So when a drug dealer offers me some drugs, and I decide to take it and begin my path down addiction, I can blame the drug dealer and take no responsibility for my actions?
Or how about this, I get offered a gigantic home loan without assessing the risk. When my house gets foreclosed upon because I am unable to make the payments I can just blame the mortgage broker, right? They offered me the credit! They enabled me! It's not my fault!
If the private sector is indeed a bunch of helpless addicts who, given a large enough supply of cash, will gorge themselves in the name of greater profits, then they must have no self control and need to be regulated for their own sake and the sake of the economy.
AIG's poor risk management is completely their responsibility. It was that poor risk management which rendered them virtually insolvent. Bubble or no bubble, if they had responsibly managed their risk they wouldn't have approached the brink of collapse, ready to take their investors and a potential huge chunk of the economy with them. There's a reason some financial institutions have done OK and some have not. Those who did OK did not overextend themselves. Businesses like AIG had a choice, just like any other business, and they chose to completely ignore the risk they were taking and simply gorge on the available money. Like an over eater at a buffet, they showed absolutely no restraint, but hey... it's not their fault, it's the restaurants fault for providing so much food. Far be it from private business that in the face of huge profits, and potentially huge risks, they show a little caution and self control. They can always blame the government for their own stupidity.
Evidently you haven't given up on enlightening me, although you still don't have any sources.
Also, I believe the government did have a hand in the recession we are in now. It's very clear that interest rates were dropped to extremely low rates and money printed like mad so that the velocity of money could be used to pay for the war in Iraq without having to raise taxes. This is a flaw in the government and it needs to be fixed, but it doesn't mean that everything the government does economically is bad.
I've never denied the government's culpability, but I believe that the private sector's irresponsibility is also to blame. I don't understand how, when AIG is handing out credit-default swaps on mortgages which are clearly going into default, that this is the government's responsibility? Shouldn't AIG, and many of these other financial institutions been doing a better job at managing their risk? No one held a gun to AIG's head when it was handing out the swaps.
They had 91% of the market share in the U.S. In several local markets they did have a monopoly. You don't have to have 100% market share to be considered a monopoly, you simply have to have "sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
For the best examples of what AC is talking about, you only have to research U.S. History of the late 1800s to the early 1900s, when monopolies were aggressively taking over several sectors of the U.S. economy. Take Standard Oil for example, at one point they controlled the entire oil refining industry, giving them a monopoly over the supply of refined oil in the U.S. They created this monopoly themselves, WITHOUT government help, by using anti-competitive tactics like bullying distributors into providing them lower prices and artificially keeping their prices so low that any competitors went bankrupt or had no choice but to be bought out by Standard Oil (this is what AC is talking about, and it is not absurd, it actually happens). In fact, it was the government that had to break up the monopoly in order to restore competition in the market. You have studied U.S. History, haven't you?
They should charge $1,000,000 a month for unlimited data transfer. Then when no one signs up, they can say there's simply no demand for unlimited data transfer and get rid of the plan entirely.
I'm sorry jcr, but I just can't see things from your one-sided point of view. The government isn't perfect, but neither are corporations. SOMEONE is going to regulate the market in the name of their own interests.
You also imply that using the government is the ONLY way a company can obtain a monopoly, which is false. With limited resources and/or a limited supply, it's easy for a company to create a monopoly by simply buying up all the resources and supplies to corner the market. You may argue that any competitor is free to enter the market and compete, but a large enough company is able to use its size and clout to undercut such competitors, by lowering prices to even unprofitable levels just to kill of the competitors or by manipulating suppliers by threatening to cut them off, and put them out of business fairly quickly. This is even without mentioning oligopolies which only require competitors to drop their swords and start screwing the customer in unison.
What we need is a healthy amount of regulation on the sectors that need it and a healthy amount of deregulation for that sectors that need the extra freedom. Either extreme, whether it be Lazziez faire or socialism, would be bad for the people. A combination of both free market and regulated market is what is needed, and what we have now. Considering that the U.S. is one of the top 10 free markets in the world, we're already leaning towards the former, so a little more regulation isn't going to hurt us.
