Hate to break it to you, but Canada's "healthcare crisis" is 80% fabrication by our Republican/Tea Party equivalents.
Think about it - our system is taxpayer funded. So healthcare can't go broke, unless the entire *country* goes broke. (Even the deficit is largely self-inflicted - if Harper hadn't cut the GST we'd still be in happy surplus land.
Now, it is true that healthcare costs are rising - but that's largely a function of the government being beholden to medical lobbies rather than negotiating for better drug rates.
(This is not a criticism of the wealthy in Canada, per se. As far as I know, they think our system is as great as the rest of us do. But they have the money, and they can decide how to spend it.)
And it's also worth noting that while the Canadian Rich can (and do) spend money to get faster service elsewhere, that's after paying their taxes like the rest of us. There's no "opting out" for the rich because they'll fly overseas - they pay their share here first, *then* decide if they want to fly elsewhere.
But, when Sheik XYZ needs quadruple bypass surgery and can get it anywhere, he typically goes to the U.S. Not the U.K. not Germany, not Canada, not Cuba, not Switzerland, the U.S. Why?
Because other countries won't let Sheik jump to the front of the line by handing over a few briefcases full of money?
But here's the counter-argument - who will have an easier time getting that quadruple bypass? You, a citizen of the US; or Mr. Sheik, who's going to pull aside the hospital admins and hand them a few briefcases?
Also, forgot to mention - we do pay for our healthcare, through taxes. Not really any different from a group insurance policy when you think of it - everyone pays into the pot, docs get paid out of the pot.
And when you don't directly have to pay for it (ie Medicare) then you don't care about the cost to benefit.
This isn't true in UHC countries like Canada or France or Sweden, so why would it be true in the U.S.? In UHC countries, annual per capita spending is around 55% of what it is in the U.S. (in 2010, $3,900 to $7,400), and they have better aggregate outcomes as measured by things like life expectancy (average 2+ years higher in UHC countries than in the U.S.). With UHC schemes, it looks pretty clearly like they pay less and get more effective medical treatment.
One way to look at UHC is that there's one payer - the government. Ideally, the government should be using that buying power to reduce costs. (As in, "I have a couple million people who want cheap aspirin - who'll give me a deal?"). In practice, the various medical professionals just lobby the hell out the government.
From the personal level, you still have to book time off, book an appointment with the doc, etc etc. So it's not like people go to the doctor for giggles. (I know mine wishes he'd see me a bit *more* often - I've been ducking my physical for years.)
To all the people who say you don't need privacy if you've got nothing to hide, fuck you. While this app has no business in the app store anyway, hopefully the masses will wake up and STOP BROADCASTING their entire life on the Internet.
Can't we have both? Can't we tell people to stop broadcasting, because there are creepy bastiches out there?
If there's any misconduct here, I'd say it's on the part of Foursquare, by making checkins not only public but personally identifiable! This should clearly not be the default, and I question whether a responsible service should provide it at all. Publishing precise locations of individual people to the world just seems like a bad idea.
I don't use Foursquare, but my understanding is that being IDed is the point ("Bob just arrived at Bob's Bobporium").
I'd still lay the blame on the app maker, but purely in a shame fashion. Yes, you can build an app that combines all this information into something. But because you can doesn't mean you should, and since the stated goal was "pick up chicks", I have no objections to them getting a bit of shaming for building something lame. Same as I think fart apps are stupid as hell.
Erm. But I wear short skirts because they're comfortable and make my legs look good. If a man happens to be stood downstairs from me and gets an eyeful then that's something I need to be conscious of avoiding, but it doesn't excuse someone standing under a staircase specifically trying to invade my privacy.
This. It's the difference between "seeing what has been offered" and "trying to see what has not been offered".
If the lady comes to the desk and leans over in her low-cut shirt, I'm not going to apologize for what I may see. But it's not polite to stare either.
Alternately, we stop being so prissy about seeing things on the Internet.
The "teacher's party picture" annoys me - you can be a school teacher at 22 years old. If they go out with their doctor, lawyer, plumber, and oil-rig worker high-school buddies for a night on the town and a parent sees the photo, why is the teacher the only one who gets in trouble?
It's App to find people who want to be found. It's like posting your address in the White Pages, but not realizing that everyone can see it. I guess some people are just that stupid!
