One small nitpick: it was actually The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), a part of the 2009 stimulus bill, that first mandated digitizing medical records.
Although I believe the ACA actually expanded on HITECH, mandated Meaningful Use requirements, etc. (I was hired at a pediatric clinic in 2008 specifically to help them convert from paper charts to an EHR.)
This link should help you out. Just download the latest version and install it over the top of your current version. It will upgrade your current install.
I would definitely be opposed to retrofitting neighborhoods to those cluster type mailboxes. My neighborhood has houses fairly far apart (large yards mostly), and that's not at all uncommon in Oregon. Plus there's a lot of traffic on my street, no sidewalks, and little to no room to walk along the street in many places. Making people walk up and down our street without first putting in sidewalks would be a prescription for injuries. I would think there's a lot of places in the US that are similar. Mostly it's just moving the boxes from the sides of houses to the street I don't see a problem with. But even that might not make sense everywhere.
But like others have said, the real issue here is the mandate that the USPS pre-fund 75 years of health insurance costs, meaning they're putting aside money for benefits for workers that aren't even born yet. Change that to a much more reasonable 10 years or so, and the USPS's money problems would pretty much clear up overnight. Not that a certain amount of consolidation and efficiency wouldn't be valuable, because the internet has reduced the amount of mail delivery needed quite a bit. I don't have a problem with getting rid of Saturday delivery. But making them pre-fund 75 years of benefits is just a sneaky way to get rid of or privatize the USPS, which I think would be a big mistake.
It's different all over, depending on when your subdivision was built. I also lived in Phoenix (agreed, it is a crappy city, that's why I only lived there 5 years and couldn't wait to move away) - our subdivision was built in 1969, and all the mailboxes were on the sides of our houses, by the front door. Drove my dogs crazy every day by the way.:)
Now that I'm back in Hillsboro, Oregon, our mailboxes are of the "cluster" type - but they're all full sized mailboxes on posts, not those little stacked boxes that have keys. (Our house was built in 1951.) My mailbox is directly at the end of my driveway, but a couple of our neighbors' mailboxes are right next to it, on my property but on an easement. A little ways down our property (we live along the main access road in the neighborhood) is a cluster of full sized mailboxes on posts that serve most of the houses within view of our house, from both sides of the street.
There's plenty of older residents on our street who walk out to get their mail every day, so I don't really think the argument about not making older residents walk to the street instead of picking up mail from the front of their house is that strong of an argument. It's good for older people to get out of the house and have a little activity every day - and when they get to the age where they can't even get to the street, I'm sure they can ask a neighbor, friend, or family member get their mail every couple days.
I don't see any problem with switching from front-of-house to out at the street. The only unanswered question: who's going to pay for putting up mailboxes at the street? It would probably be unfair to ask senior citizens on fixed incomes to pay for having a mailbox put in. Any proposals for changing mail delivery should include the cost of retrofitting mailboxes for people in them. It would still save the post office money in the long run.
You're arguing that insurance companies shouldn't be able to have all this patient information. They already have it! Even without any changes to how we do things currently. You generally sign a waver before any doctor treats you, that says that they can share all the info from your visit for purposes of paying the claim and etc.
One of the major provisions of Obamacare/ACA is getting rid of preexisting conditions, so insurance companies can't deny care based on the fact that you've had some disease in the past. So why would you then care if an insurance company has information about you?
Besides, there are strict rules about who can access a patient's private health care information. A company who wished to hire someone would not have access to the patient's past medical history unless they specifically had the applicant sign a waiver stating they could access that. I wouldn't sign such a thing as a condition of employment, I dunno about you. And if the laws currently don't prohibit employers asking for such a waiver, I'd support such a law.
It seems to me that you have this idea that because there will be electronic medical records shared more easily between medical entities, that means that everyone, everywhere will now have access to your private medical records. You apparently have no idea about the HIPAA laws. They are very specific about exactly who can have access to a patient's information, and the main thing that controls where a patients' data can go is the patient themselves. I'm assuming you didn't read the article either - there are several examples in there where they discuss exactly this - private information about mental health, and not even allowing your general practitioner to see that you're taking certain drugs for mental disorders.
DMV worker: "I see as of 2009 your record says you have epilepsy. I can't give you a driver's license."
Anonymous Coward: "See that notation from my doctor in 2010? Where it says that was a misdiagnosis and I never had epilepsy?"
DMV worker: "Oh yes, you're right. Here's your license Mr Coward."
Nope, I'm just opposed to health insurance (in its current form.) Auto/fire/theft insurance is one of those "just in case" things. If you are careful, you may never need to use that insurance, and therefore your insurance costs will be lower, and that's a great thing.
Health insurance is a different thing altogether, because everyone is going to need to get health care throughout their life. Even if you're careful, exercise all the time, eat well, you could still have a incredibly costly genetic disease that will bankrupt you even with good insurance. If you avoid getting health care throughout your life, you're going to tend to be less healthy...and then eventually you'll need costly care, and in the end you haven't saved any money at all.
