If you actually cared enough about this issue to research it rather than just listen to talk radio and regurgitate the rants, you would know that by using emergency services as the first line, they are greatly inflating costs on the entire system.
Geez, the more I read your post, the more uninformed I realize you really are. Federally funded, single payer health care is not the only form of universal coverage. And it's not what is being proposed by ANY candidate. If you understood this, you'd understand why your comment about that it would "cause unemployment in insurance companies" is so laughable. If what Obama or Hillary proposed ever got put in place, employment would increase in insurance companies, because they would be selling policies to more people.
Okay, I'm actually going to explain it to you. What's being proposed is that the government gives people who couldn't otherwise afford health insurance a tax credit to go out and buy it. Yeah, it's a government subsidy for those people, no avoiding that fact. But the theory is that they are ALREADY costing us more than this tax credit because we are not cold-hearted nazis who would turn them away in the emergency room. This would lower health care costs for everyone else because preventive medicine is far less costly than what you have to pay for in the long run. It's not just opinion, but fact supported by study after study.
So, again, people will still be getting health insurance, just like they always did.
Personally, I would prefer the single payer route, as I've already had enough frustration with health insurance to believe that system has failed. But that's not what is being proposed here.
ahodgson said:
Why on earth would you go to the doctor for a cold? The original poster Slacksoft said:
I want to be able to see a doctor, emergency room, or specialist anytime I want. I don't want to have to take a number, and sit behind a hundred different people who may or may not have insurance to get treated. Here's how it went down the last time I had a pretty severe head cold (virus) with both ears infected (bacterial) and in quite a bit of pain. I called my doctor. They said "sorry, no appointments for a week, you'll have to go to urgent care." I show up at urgent care. I take a number and sit behind a hundred different people (okay, less than a hundred but Slacksoft was engaging in hyperbole to begin with) who may or may not have insurance and waited to get treated.
In other words, Slacksoft's "nightmare scenario" is already the norm.
And as for directly answering your question - once I got through the line at urgent care, guess who I saw? Yup, an M.D. (aka a doctor). And a damn good thing, too, as by that point I was needing the good drugs.
In addition to cduffy's excellent post that is backed up with data (much different than opinions), I have to directly address at least this:
What preventive care, pray tell, will stop the cold? It's more about stopping the cold from developing into bronchitis or pneumonia, to the point of the person being on the verge of death. Going to a doctor and getting it treated early can literally make the difference between some antibiotics and a later emergency room visit.
Wow, you can see a doctor anytime you want? Where do I sign up for this fantastic plan? Currently, I have a top notch health plan with a list of doctors a mile long. Sick with a cold? Better get ready to line up at urgent care because my doctor has no openings for about two weeks. Need a new specialist? If they are even accepting new patients, there's at least a month long wait. Oh, and after that, I had the joy of finding out that my DOCTOR was in my insurance network, but the FACILITY where I had surgery wasn't so I got stuck with a huge bill just for having it done there.
This mythical fantasy world you are afraid of losing isn't so great. I'd be happy if I just didn't get socked with bills left and right for various reasons. Like the facility thing mentioned above. Or the fact that my insurance doesn't cover the first $700 of surgery anyway (totally separate from the facility charge). Or that for some reason, my copay for generic Allegra is the same as it would be for some other name brands. Or that even when I do hit my deductible for the year, they decide I'll be paying out of yet ANOTHER pot called "co-insurance."
I have to agree with geekoid, at least on the mortgage/credit crisis part. It's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be. A lot of those people who were behind pushing these products also lost their shirts. The main driving factor behind the credit crisis is that developing countries like China suddenly had way more money to invest and were demanding things to invest in, even though the number of things to invest in weren't growing at the same rate. So they were flashing around wads of cash saying "sell me something, ANYTHING!" and the market complied.
The one actual thing that all these have in common is people investing money in things that either a) they didn't understand well enough to figure out that it was a bad deal or b) they did understand it and should have known better but did it because everyone else was doing it. If you give your money to someone and blindly trust them, then you will most likely get ripped off.
