The first Open Source ultrasound system?

Free Software, , , ,

SSI Aixplorer

As Vincent reported in his post “Medical GNOME“, the French company SuperSonic Imagine (founded in 2005) just announced its next-generation ultrasound system for breast lesion imaging that will come with mostly Open Source software components.

The new system is called Aixplorer™. According to the message of N. Bruguier in the GNOME Desktop Development List it is based upon a derivative of Ubuntu. Beside GNOME/GTK the Cairo graphics library and the Cairo Composite Manager are utilized for its GUI.

Their customized packages and patches are available via Launchpad.

Very nice! But when browsing through the product brochure it seems that the utilization of Open Source software still seems not to be a viable marketing argument.

Massagen im Bundeskanzleramt

General, ,

Massage im Bundeskanzleramt

Ist man kürzlich (3. Oktober) von der Straße des 17. Juni zum Bundeskanzleramt gegangen, so konnte man das rechts abgebildetes Schild am Rande der Heinrich-von-Gagern-Straße sehen.

Benötigt unsere Kanzlerin und Ihre Mitarbeiter zur Zeit so viele Massagen, dass die anreisenden Masseure ein Verkehrschaos verursachen würden, falls sie nicht per Schild korrekt geleitet würden?

Oder hat unsere Kanzlerin gar ein Massagestudio eröffnet?

Vielleicht erfährt man mehr in einem Ihrer nächsten Video-Podcasts …

Shout Out Louds

Music

Shout Out Louds

In the time of collapsing financial markets one might wonder where investing money is still safe and worthwhile. Actually the music industry is looking for ways on how to cope with the concomitants of the Digital Age in which everyone is meanwhile just copying music without paying for it and thereby ruining the poor record labels and most notably the bands.

Recently the German band Angelika Express started to sell shares for their new album. One of in total 500 shares costs 50 € and in case the album realizes profit, the shareholders would get 80% and the band 20% of the earnings.

One of the bands of which I would definitely buy shares if available are the Shout Out Louds from Stockholm, Sweden. Great band! They formed in 2001 and released until now two albums: Howl Howl Gaff Gaff in 2003/2005 and Our Ill Wills in 2007.

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Veranstaltungshinweis: Freiheit statt Angst

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Freiheit statt Angst

Aufruf zur Demo in Berlin am Samstag, den 11.Oktober ab 14.00 Uhr

Bürgerrechtlerinnen und Bürgerrechtler rufen bundesweit zur Teilnahme an einer Demonstration gegen die ausufernde Überwachung durch Wirtschaft und Staat auf. Am Samstag, den 11. Oktober 2008 werden besorgte Bürgerinnen und Bürger in Berlin unter dem Motto “Freiheit statt Angst – Stoppt den Überwachungswahn!” auf die Straße gehen. Treffpunkt ist der Alexanderplatz um 14.00 Uhr.

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Open Source at Med-e-Tel 2008

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Med-e-Tel

From the 16th until the 18th of April 2008 Med-e-Tel, the international educational and networking forum for eHealth, Telemedicine and Health ICT will take place at the Luxexpo in Luxembourg.

Beside various other interesting events, a workshop about Facilitating Collaboration to Facilitate Tele-Success will be held on Friday 18th of April and is split into four different sessions:

  • From the Bottom Up: Designing from the User Perspective (Bill Parlette, iPath Association, Switzerland)
  • What Else Is Going On? Building a Project Database (Holger Schmuhl, apfelkraut.org, Germany)
  • Practical Considerations: Infrastructure, Links and Tools (Erik Blantz, INVENEO, USA)
  • Price-Performance via Open Source Tools (Dr. Etienne Saliez, VCT-TK, Belgium)

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Broken submarine cables – was it Nessie?

Society,

Nessie

You may have noticed in the news that during the last week at least four submarine cables in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Golf have broken or are experiencing technical problems. For example Guardian.co.uk, BBC.co.uk and Heise.de have reported about it. Unconfirmed sources even talk about up to 8-9 cut undersea cables.

The affected lines are vital to the Internet access of most countries in the Middle East. Due to the breakdown these countries have experienced serious disruptions in their means of communication which were still perceptible even in India. According to Heise.de the available bandwidth in India was reduced by about 60% of its original capacity.

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