I agree we should extend the benefits of Medicare. In fact, let's extend it to cover everyone in the US, i.e. Medicare Part E (for everyone.) Great idea, I'm glad you recommended it. You do realize Medicare is a single payer system right?
Cato Institute? Puh-lease. Why don't you just link directly to redstate.com or huffingtonpost.com? It would be just as fair and balanced as anything from the Cato Institute, a well-known libertarian think tank that is opposed to the government being in charge of anything.
The free market has had plenty of time to demonstrate to us exactly how they handle healthcare insurance. If the free market worked, healthcare in the US wouldn't be in the state it is today. Instead what we get with free market healthcare is preexisting conditions, yearly and lifetime benefit limits, insurance companies that spend all their time figuring out how to not pay claims, insurance companies that will cancel your coverage if you have an expensive claim and forgot to mention on your insurance application that you had acne treatment when you were 17, etc.
I've worked in the healthcare industry for over 10 years, and I've been on both ends: I worked for an insurance company, and I work now for a healthcare clinic. Please don't try to tell me that insurance companies' hands are tied by the government, and that's why costs are high and coverage is bad. Insurance companies are in the business to make as much money as they can, and they do that by paying as little as they can, and charging as much money as they can get away with. Any savings they pass on to shareholders, they don't cut costs to their customers. They also raise costs to providers by each one having their own highly specific rules about how claims must be submitted and formatted, what information needs to be sent with each claim, etc. If the insurance companies would get together and decide on a set of common rules, we could reduce complexity and cost for providers and patients. But instead we have a Business Office with around 20 employees, processing claims for 30 physicians. It's sure great for providing a lot of jobs, but increases the prices for everyone.
Not sure where you got the part about "everyone who disagrees with you is an inhuman monster who just wants poor people to suffer and die". Was that directed at me, or just at some caricature Democrat/liberal/socialist that you are assuming I am?
So what you're saying is, if you have epilepsy, you want the ability to hide that from the DMV, so that you can still drive your car while having a potentially very dangerous condition to have while driving? You want the "freedom" to continue to endanger the lives of others so that you're not inconvenienced by having to take public transportation. Gee, thanks for your concern for your fellow man.
Not really that convincing an argument for keeping your medical diagnoses secret.
Don't know what to tell you about the Gmail app - I don't have a Priority Inbox anywhere in mine. I have the Jelly Bean 4.2.2 version of the app if that makes any difference.
On the web page, go into your Settings, Labels, and tell it to Hide any labels you don't want to see, like the Important label.
The Priority Inbox has been around for several years now - but you can easily turn it off in both the web view and Android app. I don't see the problem.
Interesting. Good thing then, that last I looked 4.2 wasn't available for my Transformer then (the original TF101.) Mines still on a Cyanogen version of 4.1.2. I'll definitely wait to upgrade to 4.2 until the Wiimote Controller dev figures out how to work around the issue and updates it for 4.2. Thanks for the info!
But where an Android tablet really shines for gaming might be surprising: emulators. Just about every classic gaming console has multiple emulators available, and Wii console controllers, including the Classic Controller with dual analog sticks, can be easily connected via bluetooth if you install a free app from the Play store. No need for rooting or any special access. The app simply translates the Wii controller as a keyboard, so any app that supports custom keyboard mappings, i.e. "w" for up, "x" for down, etc. will work. Open the battery case of the Wii controller, click the button so it attempts to connect, click the discovery button in the app, set the Wii Remote as your current keyboard, and you're ready to go. You just need to go into the settings for each emulator app, and teach it to recognize your Wii controller. Do it once and it's saved in the app forever. I've been playing a bunch of NES, Super Nintendo, and Genesis games lately, including playing through Phantasy Star II, one of the best ever RPGs, for Sega Genesis. I previously played through Super Mario Land and I'm starting on Yoshi's Island.
There are some good platformers on Android, but it's true that a lot of games don't get the touch controls right. (Platformers and racing games are my two favorite types of games.) The best platformer I've played on Android so far is Cordy 2: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silvertree.cordy2&hl=en
Racing games are pretty easy to get right: most use either touch zones (i.e. touch the right side of the screen to turn right, touch the left side of the screen to turn left, gesture or touch onscreen buttons for brakes and nitro), or use tilt-to-steer using the accelerometer/gyroscope sensors. Tilt-to-steer works pretty good on a smartphone, but is terrible on a tablet (your hand/wrist muscles get sore very quickly tilting something the size of a tablet.) I prefer the touch zones usually. The Asphalt racing series is the best IMO - they've got the controls down pretty nicely, and they're fairly long games with good variety of tracks.
