It's sad. No more Pontiac GTO's. We had a Pontiac once. Big black '59 wagon with the 389 V8. It was big enough for a family of five with skis, gear, luggage and the family cat. The cat hated it. Once it jumped out the drivers window into a toll basket trying to escape from the car. The driver (father) was quick enough to grab the cat out of the basket, heave it into the back seat, roll up the window and drag race out of the toll booth like nothing ever happened. And before the cat made a second try for freedom.
That wagon had the worst transmission known to man. Three on the tree. First gear was too high, you had to slip the clutch to get the car rolling on the flat. Starting up hill was bad. Lots of burning clutch smell, and without a master's touch on the pedal, bucking, surging and engine stalling. Plus an unreliable shift linkage. It would occasionally get stuck in reverse, and you had to pop the hood and fiddle with the linkage to get unstuck. It acted up on the old man on Boston's central artery, during rush hour, in a driving rainstorm. He was plenty wet (and mad) before he got the car to run forward again.
Lot of talk on some car enthusiast blogs about "the channel" and the need (or lack of need) for two or three or four GM "channels". Those guys were probably car dealers worrying about loosing their franchise. GM doesn't need "channels". It does need product, cars that people will buy. Pontiac doesn't make GTO's any more, and the last interesting Pontiac was the Firebird. Except Firebird wasn't a real car model, it was a Chevy Camaro with a Pontiac nameplate. Everyone knew that, the styling was distinctive, and anyone with two brain cells firing instantly recognized the simularity of Firebird/Camaro. GM would have saved money and raised sales by marketing the Camaro under just one name. Consumers are saturated with advertising, in fact most of us consumers automatically ignore commercials. It takes a LOT of advertising to cut thru the mental filters TV watchers have evolved. Better to spend the money on one car brand than split it between two brand names attached to the same car. Guys (pony cars are a guy thing) who would buy a Firebird are equally likely to buy a Camaro. Why dilute the advertising by selling the same car under two different names?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Dawn over Marblehead. Microsoft wises up slightly.
Microsoft is going to partially disable autorun in Windows 7. Of course they couldn't bring them selves to disable it all the way, CD-ROM drives will still autorun, but USB flash drives will not.
Me, I have disabled autorun with a hand patch to my registry. On earlier versions of Windows you could turn autorun off in Device Manager. But Microsoft loved autorun so much that XP makes it harder to kill. You now have to run regedit and do a hand patch to the registry. User friendly that is.
Autorun is that feature that makes music CD's start to play for just inserting the CD into the drive. It also makes software CD's start to install hands off. It is a gaping security hole in Windows. Autorun will load and execute any kind of code off the CD or flash drive for just inserting the media into the drive or USB slot. Put a virus on a CD and infect every machine the CD ever sees. Sony used autorun to infect user's machines with an anti copy root kit to prevent copying CD's. Malware can spread by copying itself to USB flash drives.
If Microsoft actually cared about Windows security, they would remove autorun completely. Apparently they still love it too much to kill it all the way.
Computers work just fine without autorun. Users just have to click on the CD or flash drive to make it play or run. Much safer that way. I'll click on a million CD's to play them rather than autorun just one ugly piece of malware that eats my hard drive.
Me, I have disabled autorun with a hand patch to my registry. On earlier versions of Windows you could turn autorun off in Device Manager. But Microsoft loved autorun so much that XP makes it harder to kill. You now have to run regedit and do a hand patch to the registry. User friendly that is.
Autorun is that feature that makes music CD's start to play for just inserting the CD into the drive. It also makes software CD's start to install hands off. It is a gaping security hole in Windows. Autorun will load and execute any kind of code off the CD or flash drive for just inserting the media into the drive or USB slot. Put a virus on a CD and infect every machine the CD ever sees. Sony used autorun to infect user's machines with an anti copy root kit to prevent copying CD's. Malware can spread by copying itself to USB flash drives.
If Microsoft actually cared about Windows security, they would remove autorun completely. Apparently they still love it too much to kill it all the way.