Well, a step beyond that - it's taking your white pages information, then looking up any references to you in the local papers, then pulling your phone records (if they were publicly available), and compiling a dossier on you.
The "creepy" factor is that we as a society are still getting used to the fact that it's now trivial to compile that dossier. We still think it's the 50s, where the police (or a private investigator) could build that file of where you go, what you do, who you hang out with, where you were and are, but that it was really time-intensive and a bit expensive. So unless you had a reason to think someone would want to go through that effort, so assumed it wasn't done (and were mostly right).
Remember, this app was compiling data from multiple sources - GPS for where you are, FourSquare (and it's brethren) for location information on other people, Facebook for the public profiles, etc. It's nothing that a person couldn't do right now. (Google+ will show you "nearby" posts today). It's just a bit time-consuming to do by hand (and so we assume people don't bother). What we forget is that it's trivial to get the computer to do all that research for us, and display it in easy-to-use formats. It's now inexpensive, both in time and money to build those dossiers - which means we need to change our assumptions to "everyone knows everything I put online".
This is the big one - there's no way to tell is "Oh, here's the answer" is because you're Oh So Very Smart And Intuitive or because You Stole the Answers From The Kid Next To You.
Showing your work is how you prove that yes, you're oh so very smart. (Because if you can't explain your brilliant deductions, you're not as smart as you think you are).
From what I observe, regardless of hand position most drivers are doing it wrong. Tailgating, cutting people off, never use turn signals, not accelerating before trying to merge on to a highway, running stop signs. I see almost all of this every day on the way to work, and it's only 17km. Hand position is the least of their problems.
And the reason is obvious - most people haven't been tested on proper (or current!) driving techniques in decades. Where I am, I can get a class 5 (your standard "drive anything that's not a motorbike or commercial" permit) at 16, and then never take a driver's test again. There's talk of making seniors have to retake the test, but even then that's nearly 50 years! And really, anyone can pass a driver's test if they pay attention for a few minutes. There really should be mandatory re-takes when you re-new the license, just to remind folks how to do things.
As for the hand-position, I was told 9 and 3 gave you better control, but that since most cars put the beam at that point, 10 and 2 works just as well. If I hit something hard enough to set off the airbag, I figure I've got bigger problems.
(a.k.a. the “volleyball is exclusionary and tag promotes violence” types).
I've heard the tag=violence bit before (I volunteered at a school that banned any sport where you threw a ball at a kid. No baseball, soccer-baseball, dodgeball...), but I've never heard the volleyball is exclusionary line before. What's the (poor) logic there?
I am a hobby gamer. I am concerned however with his goal. He wants to introduce the hobby to nongamers or nongeeks. So how does he do this? On a channel only watched by geeks. Hmm I think the show will be great but will it reach who he intends it for?
It's on YouTube - I'm guessing the hope is that it'll go somewhat viral.
Hell, if a bunch of Canadians filling their faces with fastfood laced with bacon can pull a couple million views a week...
Oh man you're both right, and this bodes ill. Ill, I say. Socially speaking, playing sports is cool, watching sports is OK, playing games is frowned upon, and now... watching other people play games on TV. I don't know, man. That's next-level stuff. Meta.
Somehow poker makes good TV (or pulls good TV ratings)
I'll give the show a try - partly because Wil strikes me as a cool geek, and I try to support geeks when possible. Partly because I wouldn't be surprised if the show morphs into a bit of a review/demo setup. (The trailer shows them playing various games, and I suspect there'll be at least a bit of "how the game works"). And failing that, I wouldn't be surprised if it's as least as good as the Penny Arcade D&D sessions where you tune in more for the banter than the game itself.
Those of us who loved Dollhouse have two words for you: Eliza Dushku.
Eat shit, faget.
Please. I loved Dollhouse, but Eliza was *easily* the weakest part of the show. (The kindest I will be is that it was a very bad part for her.)
The world-setting was original, the supporting cast was generally above-average, and when Fox got the hell out of the way and let the producers tell the story it was damned good.
Was it The Best Sci-Fi ever? No, but it was still better than most crap on TV.
Tabletop gaming has been a traditionally males-only hobby. Nothing wrong with that.
Then you're playing the wrong tabletop games with the wrong crowds. (Or perhaps I'm fortunate enough to live in a region with a high female-gamer ratio.)