All of the issues you've raised about using a mouse on a touch UI have already been answered on Android. I have an Asus Transformer tablet with keyboard dock. It has a built in touchpad, and also supports USB or bluetooth mice. By default, when the touchpad is turned on, it shows a circle on screen as your cursor - about the size of a finger tip. Move your finger on the touchpad, the cursor moves around. Click the left touchpad button or tap on the touchpad, it acts like a finger tap. Click the button and hold, it acts like a finger held down. Click the button and hold, and swipe to the side, and it acts like a finger swipe to the side. Click the button and hold and swipe up, and the web page or document scrolls up - no need for a scroll bar. It's very intuitive if you already know how to use Android. (Side note: There ARE scroll bars in some apps on Android, but it's app-dependent. It depends on if the developer decides the app needs them.)
In addition, it supports some multi-touch gestures. For example swipe two fingers up, and it scrolls down in the document or web page. Swipe two fingers left or right on the touchpad while on your home screens, it changes home screens like you've done a finger swipe on the screen. I'm sure there are other multi-touch gestures it supports.
With all that said...I rarely use the touchpad on my Transformer, and I never use a mouse on it. I find it's much more intuitive and easy to simply use the touchscreen as my navigation - it's already there 6 inches away from my fingers, and is not a strain since the docked tablet is usually on my lap. Type on the keyboard, use the screen for navigating. The only time I use the touchpad is when I'm using Logmein to log into a Windows computer, when a touchpad is more usable than a touch screen.
I completely agree with your assessment. I have a Transformer tablet with the keyboard dock. I actually keep it docked 80% or more of the time. When it's docked, not only do you get the full keyboard, but the screen can be adjusted to any angle, it has full USB ports, and it has another 8 hours of battery life. The keyboard dock has a touchpad, but I NEVER use it - instead I use the touchscreen to navigate. Since the keyboard dock is the size of the tablet itself, I only have to reach out about 6 inches to the screen. I think this is a very efficient way to use a computer, so I think that touchscreen laptops, once people use them and get used to them (and aren't scared away by geeks with preconceived notions that haven't actually tried using a computer this way,) will catch on pretty well.
I've also tried out Windows 8 (x64 version) on a Fujitsu tablet with a keyboard dock very similar to my Transformer - in fact the keyboard keys were identical, so I suspect it was manufactured by the same Chinese company that created my Transformer keyboard dock. I was blown away by how well Microsoft has made Windows work with a touchscreen in Windows 8. I work for a medical clinic, and for five years now we've used convertible touchscreen tablet/laptops from Fujitsu. The previous ones we used needed a stylus, but our current ones the touchscreens work with your fingers as well as a stylus. Windows XP Tablet version was ok, but they just tacked on touch. Windows 7 improved things, including better handwriting recognition, but it was still difficult to do everything with touch. Windows 8 *almost* seems like it was designed for touch. With Windows 7, you were still stuck with the mouse-centric controls, and for example you had to do a little tap-up-tap and hold to select and drag a window. With Windows 8, you can actually use it intuitively - hold down on a window title bar and move your finger, it will drag the window. A million little things like that. And I'm talking about the classic desktop here, not the Metro interface. The Metro interface is designed for touch, but since the applications I'd need to use for work aren't available in Metro versions, I didn't test that out a whole lot. It didn't take me more than an hour or two to get used to using Windows 8 with touch instead of a mouse.
It was great to be able to undock the Windows 8 tablet when I wanted to use it on the couch, hand it around to friends, etc. Then dock it to the keyboard, and you have a full blown pretty standard Windows 8 laptop. And in either mode you have at least one USB port, as well as all the other normal PC ports on the keyboard dock.
I think both sides of the argument over laptop vs tablet are essentially correct: Tablets are good as consumption devices, but not great at real work. Laptops are great for real work, but not so great for casual use on the couch. Convertible tablets are the best of both worlds.
But given all that, I still use my desktop quite a bit too. There's something to be said for wired ethernet and 6 TB of hard drive space for downloading. The one device that gets the least use now? My laptop. Hadn't even used it in almost a year, until I plugged it into a monitor so we could watch videos in bed. SO much nicer to travel with my Transformer and an external USB drive.
Android tablets aren't in quite the same situation as Android smartphones are. Since most Android tablets are NOT purchased from the wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon, their updates are provided by the manufacturers, not the wireless carriers. So once the updates are available from the manufacturer, they are installable by the end user - you don't have the additional hurdle of waiting for the wireless carrier to test and release them.
My Asus Transformer TF101 came with Honeycomb originally, and there was already an update available when I turned it on the first time. I got 4-5 updates to Honeycomb, then I got the major update to Ice Cream Sandwich, then another 4-5 updates to the base ICS. It's doubtful I'll get official Jelly Bean, but that's ok - I decided not to wait and put CyanogenMod Jelly Bean on it. I'm actually not even sure if Asus is still releasing updates, since they wouldn't be installable on top of my custom ROM. And honestly, I can see why they are not updating many older tablets and smartphones to JB - the hardware just isn't up to it. I definitely enjoy having JB on it, but it has caused a bit of lag on certain things, and certain features like Google Now are just unusably slow.
