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Comment Spun a Different Way (Score 2) 998

by jpobst (#39624319) Attached to: Hybrid Car Owners Not Likely To Buy Another Hybrid

You could also write this article completely the other way.

2.4% of car purchasers buy a hybrid.
35% of hybrid owners would buy another hybrid.

So the headline could be "Hybrid Owners 14 Times More Likely to Buy Another Hybrid", which is completely different than "Hybrid Car Owners Not Likely To Buy Another Hybrid".

Comment Supply and demand (Score 5, Insightful) 375

by jpobst (#39359069) Attached to: Reversing the Loss of Science and Engineering Careers

It's simple supply and demand.

Anyone who is smart enough to do STEM is also smart enough to get an MBA for a lot less work, and have 10x the earnings potential.

When CEO's making tens of millions say they can't find engineers, they really mean they can't find engineers for what they want to pay them. If you start paying engineers like executives, management, or sales, you'll have plenty of people stepping up.
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."
Software

PETA Creates New Animal-Friendly Software License 356

Posted by samzenpus from the no-animals-were-hurt-during-the-creation-of-this-story dept.
Anders writes "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the largest animal rights organization in the world, endorse a new FLOSS license. From the article: 'The Harm-Less Permissive License (HPL) is a permissive, non copyleft, software license. It is based on the FreeBSD license but with one additional restriction; the "harm-less" clause. It prevents software, licensed under the HPL, to be used for harming humans or animals.'" I guess this leaves the bunny-fueled power plant in Stockholm out in the cold.

Comment Re:Microsoft the tar-baby (Score 2, Interesting) 215

by jpobst (#31409692) Attached to: Why Microsoft Can't Afford To Let Novell Die

Without Microsoft, Novell would have hit this crossroad many years ago. Novell could not have slowly and organically built a Linux business fast enough to replace lost revenue from the decline in things like NetWare. Microsoft gave them cash, marketshare, and mindshare (with paying enterprises, not the FOSS community of course).

Indeed, the Linux business of Novell has steadily increased and is one of the bright spots if they are allowed to continue. But it is doubtful that an investment firm is going to be interested in slow but steady, long-term growth when they can gut the company and make a quick buck.

Novell may ultimately fail, but they have already made it much further with Microsoft then they would have without.

Comment The numbers are there (Score 5, Informative) 121

by jpobst (#30996936) Attached to: How Many SUSE Subscriptions Can You Get For $240M?

If you click the links in the slashdot summary, you'll end up at the original announcement, which told you roughly how many subscriptions the deal was for: 70,000.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116249026689311557-helTbrheLKgbaJ5iO5z40ZFCiOs_20061109.html?mod=blogs

I guess that's not as much fun as wild speculation though.

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