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Comment We have cured cancer in thousands of mice (Score 0, Troll) 55

by trevmar (#45926085) Attached to: New Treatment Kills Metastatic Cancer Cells

We have cured cancer in thousands of mice, and we now realize that the mouse genome, and the human genome are vastly different. The mouse immune system is very different from that of man. They don't even have the same number of active toll-like receptors. We must start thinking much more carefully about translation from mouse to man, and ignore studies where translation is not specifically teased out...

Comment Re:Bruce Schneier is a hack (Score 1) 37

by trevmar (#45882773) Attached to: Bruce Schneier Becomes CTO of Co3 Systems

If you read further you will see the words: " Although I have started using Tails."

Tails is most certainly is not Windoze. Now, as for Windoze not being secure, at least it is "the devil you know." It has had a decade of hardening. Unlike some of the Linuxes, which use the insecure UEFI for booting, Windoze uses legacy BIOS, which is better characterized for boot kits. There is a lot more to security than is obvious on the surface. If you were a security professional, you would understand that. Meanwhile, please just Google: "Tails Linux"
 

Comment Re:Can the FDA regulate free software? (Score 1) 130

by trevmar (#44941413) Attached to: FDA Will Regulate Some Apps As Medical Devices

You need to differentiate between apps distributed in the USA and those elsewhere in the world. FDA only has control over the US of A. They will claim control (and to the best of my knowledge they have control) over the distribution of free-software (described by this final guidance) within the USA.

Comment Re:Sorry, but where is the evidence? (Score 1) 478

by trevmar (#44755411) Attached to: Schneier: We Need To Relearn How To Accept Risk

Yes, indeed, brrrr. It is tough dealing with these aching joints and dizzy spells...

However, IMO Science has been perverted by the advent of Internet publishing. This desire to ask everybody to "show me your source" and then calling their opinions "anecdotal" if they deign to take your suggestion, is indeed a relatively recent phenomenon, just in the last couple of decades. Maybe it is due to the over-availability of citations via the Internet, maybe not.

However, Schneier has fully established his own credibility. He doesn't need any stinkin' sources before drawing a conclusion. And we need to pay him some stinkin' respect... I certainly do...
 

Comment Don't assume Apple and Samsung equally Guilty (Score 1) 1

by trevmar (#40852077) Attached to: Samsung responds to Appes FUD over public releases.

As Apple said in its opening to the jury - something like "Samsung doesn't deserve to have its patent claims heard because it didn't sue us before we sued them." So who was the aggressor, the instigator? In Apples own words it was Apple. There are real patents to be weighed here, both Samsung and Apple have valid claims. But Apple can't claim the rectangle shape with rounded corners. I have a Compaq IPAQ sitting here in front of me, predating Apple by years. And an Apple Newton. There is no way I, as a designer, would ever have considered in 2007 that Apple would dare to patent such a shape. Innovation is being stifled here. I have the Newton, but I will never buy another Apple product. Does that make me biased. Well, that can be argued, as well :)
Space

Submission + - US Launches Largest Satellite in the World

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Space.com reports that over the weekend a giant booster – a Delta 4 Heavy rocket — carrying a secret new spy satellite for the US National Reconnaissance Office roared into space to deliver what one reconnaissance official has touted as "the largest satellite in the world" into orbit. The Delta 4 Heavy rocket is the biggest unmanned rocket currently in service and has 2 million pounds of thrust, capable of launching payloads of up to 24 tons to low-Earth orbit and 11 tons toward the geosynchronous orbits used by communications satellites. The mammoth vehicle is created by taking three Common Booster Cores — the liquid hydrogen-fueled motor that forms a Delta 4-Medium's first stage — and strapping them together to form a triple-barrel rocket, and then adding an upper stage. The exact purpose of the new spy satellite NROL-32 is secret but is widely believed to be an essential eavesdropping spacecraft that requires the powerful lift provided by the Delta 4-Heavy to reach its listening post. "I believe the payload is the fifth in the series of what we call Mentor spacecraft, a.k.a. Advanced Orion, which gather signals intelligence from inclined geosynchronous orbits," says Ted Molczan, a respected sky-watcher who keeps tabs on orbiting spacecraft. Earlier models of the series included an unfurling dish structure about 255 feet in diameter with a total spacecraft mass of about 5,953.5 pounds costing about $750 million and designed to monitor specific points or objects of interest such as ballistic missile flight test telemetry."
Open Source

Open Source OCR That Makes Searchable PDFs 133

Posted by timothy from the word-of-advice dept.
An anonymous reader writes "In my job all of our multifunction copiers scan to PDF but many of our users want and expect those PDFs to be text searchable. I looked around for software that would create text searchable pdfs but most are very expensive and I couldn't find any that were open source (free). I did find some open source packages like CuneiForm and Exactimage that could in theory do the job, but they were hard to install and difficult to set up and use over a network. Then I stumbled upon WatchOCR. This is a Live CD distro that can easily create a server on your network that provides an OCR service using watched folders. Now all my scanners scan to a watched folder, WatchOCR picks up those files and OCRs them, and then spits them out into another folder. It uses CuneiForm and ExactImage but it is all configured and ready to deploy. It can even be remotely managed via the Web interface. Hope this proves helpful to someone else who has this same situation."
Patents

Supreme Court Throws Out Bilski Patent 232

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isn't-that-special dept.
ciaran_o_riordan writes "The US Supreme Court has finally decided the Bilski case (PDF). We've known that Bilski's patent would get thrown out; that was clear from the open mockery from the judges during last November's hearing. The big question is, since rejecting a particular patent requires providing a general test and explaining why this patent fails that test, how broad will their test be? Will it try to kill the plague of software patents? And is their test designed well enough to stand up to the army of patent lawyers who'll be making a science (and a career) of minimizing and circumventing it? The judges have created a new test, so this will take some reading before any degree of victory can be declared. The important part is pages 5-16 of the PDF, which is the majority opinion. The End Software Patents campaign is already analyzing the decision, and collecting other analyses. Some background is available at Late-comers guide: What is Bilski anyway?" More analysis of the decision is available at Patently-O.
Medicine

What US Health Care Needs 584

Posted by kdawson from the velluvial-matrix dept.
Medical doctor and writer Atul Gawande gave the commencement address recently at Stanford's School of Medicine. In it he lays out very precisely and in a nonpartisan way what is wrong with the institution of medical care in the US — why it is both so expensive and so ineffective at delivering quality care uniformly across the board. "Half a century ago, medicine was neither costly nor effective. Since then, however, science has... enumerated and identified... more than 13,600 diagnoses — 13,600 different ways our bodies can fail. And for each one we've discovered beneficial remedies... But those remedies now include more than six thousand drugs and four thousand medical and surgical procedures. Our job in medicine is to make sure that all of this capability is deployed, town by town, in the right way at the right time, without harm or waste of resources, for every person alive. And we're struggling. There is no industry in the world with 13,600 different service lines to deliver. ... And then there is the frightening federal debt we will face. By 2025, we will owe more money than our economy produces. One side says war spending is the problem, the other says it's the economic bailout plan. But take both away and you've made almost no difference. Our deficit problem — far and away — is the soaring and seemingly unstoppable cost of health care. ... Like politics, all medicine is local. Medicine requires the successful function of systems — of people and of technologies. Among our most profound difficulties is making them work together. If I want to give my patients the best care possible, not only must I do a good job, but a whole collection of diverse components must somehow mesh effectively. ... This will take science. It will take art. It will take innovation. It will take ambition. And it will take humility. But the fantastic thing is: This is what you get to do."

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