If you think about it though, the OS support and upgrades I got from Asus on my Android tablet is BETTER than what you get with a Windows based computer. Yes, you get pretty frequent patches for Windows for most of the life of the OS, but is there ANY Windows computer where the manufacturer provides you with an upgrade to the next version of Windows for free, like the ICS upgrade I got for my Transformer? (Besides limited time offers where the new Windows OS is about to come out, and they provide you with a free OS upgrade so you don't wait to buy a computer until the new OS ships. And Windows Service Packs aren't really a new version of Windows - more a collection of patches - at least since Vista.)
And when the manufacturer of both Windows and Android computing devices stop supporting your device, what are the options for the end user? Pretty much the same for both Windows and Android:
1) Windows: Buy the new version of Windows, and install it yourself generally with no official support from the manufacturer. Manufacturer may or may not provide updated drivers for the new version of Windows - but old version of drivers may work in the new OS. In any case, they will not provide any support for the end user doing this. Generally only geeks update their Windows computers to the next version of Windows - this is not something a normal user would do.
2) Android: Find a CyanogenMod ROM version of the new Android OS for the tablet. Unlock the bootloader and root. Install the new version of the Android OS. Manufacturer will not provide support for the new version. Driver support is baked into the ROM by CyanogenMod (old version of drivers may work in the new OS.) Generally only geeks update their tablets to the next version of Android - this is not something a normal user would do.
who are you to decide what is fair? you didn't write the app, and have no idea how much time, effort, and resources went into the development. if it took me 3 man years of development, and i had to pay to license some technology, and i decide it needs to cost $30 for me to recoup my losses and make a small profit, who are you to tell me different?
Who am I to decide what is fair? I am the customer - really the only important person in determining if a price is fair. If you have to price your app at a price point to recoup your costs that the potential customer feels is not fair, then your potential customer is not going to buy your app. If you don't lower your price to a point that enough people feel is fair, then you're not going to make any sales. And you have a much greater risk of people pirating your app.
This is the way that the free market works, has always worked, and is supposed to work. You have no guarantee that all the work you put into development are going to be recouped, it's a risk any entrepreneur takes. But don't go thinking that your potential customers owe you for your hard work. I couldn't care less about all the development time you took to develop your app - all I care about is whether I feel it is a fair price for what I get.
If you're not OK with this state of affairs, I'm sure there are hundreds of other app developers that would be happy to sell me their app instead - and at a "fair" price.
But then you're not really agreeing with me at all. The fact that it has a completely different rendering engine was exactly my point. A rendering engine alone does not a browser make, but that's a huge part of it. And any arguments about whether or not it's better or worse than WebKit are irrelevant. The fact that it's DIFFERENT, that it's "not-WebKit", was my point.
It's the same reason that I value having Linux around as a desktop OS, even if I don't personally run Linux as my desktop OS and prefer Windows. Having Linux there forces Microsoft to innovate and compete, makes it so that the computing landscape is not a monoculture, and offers a compelling alternative for those that prefer non-Microsoft OS's.
I agree that one great reason to have Firefox around is the same reason Firefox for Windows was important when it first came out: it is the non-corporate open source alternative browser, that uses a different rendering engine than the rest. It's important because it's not exactly the same as all the other browsers. Even if it were to have only 1% browser share, it will always be important for Firefox to be around.
Flash is a good reason to keep Firefox Mobile around. Another is that Google's iGoogle personalized homepage no longer works on the stock Android browser or Chrome for Android, but still works fine on Firefox Mobile (if you set Firefox to download the desktop version of the page.) I haven't found any way to fool the other browsers into loading it.
Yes Google has deprecated iGoogle and is going to kill it completely later this year, but damnit, I like my iGoogle homepage!
It's also nice to have three different browsers around for those situations where a webpage just doesn't render right in one or the other. But I generally prefer Chrome for Android for most of my daily browsing. It's quick at rendering and loading, and since it uses WebKit most web pages just work correctly (but not all of them!)
I don't use Firefox sync any longer, even though I only browse with Firefox on my desktop computers. I used it for a while, but it was killing my battery because it was always doing its syncing thing. Once I turned that feature off my battery life went way up.
Slashdot Mirror
One small nitpick: it was actually The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), a part of the 2009 stimulus bill, that first mandated digitizing medical records.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Although I believe the ACA actually expanded on HITECH, mandated Meaningful Use requirements, etc. (I was hired at a pediatric clinic in 2008 specifically to help them convert from paper charts to an EHR.)
Do you expect to be able to use a 32-bit Flash Player inside a 64-bit browser?
There is a 64 bit version of Flash:
http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/flash-player-64-bit-operating.html
This link should help you out. Just download the latest version and install it over the top of your current version. It will upgrade your current install.