Our group includes two married couples (one of which is my wife), and when the guys start talking about too much geeky crap, they just go upstairs and start a game of Dominion or Ticket to Ride or whatever else they're in the mood for (our group is just shy of 50/50, depending on who shows up on any given day). I've been at D&D tables where I'm the only guy.
Women like games as much as men. They dislike swamp-ass'ed, sexist men. If you can't get women to hang out with you, it's very likely not because you're playing Settlers...
If you don't have an office in your home, get a different job. Close the door and make sure your spouse/family knows that between XX:XX and XX:XX hours, you're working, you're not home.
It takes some getting used to...but they'll get it eventually. Just keep the door closed.
A few options on enforcing home/work routine:
One I've seen in action - my wife works in a home office (the boss' house). When the door is open, the kids can come in but the office is "quiet space". (No toys, no yelling, no roughhousing). When the door is closed, no-one comes in unless something is on fire.
We use a variation at home for my wife's office - door open means the daughter can come in and out and hang. Door closed means Mom is working, but you can bug her if you really need to (but you should go ask Dad instead). Door locked means that you go find Dad, no matter what.
A variation I've heard of but not seen in person is installing one of those novelty stoplights outside the door (with the control inside). Use green-yellow-red for the various levels. Advantage is that you can keep the door closed all the time without sealing yourself away from your family.
Google is trying NOT to do that. They definitely good do a better job at taking some of their inventions and making them into a product, or licensing the technology out, but Google is basically printing money, it's good to see them putting it to a good use. Any investor not happy with how google uses its resources is free to sell their shares, and stfu.
And since Google has been doing "weird science" since nearly the beginning (certainly before the IPO), you can't claim that you didn't know they were going to spend money on wacky projects. And sometimes wacky projects don't pan out. Such is life.
I think the point made by the article is that we need more rigor in determining that the person is dead before the organs are removed. Obviously, they'll be dead afterwards.
There is no check for brain activity. They poke you a few times and remove your breather to see if you can breathe on your own. Note that a coma patient would fail some of those as well, and people *do* awake from comas. There is a big rush to declare you dead so that the organs can be harvested.
A "brain dead" patient is a money pinata, waiting to be whacked.
I'd be willing to believe that if the article had shown *any* evidence that an organ donor received different treatment "post-death" than non-donors.
I'll also settle for something saying that the doctors in that hospital are getting paid for removing organs for donation (hence giving them any sort of incentive to cheat). Yeah, the body might be worth two million (which feels like an inflated number), but I'd bet the doctor in the ER isn't eligible to get any of it - and if they don't get paid extra, why would they cheat?
Agreed - if my brain ain't running, I am happy to be considered "left the building". (OK, not happy, but I'm dead - I'm not *anything).
The summary is misleading as well - the "lack of informed consent" is that they don't advertise the gory details of how they keep your meaty bits fresh while they part you out. And frankly, like sausage factories and laws, people aren't really interested in the details of surgery unless it directly applies to them.
When I die I know I'm going to be parted out to help save people's lives. I don't need to know the details, since I'm not planning to be around for that part.
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to break it to you, but Canada's "healthcare crisis" is 80% fabrication by our Republican/Tea Party equivalents.
Think about it - our system is taxpayer funded. So healthcare can't go broke, unless the entire *country* goes broke. (Even the deficit is largely self-inflicted - if Harper hadn't cut the GST we'd still be in happy surplus land.
Now, it is true that healthcare costs are rising - but that's largely a function of the government being beholden to medical lobbies rather than negotiating for better drug rates.
(This is not a criticism of the wealthy in Canada, per se. As far as I know, they think our system is as great as the rest of us do. But they have the money, and they can decide how to spend it.)
And it's also worth noting that while the Canadian Rich can (and do) spend money to get faster service elsewhere, that's after paying their taxes like the rest of us. There's no "opting out" for the rich because they'll fly overseas - they pay their share here first, *then* decide if they want to fly elsewhere.
But, when Sheik XYZ needs quadruple bypass surgery and can get it anywhere, he typically goes to the U.S. Not the U.K. not Germany, not Canada, not Cuba, not Switzerland, the U.S. Why?
Because other countries won't let Sheik jump to the front of the line by handing over a few briefcases full of money?
