Slashdot Mirror
Slow Oracle Merger Leads To Outflow of Sun Projects, Coders
An anonymous reader writes "Sun Microsystems might have had a chance if the Oracle merger had gone through quickly, but between the DoJ taking its time and the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms, just plain dragging its feet, that won't happen now. As Sun twists in the wind, unable to defend itself, and Oracle is unable to do anything until the deal closes, IBM is pretty much tearing Sun to shreds. By the time this deal closes, there won't be much left for Oracle. This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end."
Kind of like how the USA seems to "get off" on taking down middle eastern fundamentalists and strong men.
Stupid article - so three coders (JRuby team) quit, and Sun's losing in sales to IBM (which they were doing anyway before the merger).
When a company is taken over, the corporate "feel" usually suffers. I have seen a few companies that were taken over from the inside (I experienced the take-over itself in one occasion), and the employers were never happy with it. And as always, the best people have the best chances, so they leave first...
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Perhaps, it's just that the European Commission is just slightly less beholden to corporations than their counterparts in the US.
As far as I can tell their slowness to sign on to other corporatist things coming from the US has been a pretty good thing.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end.
How should they end?
Spectacular bankruptcy like Enron?
Seems like most in silicon valley do a slow fade into oblivion and are eventually acquired for peanuts and never heard from again. 3DO, Transmeta, Borland, Quarterdeck, SGI, etc...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The summary places a lot of blame on regulators. But in fact, the article quotes IBM claiming the announcement of the acquisition is what drove people to IBM; that obviously has nothing to do with subsequent delays. As for talent leaving, the article provides one example of 3 employees who left because they were unsure of Oracle's commitment to their work. However, there is no reason to assume the EU or DOJ have anything to do with this. Oracle could have reassured them at any time, if they knew, and cared, which isn't a very realistic expectation for a small team in a big merger. What is motivating the story submitter to put so much unwarranted blame at the feet of the EU and DOJ?
Nah, if it were just that, they'd have said yes or no by now. It seems they really do like abusing american corps.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Evidence in the form of the number of actions taken against American firms, as opposed to actions taken against European firms would really help make your case. For bonus points, show that American firms don't actually deserve the 'abuse' by committing more crimes than their European counterparts. Without some sort of evidence, your post is simply pro-American, anti-European jingoism. Probably boiling down to either 'Capitalism GOOD, socialism BAD!' or simple flag waving nationalism, rather than any kind of logical thought process.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
As far as I can tell their slowness to sign on to other corporatist things coming from the US has been a pretty good thing.
Too bad that when it really counted, they bent over and presented their constituents' anuses to have their privacy violated by the US feds.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end.
Why not? How, exactly, should a Silicon Valley legend end, like Enron did? Nothing lasts forever.
Free Martian Whores!
There seem to be two points in the article and summary. The one that makes sense is that the slowness of the merger is murdering Sun's business. The other is that the slowness is causing people to leave. I doubt the latter is true. People do not want to work for Oracle, fast merge or slow merge.
Maybe, just maybe, this is just a bargaining chip in the under-the-table schmoozing between US and EU that you and I will never know about.
Hopefully more projects and coders will leave Sun before they get absorbed into Oracle, the industry's largest pool of promising, stagnating technology.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
So, are you saying American businesses are too stupid to avoid bad business situations? You make it sound as if you think of Europe as our enemy, rather than our staunchest allies. I mean, how DARE they provide better health care for less money than we do and make our capitalist health care system look bad? How DARE they get 32 hour work weeks with minimum one month of vacation. Here we are, working our asses off, and we aren't any happier than them for it. The bottom 80% of our society aren't any richer for it, either. That's just not fair, and obviously, they are evil for not fellating their owning class like we do. Why, if they aren't stopped, our peasantry might just get uppity ideas on their heads and start thinking they should get a share in our increase in GDP.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Both dTrace and ZFS represent substantial contributions to the state of the art in the operating system world.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
In a cathartic orgy of violence in the third act, in which everyone dies except the narrator, who is finally revealed to be an obscure character who was shown briefly in the second episode and everyone forgot about in the meantime.
Oh, sorry, I was reading TVTropes.
So IBM first tried to buy SUN, but then realizes that SUN is losing business anyway and gives up on the offer. This further screws SUN up. SUN stocks fell 22% that day on news of the failed takeover. Now, because of the delay in the Oracle acquisition, IBM is trying to make hay in the sun (pun not intended) by going after as many SUN customers as possible. This is just a ruthless business strategy by IBM. Instead of buying a troubled company and getting their customers, they waited to make their situation worse and then started luring clients away and all this with no money down. Bravo!!
Hey! You cribbed that speech from Sean Hannity, didn't you!
Admit it!
If the EU is actually delaying anything over this, then they're either doing it for political reasons or out of incredible incompetence. MySQL is open source and has already been forked. So what if Oracle gets ahold of the IP behind MySQL?! They cannot close source MariaDB, Drizzle, etc.
Oracle predicted that the sun will shine on. Maybe the oracle is a quack.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Europe likes their corporations just fine (AirBus much?) It's foreign (ie, American) companies that give them a hard-on.
The US just approved this merger about a week ago. An additional week is certainly no proof of malice. Even if it takes longer, it might be due to more intensive oversight, as the EU seems to simply take the job more seriously.
You could argue that in-depth oversight hurts businesses, but it's a common fallacy here to attribute it to Anti-Americanism, even though there's ample evidence that European and Asian country are often hit just as harshly as American ones. See for example the then-highest cartel fine against countries from Belgium, the UK and Japan.
Fleur de Sel
While I agree that a dragging take-over procedure can be very bad as well, I merely wanted to say that there are more factors that make a take-over unsuccessful. I have been in two companies that bled completely dry in a few months because of a takeover.
In one company, even upper management was not involved in the sale and learned only afterwards from it. The owner had done it completely by surprise.
In another company, the new owner was a competitor that merely wanted to get rid of a competing firm. We called our company "The Big Brother House". because every week somebody was leaving.
I worked (as a temp) at Fokker when the announcement was made that it would be sold to DASA and I cannot say I saw even one happy reaction. My contract ended before the take-over really took place though.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I'm just a little confused. How can the European Commission block the merger of two US firms? I can see why the FTC would be an issue, but once the US regulators are happy, how does the EC have *any say* in this at all? This seems like a really screwy thing - what's next - for any two companies to merge, they need the permission of EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH?
I suppose, what it comes down to is, those two need EC permission to have offices/do business in the EU, right? The way I see it, if this article is right about the delays hurting them that much, just finish the merger when they get US permisssion, and sort out with the Europeans later. EC can't really block the merger of two US companies in the US, and if they want to block them doing business in the EU, even though that would be a huge problem, that's got to be less of a problem than losing all the company's technical talent, right?
Better to ask forgiveness than permission, I think, is the expression.
My two cents: It doesn't suck to work at Oracle. Pay is fair and above market, benefits are good, employees are treated fairly, and there are a lot of exciting projects going on to choose from as a techie. If you don't like what you're doing for a living, there are numerous opportunities always available in something more suited to your interest, and telecommuting is encouraged in most "talent" positions, so relocation is largely a non-issue. The employees I work with (admittedly, we're a rack-monkey and operating system nerd crowd) are generally optimistic and excited about the merger.