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/fx/#desktop
I would definitely be opposed to retrofitting neighborhoods to those cluster type mailboxes. My neighborhood has houses fairly far apart (large yards mostly), and that's not at all uncommon in Oregon. Plus there's a lot of traffic on my street, no sidewalks, and little to no room to walk along the street in many places. Making people walk up and down our street without first putting in sidewalks would be a prescription for injuries. I would think there's a lot of places in the US that are similar. Mostly it's just moving the boxes from the sides of houses to the street I don't see a problem with. But even that might not make sense everywhere.
But like others have said, the real issue here is the mandate that the USPS pre-fund 75 years of health insurance costs, meaning they're putting aside money for benefits for workers that aren't even born yet. Change that to a much more reasonable 10 years or so, and the USPS's money problems would pretty much clear up overnight. Not that a certain amount of consolidation and efficiency wouldn't be valuable, because the internet has reduced the amount of mail delivery needed quite a bit. I don't have a problem with getting rid of Saturday delivery. But making them pre-fund 75 years of benefits is just a sneaky way to get rid of or privatize the USPS, which I think would be a big mistake.
That is full sized. I meant US standard mailbox size, meaning 5-ish x 6-ish x 19-ish ... one of the two smaller ones on this page.
http://www.medfordmailboxshop.com/merchant/pages/guide/mailbox-sizes.htm
It's different all over, depending on when your subdivision was built. I also lived in Phoenix (agreed, it is a crappy city, that's why I only lived there 5 years and couldn't wait to move away) - our subdivision was built in 1969, and all the mailboxes were on the sides of our houses, by the front door. Drove my dogs crazy every day by the way. :)
Now that I'm back in Hillsboro, Oregon, our mailboxes are of the "cluster" type - but they're all full sized mailboxes on posts, not those little stacked boxes that have keys. (Our house was built in 1951.) My mailbox is directly at the end of my driveway, but a couple of our neighbors' mailboxes are right next to it, on my property but on an easement. A little ways down our property (we live along the main access road in the neighborhood) is a cluster of full sized mailboxes on posts that serve most of the houses within view of our house, from both sides of the street.
There's plenty of older residents on our street who walk out to get their mail every day, so I don't really think the argument about not making older residents walk to the street instead of picking up mail from the front of their house is that strong of an argument. It's good for older people to get out of the house and have a little activity every day - and when they get to the age where they can't even get to the street, I'm sure they can ask a neighbor, friend, or family member get their mail every couple days.
I don't see any problem with switching from front-of-house to out at the street. The only unanswered question: who's going to pay for putting up mailboxes at the street? It would probably be unfair to ask senior citizens on fixed incomes to pay for having a mailbox put in. Any proposals for changing mail delivery should include the cost of retrofitting mailboxes for people in them. It would still save the post office money in the long run.
You're arguing that insurance companies shouldn't be able to have all this patient information. They already have it! Even without any changes to how we do things currently. You generally sign a waver before any doctor treats you, that says that they can share all the info from your visit for purposes of paying the claim and etc.
One of the major provisions of Obamacare/ACA is getting rid of preexisting conditions, so insurance companies can't deny care based on the fact that you've had some disease in the past. So why would you then care if an insurance company has information about you?
Besides, there are strict rules about who can access a patient's private health care information. A company who wished to hire someone would not have access to the patient's past medical history unless they specifically had the applicant sign a waiver stating they could access that. I wouldn't sign such a thing as a condition of employment, I dunno about you. And if the laws currently don't prohibit employers asking for such a waiver, I'd support such a law.
It seems to me that you have this idea that because there will be electronic medical records shared more easily between medical entities, that means that everyone, everywhere will now have access to your private medical records. You apparently have no idea about the HIPAA laws. They are very specific about exactly who can have access to a patient's information, and the main thing that controls where a patients' data can go is the patient themselves. I'm assuming you didn't read the article either - there are several examples in there where they discuss exactly this - private information about mental health, and not even allowing your general practitioner to see that you're taking certain drugs for mental disorders.
DMV worker: "I see as of 2009 your record says you have epilepsy. I can't give you a driver's license."
Anonymous Coward: "See that notation from my doctor in 2010? Where it says that was a misdiagnosis and I never had epilepsy?"
DMV worker: "Oh yes, you're right. Here's your license Mr Coward."
That was hard.
Nope, I'm just opposed to health insurance (in its current form.) Auto/fire/theft insurance is one of those "just in case" things. If you are careful, you may never need to use that insurance, and therefore your insurance costs will be lower, and that's a great thing.
Health insurance is a different thing altogether, because everyone is going to need to get health care throughout their life. Even if you're careful, exercise all the time, eat well, you could still have a incredibly costly genetic disease that will bankrupt you even with good insurance. If you avoid getting health care throughout your life, you're going to tend to be less healthy...and then eventually you'll need costly care, and in the end you haven't saved any money at all.
