with driving the mouse for people with disabilities.

Surely this patent application has to be thrown out, and isn't Microsoft just wasting the Patent Office (and our) time with applications that are so easily shown to have been demonstrated before?

Look Ma, No Pen! Electrical Impulses Can Reproduce Handwriting
SmartHand: Merging Mind and Machine
Application of facial electromyography in computer mouse access for people with disabilities
Demonstrating the feasibility of using forearm electromyography for muscle-computer interfaces
Electromyography sensor based control for a hand exoskeleton

What's the original part here? The patent application does not specify any specific software application (just talks about interpreting the signals), so all the prior art should hold.

This is the most true thing I've ever read on slashdot. Its worse for me... All my coworkers in my room don't speak English at home, so instead of being able to ignore it as background noise, I have this incredibly distracting drone of Indian or Indonesian - more distracting because your subconscious keeps trying to make out the words even though its impossible.