Yes, as part of the M&A process there have been layoffs from time to time. With the exception of hostile takeovers, they are fairly predictable in advance, severance is decent and fair, the door remains open if you decide to rejoin the company later, and as far as a huge Fortune 500 company goes, it's a really decent place to work. If you work in some of the larger locations there are nice benefits on-site for free or at really reduced prices (gyms, cafeterias, massages, to name a few), and there is a lot of employment flexibility.
Of course there are annoyances like paperwork, lengthy project approval processes, ITIL compliance, SOX compliance, and so forth. Welcome to working for any large company. But to say "People do not want to work for Oracle, fast merge or slow merge" is simply false. By and large, it's a good company to work for, and the low turnover rate and lengthy average employment time amongst extremely talented and well-educated people speaks to overall job satisfaction.
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
If all of Sun's JRuby developers left to work for Engine Yard, what possible impact might this have on the JRuby project? Will Sun continue to support JRuby development? Does this decrease the chances of Ruby someday becoming a mainstream part of Java?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
You mean like the backroom deals that just got the Lockerbie bomber released? Yuck. I understand full well that slimy stuff like this happens, but I don't have to like it. Let the EC vote down the sale if they like, or tack on clauses to ensure whatever it is that they want to ensure because that is what they are paid to do. But to drag things out is just wrong.
To quote Yoda: Do, or don't do. Halfway stuff sucks.
- doug
Please don't refer to 'Europe' as though the relationship between the EU and member states is akin to the relationship between American states and the federal government. It sends a shiver down my spine and isn't quite true (yet).
I sold my Sun workstation on CraigsList before this news hit
Yes, dammit. And I don't want a government run insurance option, but don't touch my medicare.
I love it because I hate it.
I hate it because I love it.
"This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end."
I don't know about that...
http://astronomyonline.org/Stars/Images/MassiveStarLifecycle.gif
The only difference here is Sun is now orbiting another star called Oracle which should make things interesting.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
"Silicon Valley legend"? Sun made it's fortune by taking BSD Unix and commercializing it, selling it pre-installed on boxes. Sure, most of the enhancements made to PCs over the years appeared years earlier on Sun workstations (e.g. CD-ROM drives, sound cards, and Ethernet), but ever since the rise of Linux as a viable alternative to Unix, Sun has been floundering about looking for a viable business model. Spark CPUs? Give me a break; no matter how good the initial design was, if you don't have the several billion dollars a year Intel is putting into R&D to improve the chips, you're fighting a losing battle. Java? Great idea, but you give it away for free, and never have figured out how to make money off of it. Now they can't compete in hardware with off-the-shelf X86 boxes, and they can't compete in software with Linux (being supported by their rival IBM). In short, they have no real business model and no real reason to continue existence. Oracle is doing them a favor by offering to buy them out. Oracle has been trying for years to sell a database appliance with Oracle preinstalled, but they keep running up against that "can't compete with off-the-shelf X86 boxes" barrier too. Sure, Sun invokes fond nostalgia for many, many Unix nerds, but face it -- it's dead, Jim.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I don't know why big companies keep merging despite the fact that tech mergers rarely seem to be worth it. Is it short-sided greed and ego that keeps driving mergers? Hit-and-run lawyers? Why don't they learn that it's too likely to flop? I don't get it.
Table-ized A.I.
Quoted from the article...
"ISVs were more than willing to work with Sun because they saw Sun as a neutral hardware platform," he said. "But when the Sun platform becomes part of Oracle, and Oracle has a reputation for acquiring companies and replacing the products with Oracle products, then ISVs get nervous. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out."
Ah yes... Oracle has a pretty good reputation of replacing its acquired products... But what is worse (and I have first hand experience as one of those ISVs), is that Oracle likes to leave these acquired products in limbo until the replacements are ready... Support on the old product is virtually non-existent, and migration to the new product (when it actually does come) is like a shot in the dark; then can never give you reliable documentation on how to make the transition and Oracle engineers always insist that it is far easier than it actually is.
I can understand why people would run from Sun products. This is Oracle's first acquisition outside of a software-only company. If a company has to depend on Sun fulfilling their provisioning and support contracts, Oracle's reputation would probably scare away customers that are concerned with potential supplier problems.
Clients are just betting based upon Oracle's reputation with respect to their acquisitions...
Flamebait? Odd. It's possible that the OP is wrong, but it's not like he has no justification for thinking the way he does. I would be surprised if the EU didn't favor, by whatever means they have available, EU companies.
Or does it just reduce down to: EU fined Microsoft, so EU = good?
JRuby fate was already discussed on slashdot and there is nothing new on IBM program. Every vendor has these, every vendor offer iniciatives toward purchasing his wares.
OTOH, if IBM really offering 64k$ for single-socket CMT server, then it can be really good purchase for customer, considered that Sun T1000 (1st generation niagara) cost less than $5000.
So :)
1. Buy one Sun T1000 for $5k
2. Get 64k$ from IBM
3. ???
4. 59 thousand dollars profit
Oh, and Sun server outperforms IBM Power
Three ex-sun developers didn't have Oracle kiss their rears and so they left and tried to get a little hype for themselves by saying their former masters are dying. Regardless of whether or not its true, the whole way they tried to get some press is pathetic. If they want to make news, make a product release with cool features.
This is my sig.
Spark CPUs
Hey Sun Expert! Sparc is spelled with a C, not a K
Just, uh, throwing that out there.
This is my sig.
You lose your geek card, please hand it over.
NEVER misquote Yoda.
My Babylon
I really think it's Capitalism at its best! If Sun had been minding the business store and its marketing plan had been sucessful it would not be being eaten by wolves today. It's not reasonable to blame the EU or IBM either. The EU is looking out for itself (and European citizenry), and IBM is doing its job by killing off the competition.
Yea, because the US has never abused its geopolitical, economic and often military muscle to stick it to other nations.
Get off your high horse.
I still don't get what say a foreign "commission" has in the dealings of two American companies. Sure, they can weigh in, but as long as the two parties involved are headquartered/owned/operated here, what obligation do they have to anyone outside of the US? Additionally, couldn't they be jerks about it and say 'Eff You, we just won't operate, sell, or support our products on your side of the world' and be done with it? The RIAA does that all the time by restricting how media is available in foreign countries, why not software itself?
Maybe, but on the other hand, what would you think if it was the opposite situation with major European firms going into a merger that could have a major impact on the US?
At least other major actors should see this as a warning that it may take a lot more time to get to the raisins in the cake than they think. And when they do the raisins has turned moldy.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I give it 30 years, tops.
Oracle shouldn't be able to merge with Sun for antitrust reasons. Sun's disintegration opens up room for new players in the marketplace. What exactly do you free-market capitalists have a problem with?
I'll take it. At least if it's France (#1), Italy (#2), Belgium (#21), or really anywhere better than the US (#37). Forget the talk show "rah rah rah U-S-A U-S-A" nonsense. If you think the US health care system is legitimately "the best", tell me by which measure.
It is going to be another three months.
You may be right, it may be more of a Troll than Flamebait.
An attack without evidence. Several others have already gone into detail on how non-American companies run into similar treatment and it's likely Americans have this view since American media tends to only report on American companies. But that is irrelevant, the post attacks and stirs up controversy without contributing anything.
"This is not how a Silicon Valley legend should end"
It's almost fitting considering how some of Sun's best customers were left out in the cold with bad CPUs and RAM, while Sun lawyers (waving signed NDAs in hand) were more prevelent than Sun Support engineers. Remember all the press about that? What, you don't? It's because it was silenced by Sun.