I agree we should extend the benefits of Medicare. In fact, let's extend it to cover everyone in the US, i.e. Medicare Part E (for everyone.) Great idea, I'm glad you recommended it. You do realize Medicare is a single payer system right?
Cato Institute? Puh-lease. Why don't you just link directly to redstate.com or huffingtonpost.com? It would be just as fair and balanced as anything from the Cato Institute, a well-known libertarian think tank that is opposed to the government being in charge of anything.
The free market has had plenty of time to demonstrate to us exactly how they handle healthcare insurance. If the free market worked, healthcare in the US wouldn't be in the state it is today. Instead what we get with free market healthcare is preexisting conditions, yearly and lifetime benefit limits, insurance companies that spend all their time figuring out how to not pay claims, insurance companies that will cancel your coverage if you have an expensive claim and forgot to mention on your insurance application that you had acne treatment when you were 17, etc.
I've worked in the healthcare industry for over 10 years, and I've been on both ends: I worked for an insurance company, and I work now for a healthcare clinic. Please don't try to tell me that insurance companies' hands are tied by the government, and that's why costs are high and coverage is bad. Insurance companies are in the business to make as much money as they can, and they do that by paying as little as they can, and charging as much money as they can get away with. Any savings they pass on to shareholders, they don't cut costs to their customers. They also raise costs to providers by each one having their own highly specific rules about how claims must be submitted and formatted, what information needs to be sent with each claim, etc. If the insurance companies would get together and decide on a set of common rules, we could reduce complexity and cost for providers and patients. But instead we have a Business Office with around 20 employees, processing claims for 30 physicians. It's sure great for providing a lot of jobs, but increases the prices for everyone.
Not sure where you got the part about "everyone who disagrees with you is an inhuman monster who just wants poor people to suffer and die". Was that directed at me, or just at some caricature Democrat/liberal/socialist that you are assuming I am?
The entire point of the ACA is to destroy the insurance industry, causing an emergency for which the only solution will be single-payer.
We can only hope. That would be the best possible outcome. Tell me again what the point of insurance companies is?
So what you're saying is, if you have epilepsy, you want the ability to hide that from the DMV, so that you can still drive your car while having a potentially very dangerous condition to have while driving? You want the "freedom" to continue to endanger the lives of others so that you're not inconvenienced by having to take public transportation. Gee, thanks for your concern for your fellow man.
Not really that convincing an argument for keeping your medical diagnoses secret.
Don't know what to tell you about the Gmail app - I don't have a Priority Inbox anywhere in mine. I have the Jelly Bean 4.2.2 version of the app if that makes any difference.
On the web page, go into your Settings, Labels, and tell it to Hide any labels you don't want to see, like the Important label.
The Priority Inbox has been around for several years now - but you can easily turn it off in both the web view and Android app. I don't see the problem.
You're actually wrong on both counts:
To get rid of the "Important" mailbox in the web interface: Go to your Gmail settings, Inbox tab, and set your Inbox to "Classic".
In the Android Gmail app, go into the settings for your Gmail account, and uncheck "Priority Inbox".
Interesting. Good thing then, that last I looked 4.2 wasn't available for my Transformer then (the original TF101.) Mines still on a Cyanogen version of 4.1.2. I'll definitely wait to upgrade to 4.2 until the Wiimote Controller dev figures out how to work around the issue and updates it for 4.2. Thanks for the info!
But where an Android tablet really shines for gaming might be surprising: emulators. Just about every classic gaming console has multiple emulators available, and Wii console controllers, including the Classic Controller with dual analog sticks, can be easily connected via bluetooth if you install a free app from the Play store. No need for rooting or any special access. The app simply translates the Wii controller as a keyboard, so any app that supports custom keyboard mappings, i.e. "w" for up, "x" for down, etc. will work. Open the battery case of the Wii controller, click the button so it attempts to connect, click the discovery button in the app, set the Wii Remote as your current keyboard, and you're ready to go. You just need to go into the settings for each emulator app, and teach it to recognize your Wii controller. Do it once and it's saved in the app forever. I've been playing a bunch of NES, Super Nintendo, and Genesis games lately, including playing through Phantasy Star II, one of the best ever RPGs, for Sega Genesis. I previously played through Super Mario Land and I'm starting on Yoshi's Island.
There are some good platformers on Android, but it's true that a lot of games don't get the touch controls right. (Platformers and racing games are my two favorite types of games.) The best platformer I've played on Android so far is Cordy 2:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.silvertree.cordy2&hl=en
Racing games are pretty easy to get right: most use either touch zones (i.e. touch the right side of the screen to turn right, touch the left side of the screen to turn left, gesture or touch onscreen buttons for brakes and nitro), or use tilt-to-steer using the accelerometer/gyroscope sensors. Tilt-to-steer works pretty good on a smartphone, but is terrible on a tablet (your hand/wrist muscles get sore very quickly tilting something the size of a tablet.) I prefer the touch zones usually. The Asphalt racing series is the best IMO - they've got the controls down pretty nicely, and they're fairly long games with good variety of tracks.