I've never said that the government ALWAYS does the right thing and protects us from corporations stealing our land from under our noses. What I said is that if a corporation wanted to take your land, they'll find a way with or without the government's help. BTW, those laws saying that a corporation can't just come and steal your land? They'd be worthless without a government to enforce them. You say the government is corrupt, so let's just get rid of the government and see who enforces those laws, yay anarcho-capitalism!
I've admitted that the government isn't perfect and there are politicians out there who are corrupt to the bone, but you can't seem to admit that letting equally self-interested corporations do what they please is just as bad.
Lazziez faire has been tried before and failed to bring abundance to the people as its supports claim it will, just like trickle down economics. Free market capitalism would work great if the private sector didn't manipulate the market to eradicate the very thing that makes capitalism work for the people: competition. Also, do you really want to take a step closer to anarcho-capitalism? The conglomerates have enough power as it is, at least with the government they have to actually go through the effort of bribing someone before they start stealing the land from under our houses.
In other words, Ron Paul doesn't think it's ok for the federal government to say that you can't have butt sex, but he's perfectly fine with the state government saying your can't have butt sex.
I'm sure Ron Paul would be perfectly ok with warrant-less wiretapping as well, as long as it was the state government doing it and not the federal government. The constitution? Oh that just has silly words in it like "Liberty" which in no way implies freedom from prying eyes in your bedroom.
If the courts rule in favor of Jewel against the NSA, what are the consequences? Who gets the punishment? Does the federal government just have to hand over a bunch of money? Will the federal government be required to fire people responsible? Will it increase the possibility that Bush/Cheney could be found guilty of a crime? Or is it just that the federal government won't be able to do warrent-less wiretaps in the future without a clear break of the law?
It seems to me that if the courts rule against the NSA and thus the federal government, it's Obama's administration that will pay when it is the Bush administration that committed the actions. I've also had a sense throughout Obama's campaign that he does not want to go after the Bush administration or the telcos because he simply doesn't want to rehash the past. Losing Jewel v. NSA would be just that, opening up past members of the federal government and the telcos to liabilities and potential criminal charges.
The downside is that in order to win Jewel v. NSA, Obama's DOJ has little choice but to use the Bush administration's stance on the issue. The DOJ is unable to use any written laws to defend the action because even the 2008 Intelligence Survellience law contained a provision "reaffirm[ing] that FISA, and that act's courts, gives the final say over government spying."
Has any Presidential administration allowed a witch hunt against the previous administration to occur? If a which hunt against the Bush administration was allowed to start, would it be unprecedented?
Sounds kinda like the same reasons the South wanted to secede from the Union. I'd say not putting up with the South's secession was a good thing though.
An honest question attacked by 90% snide comments from users on high horses. What a bunch of assholes you people are. I ask "Why would you pay for something that you can legally get for free?" I didn't know the copy on Cydia was illegal. Just correct me like s73v3r did and leave the sermons for more appropriate threads.
CA Republicans are more interested in redistricting and open primaries to further their minority political power than being fiscal conservatives. I would have loved to see the Republicans win, because it would have resulted in massive layoffs by all state government agencies, sending the unemployment rate skyrocketing and pissing off a hell of a lot of people, which the Republicans would be fully to blame for.
The private sector is laying off people en masse, whether they are hurting financial or not. Even if taxes were lowered, the private sector is not going to start hiring people back because we are still in a state of economic decline. When we hit bottom, that'll be the time to cut spending and lower taxes, because by then the private sector will be comfortable with hiring more people and taking on more risk.
Our company has taken cutting costs pretty seriously, down to the penny. We've been asked to turn off our machines at night. I decided to setup to have my machine slowly turn things off over a matter of hours, in case I forget to turn my computer off when I'm away for a while. I also used to standby, but now I hibernate. I know the savings are probably minuscule, but every little bit helps. If I ever need access to my machine away from the office, I just WOL and remote it, then shutdown when I'm done. It really doesn't require much more effort.
If I could mod you up I would. Even though it's a legitimate argument, I think people are afraid of this being abused to inject intelligent design into the classroom. The sad thing is that by attacking it, they are destroying a pillar of science in the process; the baby goes out with the bathwater.