Let us look back on a long and storied history of World Geopolitcal, Economic and Military abuses ?? Hmmm the US is 200+ years old and has a decent history of such, however let us examine Spainish, English, or German history and compare the length and breadth of their abuses. There is NO ROOM on either side for stone throwing, that is what governments do, LEVERAGE their power while they have it to try and establish the highest standard of living and profit for their citizens. The thought that scares me the most is when the EU and the US STOP fighting and decide that cooperation allows them MORE POWER and control.
We all need to get off the horse, and out of the way of the runaway carriage...
posting anon to preserve mod's
The problem I have with it is that the Sun shareholders own something of value - namely the brands, technology, and organizational structure (that is, they don't own the employees of course, but the do 'own' existing business relationships with those employees which could be transferred, and those relationships have value). Even if the company is not worth what it once was, shouldn't the shareholders have the freedom to sell off the assets of value which they own to an interested buyer?
Capitalism is, first and foremost, about freedom - that people should have the freedom to do business without undo interference by the government. The great economic tragedy of the current political climate is that all the people who are hating on capitalism right now forget that the *reason* the USA has traditionally chosen a mostly capitalist economy (I say mostly because, it definitely hasn't been a 'pure' capitalist business system in a long time) is because that is the most Free system of business.
There must be a very compelling reason, indeed, to impinge on the freedom of others. Sun shareholders should have the right to sell what is left of the company to a willing buyer.
>>>European Commission is just slightly less beholden to corporations than their counterparts in the US.
Are they? When the European Daimler wanted to merge with Chrysler, the EU signed-off on the deal so fast my head spun. I'm sure others with more familiarity with EU politics could name other examples. The EU seems very proactive when it comes to their own home-grown corporations. So really they are no different than the U.S. government in that respect.
It would be a shame if Sun went under.
I have a friend who has a great job where he's only required to come to work on Tuesday/Thursday. The rest of the time he works from home in New Hampshire. Knowing his personality he'd probably go nuts (like me) if he had to dutifully sit in an office day-after-day like us other poor schlubs. The 1.5 hour commute to Boston would probably be zero fun as well.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
US health care system is fine. The US health insurance system sucks balls though.
Yuma, AZ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
If they didn't care about selling in Europe they could just ignore them and cease operations there. I don't see it being worth it to either oracle or sun for that to happen.
Misquoting Yoda cry baby Jesus makes.
US has no regulation, that's why they have companies that are too big to fail. We're a fan or regulation, if you want play in our court you play by our rules.
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Well, the prospect of one mega software company controlling both commercial and open source database software seems like a valid concern.
The EU commission is only trying to protect the EU's interests... That's what it's there for, right? Nobody on /. seems to mind when they take Microsoft to task. I wouldn't expect a European company to be able to take advantage of their position in the U.S. without due process, so why the fuck should we put up with the same. Xenophobia at the geek level? Now that is news for nerds... Submission has elements of troll in it. Mod submission down..
A triple-digit slashdotter blowing a Yoda quote red-lines my cognitive dissonance meter.
Quote Yoda, or quote Yoda not. There is no try to quote Yoda.
They don't have any obligations outside the US whatsoever, of course. Until they want to do business in the biggest economy of the world. Then they have to play by their rules.
I really don't understand how this is so hard to fathom - the biggest market in the world is not something a business like Oracle can ignore, even if they share your misguided xenophobia.
BTW, movie industries sell regionally because they can make more that way, not less.
Most triple-digiters are likely well into dementia by now, so that might explain it.
No no no...
Cry baby jesus you make when misquoting you do.
Fucking up his grammar is just about as bad.
Are you one of that "death panels will kill my grandmother" crowd? Because you sound just like one.
Do you even realize that you just stated that the EC would abuse American firms, only because TFS stated it, which is a wild assumption, and is not anywhere backed by anything. It's just made out of thin air. Even if something like that would happen, your statement would be false, because you know nothing about it.
And I, for one, think it's great, that finally someone kicked Microsoft's and Intel's ass, after all their monopolistic abuses. Because the US government just was so far up those companies asses, that they nearly came out of the mouth again.
I will check what the EC really does to Sun, and then decide for myself what of those things I find right and wrong. MY right, wrong and everything in between. I won't just totally dissolve in the realities of others, and then start to parrot that stuff, like you. No matter who thinks it's right, wrong, or whatever.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
As much as anyone else, I want(ed) Sun to succeed. It's an engineer's company.
But fact is they signed their own warrant. They made a catastrophic failure of monetising java (despite all the mobile rhetoric). Reality is there wouldn't /be/ an enterprise java market had the likes of IBM not figured out how to sell stuff to big companies.
Sun hasn't successfully executed anything for too long. It put all its eggs in the java basket. It even gave the top gig to the man who oversaw its inability to make software a commercial viability.
I'd love to see Sun return to the successful, engineer's company it once was. Just ain't gonna happen. How should it die? With the good engineers (and there's _LOTS_ of them) whisked off to success elsewhere. And Shwartz given a paintbrush and told to learn his trade form the bottom up.
Slashdot user 1049312 tells Slashdot user 926 to hand in his geek card. I never thought I'd see the day.
Although really, the correct syntax is "Geek card you lose. Hand it over you must."
I am officially gone from
For all us old Berkeley types who put "/usr/ucb" first in the path it would.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Too bad I just ran out of mod points. I'd have an offtopic for you and your friend who'd rather sit around in your respective moms' basements instead of going to work.
"Why do so many of my fellow Americans have trouble understanding this? Are you dense? Governments do this sort of thing. They actually want to have a say about what gets sold in their countries and by whom."
Yes, yes, that's all fine and good. However, seems to me that something like a merger of two foreign companies who both happen to do business in your country is rather a bit out of the purview of *another* country's authority.
"since you have no voice in any government but that of the US."
And why should any country's leaders feel they have the right to interfere in the U.S.? What I mean is, if Oracle or Sun got permission previously to do business in European countries, then after a merger, they should at least have a right to continue doing the same business as before. Now, granted, if they wish to *modify* their business in those foreign countries (for example, discontinue a product which has become redundant, or introduce new products they weren't selling in that country before), I certainly see the validity of that country reviewing the changes of *business* they wish to do, but not changes of *ownership*.
I'm sorry, but I just do not see that it is anything less than a loss of sovereignty for the US, to expect that US business must get foreign approval for changes in ownership.
The commission doesn't seem to be concerned about the consequences of its actions, just the consequences of the merger. Since business thrives on stability, promoting instability is a powerful weapon in the marketplace, and they seem to be wielding it with abandon. It's like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - government scrutiny changes the direction of a company.
MacroHard - Boning you in a big way! (TM)
It's not really fine. Well, sort of. The health care system has major problems because no one can really afford it without insurance. In fact, if you try and purchase medical care, the hospital will charge you more than they would charge an insurance company.
Insert witty
is someone higher up at sun saw this coming early on, and decided to craft a poison-pill. I wont be surprised if down the road Oracle ends up stepping in a few more bear-traps left by spirited folk from the old guard (automatic stock spit, NCO contracts auto-nullifying, etc...)
Good people go to bed earlier.
Riiiiight. I'm off-topic. Okay then - read this:
This just in from MSNBC.com (1:06 p.m. ET, Thursday)
European Union regulators applied the brakes Thursday, launching a formal antitrust probe that shatters Oracle's goal of completing the acquisition this summer. The U.S. Department of Justice has already approved the deal.