All of the issues you've raised about using a mouse on a touch UI have already been answered on Android. I have an Asus Transformer tablet with keyboard dock. It has a built in touchpad, and also supports USB or bluetooth mice. By default, when the touchpad is turned on, it shows a circle on screen as your cursor - about the size of a finger tip. Move your finger on the touchpad, the cursor moves around. Click the left touchpad button or tap on the touchpad, it acts like a finger tap. Click the button and hold, it acts like a finger held down. Click the button and hold, and swipe to the side, and it acts like a finger swipe to the side. Click the button and hold and swipe up, and the web page or document scrolls up - no need for a scroll bar. It's very intuitive if you already know how to use Android. (Side note: There ARE scroll bars in some apps on Android, but it's app-dependent. It depends on if the developer decides the app needs them.)
In addition, it supports some multi-touch gestures. For example swipe two fingers up, and it scrolls down in the document or web page. Swipe two fingers left or right on the touchpad while on your home screens, it changes home screens like you've done a finger swipe on the screen. I'm sure there are other multi-touch gestures it supports.
With all that said...I rarely use the touchpad on my Transformer, and I never use a mouse on it. I find it's much more intuitive and easy to simply use the touchscreen as my navigation - it's already there 6 inches away from my fingers, and is not a strain since the docked tablet is usually on my lap. Type on the keyboard, use the screen for navigating. The only time I use the touchpad is when I'm using Logmein to log into a Windows computer, when a touchpad is more usable than a touch screen.
I completely agree with your assessment. I have a Transformer tablet with the keyboard dock. I actually keep it docked 80% or more of the time. When it's docked, not only do you get the full keyboard, but the screen can be adjusted to any angle, it has full USB ports, and it has another 8 hours of battery life. The keyboard dock has a touchpad, but I NEVER use it - instead I use the touchscreen to navigate. Since the keyboard dock is the size of the tablet itself, I only have to reach out about 6 inches to the screen. I think this is a very efficient way to use a computer, so I think that touchscreen laptops, once people use them and get used to them (and aren't scared away by geeks with preconceived notions that haven't actually tried using a computer this way,) will catch on pretty well.
I've also tried out Windows 8 (x64 version) on a Fujitsu tablet with a keyboard dock very similar to my Transformer - in fact the keyboard keys were identical, so I suspect it was manufactured by the same Chinese company that created my Transformer keyboard dock. I was blown away by how well Microsoft has made Windows work with a touchscreen in Windows 8. I work for a medical clinic, and for five years now we've used convertible touchscreen tablet/laptops from Fujitsu. The previous ones we used needed a stylus, but our current ones the touchscreens work with your fingers as well as a stylus. Windows XP Tablet version was ok, but they just tacked on touch. Windows 7 improved things, including better handwriting recognition, but it was still difficult to do everything with touch. Windows 8 *almost* seems like it was designed for touch. With Windows 7, you were still stuck with the mouse-centric controls, and for example you had to do a little tap-up-tap and hold to select and drag a window. With Windows 8, you can actually use it intuitively - hold down on a window title bar and move your finger, it will drag the window. A million little things like that. And I'm talking about the classic desktop here, not the Metro interface. The Metro interface is designed for touch, but since the applications I'd need to use for work aren't available in Metro versions, I didn't test that out a whole lot. It didn't take me more than an hour or two to get used to using Windows 8 with touch instead of a mouse.
It was great to be able to undock the Windows 8 tablet when I wanted to use it on the couch, hand it around to friends, etc. Then dock it to the keyboard, and you have a full blown pretty standard Windows 8 laptop. And in either mode you have at least one USB port, as well as all the other normal PC ports on the keyboard dock.
I think both sides of the argument over laptop vs tablet are essentially correct: Tablets are good as consumption devices, but not great at real work. Laptops are great for real work, but not so great for casual use on the couch. Convertible tablets are the best of both worlds.
But given all that, I still use my desktop quite a bit too. There's something to be said for wired ethernet and 6 TB of hard drive space for downloading. The one device that gets the least use now? My laptop. Hadn't even used it in almost a year, until I plugged it into a monitor so we could watch videos in bed. SO much nicer to travel with my Transformer and an external USB drive.
Android tablets aren't in quite the same situation as Android smartphones are. Since most Android tablets are NOT purchased from the wireless carriers like AT&T and Verizon, their updates are provided by the manufacturers, not the wireless carriers. So once the updates are available from the manufacturer, they are installable by the end user - you don't have the additional hurdle of waiting for the wireless carrier to test and release them.