But here's the counter-argument - who will have an easier time getting that quadruple bypass? You, a citizen of the US; or Mr. Sheik, who's going to pull aside the hospital admins and hand them a few briefcases?
Also, forgot to mention - we do pay for our healthcare, through taxes. Not really any different from a group insurance policy when you think of it - everyone pays into the pot, docs get paid out of the pot.
This isn't true in UHC countries like Canada or France or Sweden, so why would it be true in the U.S.? In UHC countries, annual per capita spending is around 55% of what it is in the U.S. (in 2010, $3,900 to $7,400), and they have better aggregate outcomes as measured by things like life expectancy (average 2+ years higher in UHC countries than in the U.S.). With UHC schemes, it looks pretty clearly like they pay less and get more effective medical treatment.
One way to look at UHC is that there's one payer - the government. Ideally, the government should be using that buying power to reduce costs. (As in, "I have a couple million people who want cheap aspirin - who'll give me a deal?"). In practice, the various medical professionals just lobby the hell out the government.
From the personal level, you still have to book time off, book an appointment with the doc, etc etc. So it's not like people go to the doctor for giggles. (I know mine wishes he'd see me a bit *more* often - I've been ducking my physical for years.)
To all the people who say you don't need privacy if you've got nothing to hide, fuck you. While this app has no business in the app store anyway, hopefully the masses will wake up and STOP BROADCASTING their entire life on the Internet.
Can't we have both? Can't we tell people to stop broadcasting, because there are creepy bastiches out there?
Any bets on whether a "guy around me" app would have raised any inkling of similar outcry?
Actually, despite the name, the app could show either males or females. (Yeah, I know, it's not cool to RTFA.)
Also, blame society - the perception is that women don't need to scam their way into a date with a guy.
If there's any misconduct here, I'd say it's on the part of Foursquare, by making checkins not only public but personally identifiable! This should clearly not be the default, and I question whether a responsible service should provide it at all. Publishing precise locations of individual people to the world just seems like a bad idea.
I don't use Foursquare, but my understanding is that being IDed is the point ("Bob just arrived at Bob's Bobporium").
I'd still lay the blame on the app maker, but purely in a shame fashion. Yes, you can build an app that combines all this information into something. But because you can doesn't mean you should, and since the stated goal was "pick up chicks", I have no objections to them getting a bit of shaming for building something lame. Same as I think fart apps are stupid as hell.
Erm. But I wear short skirts because they're comfortable and make my legs look good. If a man happens to be stood downstairs from me and gets an eyeful then that's something I need to be conscious of avoiding, but it doesn't excuse someone standing under a staircase specifically trying to invade my privacy.
This. It's the difference between "seeing what has been offered" and "trying to see what has not been offered".
If the lady comes to the desk and leans over in her low-cut shirt, I'm not going to apologize for what I may see. But it's not polite to stare either.
Alternately, we stop being so prissy about seeing things on the Internet.
The "teacher's party picture" annoys me - you can be a school teacher at 22 years old. If they go out with their doctor, lawyer, plumber, and oil-rig worker high-school buddies for a night on the town and a parent sees the photo, why is the teacher the only one who gets in trouble?
It's App to find people who want to be found. It's like posting your address in the White Pages, but not realizing that everyone can see it. I guess some people are just that stupid!
Well, a step beyond that - it's taking your white pages information, then looking up any references to you in the local papers, then pulling your phone records (if they were publicly available), and compiling a dossier on you.
The "creepy" factor is that we as a society are still getting used to the fact that it's now trivial to compile that dossier. We still think it's the 50s, where the police (or a private investigator) could build that file of where you go, what you do, who you hang out with, where you were and are, but that it was really time-intensive and a bit expensive. So unless you had a reason to think someone would want to go through that effort, so assumed it wasn't done (and were mostly right).
Remember, this app was compiling data from multiple sources - GPS for where you are, FourSquare (and it's brethren) for location information on other people, Facebook for the public profiles, etc. It's nothing that a person couldn't do right now. (Google+ will show you "nearby" posts today). It's just a bit time-consuming to do by hand (and so we assume people don't bother). What we forget is that it's trivial to get the computer to do all that research for us, and display it in easy-to-use formats. It's now inexpensive, both in time and money to build those dossiers - which means we need to change our assumptions to "everyone knows everything I put online".