Who here still thinks the European Commission is just a "neutral party" and not, to quote the summary, "seems to get off on abusing American firms"?
It seems odd how they are dragging their feet like this, especially after the U.S. DOJ already provided approval. We're just talking about the merger of two companies - why create an anti-monopoly investigation for that?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
For those who don't know, the deal was over an ,a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6814939.ece">oil exploration contract. Hope we can make lots of petroleum-based cleaners to get all the slime off our hands!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Sun should end with Schwartz and McNealy making a bundle in cash from Oracle.... err... wait a minute... that's going to happen anyway!!
Nevermind...
..the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms...
Oh, horseshit. I've worked in American companies with European offices for years and have seen no such thing. Europeans are just as happy to take American dollars as anyone else. The EC countries do, however, have rather more stringent antitrust laws than the United States (and more consumer protections, more privacy laws, and so on). If you do business in a country, you have to respect their laws, just as European countries doing business in the US have to respect our laws (or our lawlessness in many matters). That Microsoft and Oracle -- two companies that are hardly well-loved here -- have had trouble in Europe hardly constitutes a pattern of "abusing American firms".
It may be that the real issue here is that Oracle, like Microsoft, gets off on anti-competitive practices, and as a result often finds itself up against laws against the same, in Europe as well as the US.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Well, do like the insurance companies and only pay 20-25% of the bill... then say "suck it" to the rest... look at your EOB statements for your insurance company sometime.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I was thinking anime until you said the narrator survives.
And that same hospital will take 30% off the top of your bill if you ask and offer to pay them on net-30 terms. You're free to negotiate the same rates as insurance companies -- you have less buying power, so you probably won't get quite as good a rate (just like processors are cheaper by the 1000), but there's no rule that says you have to pay the listed rack rate just because you're paying cash.
By massive corporate profits, of course.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Remember when all the FOSSies cheered every time the EU unjustly strongarmed Microsoft for billions of dollars, and created an entire subset of laws which only apply to Microsoft?
Well, now Sun and Oracle are harvesting the bitter fruits of trying to beat Microsoft through legislation rather than the marketplace. In a way, it's poetic justice- after all, they were some of the biggest advocates of turning lawmakers into anti-MS attackdogs.
Those who ride a tiger fear to dismount... and it looks like Sun and Oracle are the tiger's new chew toys.
OK I know: "AC", but where are the mod points for truly informative posts?
I'm sure others with more familiarity with EU politics could name other examples.
There are examples both ways; for example, the Volvo/Scania merger that was rejected. European companies get their fair share of spankings, and I haven't seen any exceedingly obvious bias, just a bit more commitment to the 'competition' part of the free market. That in itself might create an appearance of a bias if US companies have a stronger desire to grow to larger market share through acquisitions, but it might not be a reflection of preferential treatment. I'm not saying it's not possible, but I'd have to see some more thorough statistics to agree there's an actual bias.
Or alternately: :Lose your geek card do you,
Hand it over you must"
Either would receive credit in my book.
My Babylon
This is an old, old story
Unix is snake oil, Ken Olsen
WNT is a completely new design, Dave Cutler
Linux is not ready for the Desktop or Enterprise, AC
Nothing can compete against FOSS done right, hopefully this will get OOO really into Open Source, and maybe someone at Oracle, whis is smart, Ellison, will realise they have to do an Exchange.Outlook and OpenSync job properly
All in all this is the very best outcome for FOSS.
If you think the US health care system is legitimately "the best", tell me by which measure.
People throw that study number around without actually understanding what was going on. Let me explain a bit about that study, then you can decide if you think you want to continue using the study as evidence of anything.
I've written down the criteria in this form-
Criterion (weighting %) : US Ranking, explanation.
Health Level (25%): 24
This is primarily ranking based on life expectancy.
Health Distribution (25%): 32
This is primarily based on child survival rates vs. wealth. You get a bad score if poor kids die while rich kids live.
Responsiveness Level (12.5%): 1
This is based on a survey of health care users about choice of doctor, access to care, quality of care, and outcomes. Generally, when people think about whether they have a "good" health care system or not, these are the criteria they are generally talking about. US ranked 1, Switzerland 2, Luxembourg 3, and Denmark 4.
Responsiveness Distribution (12.5%): 3-38
This looks at the scores of responsiveness above, and cubes the mathematical difference between responsiveness scores of disadvantaged groups vs. all other groups. In this category, the UAE which ranked 30th in responsiveness was ranked number one in distribution of responsiveness. E.G. the disadvantaged got roughly the same care as the advantaged.
Fairness in Financial Contribution (25%): 54-55
Again, measuring the distribution of % of household income going to health care across various economic segments.
Based on this weighting, the aggregate US ranking was 15th. This is the Attainment ranking.
The Performance Ranking is the number you refer to (France 1st, US 37th). It is a calculation which uses a formula much to complicated for me to understand, but essentially they made a model which calculates what they think the life expectancy in the country should be given the expenditures. That is, it's sort of a misnomer- it is not Performance, but Efficiency they are measuring. France scored best because the model created determined that their life expectancy is closest to the theoretical maximum predicted. People (rightly in my opinion) get worked up over this ranking because it's not really based on facts or performance, but actually a prediction of life expectancy. Japan ranks number 1 in the world in life expectancy, but 10th in terms of Efficiency. It doesn't make much sense.
I see several big flaws with this study, but feel free to ignore me if you're looking for ammunition to bash the US health care system:
1) You really have to wonder if life expectancy is the best way to be comparing health care systems. The vast majority of expenditures in the USA are on procedures, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, etc. that are not designed to increase life expectancy. Whether that is the right or not is up for debate, but it does explain why the US scores poorly in efficiency.
2) Distribution of care makes up the bulk of the ranking whereas quality of care and outcomes makes up 12.5%. The US gets bonus points for having the best quality of care when you go to the doctor. We get serious dings for having different quality of care for rich and poor. We also get serious dings for the way our population takes generally poor care of ourselves (smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, etc.). If you think poor care by doctors is the reason for the obesity epidemic, then feel free to believe in this study. Me- I don't know a single person who truly blames doctors or the health care system for our lifestyle choices.
3) This study was done once (in 2000). The methodology was so poorly designed that it wasn't funded again by the WHO. It's not exactly the type of study you want to be throwing around as the definitive ranking on health care systems.
So now the stupid overpaid worthless bureaucratic asslicks lolling around in their comfy EC jobs can fuck around with foreign companies to the point that the foreign companies are uncompetitive.
Nice work
the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms
As an European businessman I have to make a small correction: the European Commission seems to be against any firm, be it European, American or from Mars (I'm an European citizen, and my family's company literally paid millions of Euros in taxes that in the US don't even exist, while always being screwed by the EU "social market" system in more ways that it's worth mentioning here).
That's why my current start-up (Omlulu.com, a low-cost, no-DRM, no-BS video marketplace) is registered in the United States. Because EU is to business (and free competition) what Stalin was to democracy.
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
A year or so ago, Sun had enough FREE CASH ON HAND to take the company private. They chose not to do so. Instead, they talked at length about finding partners, synergy, etc. In other words, Jonathan Schwartz put out a big FOR SALE sign on the front lawn, and waited for people to come calling. When that didn't happen, they dropped their price (1:4 reverse split, which can't help but devalue a company) and cut staff some more.
There's nothing predatory about Oracle buying a company that was begging to be bought.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Reminds me a bit of how Atari faded into obvilion at the end.