Speaking of dog vs cat psychology, there is one major factor that can make dogs uniquely problematic. As you say, they are pack animals. The problem with this is in how a pack works. There are the dominant members of the pack, and there are the submissive ones. As such, dogs are always on the lookout for when they can move up in the pack hierarchy. They're basically always looking for any sign of weakness you might show so that they can exploit it and turn the tables on you.
So yeah, they're pretty much the same as teenagers.
I'm not sure why people think this is specific to video games. The same thing happens to voice actors in animation. The voice actors on The Simpsons have had to fight tooth and nail to get a bigger slice of the pie, yet their voices are a major reason the show has been such a cash cow. At one point, Fox threatened to replace them with new actors. Can you imagine someone actually believing such a threat? The entire reason Maude Flanders died was because Fox wouldn't even pay to fly Maggie Roswell from her home in Colorado to LA.
Listening to the commentary for Futurama has made me realize that there are four kinds of voice actors. There are people who are good at doing basically their own voice. Then there are good voice actors who can do a voice or three. Third, there are people who can do a lot of voices, even if some of them sound pretty similar. Finally, there are extremely talented people who can do many unique and entertaining voices, plus use their voice as a foley artist. Billy West is definitely in the last category.
You might also consider their books. They have commentary on every strip which is very entertaining and sometimes illuminating. It's also fun to just sit down and read instead of having to start at the old computer.
I'm fairly positive Keanu lacks the delta brain wave...
I also don't get how the people who said BBS wasn't funny are going to "eat their words." Is the new movie somehow going to retroactively make the fist one funnier? Or maybe they'll include an alternate version of BBS where most of the self indulgent bullshit is replaced with actual jokes.
As an agnostic, I find "I don't know" to be the best answer, too. I was just refuting the OP's claim that the only option was to give up on theology. I just don't see that happening at the church leadership level. Though I'm sure it would cause some followers to abandon ship. And I'm sure others would claim an answer, much as some claim to know what happens to a newborn's soul when they die.
I don't see how the catholic clergy can just say "yeah alien life doesn't contradict our religeon" without addressing these questiosn. Of course they can. The answer will just be "I don't know" and/or "God works in mysterious ways", same as their answer to numerous other major theological questions.
Cross-browser? Does it work on Opera? If not why not? Whose fault is it? Yes. No. Because it's a fifth-place browser, falling just behind Safari, with of a share of around 2% (might as well complain that it doesn't work in IE5, which is also within a % point of Opera numbers). Yours, for thinking that a browser used by less than 2% of the users would have all the same cool support as browsers used by 90%.
Anyway, they're working on Safari support right now. They've talked about adding Opera support. The source is open so the only thing stopping any Opera user who can program is that that guy already has a full time job.
I don't recall the poster saying anything about EVDO. He said USB. I already have a computer for talking to the rest of the electronic world. I also don't think he ever said free as in beer. He said he wanted to be sold it. I think he meant free as in open and unencumbered.
c) You can already RENT IT. That article says:
Better yet, Cyberdyne is saying that they will have 40--500 suits available for rent by the end of the year... for the scant price of $1,000 per month. If slashdot has taught you anything, it should be that companies looking for venture capital are ALWAYS claiming that their product will be available "real soon now."
Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly
on
The Science of Iron Man
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Tony Stark's amazing suit is a long way from realization, mostly due to practical energy constraints.
As a comic book fan and physics professor, I am looking forward to the big screen debut of Iron Man. This is due, in part, to the fact that instead of getting belted with gamma rays or being born a demon from hell, industrialist and scientist Tony Stark got his super powers by means of his engineering genius.
But just how realistic is Stark's amazing suit?
Sadly, nearly all of the features of the Iron Man suit, with one important exception, are not likely to be realized anytime soon. Let's look at each of the suit's major elements in turn.
Jet boots
The reason that we don't fly to work using boot-mounted jets as Iron Man does has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with energy. We know how to achieve thrust and propulsion using personal jet packs, and a person can indeed fly from home to their place of employment like Buck Rogers or Adam Strange -- provided they live 30 seconds from work.
The problem is that lifting a full-grown person 100 feet into the air considerably increases their potential energy, and that gain in energy must come from the stored chemical energy in the jet pack. Ditto for the energy required to zip around once airborne. You just can't store enough energy to make long flights without making the suit too big to wear. So jet boots alone don't make Iron Man an escapist fantasy, but the idea that Stark could store enough energy in his suit to fly for more than half a minute does.