Let creationists challenge evolution in the classroom all the want, children should be taught that theories can and should be challenged. Religious arguments, because they are not faith-neutral by nature, should not be allowed though. If there was a faith-neutral way to present Intelligent Design, or if God could have some kind of scientific definition, then I'd be ok with it being taught in the classroom. That may very well be impossible though, so such discussions will simply have to occur outside of public institutions. Do people seriously want their children to be taught in school about the flying spaghetti monster as a challenge to the theory of evolution?
It's not that I don't like red light cameras in general. What it is I don't like is:
1) There is NO LIMIT to the number of red light cameras that a city can install. That means that it's possible for a red light camera to be on every single intersection, which is overkill. I would be more comfortable if a city could only have X% of traffic light intersections covered with red light cameras. If they want to add a camera to another intersection, they must remove an existing camera first.
2) Once red light running goes down, the cameras are not removed. They may be turned off, but they are still there and the general public does not know if they are on or off. They should be physicially removed from the site and either stored or installed at another location (see point 1). If red light running goes up again, then just reinstall the cameras. It would cost more, but that's the price you pay for some level of privacy.
3) That a 3rd party takes a cut of a public fine. The private sector should be paid for the cost of installing the equipment. They should not be given a cut of the fines, because this creates the incentive for the private company to do unethical things to increase ticket revenue.
4) The government still has an incentive to increase ticket revenue in order to fill budget holes completely unrelated to traffic safety, so it should be mandated that all funds that come from red light cameras first go to pay for the maintenance of the red light camera equipment, and anything left over MUST go to traffic safety programs: programs that educate drivers, construction to improve hazards at intersections, etc. The programs to educate drivers should be free, even for those who get caught running the red light. They already paid the fine anyways.
The anti-government demographic is quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this issue, but I say a little common sense can make red light cameras a benefit for everyone.
The expectation of travel is stupid, why would an engineer care about being sent here and there? If you want to travel to exotic places, just figure out how to make the most money using the smallest amount of time possible, make your own business on the side and send yourself on a nice vacation. Otherwise, you could do what I did and just move somewhere nice like San Diego and work there.
As for expecting constant rewards, what is wrong with thinking that learning a new skill gives you a leg up on the competition? You say "you are expected to learn new technology" as if everyone puts forth effort to learn new technology. Based on my experience, the older the person is, the less likely they are to give two shits about learning new technology. They are perfectly happy in their ways, even if that means refusing to write object oriented code and instead writing C++ using giant functions that resembles a goto-filled BASIC program, and the manager is happy as long as it works and doesn't take forever to do. So if this new grad learns technology A, and the senior programmer who's still writing using Delphi doesn't bother to learn that new technology A, and the company finds a use for technology A, guess who's more likely to get a reward?
Of course, instead of encouraging him, you simply kill his motivation, and for what? I don't think it has to do with being an old grad or a new grad, certain people are just inherently narcissistic.
Devaluation isn't always a bad thing though. It was devaluation that cause U.S. labor to become a lot cheaper to European countries and motivated them to start to relocate manufacturing plants in the U.S. The dollar was becoming so cheap, that we were beginning to do to Europe what China has done to us. Of course, since the dollar as shot up in value since the '08 crash, we no longer have quite an edge. Also, while wages may have been stagnant, corporate profits have soared.
Devaluation only really hurts you if you are just stuffing your cash in your mattress. If you invest that money in stocks, your value is not tied to the price of that stock, not the value of the dollars you used to pay for it. If you invest every dollar you get in gold, then the value is now tied to gold. In fact, as the dollar was dropping gold was climbing, so if you had turned your dollars into gold, you might see devaluation as a very good thing.
We certainly need our currency to be more stable, and it'd be nice if I did decide to stuff my money in my mattress that it retain its value, but devaluation isn't inherently bad. Until then, I guess I'll just stuff my mattress with gold instead.
It's against AT&T wireless' terms of service to use VoIP over a cellular data connection. Of course, just encrypt and connect to a proxy or just setup a VPN and viola, none of AT&T's business.
The Democratic Primary is not won by popular vote, but by delegates. Not surprisingly, Clinton's popular vote estimate only includes Clinton voters from Michigan, not Obama voters. Clinton lost because she a false sense of security that spawned from nepotism and entitlement. Maybe if she hadn't assumed from the very beginning that the cat was in the bag, she could have won.