Sun will be missed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Idiot. You have the best democracy that bribes can buy, and you have the gaull to complain when we dont go along!
I read the 'tearing sun to shreds' article and it sure was exaggerated.
The article title is "Defections Batter Sun Micro.".....whatever. Three jruby developers left, and they didn't go to IBM.
Next the article talks about 170 sun customers going to IBM. And then mentions that none of Sun's big customers have switched to IBM. I wasn't able to find the total Sun customer count...but I'll take a guess and say that 170 is less than 1% of their total.
I know that Sungard.com's Luminis portal for higher ed is mostly installed on Solaris, and there are 75+ installations of that one application alone. One app (Luminis), for one business type (Edu), is nearly half of this "massive exodus" away from Sun.... give me a break hehe.
Being an American living in the UK, I've experienced both systems and neither is really worse than the other in terms of service. The difference is that you get either a large bill in the US or get effectively black listed for buying insurance.
Now, I do wait a bit longer (like maybe 20 minutes rather than 10) in the doctor's waiting room but I much rather do that than paying out the ass.
I rather not test cancer care or major operations in either country but for people that I know that have had operations, none of them had significant waits except for one who was getting an ingrown toe nail removed. Since it posed no risk they told the person that it could take up to a month to get scheduled in. It took two weeks. Considering at that point it was more of a preventative think rather than fixing something infected or painful, I'd say that's no a bad deal.
There are certainly nightmare stories and some bad hospitals, the same as you'll find in every country including the US.
The US already has social healthcare for the elderly and the poor. I'm not sure why it's so wrong for the young and middle class to get treated the same.
For a country that goes on about equality, the course of action should be to give everyone free healthcare or give it to no one rather than giving it to people in key voting demographics and I find it highly ironic that most of these numb nuts that you find protesting free healthcare the loudest are in fact either poor or old people who have their healthcare sorted for them anyway.
These people would have more of an argument if there weren't so many socialist programs in the US already which are either successful or that people just simply don't seem bothered about ending and people seem to be happy throwing money away on pointless wars which will increase debt and taxes and you get no benefit from it.
At least if taxes were raised for healthcare instead of questionable wars then US citizens would get some benefit.
It is number one in the following way:
We spend the most per person for healthcare!
Undisputed kings of overspending, we're number one! we're number one! ;)
The New York Times says:
Another issue that may have led the Europeans to take more time over the case is the way that Oracle has handled regulators on both sides of the Atlantic.
Oracle notified E.U. regulators of its deal in late July, more than two months after it had informed U.S. officials.
European merger watchdogs can take a dim view if companies spread out their notifications between jurisdictions over long periods of time, and they have said in the past that such tactics might be designed to pressure the Europeans to give the green light to takeovers already approved in the United States.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/04/technology/companies/04oracle.html?_r=1&hp
The mere fact that health care is treated as a commodity that can be bought and sold for a given price rather than as a necessary service is a rather fundamental part of the problem with our health care system. The insurance companies shouldn't get special deals. They should have to pay what I would pay walking in off the street, or more to the point, hospitals should be required by law to give everyone the same deal as the lowest price they give to any insurance provider. That one tiny change would solve a big part of what's wrong with health care today---no preferential pricing for anyone, including other insurance providers. With that change, smaller insurers would be on equal footing with the giants, and immediately we'd start to see some real competition in health insurance.
The thing is, health care isn't at all like buying goods in bulk. I can't go in and say, "I'd like to have five appendectomies, please---one for now, and the other four for when I need them." Well, I could, but they'd look at me like I was nuts. It's no less nuts for the insurance companies to ask for bulk discounts, but for some reason, they get them anyway. It's not like people generally choose a hospital based on which network it is in, and if they do, they shouldn't. At best, that might affect a choice of clinics or personal physicians. When you're sick enough to need a hospital, you should always choose medical care based on getting the best care, and any system put in place that pushes people towards choosing a hospital based on cost is by design a race to the bottom (in quality, anyway). Such conditions never benefit the consumer in the long run, and our health care system will only continue to deteriorate as long as insurance companies are allowed to get special bulk buying power from hospitals.
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This is a nice analysis of the study, thanks.
However flawed, having lived in both France and the USA (as well as other countries) I have an opinion of course. I can attest that the level of care in France is pretty good (choice of doctor and general quality of care) as well as easily and cheaply accessible for all. I have a good friend being treated for cancer right now in France, and she is treated completely for free, with the best treatment available in the literature for her condition as far as I have been able to research, even though she is actually not French and currently unemployed. She will continue to get free care until she is cured (which, thank God, looks likely). That is pretty good in my book. This is not a isolated case, this is a policy.
Now in the US I have another friend who went through childbirth in a hospital L.A., a throroughly normal birth took place with zero complication, she spent 3 days in hospital with her baby, and was billed $15k by the hospital and $5k by her gynecologist. Her husband being currently not unemployed, her insurance took most of the bill but she still had a few hundred US$ to pay.
I'm sure everyone have their favourite horror story but here is another one on the US health care. Yet another friend of mine came back to college in Texas (A&M Uni.) from Ivory Coast sick with malaria. The college hospital did not find what was wrong with her. After a few days of very high temperature, she was transfered to Austin, where they suspected everything wrongly and were putting her on the list for liver transplant, until her parents turned up and told the doctors what her condition most likely was. After a few days of a quinine or equivalent regimen she was basically fine again and sent home. However her prolonged stay in hospital blew the ceiling on her insurance and she was left with a debt of many 10s of thousands of US$. With no other rescourse, she went to the TAMU lawyer and sued both hospitals for malpractice. This was settled out of court, and my friend eventually paid nothing, the lawyer worked pro-bono.
OK, these are perhaps anecdotal, but a bit more than that I think. My wife has had two kids in two different countries, neither being the US, and we never had anything to pay for childbirth. I'm pretty sure that if my malaria-affected friend had been treated in most western countries the doctors would have perhaps apologised for their incompetence and certainly refrained from sending her such an outrageous bill. I'm also pretty sure that you have to look far and wide in the US for a hospital that will give you top-level cancer care for free.
There you have in a nutshell why the US health system is poorly ranked. Having the best level of care in the world means nothing if one can't afford it, and if public health policies are driven by greed.
The US people deserve and can afford better.
SUN's problem was that they could not figure out What_to_Do, the reason for that was that the founders, Shah, Joy & Bechtalsheim all left and the stars of the second level of management were never sucessfully engaged, and the paren is exactly right, SUN, largely founded by those who jumped ship from DEC faithfully repeated DEC's most significant mistakes,
the Cult of the CEO, Olsen & McNealy
transfer control from Engineering to Marketing
getting into, and spending lots of money on, fights that are Just not Worth Winning, JAVA
SUN grew, and outpaced Apollo (domain) HP and the when HP bought Apollo's market share, both again.
But it did not take long for in-fighting and huberis to set in and bring SUN to where they are today,
so that Oracle is today's Compaq.
Oracle will kill both the SPARC and Java track as they exist today as neither can be monetized. It will be
very intersting if Java can succeeed on its merits, I hope not, Python is a far nicer language.
I can appreciate your perspective, but seems to me that AIX is ingrained in a lot of places for the foreseeable future. Remember when IBM pulled AIX c.2001 and replaced it with linux, and the admins in the trenches bitched and moaned?
One of the main problems with AIX is learning AIX.