Repulsor rays
Similarly, the directed energy weapons Iron Man uses, such as the "repulsor rays" built into the palms of his gloves, should require that Stark drag along a large power generator whenever he faces off against the Mandarin or Titanium Man. I'm not exactly sure what a "repulsor ray" is, but if it's anything like a high-power laser, then the energy demands are considerable.
Even assuming that Iron Man can convert any stored energy in his suit into laser light with 100 percent efficiency, then to generate a beam powerful enough to melt a fist-size hole through a half-inch thick steel plate (which any comic book fan can tell you is well within Shellhead's capabilities) would require an energy pulse of more than 2 gigawatts of power, greater than the output of a nuclear power plant.
Cybernetic helmet
There is one aspect of Iron Man's armor that is not only scientifically sound, but may be available for our use someday soon: the "cybernetic helmet" Tony Stark uses to control the devices within his armor. When Iron Man wants to discharge his palm-mounted repulsor rays, he does not have to manually release a safety switch, enter a firing sequence code or even pull a trigger -- he just tells the supervillain to "talk to the hand" and fires!
In fact, Bin He of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota has already created a helmet much like Iron Man's. It works on the principle that neurons' electrical currents create electric and magnetic fields, which can be detected with devices such as the electroencephalograph, or EEG. While the EEG has been around since the 1920s, recent advances in signal processing have enabled scientists to isolate and identify the firing signatures of neurons associated with particular motor-imagery tasks.
Professor He identified the specific firing pattern that arises when a person, watching images on a computer monitor, tries to mentally move a cursor to the left or right. These detected frequencies can then be amplified and, when suitably modified, can instruct the computer to move the cursor in the same direction.
Thanks for the info. Have any recommendations on who to buy the replacements from in the USA? Or did you do refills? Can't find anyone to do refills for Canon here (lawsuit related).
I just finally ran out of ink in my Canon Pixma MP780 and am looking at buying replacement ink cartridges. I know that a lot of the printers, mine included I'm pretty sure, have counters in the carts to keep you from refilling them. You can (usually) disable the counters through some undocumented voodoo, but then it doesn't watch out for you running out of ink and you can burn up the expensive print head.
So I'm going to skip the refill. But I'm looking at buying the non-name brand ink carts. Does anyone know if this avoids the counter problem? Do these "compatible" ink carts also have the counter chip so it can avoid silently running out of ink?
I need replacements of all the carts - BCI-3eBk, BCI-6C, BCI-6Y, BCI-6M, BCI-6Bk. From Canon, this costs around $40-50 for all 5. I found one compatible one that is $14.51 and actually contains about twice as many carts: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000C159LW
Couple of other questions: if I got the above package, would I still need a BCI-6Bk, or could it use the BCI-3eBk for all the black needs? Does anyone have a link to a page the explains the difference between BCI-3, BCI-3e, BCI-6, etc.?
Note: I sometimes print photos, but it's not really for archival purposes. If I want a quality long term photo, I send it to Walgreens. Most of my printing is fairly disposable - a map to some place, a story to read later, etc.
No, I know all about literate programming. A friend was forced to study it in college, and I was interested enough that I checked it out.
Rereading your post a few times, I'm actually beginning to wonder if you know what literate programming is. It's not just well written, well commented code. That's just called "well written, well commented code."
Literate programming is a lot more involved than just that. People were doing that long before Knuth came along and coined the term "literate programming" for his idea of the "programs as documentation with occasional code."
I'm having a little trouble following what you wrote. Could you give an example to clarify? I'm just curious if what you're talking about applies to Delphi (Object Pascal). I think I know what you mean, but I'm not really seeing the difference between having to pass values into nested functions versus passing them into non-nested ones. The only thing nesting gets you is the aforementioned "privacy" of the nested function to it's containing function.
