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Comment Re:cost vs sales curve (Score 2) 629

by lbk70 (#40314105) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Are Hearing Aids So Expensive?

... I know hearing aids aren't as covered as other medical devices, treatments, and prescriptions but they're not 100% out of pocket very often either.

They are in fact 100% out of pocket most of the time, in my personal experience, even if you have congenital hearing loss (not the age-related kind). About 25 years ago, the insurance companies would sometimes pay some part of the expense, but not much since then.

Comment Re:Simple Economics of Scale (Score 2) 629

by lbk70 (#40314021) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Why Are Hearing Aids So Expensive?
While the manufacture of custom ITC/CIC hearing aids seems to justify the prices, once they became the norm, the price for behind-the-ear aids jumped from $600 to $2K. I had profound hearing loss and could only use the non-custom behind-the-ear aids. I paid extra for ear molds to attach them to my ears. There is no justification for the price for these kinds of aids.

I have since lost all of my hearing and graduated to cochlear implants. I pay $2K per year just for repair insurance now that the initial warranty period is up. Then I pay another $1K for rechargeable and disposable batteries every 1-2 years. None of these expenses is covered by any insurance. How can people with tight budgets afford this? If I get laid off [again] in a tight economy, is it reasonable that my only choice is to be deaf when I run out of batteries or a part breaks?
Math

First Self-Replicating Creature Spawned In Conway's Game of Life 241

Posted by Soulskill from the emergent-gameplay dept.
Calopteryx writes "New Scientist has a story on a self-replicating entity which inhabits the mathematical universe known as the Game of Life. 'Dubbed Gemini, [Andrew Wade's] creature is made of two sets of identical structures, which sit at either end of the instruction tape. Each is a fraction of the size of the tape's length but, made up of two constructor arms and one "destructor," play a key role. Gemini's initial state contains three of these structures, plus a fourth that is incomplete. As the simulation progresses the incomplete structure begins to grow, while the structure at the start of the tape is demolished. The original Gemini continues to disassemble as the new one emerges, until after nearly 34 million generations, new life is born.'"
Image

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."

Comment Dear old Dad (Score 1) 876

by lbk70 (#27995821) Attached to: The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer
The only one that really bothered me was the hard drive/memory mix-up, or lack of differentiation, my father used whenever talking about his computer. Even worse, he always took my brother's word as The last word in computer technology, even though he's a dentist and I was building computers for a living. He must have thought technology was not for "girls".

Comment Re:The desktop is dead (Score 1) 1365

by lbk70 (#27995637) Attached to: Why Linux Is Not Yet Ready For the Desktop
You can't really be so sure about the impending death of desk/laptops. I believe you may have missed the Google outage that had cloud users in an uproar last week: http://www.macworld.com/article/140641/2009/05/googleoutage.html . I think the general web-using public finally learned you can get burned by not running apps on your own desktop/laptop, or by not storing your own data.
The Courts

Appeals Court Stays RIAA Subpoena Vs. Students 266

Posted by kdawson from the long-time-coming dept.
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The procedures used by the RIAA the past 5 years in suing 'John Does' without their knowing about it have never been subjected to scrutiny by an appeals court, since most of the 'John Does' never learn about the 'ex parte' proceeding until it's too late to do anything about it. That is about to change. In Arista Records v. Does 1-16, a case targeting students at the Albany Campus of the State University of New York, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has decided to put things on hold while it takes a careful look at what transpired in the lower court. The way it came to this is that a few 'John Does' filed a broad-based challenge to a number of the RIAA's procedures, citing the defendant's constitutional rights, the insufficiency of the complaint, the lack of personal jurisdiction over the defendants, improper misjoinder of the defendants, and the RIAA's illegal procurement of its 'evidence' through the use of an unlicensed investigator, MediaSentry. The lower court judges gave short shrift to 'John Doe #3,' but he promptly filed an appeal, and asked for a stay of the subpoena and lower court proceedings during the pendency of the appeal. The RIAA opposed the motion, arguing that John Doe's appeal had no chance of success. The Appeals Court disagreed and granted the motion, freezing the subpoena and putting the entire case on hold until the appeal is finally determined. As one commentator said, 'this news has been a long time coming, but is welcomed.'"
The Military

DARPA's Map-Based Wiki Keeps Platoons Alive 86

Posted by samzenpus from the a-wiki-of-one dept.
blackbearnh writes "One of the biggest problem that a platoon on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan faces is that when a new unit cycles in, all the street-sense and experience of the old unit is lost. Knowing where insurgents like to plant IEDs, or even which families have a lot of domestic disputes, can spell the difference between living and dying. In response to this, DARPA created TIGR, the Tactical Ground Reporting System. Developed as much on the ground in active warzones as in a lab, TIGR lets platoons access the latest satellite and drone imagery in an easy-to-use map based interface, as well as recording their experiences in the field and accessing the reports of other troops. In this O'Reilly Radar interview, two of the people responsible for the development of TIGR talk about the intel issues that troops face in hostile territory, the challenges of deploying new technology meant for combat areas, the specific tricks that they had to employ to make TIGR work over less-than-robust military networking, and how TIGR is impacting platoons in their day to day operations"
Censorship

Germany Institutes Censorship Infrastructure 235

Posted by samzenpus from the not-for-your-eyes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Germany's government has passed a draft law for censorship of domains hosting content related to child pornography. A secret list of IPs will be created by the BKA, Germany's federal police; any attempted access to addresses on this list is blocked, logged (the draft seems to contradict press reports on this point) and redirected to a government page featuring a large stop sign. The law has not yet passed the assembly, however five of the largest ISPs have already agreed to voluntarily submit to the process even without a law in place. Critics argue that with the censorship infrastructure in place, the barrier for blocking access for various other reasons is very low. The fact that the current block can easily be circumvented may lead to more effective technologies to be used in the future. There are general elections as well as elections in several of the states later this year."

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... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage from beginning to end. -- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"

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