Computers work just fine without autorun. Users just have to click on the CD or flash drive to make it play or run. Much safer that way. I'll click on a million CD's to play them rather than autorun just one ugly piece of malware that eats my hard drive.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Electronic Medical Records Horror Story
The writer, an asthma patient, describes a near death experience in hospital. All the doctors and nurses were too busy working with a clunky computer system to treat him. The asthma nearly killed him.
The writer works in IT and he talks about data models and message models and other technical stuff. In simpler words, this is an example of the don't know squared problem. The medical people don't know, that they don't know what they need. It's a typical situation. The customer wants "it" computerized but that's as far as his thinking goes. The vendors do their best and present the customer with a vast written specification, 100's of pages, which only makes sense to the vendor who wrote it. "My eyes glaze over" (MEGO) . Eventually the spec is signed, so the job can proceed, even though the customer still doesn't understand it. If the resulting system isn't too too bad, it goes into service.
I had thought that the medical business would have come up with a workable system by now. Manufacturing has SAP, Engineering has Orcad, administrators have Office. Each system has been in use for 10 years or more and is basically satisfactory. Sounds like the medics are not there yet.
And this story doesn't get into security issues. An electronic medical record system based on Windows computers hooked to the public internet will be totally vulnerable to high school hackers. Your medical records will be "accessed" by anyone who cares; employers, insurers, private investigators, the ex-wife, bill collectors, cops, lawyers, parents, children and god knows who else.
Neither did the author talk about portability issue. For the system to be worth much, records entered by your doctor, at his office, should readable at the hospital should you later get hospitalized. Or at the next hospital after you move. Without the fiercest sort of federal supervision, competing vendor's systems will be unable to read records created or edited on other systems.
The writer works in IT and he talks about data models and message models and other technical stuff. In simpler words, this is an example of the don't know squared problem. The medical people don't know, that they don't know what they need. It's a typical situation. The customer wants "it" computerized but that's as far as his thinking goes. The vendors do their best and present the customer with a vast written specification, 100's of pages, which only makes sense to the vendor who wrote it. "My eyes glaze over" (MEGO) . Eventually the spec is signed, so the job can proceed, even though the customer still doesn't understand it. If the resulting system isn't too too bad, it goes into service.
I had thought that the medical business would have come up with a workable system by now. Manufacturing has SAP, Engineering has Orcad, administrators have Office. Each system has been in use for 10 years or more and is basically satisfactory. Sounds like the medics are not there yet.
And this story doesn't get into security issues. An electronic medical record system based on Windows computers hooked to the public internet will be totally vulnerable to high school hackers. Your medical records will be "accessed" by anyone who cares; employers, insurers, private investigators, the ex-wife, bill collectors, cops, lawyers, parents, children and god knows who else.
Neither did the author talk about portability issue. For the system to be worth much, records entered by your doctor, at his office, should readable at the hospital should you later get hospitalized. Or at the next hospital after you move. Without the fiercest sort of federal supervision, competing vendor's systems will be unable to read records created or edited on other systems.
Why does swine flu get more press than plain flu?
Dunno. The swine type sure does drive the newsies into a headline orgy. How does it differ from plain old influenza? Is it more contagious, more virulent, or what? Or does it just give a DNA match with cases from Mexico, or swine, or something. Do I care if complex lab procedures show a match with something else?
Unless I hear something that matters, I think it's just another flu varient, the likes of which we hav been seeing for centuries. Anyone remember the Asian flu of 1957? It went thru boarding school like a house afire, every kid in my school came down with it. They all recovered too.
Unless I hear something that matters, I think it's just another flu varient, the likes of which we hav been seeing for centuries. Anyone remember the Asian flu of 1957? It went thru boarding school like a house afire, every kid in my school came down with it. They all recovered too.
Words of the Weasel Part 8
Budget Cut. After jacking up the federal budget by trillions, Obama claimed a 100 million budget cut. To be realized by buying office supplies in bulk. Right.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Calling the law offices of James T. Sokolov....
You think the GIECO Gecko gets a lot of TV air time? Take a look at the lawyers, out fishing for plaintiffs so they can do yet another personal injury case. Lately the lawyers have been advertising for drug company plaintiffs, Avandia and Vioxx and others.