The big problem I have with nested functions is that yet again they make the code difficult to understand with the eyeballs. Worse yet, you have to define the function between the declaration of the outer function and the body of it. So you get this:
procedure MyProc(Foo: Integer; Bar: Boolean);
procedure DoSomething(X: Integer);
begin
(* several lines go here *)
end;
function CalcSomething(H, W: Integer; G: Double): Double;
begin
(* several more lines go here *)
end; var
Q: Integer;
Z: Boolean; begin
(* bunch of lines here *) end;
As many people have pointed out, you seem to be a bit mistaken about what I'm talking about. When the client start out not really knowing what they want (as is the case in a large number of situations), it's impossible to sit down and design a solution from the beginning. It's also sometimes very shortsighted to design an interface when you don't even know all the functionality that will be in it yet.
If you work only with clients that know everything they want before you build it, more power to you. I'll continue to cash in on the other 99% of the market.
No, actually I'm not missing the point. I think perhaps you are. We get to the final system through iterations. But you can't build some half-assed mock up of the system and actually get the same results as building real versions of the system. So you do all the work of making a working system. So at that point, you can start over, abstracts some specs and build again. OR, you can take the perfectly working versions and ship it. Which do you think is more likely to happen in a business situation where time is money? What about if you plan on selling a new version next year? Can you now see my point about why the latter is "out of favor" because of real world considerations?
Slashdot Mirror
If you actually cared enough about this issue to research it rather than just listen to talk radio and regurgitate the rants, you would know that by using emergency services as the first line, they are greatly inflating costs on the entire system.
Geez, the more I read your post, the more uninformed I realize you really are. Federally funded, single payer health care is not the only form of universal coverage. And it's not what is being proposed by ANY candidate. If you understood this, you'd understand why your comment about that it would "cause unemployment in insurance companies" is so laughable. If what Obama or Hillary proposed ever got put in place, employment would increase in insurance companies, because they would be selling policies to more people.
Okay, I'm actually going to explain it to you. What's being proposed is that the government gives people who couldn't otherwise afford health insurance a tax credit to go out and buy it. Yeah, it's a government subsidy for those people, no avoiding that fact. But the theory is that they are ALREADY costing us more than this tax credit because we are not cold-hearted nazis who would turn them away in the emergency room. This would lower health care costs for everyone else because preventive medicine is far less costly than what you have to pay for in the long run. It's not just opinion, but fact supported by study after study.
So, again, people will still be getting health insurance, just like they always did.
Personally, I would prefer the single payer route, as I've already had enough frustration with health insurance to believe that system has failed. But that's not what is being proposed here.
In other words, Slacksoft's "nightmare scenario" is already the norm.
And as for directly answering your question - once I got through the line at urgent care, guess who I saw? Yup, an M.D. (aka a doctor). And a damn good thing, too, as by that point I was needing the good drugs.
Wow, you can see a doctor anytime you want? Where do I sign up for this fantastic plan? Currently, I have a top notch health plan with a list of doctors a mile long. Sick with a cold? Better get ready to line up at urgent care because my doctor has no openings for about two weeks. Need a new specialist? If they are even accepting new patients, there's at least a month long wait. Oh, and after that, I had the joy of finding out that my DOCTOR was in my insurance network, but the FACILITY where I had surgery wasn't so I got stuck with a huge bill just for having it done there.
This mythical fantasy world you are afraid of losing isn't so great. I'd be happy if I just didn't get socked with bills left and right for various reasons. Like the facility thing mentioned above. Or the fact that my insurance doesn't cover the first $700 of surgery anyway (totally separate from the facility charge). Or that for some reason, my copay for generic Allegra is the same as it would be for some other name brands. Or that even when I do hit my deductible for the year, they decide I'll be paying out of yet ANOTHER pot called "co-insurance."
After having listened to this:
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1242
I have to agree with geekoid, at least on the mortgage/credit crisis part. It's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be. A lot of those people who were behind pushing these products also lost their shirts. The main driving factor behind the credit crisis is that developing countries like China suddenly had way more money to invest and were demanding things to invest in, even though the number of things to invest in weren't growing at the same rate. So they were flashing around wads of cash saying "sell me something, ANYTHING!" and the market complied.
The one actual thing that all these have in common is people investing money in things that either a) they didn't understand well enough to figure out that it was a bad deal or b) they did understand it and should have known better but did it because everyone else was doing it. If you give your money to someone and blindly trust them, then you will most likely get ripped off.
Tigers don't have "owners." They simply have people they haven't had a reason to eat yet.