Where were your in 2008, when Bush was still in office and the economy really went down the shitter? How many people lost their jobs in 2008, something like 2 million? Yeah, we were just rolling in dough when Bush was in office, he did a great job with the economy.
Ironic that you seem perfectly ok "paying a bit more for it" as long as it's a Republican in office. You bitch about the government picking your pocket, but you'll bend right over for a private company.
I work for an EMR company and we have been working towards giving customers more freedom of choice, at the customer's request. For example, previously the customer had to purchase software AND hardware from us, now they can purchase the software standalone and bring their own hardware to use. Also, a lot of medical information is available for transfer or synchronization from one system to the next using HL7 interfaces. You can use a third party system to schedule exams and use our system to perform the exams, all the information is synchronized via HL7 interfaces.
You are right on the money that there is currently no demand for an open EMR spec. If customers were asking for it, believe me they would get it, but that's honestly the last thing on their minds. They want more features to reduce the amount of resources (people, time, materials) that they need, thereby saving them money.
Not to mention the fact that forcing all EMR software companies to support a completely new spec in addition to their existing one would cost these companies a lot of money. That's time that could be spent improving the functionality of the existing software.
HL7 isn't a standardized format to store medical information, but rather to transfer medical information from one system to the next. Private companies and medical centers still have to configure their systems to spit out the HL7 from their proprietary data structures and databases so it can be transferred to/from their systems. It's also a very loosely defined standard, purposely so that it allows the people developing the applications as much flexibility as possible.
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So when a drug dealer offers me some drugs, and I decide to take it and begin my path down addiction, I can blame the drug dealer and take no responsibility for my actions?
Or how about this, I get offered a gigantic home loan without assessing the risk. When my house gets foreclosed upon because I am unable to make the payments I can just blame the mortgage broker, right? They offered me the credit! They enabled me! It's not my fault!
If the private sector is indeed a bunch of helpless addicts who, given a large enough supply of cash, will gorge themselves in the name of greater profits, then they must have no self control and need to be regulated for their own sake and the sake of the economy.
AIG's poor risk management is completely their responsibility. It was that poor risk management which rendered them virtually insolvent. Bubble or no bubble, if they had responsibly managed their risk they wouldn't have approached the brink of collapse, ready to take their investors and a potential huge chunk of the economy with them. There's a reason some financial institutions have done OK and some have not. Those who did OK did not overextend themselves. Businesses like AIG had a choice, just like any other business, and they chose to completely ignore the risk they were taking and simply gorge on the available money. Like an over eater at a buffet, they showed absolutely no restraint, but hey... it's not their fault, it's the restaurants fault for providing so much food. Far be it from private business that in the face of huge profits, and potentially huge risks, they show a little caution and self control. They can always blame the government for their own stupidity.
Evidently you haven't given up on enlightening me, although you still don't have any sources.
Also, I believe the government did have a hand in the recession we are in now. It's very clear that interest rates were dropped to extremely low rates and money printed like mad so that the velocity of money could be used to pay for the war in Iraq without having to raise taxes. This is a flaw in the government and it needs to be fixed, but it doesn't mean that everything the government does economically is bad.
I've never denied the government's culpability, but I believe that the private sector's irresponsibility is also to blame. I don't understand how, when AIG is handing out credit-default swaps on mortgages which are clearly going into default, that this is the government's responsibility? Shouldn't AIG, and many of these other financial institutions been doing a better job at managing their risk? No one held a gun to AIG's head when it was handing out the swaps.
They had 91% of the market share in the U.S. In several local markets they did have a monopoly. You don't have to have 100% market share to be considered a monopoly, you simply have to have "sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
"The Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and its nineteen subsidiary corporations were declared today by the Supreme Court of the United States to be a conspiracy and combination in restraint of trade.
It was otherwise held to be monopolizing interstate commerce in violation of the Sherman anti-trust law. The dissolution of the combination was ordered to take place within six months."
http://encarta.msn.com/sidebar_761594048/supreme_couhttp://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/09/2243214&from=rss#rt_rules_standard_oil_company_is_illegal_trust.html
That sure sounds like a monopoly to me! Maybe you should revisit your history lessons.
