Sep 10 2009 9:40AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
Blog This! using:  Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

St. Jude Medical has announced CE (Conformité Européenne) Mark approval for its the Brio neurostimulator, which the company calls the world’s smallest, longest-lasting rechargeable deep brain stimulation (DBS) device for treating the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. St. Jude Medical makes a variety of implantable medical products, including the Eon Mini rechargeable spinal-cord stimulator that treats chronic pain of the trunk and limbs as well as pain from failed back surgery. I had the opportunity to visit St. Jude Medical's Dallas facility last December to interview test engineer Eddie Abshire, winner of our 2009 Test Engineer of the Year award. You can read about Eddie and his work here, and you can nominate a candidate for the 2010 Test Engineer of the Year ...Read More

Sep 10 2009 6:45AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (3) |
Blog This! using:  Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

The US Congress should promptly pass HR3458—the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009. Despite the whining of the badly misnamed Hands off the Internet organization, passage of the act is necessary to ensure a level playing field for content providers and consumers, no matter how big or how small. Net neutrality is critical to ensure that consumers, not deep-pocketed content providers in secret deals with service providers, determine what content they want to access. Net-neutrality opponents—the marketers and financiers concocting schemes to charge a premium for faster content delivery, need to get out of the way before they do as much damage to the Internet as so-called financial engineers have done to the economy. It's time for opponents at Internet ser...Read More

Sep 9 2009 5:54AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (1) |
Blog This! using:  Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

I've written a couple of posts on e-books, suggesting that Cushing Academy might be premature in substituting a digital learning center supplemented by electronic readers for its library. And I mentioned Amazon.com's nasty ability to repossess books you've already purchased—and perhaps annotated. But In-Stat weighs in with research showing a strong trend toward adoption of the devices. The market-research firm reports that the market is heating up as Amazon updates its Kindle lineup and as Sony debuts models costing as little as $199 as well as a $399 version offering 3G connectivity through AT&T.

"Until Sony announced its wireless e-reader, the compan...Read More

Sep 8 2009 6:18AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (1) |
Blog This! using:  Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

The Boston Globe weighs in with an editorial on Cushing Academy's move to trade in its books on a $500,000 electronic learning center, complete with flat-panel TVs, laptop-friendly laptop study carrels, and a $12,000 cappuccino machine, all supplemented with electronic readers (see "New England prep school drinks the E Ink"). Writes the Globe, "It’s obvious, at least in the world of periodicals, that electronic screens are rapidly assuming a role once played by printed paper alone. But the long-term shape of the Internet-era news and publishing industries has yet to be settled, and the precise route that progress takes is hard to predict. In the 1980s, plenty of forwar...Read More

Sep 4 2009 12:24PM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
Blog This! using:  Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

Real bad news in advance of the US Labor Day weekend: "Jobless Rate Soars to 9.7%" (although employers cut jobs in August at their slowest pace in a year). Worse news: "Actual Unemployment Rate Hits All-Time High of 16.8%." The official rate counts people who are unemployed and who have looked for work within the previous four weeks; the unofficial rate includes unemployed or underemployed people who have given up on seeking employment. The official rate is designed to make politicians look better than, or at least not as bad as, they otherwise would. The unofficial rate provides a more accurate picture of the condition of the economy. Let...Read More