Speaking of dog vs cat psychology, there is one major factor that can make dogs uniquely problematic. As you say, they are pack animals. The problem with this is in how a pack works. There are the dominant members of the pack, and there are the submissive ones. As such, dogs are always on the lookout for when they can move up in the pack hierarchy. They're basically always looking for any sign of weakness you might show so that they can exploit it and turn the tables on you.
So yeah, they're pretty much the same as teenagers.
On the other hand, my housemate's dog just chewed a hole in the carpet in the center of the room. So yeah, there's that.
I'm not sure why people think this is specific to video games. The same thing happens to voice actors in animation. The voice actors on The Simpsons have had to fight tooth and nail to get a bigger slice of the pie, yet their voices are a major reason the show has been such a cash cow. At one point, Fox threatened to replace them with new actors. Can you imagine someone actually believing such a threat? The entire reason Maude Flanders died was because Fox wouldn't even pay to fly Maggie Roswell from her home in Colorado to LA.
Listening to the commentary for Futurama has made me realize that there are four kinds of voice actors. There are people who are good at doing basically their own voice. Then there are good voice actors who can do a voice or three. Third, there are people who can do a lot of voices, even if some of them sound pretty similar. Finally, there are extremely talented people who can do many unique and entertaining voices, plus use their voice as a foley artist. Billy West is definitely in the last category.
You might also consider their books. They have commentary on every strip which is very entertaining and sometimes illuminating. It's also fun to just sit down and read instead of having to start at the old computer.
I'm fairly positive Keanu lacks the delta brain wave...
I also don't get how the people who said BBS wasn't funny are going to "eat their words." Is the new movie somehow going to retroactively make the fist one funnier? Or maybe they'll include an alternate version of BBS where most of the self indulgent bullshit is replaced with actual jokes.
As an agnostic, I find "I don't know" to be the best answer, too. I was just refuting the OP's claim that the only option was to give up on theology. I just don't see that happening at the church leadership level. Though I'm sure it would cause some followers to abandon ship. And I'm sure others would claim an answer, much as some claim to know what happens to a newborn's soul when they die.
Anyway, they're working on Safari support right now. They've talked about adding Opera support. The source is open so the only thing stopping any Opera user who can program is that that guy already has a full time job.
Not true. They can also be microwaved.
And in answer to the followup question - delicious!
I don't recall the poster saying anything about EVDO. He said USB. I already have a computer for talking to the rest of the electronic world. I also don't think he ever said free as in beer. He said he wanted to be sold it. I think he meant free as in open and unencumbered.
Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly
By James Kakalios
Tony Stark's amazing suit is a long way from realization, mostly due to practical energy constraints.
As a comic book fan and physics professor, I am looking forward to the big screen debut of Iron Man. This is due, in part, to the fact that instead of getting belted with gamma rays or being born a demon from hell, industrialist and scientist Tony Stark got his super powers by means of his engineering genius.
But just how realistic is Stark's amazing suit?
Sadly, nearly all of the features of the Iron Man suit, with one important exception, are not likely to be realized anytime soon. Let's look at each of the suit's major elements in turn.
Jet boots
The reason that we don't fly to work using boot-mounted jets as Iron Man does has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with energy. We know how to achieve thrust and propulsion using personal jet packs, and a person can indeed fly from home to their place of employment like Buck Rogers or Adam Strange -- provided they live 30 seconds from work.
The problem is that lifting a full-grown person 100 feet into the air considerably increases their potential energy, and that gain in energy must come from the stored chemical energy in the jet pack. Ditto for the energy required to zip around once airborne. You just can't store enough energy to make long flights without making the suit too big to wear. So jet boots alone don't make Iron Man an escapist fantasy, but the idea that Stark could store enough energy in his suit to fly for more than half a minute does.
Repulsor rays
Similarly, the directed energy weapons Iron Man uses, such as the "repulsor rays" built into the palms of his gloves, should require that Stark drag along a large power generator whenever he faces off against the Mandarin or Titanium Man. I'm not exactly sure what a "repulsor ray" is, but if it's anything like a high-power laser, then the energy demands are considerable.