Every time one of these ads run, the cost of health care goes up. The lawyers are looking for plaintiffs claiming injury from FDA approved drugs. The drug companies jump thru a thousand FDA hoops to get the drug approved for sale. Drugs on the market survive a process so rigorous, years of testing, reports, committee meetings, memoes, retests, yada-yada-yada, that any doctor,nurse, or reasonable person will believe they are safe and effective.
And yet, with a sympathetic plaintiff and a wily lawyer, the drug companies still get sued. They obey all the rules, file all the paperwork do everything a responsible corporation ought to do. Does no good, they still get sued. And loose, big.
Vioxx, passed all the FDA tests, got to market. After a few reports of adverse side effects (heart attacks?) surfaced, FDA withdrew the approval of Vioxx. The lawyers closed in and squeezed $4.6 billion in hush money of of the maker. Not sure what happened with Avandia, but the lawyers run ads for Avandia plaintiffs every hour on Fox News.
Congress could fix this. There ought to be a law saying "Manufacture, sale, and presciption of FDA approved drugs and medical devices is never cause for a lawsuit. Manufacturers, drug stores and doctors shall not be punished for making, selling or prescribing FDA approved drugs and devices or complying with FDA regulations such as drug labeling. "
There are a lot of other scams in the malpractice lawsuit racket, but one act of Congress could rule out a big bunch of them.
Every time one of these ads run, the cost of health care goes up. The lawyers are looking for plaintiffs claiming injury from FDA approved drugs. The drug companies jump thru a thousand FDA hoops to get the drug approved for sale. Drugs on the market survive a process so rigorous, years of testing, reports, committee meetings, memoes, retests, yada-yada-yada, that any doctor,nurse, or reasonable person will believe they are safe and effective.
And yet, with a sympathetic plaintiff and a wily lawyer, the drug companies still get sued. They obey all the rules, file all the paperwork do everything a responsible corporation ought to do. Does no good, they still get sued. And loose, big.
Vioxx, passed all the FDA tests, got to market. After a few reports of adverse side effects (heart attacks?) surfaced, FDA withdrew the approval of Vioxx. The lawyers closed in and squeezed $4.6 billion in hush money of of the maker. Not sure what happened with Avandia, but the lawyers run ads for Avandia plaintiffs every hour on Fox News.
Congress could fix this. There ought to be a law saying "Manufacture, sale, and presciption of FDA approved drugs and medical devices is never cause for a lawsuit. Manufacturers, drug stores and doctors shall not be punished for making, selling or prescribing FDA approved drugs and devices or complying with FDA regulations such as drug labeling. "
There are a lot of other scams in the malpractice lawsuit racket, but one act of Congress could rule out a big bunch of them.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Battery life of Kodak Z1485
About 51 pictures. From a Kodak Lithium NON rechargeable battery. The camera lacks a low battery indicator. When its little microprocessor thinks the battery is low, it just shuts down. Lens retracts, power LED goes out. Acts just like the camera is broken, except it will come back to life when you replace the dead battery with a charged one.
Staples wants $30 for a Kodak rechargeable lithium battery and $40 for the Kodak charger. I'm going to try the net, see if I can get something cheaper, even if it isn't Kodak.
So, battery options are
1. Kodak NON rechargeable CVR3 Lithium two cell pack $?? (ten maybe?)
2. Rechargeable Lithium plus charger $35 off the net?
3. Plain Alkaline AA cells. Just tried a pair. The camera does power up. I'd expect life to be half that of Lithium, so it will cost about 10 cents a picture.
Staples wants $30 for a Kodak rechargeable lithium battery and $40 for the Kodak charger. I'm going to try the net, see if I can get something cheaper, even if it isn't Kodak.
So, battery options are
1. Kodak NON rechargeable CVR3 Lithium two cell pack $?? (ten maybe?)
2. Rechargeable Lithium plus charger $35 off the net?
3. Plain Alkaline AA cells. Just tried a pair. The camera does power up. I'd expect life to be half that of Lithium, so it will cost about 10 cents a picture.
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