My Asus Transformer TF101 came with Honeycomb originally, and there was already an update available when I turned it on the first time. I got 4-5 updates to Honeycomb, then I got the major update to Ice Cream Sandwich, then another 4-5 updates to the base ICS. It's doubtful I'll get official Jelly Bean, but that's ok - I decided not to wait and put CyanogenMod Jelly Bean on it. I'm actually not even sure if Asus is still releasing updates, since they wouldn't be installable on top of my custom ROM. And honestly, I can see why they are not updating many older tablets and smartphones to JB - the hardware just isn't up to it. I definitely enjoy having JB on it, but it has caused a bit of lag on certain things, and certain features like Google Now are just unusably slow.
If you think about it though, the OS support and upgrades I got from Asus on my Android tablet is BETTER than what you get with a Windows based computer. Yes, you get pretty frequent patches for Windows for most of the life of the OS, but is there ANY Windows computer where the manufacturer provides you with an upgrade to the next version of Windows for free, like the ICS upgrade I got for my Transformer? (Besides limited time offers where the new Windows OS is about to come out, and they provide you with a free OS upgrade so you don't wait to buy a computer until the new OS ships. And Windows Service Packs aren't really a new version of Windows - more a collection of patches - at least since Vista.)
And when the manufacturer of both Windows and Android computing devices stop supporting your device, what are the options for the end user? Pretty much the same for both Windows and Android:
1) Windows: Buy the new version of Windows, and install it yourself generally with no official support from the manufacturer. Manufacturer may or may not provide updated drivers for the new version of Windows - but old version of drivers may work in the new OS. In any case, they will not provide any support for the end user doing this. Generally only geeks update their Windows computers to the next version of Windows - this is not something a normal user would do.
2) Android: Find a CyanogenMod ROM version of the new Android OS for the tablet. Unlock the bootloader and root. Install the new version of the Android OS. Manufacturer will not provide support for the new version. Driver support is baked into the ROM by CyanogenMod (old version of drivers may work in the new OS.) Generally only geeks update their tablets to the next version of Android - this is not something a normal user would do.
who are you to decide what is fair? you didn't write the app, and have no idea how much time, effort, and resources went into the development. if it took me 3 man years of development, and i had to pay to license some technology, and i decide it needs to cost $30 for me to recoup my losses and make a small profit, who are you to tell me different?
Who am I to decide what is fair? I am the customer - really the only important person in determining if a price is fair. If you have to price your app at a price point to recoup your costs that the potential customer feels is not fair, then your potential customer is not going to buy your app. If you don't lower your price to a point that enough people feel is fair, then you're not going to make any sales. And you have a much greater risk of people pirating your app.
This is the way that the free market works, has always worked, and is supposed to work. You have no guarantee that all the work you put into development are going to be recouped, it's a risk any entrepreneur takes. But don't go thinking that your potential customers owe you for your hard work. I couldn't care less about all the development time you took to develop your app - all I care about is whether I feel it is a fair price for what I get.
If you're not OK with this state of affairs, I'm sure there are hundreds of other app developers that would be happy to sell me their app instead - and at a "fair" price.
But then you're not really agreeing with me at all. The fact that it has a completely different rendering engine was exactly my point. A rendering engine alone does not a browser make, but that's a huge part of it. And any arguments about whether or not it's better or worse than WebKit are irrelevant. The fact that it's DIFFERENT, that it's "not-WebKit", was my point.
It's the same reason that I value having Linux around as a desktop OS, even if I don't personally run Linux as my desktop OS and prefer Windows. Having Linux there forces Microsoft to innovate and compete, makes it so that the computing landscape is not a monoculture, and offers a compelling alternative for those that prefer non-Microsoft OS's.
Thanks for the info, I'll have to try turning sync on again.
I agree that one great reason to have Firefox around is the same reason Firefox for Windows was important when it first came out: it is the non-corporate open source alternative browser, that uses a different rendering engine than the rest. It's important because it's not exactly the same as all the other browsers. Even if it were to have only 1% browser share, it will always be important for Firefox to be around.
Flash is a good reason to keep Firefox Mobile around. Another is that Google's iGoogle personalized homepage no longer works on the stock Android browser or Chrome for Android, but still works fine on Firefox Mobile (if you set Firefox to download the desktop version of the page.) I haven't found any way to fool the other browsers into loading it.
Yes Google has deprecated iGoogle and is going to kill it completely later this year, but damnit, I like my iGoogle homepage!
It's also nice to have three different browsers around for those situations where a webpage just doesn't render right in one or the other. But I generally prefer Chrome for Android for most of my daily browsing. It's quick at rendering and loading, and since it uses WebKit most web pages just work correctly (but not all of them!)
I don't use Firefox sync any longer, even though I only browse with Firefox on my desktop computers. I used it for a while, but it was killing my battery because it was always doing its syncing thing. Once I turned that feature off my battery life went way up.