I love it when people retort with childish insults, it shows that they are out of sources or evidence to support their side of the debate with.
For the best examples of what AC is talking about, you only have to research U.S. History of the late 1800s to the early 1900s, when monopolies were aggressively taking over several sectors of the U.S. economy. Take Standard Oil for example, at one point they controlled the entire oil refining industry, giving them a monopoly over the supply of refined oil in the U.S. They created this monopoly themselves, WITHOUT government help, by using anti-competitive tactics like bullying distributors into providing them lower prices and artificially keeping their prices so low that any competitors went bankrupt or had no choice but to be bought out by Standard Oil (this is what AC is talking about, and it is not absurd, it actually happens). In fact, it was the government that had to break up the monopoly in order to restore competition in the market. You have studied U.S. History, haven't you?
They should charge $1,000,000 a month for unlimited data transfer. Then when no one signs up, they can say there's simply no demand for unlimited data transfer and get rid of the plan entirely.
I'm sorry jcr, but I just can't see things from your one-sided point of view. The government isn't perfect, but neither are corporations. SOMEONE is going to regulate the market in the name of their own interests.
You also imply that using the government is the ONLY way a company can obtain a monopoly, which is false. With limited resources and/or a limited supply, it's easy for a company to create a monopoly by simply buying up all the resources and supplies to corner the market. You may argue that any competitor is free to enter the market and compete, but a large enough company is able to use its size and clout to undercut such competitors, by lowering prices to even unprofitable levels just to kill of the competitors or by manipulating suppliers by threatening to cut them off, and put them out of business fairly quickly. This is even without mentioning oligopolies which only require competitors to drop their swords and start screwing the customer in unison.
What we need is a healthy amount of regulation on the sectors that need it and a healthy amount of deregulation for that sectors that need the extra freedom. Either extreme, whether it be Lazziez faire or socialism, would be bad for the people. A combination of both free market and regulated market is what is needed, and what we have now. Considering that the U.S. is one of the top 10 free markets in the world, we're already leaning towards the former, so a little more regulation isn't going to hurt us.
I've never said that the government ALWAYS does the right thing and protects us from corporations stealing our land from under our noses. What I said is that if a corporation wanted to take your land, they'll find a way with or without the government's help. BTW, those laws saying that a corporation can't just come and steal your land? They'd be worthless without a government to enforce them. You say the government is corrupt, so let's just get rid of the government and see who enforces those laws, yay anarcho-capitalism!
I've admitted that the government isn't perfect and there are politicians out there who are corrupt to the bone, but you can't seem to admit that letting equally self-interested corporations do what they please is just as bad.
Lazziez faire has been tried before and failed to bring abundance to the people as its supports claim it will, just like trickle down economics. Free market capitalism would work great if the private sector didn't manipulate the market to eradicate the very thing that makes capitalism work for the people: competition. Also, do you really want to take a step closer to anarcho-capitalism? The conglomerates have enough power as it is, at least with the government they have to actually go through the effort of bribing someone before they start stealing the land from under our houses.
In other words, Ron Paul doesn't think it's ok for the federal government to say that you can't have butt sex, but he's perfectly fine with the state government saying your can't have butt sex.
I'm sure Ron Paul would be perfectly ok with warrant-less wiretapping as well, as long as it was the state government doing it and not the federal government. The constitution? Oh that just has silly words in it like "Liberty" which in no way implies freedom from prying eyes in your bedroom.
If the courts rule in favor of Jewel against the NSA, what are the consequences? Who gets the punishment? Does the federal government just have to hand over a bunch of money? Will the federal government be required to fire people responsible? Will it increase the possibility that Bush/Cheney could be found guilty of a crime? Or is it just that the federal government won't be able to do warrent-less wiretaps in the future without a clear break of the law?
It seems to me that if the courts rule against the NSA and thus the federal government, it's Obama's administration that will pay when it is the Bush administration that committed the actions. I've also had a sense throughout Obama's campaign that he does not want to go after the Bush administration or the telcos because he simply doesn't want to rehash the past. Losing Jewel v. NSA would be just that, opening up past members of the federal government and the telcos to liabilities and potential criminal charges.