Solaris was and is used in education institutions. You can download it for free (and even use it commercially without paying a dime--or go open=source with OpenSolaris). You can run it in VMware, Parallels, VirtualBox. There are many ways to learn in a hands-on fashion.
How the hell do you learn AIX except at an AIX shop? And how do you get into an AIX shop if you don't have experience?
IBM and AIX have no community engagement. It's all golf buddies and three martini lunches with expense accounts.
Please don't refer to the 'American states' as though it is akin to "US states." There is more to "America" than the "United States of America."
Its the end of another era. Back in the day the Sun Campus in Santa Clara, Ca. was teh $h!t. It was THE place to be for employment, demonstrations, lectures, all kinds of stuff. It was on the Sun campus that I was told "Learn Java, now." (Lots of good that did...) I myself have been there for a number of reasons, not only to get a job (which I didn't get). And all the geek employers near by. Back then, I remember that when Scott McNealy said something, Silicon Valley generally listened, so long as Bill Gates or Larry Ellison didn't currently have the spotlight. Sun, ye fallen, mightily.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
There are so many people working in the IT industry who are deficient in basic logic, it should scare you. We don't teach it in schools, it's little wonder so many people are so poor at it. We don't teach the basic logical reasoning fallacies, either. We are paying the price for this educational failure in so many ways.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I was horrified a few years ago to see a T-shirt featuring a cartoonish Yoda with the phrase mangled into something like, "Try not, there is only do."
Oracle could give Linux a nice run for the money, with the right OpenSolaris based strategy. They would need a healthy dose of clue, however, which I don't expect them to get from Sun.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
How is Sun "unable to defend itself"? The whole point of this story is that the merger hasn't happened. So Sun is just as able to defend itself as before the attempt at merging was announced.
Besides, Oracle and Sun's directors know that mergers like the one with Sun take a long time, and are not guaranteed to be allowed. So that risk had to have been taken with this scenario in the math. If that could possibly hurt Sun's business in the meantime, that's Sun's fault - and Oracle's problem. Because if the merger goes through, they'll have paid full price for a damaged Sun. And if the merger fails, Sun will have been damaged for no benefit at all to Sun's shareholders, which the next target of an Oracle acquisition will rightly fear, making Oracle less able to acquire companies, which it must do to survive.
In any case, this whole article is BS. The EU antitrust division is taking longer not just to "bash American companies". The EU is concerned that MySQL will stop being a viable choice once it's owned by Oracle. That MySQL's open source community will no longer thrive once it's controlled by Oracle's execs instead of Sun's. That's a valid concern - that Obama's government just ignored when it immediately OK'd the deal.
The corporate mass media will spin this story any way it can to help kill anything about Sun that promoted freedom, choice and innovation. It worships Oracle and Larry Ellison, even as they make it harder for anyone else to make money. The pure capitalist will sell the rope used to hang himself. And Oracle will charge for the transactions.
--
make install -not war
If you've been reading slashdot recently, maybe it should step into a closet and blow its head off with a shotgun.
and the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms
In what way is the European Commission "abusing American firms"? Seems to me they are doing exactly what a regulatory authority for a big market like the EU should do, and they are regulating European firms just as much as American firms.
The US is #37 based mostly on infant mortality, and to a smaller extent "cost equity". We suck at infant mortality statistics because we count all live births as live births, while Europeans only count "viable" births, with viable being defined in many different ways. So, your #37 statistic is bullshit. However, keep worshiping Obama the Savior!
If they didn't want to have to follow EU rules then they shouldn't have expanded operations into the EU, and instead elected to merely export products to EU companies.
They did whatever risk/benefit analysis they could, and given the conditions in europe (and frankly, european attitudes seem have been pretty consistent over the past few decades, so european activities should be no surprise to a well-researched company) they decided that the profit was greater to have operations in european countries, and therefore at least in part under european regulatory authority.
In other words, it's their own fault for trying to straddle countries and pick and choose operating styles which were convenient to only one venue (or worse, attempting to operate in some imagined conglomerate venue that favors the company)
They knew the rules going in, and either ignored them or chose to interpret them using definitions that were culturally incorrect.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I don't know how this became about health care, but considering the cost and quality improvements in every other industry that doesn't have governments' thumb on the scales, I think you should rethink your objection to health care as a commodity. Commodities by definition, have the price approach the marginal cost over time.
Heck, even food, which does have a good deal of governmental interference works very well using a commodity model. The poor in the US have a much larger problem with obesity than starvation.
Now, if you can tell us the reason why veterinary medicine is so much cheaper than human medicine for the same procedures and medications, you've got a start for telling us ways to improve the current situation.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Crimony, chill out buddy.
Speaking of "content-free". He did actually post one fact--not much, but more than all your posts put together.
Your posts are verbal diarrhea. All of them. You have said absolutely nothing substantive. I can't imagine why anyone is modding you up.
By the way, the article was not about the merits of various healthcare systems. It was about antitrust reviews of the Sun/Oracle merger. Granted, it did mention Europe. Apparently, mentioning Europe is all it takes to trigger this kind of reaction out of you...
Ever try to do GIS in a key-value store? Statistical analysis? Data mining? Billing?
Yes. My RDBMS data models tend to be so highly normalized that they move to be a series of key-value tables.
Moving to key-value data stores was no challenge at all for my data models. The challenges were in other places.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Something is rotten in (a certain region of) the state of California. :P
Sure, TVTropes can go head to head with Wikipedia in an addictive-reading competition, but Hamlet was the first thing to come to mind as I read the opening of your post.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Riiiiight. I'm off-topic. Okay then - read this:
This just in from MSNBC.com (1:06 p.m. ET, Thursday)
European Union regulators applied the brakes Thursday, launching a formal antitrust probe that shatters Oracle's goal of completing the acquisition this summer. The U.S. Department of Justice has already approved the deal.
Who here still thinks the European Commission is just a "neutral party" and not, to quote the summary, "seems to get off on abusing American firms"?
It seems odd how they are dragging their feet like this, especially after the U.S. DOJ already provided approval. We're just talking about the merger of two companies - why create an anti-monopoly investigation for that?
Because it involves one of the biggest Database producers (Oracle) and one of the most common cheap, Open Source Database products (MySQL), and there is valid concern that Oracle will try to undercut MySQL in order to boost its namesake product that customers pay a hefty sum for. Granted, the original MySQL developers have pretty much already left Sun and forked MySQL (MariaDB, etc.); but it still remains a concern.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
If you actually read the article in the NYT, they point out that Oracle submitted its request to European authorities two months after they submitted the request to American authorities. So you shouldn't be complaining about how slow Europe is for another two months -- the US just approved the merger days ago.
Perhaps, it's just that the European Commission is just slightly less beholden to corporations than their counterparts in the US.
or perhaps the US government is more open to business?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yeah, rule of law is bad for profits. Stick to America, where corporations make the laws, rather than have to follow them.
By "free" you certainly mean you paid a large portion of your income for a period of time to the providing government, which then used that money (that you pre-paid) to cover your expenses which were likely less, by a large margin, than your actual expenses?
Or do doctors in France work pro-bono and pay their bills with a 2nd job in an industry that makes or sells some "thing" that is not "free"?
If the first...wow...that sounds an awful lot like my insurance. Let's see. It costs me a lot of money, yep. I pay it all the time, even when I don't use it, yep. They have take a lot more of my money than I have asked for back in "free" services, yep. Oh, and if I owe $500,000 for cancer treatments, they pay ALL the bills, "free" (after a measly few thousand deductible anyone can afford, say I give up cable and eating out for a year, or use savings, or sell my posessions). Huh...