Even assuming that Iron Man can convert any stored energy in his suit into laser light with 100 percent efficiency, then to generate a beam powerful enough to melt a fist-size hole through a half-inch thick steel plate (which any comic book fan can tell you is well within Shellhead's capabilities) would require an energy pulse of more than 2 gigawatts of power, greater than the output of a nuclear power plant.
Cybernetic helmet
There is one aspect of Iron Man's armor that is not only scientifically sound, but may be available for our use someday soon: the "cybernetic helmet" Tony Stark uses to control the devices within his armor. When Iron Man wants to discharge his palm-mounted repulsor rays, he does not have to manually release a safety switch, enter a firing sequence code or even pull a trigger -- he just tells the supervillain to "talk to the hand" and fires!
In fact, Bin He of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota has already created a helmet much like Iron Man's. It works on the principle that neurons' electrical currents create electric and magnetic fields, which can be detected with devices such as the electroencephalograph, or EEG. While the EEG has been around since the 1920s, recent advances in signal processing have enabled scientists to isolate and identify the firing signatures of neurons associated with particular motor-imagery tasks.
Professor He identified the specific firing pattern that arises when a person, watching images on a computer monitor, tries to mentally move a cursor to the left or right. These detected frequencies can then be amplified and, when suitably modified, can instruct the computer to move the cursor in the same direction.
Of course, He is not int
Thanks for the info. Have any recommendations on who to buy the replacements from in the USA? Or did you do refills? Can't find anyone to do refills for Canon here (lawsuit related).
I just finally ran out of ink in my Canon Pixma MP780 and am looking at buying replacement ink cartridges. I know that a lot of the printers, mine included I'm pretty sure, have counters in the carts to keep you from refilling them. You can (usually) disable the counters through some undocumented voodoo, but then it doesn't watch out for you running out of ink and you can burn up the expensive print head.
So I'm going to skip the refill. But I'm looking at buying the non-name brand ink carts. Does anyone know if this avoids the counter problem? Do these "compatible" ink carts also have the counter chip so it can avoid silently running out of ink?
I need replacements of all the carts - BCI-3eBk, BCI-6C, BCI-6Y, BCI-6M, BCI-6Bk. From Canon, this costs around $40-50 for all 5. I found one compatible one that is $14.51 and actually contains about twice as many carts: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000C159LW
Couple of other questions: if I got the above package, would I still need a BCI-6Bk, or could it use the BCI-3eBk for all the black needs? Does anyone have a link to a page the explains the difference between BCI-3, BCI-3e, BCI-6, etc.?
Note: I sometimes print photos, but it's not really for archival purposes. If I want a quality long term photo, I send it to Walgreens. Most of my printing is fairly disposable - a map to some place, a story to read later, etc.
No, I know all about literate programming. A friend was forced to study it in college, and I was interested enough that I checked it out.
Rereading your post a few times, I'm actually beginning to wonder if you know what literate programming is. It's not just well written, well commented code. That's just called "well written, well commented code."
Literate programming is a lot more involved than just that. People were doing that long before Knuth came along and coined the term "literate programming" for his idea of the "programs as documentation with occasional code."
The big problem I have with nested functions is that yet again they make the code difficult to understand with the eyeballs. Worse yet, you have to define the function between the declaration of the outer function and the body of it. So you get this: It makes it fairly easy to get lost.
As many people have pointed out, you seem to be a bit mistaken about what I'm talking about. When the client start out not really knowing what they want (as is the case in a large number of situations), it's impossible to sit down and design a solution from the beginning. It's also sometimes very shortsighted to design an interface when you don't even know all the functionality that will be in it yet.
If you work only with clients that know everything they want before you build it, more power to you. I'll continue to cash in on the other 99% of the market.
No, actually I'm not missing the point. I think perhaps you are. We get to the final system through iterations. But you can't build some half-assed mock up of the system and actually get the same results as building real versions of the system. So you do all the work of making a working system. So at that point, you can start over, abstracts some specs and build again. OR, you can take the perfectly working versions and ship it. Which do you think is more likely to happen in a business situation where time is money? What about if you plan on selling a new version next year? Can you now see my point about why the latter is "out of favor" because of real world considerations?
I like that. But considering it only gets around 1k hits on google, I'm not really going to consider it an established term. ;)