The downside is that in order to win Jewel v. NSA, Obama's DOJ has little choice but to use the Bush administration's stance on the issue. The DOJ is unable to use any written laws to defend the action because even the 2008 Intelligence Survellience law contained a provision "reaffirm[ing] that FISA, and that act's courts, gives the final say over government spying."
Has any Presidential administration allowed a witch hunt against the previous administration to occur? If a which hunt against the Bush administration was allowed to start, would it be unprecedented?
Sounds kinda like the same reasons the South wanted to secede from the Union. I'd say not putting up with the South's secession was a good thing though.
An honest question attacked by 90% snide comments from users on high horses. What a bunch of assholes you people are. I ask "Why would you pay for something that you can legally get for free?" I didn't know the copy on Cydia was illegal. Just correct me like s73v3r did and leave the sermons for more appropriate threads.
I want the Republicans to succeed and America to fail, so obviously I must be a Republican, DUH.
CA Republicans are more interested in redistricting and open primaries to further their minority political power than being fiscal conservatives. I would have loved to see the Republicans win, because it would have resulted in massive layoffs by all state government agencies, sending the unemployment rate skyrocketing and pissing off a hell of a lot of people, which the Republicans would be fully to blame for.
The private sector is laying off people en masse, whether they are hurting financial or not. Even if taxes were lowered, the private sector is not going to start hiring people back because we are still in a state of economic decline. When we hit bottom, that'll be the time to cut spending and lower taxes, because by then the private sector will be comfortable with hiring more people and taking on more risk.
Our company has taken cutting costs pretty seriously, down to the penny. We've been asked to turn off our machines at night. I decided to setup to have my machine slowly turn things off over a matter of hours, in case I forget to turn my computer off when I'm away for a while. I also used to standby, but now I hibernate. I know the savings are probably minuscule, but every little bit helps. If I ever need access to my machine away from the office, I just WOL and remote it, then shutdown when I'm done. It really doesn't require much more effort.
I went to App Store and saw it was $4.99. Went to Cydia and installed it for free. Why would you pay for something that you can legally get for free?
If I could mod you up I would. Even though it's a legitimate argument, I think people are afraid of this being abused to inject intelligent design into the classroom. The sad thing is that by attacking it, they are destroying a pillar of science in the process; the baby goes out with the bathwater.
Let creationists challenge evolution in the classroom all the want, children should be taught that theories can and should be challenged. Religious arguments, because they are not faith-neutral by nature, should not be allowed though. If there was a faith-neutral way to present Intelligent Design, or if God could have some kind of scientific definition, then I'd be ok with it being taught in the classroom. That may very well be impossible though, so such discussions will simply have to occur outside of public institutions. Do people seriously want their children to be taught in school about the flying spaghetti monster as a challenge to the theory of evolution?
It's not that I don't like red light cameras in general. What it is I don't like is: 1) There is NO LIMIT to the number of red light cameras that a city can install. That means that it's possible for a red light camera to be on every single intersection, which is overkill. I would be more comfortable if a city could only have X% of traffic light intersections covered with red light cameras. If they want to add a camera to another intersection, they must remove an existing camera first.
2) Once red light running goes down, the cameras are not removed. They may be turned off, but they are still there and the general public does not know if they are on or off. They should be physicially removed from the site and either stored or installed at another location (see point 1). If red light running goes up again, then just reinstall the cameras. It would cost more, but that's the price you pay for some level of privacy.
3) That a 3rd party takes a cut of a public fine. The private sector should be paid for the cost of installing the equipment. They should not be given a cut of the fines, because this creates the incentive for the private company to do unethical things to increase ticket revenue.
4) The government still has an incentive to increase ticket revenue in order to fill budget holes completely unrelated to traffic safety, so it should be mandated that all funds that come from red light cameras first go to pay for the maintenance of the red light camera equipment, and anything left over MUST go to traffic safety programs: programs that educate drivers, construction to improve hazards at intersections, etc. The programs to educate drivers should be free, even for those who get caught running the red light. They already paid the fine anyways.