Doing double duty, the post also adds to the weight of evidence that posts which begin with "meh" are equivalent to line noise.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
What mill dust are you cranking?
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The European Commission is sluggish by nature. Additionally, in merge or anti-trust issues they like to wait for the US decision first.
In the Oracle-Sun case the DOJ decision is quite fresh and August is sacrosanct holiday month in Brussels. Now the Eurocrats are back to work and there *is* a decision on the merge although not officially finalized. You just have got to read the European oracles.
The decision is: either Oracle sells mySQL or they will face a very lengthy procedure and in the end an adverse outcome. So it is really up to the playboy in charge at Oracle. If he wants an end to uncertainty, he has to dump mySQL now.
I rather not test cancer care or major operations in either country but for people that I know that have had operations, none of them had significant waits except for one who was getting an ingrown toe nail removed. Since it posed no risk they told the person that it could take up to a month to get scheduled in. It took two weeks. Considering at that point it was more of a preventative think rather than fixing something infected or painful, I'd say that's no a bad deal.
Uh.. I take it you've never had an ingrown toe nail. I can assure you, that it's not "not painful" and as for the "not infected," it's pretty likely to get infected. Why not take care of it right away? In the US, that wouldn't even warrant an ER visit; they'd just take care of it at an outpatient facility or even the doctors' office - same day.
As to the other socialist programs, don't think we haven't tried. The problem is that they're set up as entitlements, and people grow to depend upon them (at the cost of making their own preparations instead), so they're very difficult to roll back once established; you not only have to get past the public outcry, but there is the moral argument that you've made people dependent so you can't just pull the rug out from under them. You have to make some kind of provisions for the people who've come to depend on the program you're ending.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
And the quality of food in this country has dropped quite significantly in the past few decades, leading to a massive obesity epidemic, largely due to government subsidies of corn and tariffs on sugar imports. The government interfering usually makes things worse unless it does so by creating nonprofit corporations and turning them loose. Commodities, by definition, rapidly approach being unprofitable. When a service that lives depend on is commoditized, you end up with the least qualified people practicing medicine because it doesn't make money. We're already seeing a great deal of this because of high malpractice insurance costs and the high cost of getting a medical degree relative to the payout. In many parts of this country, a sizable percentage of new doctors are imported from certain countries where educational standards are, IMHO, lower, precisely because of the commoditization of health care.
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Yeah, right.
That's why the EU fined German company E.On and some French company (Gaz de France or suchlike) a few hundred millions a few weeks ago...
But they only act that way towards foreign countries.
FACTBOX-EU slaps 1.1 bln euro fine on E.ON, GDF Suez
Does anyone have any info on what might become of OpenSolaris? The more I read about it, the more I want to explore it, however, I am loath to invest time into something that might be put out to pasture in the near future. Even though the code is open, from what I have read it will probably stagnate if its paid developers are pulled. ? MOE
SARAVA!
Ok, some one example somehow proves your point, hey genius?
If the first...wow...that sounds an awful lot like my insurance. Let's see. It costs me a lot of money, yep. I pay it all the time, even when I don't use it, yep.
Except that unlike U.S. private insurers, the government won't deny you insurance because of pre-existing conditions or deny payment because you gave inaccurate information on your application form. No caps on lifetime expenditure, no loopholes to drop you if they think you're costing them too much.
They have take a lot more of my money than I have asked for back in "free" services, yep. Oh, and if I owe $500,000 for cancer treatments, they pay ALL the bills, "free" (after a measly few thousand deductible anyone can afford, say I give up cable and eating out for a year, or use savings, or sell my posessions). Huh...
Some people wouldn't be able to pay a few thousand dollars or euros for their treatment. Generally, those are the same people who can't afford private insurance to begin with, that's why universally guaranteed coverage by the government is very important for the well being of the poor.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
The European Commission is not abusing american companies. They have an obligation to ensure, in this particular case, that Oracle is not buying Sun to undermine MySQL development, and to eliminate a competitor. In fact, in the past, the EU regulatory authorities have been very lenient with US firms. For example, the fine Microsoft received in Europe was relatively small compared to the actual harm caused. Most people agree that Microsoft should have been broken up to create competing Windows/Office suite products. This would definitely have stimulated competition. As usual, however, the US government was interfering in the affairs of other nations to support the interests of a powerful company, to the detriment of their own people, who would have significantly benefited from an alternate version of Windows/Office.
I sometimes wonder how the stupid and ignorant nationalistic mindset of some americans develops. The rest of the world has always favoured some degree of regulation to stimulate competition. Although the US government is the largest (in terms of proportion of GDP on public spending) and most interventionist in the world, it has almost always tended to favour those who can afford lobbyists, and campaign contributions, and has consistently pursued an economic policies that work against its own people.
Many of us now look in horror at what the United States has become, with its tent cities, third world health care, lack of proper public services, and mass unemployment.
While the EU may be slow and lethargic, it does, at least, not suffer from the massive degree of corruption that is prevalent in Washington.
While I don't believe that Oracle/Sun are particularly relevant/important in the modern world, I do think that is important that we preserve some form of government that is detached from powerful interest groups. Most Europeans do not want to see a corporate dictatorship like the US regime.
average weight ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Americans who say that they like/prefer to keep their health care system the way it is have to be either utterly ignorant of the facts or blinded HURRAH AMERICA! patriots who percieve anything about their country as great.
America has the most expensive health care system in the world and the least effective in direct comparison with other developed countries.
http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL34175_20070917.pdf
And here comes Obama, trying to put it right, and everyone is like "WTF??? Communists are taking over the country!!!"
Seriously, for the fucking love of Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you people? Stop believing all the bullshit on Fox News and start getting a grip on reality.
The difference is that "America" is a shortened form of USA while Europe is not a shortened form of any one European state.
The EU treats it's own industry exactly like those from abroad (including the USA). Sure MS and Intel have gotten some big fines, but the biggest penalties have still been to EU companies like E.ON, Gaz de France, and a group of car manufacturers.
It's just that unlike in the USA, offenders of anti-trust laws don't get off with a slap on the wrist.
Same thing holds for mergers and such. The process might be a bit slow though, I don't think the EU has the most efficient bureaucracy in the world, if only because it has like 27 languages.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Commodities by definition, have the price approach the marginal cost over time.
That's a clear statement that US health care is not a commodity. For example, it costs 11x as much to treat a broken arm in the US compared to Canada. Some entity is frigging with the free market and making a lot of money. Note that there are entities other than the government that can interfere. It seems certain that such an entity would fight tooth and nail to prevent meaningful change to the system. They'd use every dirty trick in the book to manage public perception.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Except that unlike U.S. private insurers, the government won't deny you insurance because of pre-existing conditions or deny payment because you gave inaccurate information on your application form. No caps on lifetime expenditure, no loopholes to drop you if they think you're costing them too much.
You missed my favorite: unlike US private insurers, if you get too sick to work and lose your income, and then can no longer afford your insurance premiums precisely when you need them the most, you don't lose your coverage.
My mom has a relative in Germany who is going thru cancer treatment. One of the benefits
is they will send her to any health spa for a month for free. I'm not sure if this is
a one-time only thing upon undergoing treatment or if she can do this once every year
until she's cured or croaks.