The anti-government demographic is quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this issue, but I say a little common sense can make red light cameras a benefit for everyone.
The expectation of travel is stupid, why would an engineer care about being sent here and there? If you want to travel to exotic places, just figure out how to make the most money using the smallest amount of time possible, make your own business on the side and send yourself on a nice vacation. Otherwise, you could do what I did and just move somewhere nice like San Diego and work there.
As for expecting constant rewards, what is wrong with thinking that learning a new skill gives you a leg up on the competition? You say "you are expected to learn new technology" as if everyone puts forth effort to learn new technology. Based on my experience, the older the person is, the less likely they are to give two shits about learning new technology. They are perfectly happy in their ways, even if that means refusing to write object oriented code and instead writing C++ using giant functions that resembles a goto-filled BASIC program, and the manager is happy as long as it works and doesn't take forever to do. So if this new grad learns technology A, and the senior programmer who's still writing using Delphi doesn't bother to learn that new technology A, and the company finds a use for technology A, guess who's more likely to get a reward?
Of course, instead of encouraging him, you simply kill his motivation, and for what? I don't think it has to do with being an old grad or a new grad, certain people are just inherently narcissistic.
Devaluation isn't always a bad thing though. It was devaluation that cause U.S. labor to become a lot cheaper to European countries and motivated them to start to relocate manufacturing plants in the U.S. The dollar was becoming so cheap, that we were beginning to do to Europe what China has done to us. Of course, since the dollar as shot up in value since the '08 crash, we no longer have quite an edge. Also, while wages may have been stagnant, corporate profits have soared.
Devaluation only really hurts you if you are just stuffing your cash in your mattress. If you invest that money in stocks, your value is not tied to the price of that stock, not the value of the dollars you used to pay for it. If you invest every dollar you get in gold, then the value is now tied to gold. In fact, as the dollar was dropping gold was climbing, so if you had turned your dollars into gold, you might see devaluation as a very good thing.
We certainly need our currency to be more stable, and it'd be nice if I did decide to stuff my money in my mattress that it retain its value, but devaluation isn't inherently bad. Until then, I guess I'll just stuff my mattress with gold instead.
It's against AT&T wireless' terms of service to use VoIP over a cellular data connection. Of course, just encrypt and connect to a proxy or just setup a VPN and viola, none of AT&T's business.
Wow, fresh flame bait. Ok, I'll bite.
The Democratic Primary is not won by popular vote, but by delegates. Not surprisingly, Clinton's popular vote estimate only includes Clinton voters from Michigan, not Obama voters. Clinton lost because she a false sense of security that spawned from nepotism and entitlement. Maybe if she hadn't assumed from the very beginning that the cat was in the bag, she could have won.
Where were your in 2008, when Bush was still in office and the economy really went down the shitter? How many people lost their jobs in 2008, something like 2 million? Yeah, we were just rolling in dough when Bush was in office, he did a great job with the economy.
Ironic that you seem perfectly ok "paying a bit more for it" as long as it's a Republican in office. You bitch about the government picking your pocket, but you'll bend right over for a private company.
I work for an EMR company and we have been working towards giving customers more freedom of choice, at the customer's request. For example, previously the customer had to purchase software AND hardware from us, now they can purchase the software standalone and bring their own hardware to use. Also, a lot of medical information is available for transfer or synchronization from one system to the next using HL7 interfaces. You can use a third party system to schedule exams and use our system to perform the exams, all the information is synchronized via HL7 interfaces.
You are right on the money that there is currently no demand for an open EMR spec. If customers were asking for it, believe me they would get it, but that's honestly the last thing on their minds. They want more features to reduce the amount of resources (people, time, materials) that they need, thereby saving them money.
Not to mention the fact that forcing all EMR software companies to support a completely new spec in addition to their existing one would cost these companies a lot of money. That's time that could be spent improving the functionality of the existing software.
HL7 isn't a standardized format to store medical information, but rather to transfer medical information from one system to the next. Private companies and medical centers still have to configure their systems to spit out the HL7 from their proprietary data structures and databases so it can be transferred to/from their systems. It's also a very loosely defined standard, purposely so that it allows the people developing the applications as much flexibility as possible.