EU is holding up the merger because Oracle want to kill MySql and knew full well that if they didn't spin that piece off as part of the plan, they would actually be exposed by those intelligent and diligent anti-trust regulators in the EU....as opposed to our corporate monopoly toadies over here in the good old USA, inc.
It's not really fine. Well, sort of. The health care system has major problems because no one can really afford it without insurance. In fact, if you try and purchase medical care, the hospital will charge you more than they would charge an insurance company.
Not in my experience *at all*. I have been cruising without insurance for the better part of the past 10 years (and yes, with a family). What I have found is that doctors and hospitals are so frustrated with the insurance scamdustry that they will bend over backwards to work a straight deal. Also, they will gladly work out long-term payment plans, sometimes even interest-free.
I paid the hospital $4000, and our doctor $1400 at the birth of our last child. Yes, that was painful, but considering that insurance for a self-employed father of 3 will be at least $1200-1500/mo it was the better choice.
Do I want to be without insurance? No, but from here on out, the only insurance I will ever purchase is for 'catastrophic' events. That was the original idea of insurance, not as an agent to 'pay' for all ongoing costs.
Insurance and high finance are the two greatest scams going in America right now, and they can get away with it precisely because they have our political ruling class in their pockets. Time to starve the beast.
That is actually not a bad tactic at all, but first you just want to ask a few questions about why the bill is so high. You would be amazed at how often these things are negotiable. Just about every time I have raised questions with a hospital about some ridiculous cost (like $15 for a Tylenol or whatever) the hospital has revised the bill considerably.
Just because the venture capitalists told you your shares were worth $1.8M it doesn't mean that they were. In fact, until you sell them, they aren't worth anything. It was a confidence trick. Don't feel daft. Many have fallen for the same scam before you, and many will fall for it in the future. Those magical figures printed on a bit of paper or sent to you in an email addled your brains.
You were never rich.
but between the DoJ taking its time and the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms,
I am so sorry that your poor Yanks companies feel abused by the European Union, but you see, we have millions of consumers to protect and avoid being shafted. Those people aren't sheep and aren't ready to accept the same level of FUD that you guys can swallow.
More seriously, there is a difference between stating facts, and spitting free unrelated and uninformed criticism on a headline. The OP totally fails at objective journalism. But wait...I'm on Slashdot..never mind.
I will second that with my own experience:
My dad sadly died of a brain tumor last may, after 2 years of a long illness.
Because we didn't have insurance in the USA, we paid about 15K$ for 3 days of doctor visits and such (the amount is huge, but Boston has the best specialists in that particular matter) that was paid by my dad's (french) boss. The only thing the doctors did was confirming a recommandation from a doctor in France.
Back in France, during his last 2 years of life, my dad didn't pay a euro - including but not limited to:
I can't start to add up how much it would have cost us by staying in Boston. We probably would not have been able to afford more than a month of treatment. In contrast, French health care provided us with 2 years of life of my dad.
Given this, I honestly don't understand WHY there is still a debate in the US about health care. Honestly, the right-wingers who think Obama is deranged and national health care is evil should be pulled away from the gene pool. They're not thinking straight and show no compassion to their human siblings. It's just a terrible shame.
"the European Commission, which seems to get off on abusing American firms"
better that than dropping bombs on Afghan civilians, eh Freedom Lovers?
Well, one particular orifice is more open.
Actually I have and was a result of dropping a brick on my toe. This was in the US, my toe did in fact become infected because I waited (hoping I could sort it myself by soaking it in hot salt water, keeping it aired out, etc) so I had to go to the doc.
It took about 4 days to my appointment but I am fully aware of how painful it can be but I also know full well there are different stages and if you're having your toes looked at on a regular basis (because you have wonky toe nails, like this person) then they'll catch it early and sort it out long before it gets to the stage I was at because I was too tight with my money to pay.
European here. I've been waiting almost a year now in a line to get an operation for a painful condition that I was told by the doctors could become permanent unless treated fast. So if "you will get treated fast" is in your definition of better I'm afraid I have to disappoint you.
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
The problem there is that many of us think that "the entity" could very well be behind the "health care reform" bill. Are we sure that the bill changes the status quo in a meaningfully harmful way for the entity in question?
Now, we do know that one of the entities in question are malpractice lawyers and grandstanders like John Edwards. (two scumbags with almost the same name on the national stage in the same country, who'd have figured...) And that that entity, in fact, is not addressed in the bill.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Well, it's almost like there's more Anime than TV at TVTropes anyway. :)
Maybe I'm getting hot under the collar over nothing. I'm not meaning to carry on with some kind of flame war.
Perhaps I'm being overly feisty.
Profit.
(CAPTCHA: vileness)
On point #2: To be correct, health care system is not only doctors and hospitals(what you probably meant by health care system). It includes education for healthy living, witch US lacks very much. In general, US lacked any health awareness for a long time and you are overcompensating now.
I am European and I am comparing multiple European countries to Colorado, where I lived for a while. And my friends say that in other states there is a bigger issue with obesity.
And my mom can't get treatment for her cancer, AT ALL, because she has no insurance. I'll take a long wait over no hope for treatment any day. Just look at health outcomes versus dollars spent. We spend twice as much as the next most expensive system, which puts us around 37th in the world for health care outcomes. Our system is broken beyond belief.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The whining over denying people coverage for pre-existing conditions always baffles me. You do realize that insurance is a business, right? Insurance is supposed to be something you pay for to help in the case of an unforeseen emergency. You pay for your car insurance, in case you're in an expensive major car accident but you don't use it to repair every nick and ding on your car every week.
Insurance is not a fucking CHARITY. It's a business. If you started insuring everyone who has a 100% chance of an expensive illness that will cost MORE than they could EVER put in, you are losing money. That's one thing if you're playing the odds, but if the person is already sick, then you're just giving out free money and that's a terrible way to run a business.
Stop treating insurance like a CHARITY. People who complain that insurance companies are run like businesses instead of out there waving the "free health care wand" over every potential customer show a distinct lack of comprehension over what exactly insurance is.
Also, people generally tend to get better health care in proportion to their contribution to society. If you're successful and/or wealthy or very valuable and employed, you probably have decent health care. If you're a major politician or CEO or other uniquely valuable asset (or ridiculously wealthy) you probably get the best health care in the world. If you sit around watching Oprah all day long in your underwear and contribute little or nothing to society, you probably don't have any health care.
Where is the problem here?! It sounds like a meritocracy to me. Should we suddenly become altruistic and give slack-assed mooching losers the same health care as outgoing, productive, creative, contributing members of society?
Feeding the troll I know, but everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, mine is that altruism works better than greed for a *society* as opposed to a collection of individual. Kant explained that better than I ever could.
As for contribution to society vs. wealth I'm not sure that they correlate that well. Look up the Enron executive or Bernie Madoff on the one hand and Vincent Van Gogh or Charlie Parker on the other.
Thanks for sharing your experience and really sorry about your dad. Western societies generally lacks compassion, this is exactly it, but the US is an extreme example it seems, at least judging by the incredible comments on this forum. There is more to life than one's supposedly short term achievements, carees, money and showoff items.
Sun's own dirty tactics are used against them.
When I was consulting at a very large Wall Street bank SUN offered to buy out all the NeXT computers and replace them with SUN machines (sparc 5's mostly). For a while we had both on our desks. One of the brand new SUN workstations caught fire and shot a six in flame out it's side scorching the NeXTstation next to it!!! Yes a mark was left.
So as the Sun sets life repeats itself.