Err.. that one is actually true.
Actually it's young men who are My Little Pony fans..
So, you heard about the Bronies too? Yeah.. weirded me out too.. still trying to get my heard around that one..
Personally, I'll go for the Friendship is Mauling version.
(Has thus-far managed to avoid the MLP plague, but having a five-year-old daughter it's only a matter of time...)
This is the big one - there's no way to tell is "Oh, here's the answer" is because you're Oh So Very Smart And Intuitive or because You Stole the Answers From The Kid Next To You.
Showing your work is how you prove that yes, you're oh so very smart. (Because if you can't explain your brilliant deductions, you're not as smart as you think you are).
From what I observe, regardless of hand position most drivers are doing it wrong. Tailgating, cutting people off, never use turn signals, not accelerating before trying to merge on to a highway, running stop signs. I see almost all of this every day on the way to work, and it's only 17km. Hand position is the least of their problems.
And the reason is obvious - most people haven't been tested on proper (or current!) driving techniques in decades. Where I am, I can get a class 5 (your standard "drive anything that's not a motorbike or commercial" permit) at 16, and then never take a driver's test again. There's talk of making seniors have to retake the test, but even then that's nearly 50 years! And really, anyone can pass a driver's test if they pay attention for a few minutes. There really should be mandatory re-takes when you re-new the license, just to remind folks how to do things.
As for the hand-position, I was told 9 and 3 gave you better control, but that since most cars put the beam at that point, 10 and 2 works just as well. If I hit something hard enough to set off the airbag, I figure I've got bigger problems.
(a.k.a. the “volleyball is exclusionary and tag promotes violence” types).
I've heard the tag=violence bit before (I volunteered at a school that banned any sport where you threw a ball at a kid. No baseball, soccer-baseball, dodgeball...), but I've never heard the volleyball is exclusionary line before. What's the (poor) logic there?
I am a hobby gamer. I am concerned however with his goal. He wants to introduce the hobby to nongamers or nongeeks. So how does he do this? On a channel only watched by geeks. Hmm I think the show will be great but will it reach who he intends it for?
It's on YouTube - I'm guessing the hope is that it'll go somewhat viral.
Hell, if a bunch of Canadians filling their faces with fastfood laced with bacon can pull a couple million views a week...
Oh man you're both right, and this bodes ill. Ill, I say. Socially speaking, playing sports is cool, watching sports is OK, playing games is frowned upon, and now... watching other people play games on TV. I don't know, man. That's next-level stuff. Meta.
Somehow poker makes good TV (or pulls good TV ratings)
I'll give the show a try - partly because Wil strikes me as a cool geek, and I try to support geeks when possible. Partly because I wouldn't be surprised if the show morphs into a bit of a review/demo setup. (The trailer shows them playing various games, and I suspect there'll be at least a bit of "how the game works"). And failing that, I wouldn't be surprised if it's as least as good as the Penny Arcade D&D sessions where you tune in more for the banter than the game itself.
Those of us who loved Dollhouse have two words for you: Eliza Dushku.
Eat shit, faget.
Please. I loved Dollhouse, but Eliza was *easily* the weakest part of the show. (The kindest I will be is that it was a very bad part for her.)
The world-setting was original, the supporting cast was generally above-average, and when Fox got the hell out of the way and let the producers tell the story it was damned good.
Was it The Best Sci-Fi ever? No, but it was still better than most crap on TV.
Tabletop gaming has been a traditionally males-only hobby. Nothing wrong with that.
Then you're playing the wrong tabletop games with the wrong crowds. (Or perhaps I'm fortunate enough to live in a region with a high female-gamer ratio.)
Our group includes two married couples (one of which is my wife), and when the guys start talking about too much geeky crap, they just go upstairs and start a game of Dominion or Ticket to Ride or whatever else they're in the mood for (our group is just shy of 50/50, depending on who shows up on any given day). I've been at D&D tables where I'm the only guy.
Women like games as much as men. They dislike swamp-ass'ed, sexist men. If you can't get women to hang out with you, it's very likely not because you're playing Settlers...
If you don't have an office in your home, get a different job. Close the door and make sure your spouse/family knows that between XX:XX and XX:XX hours, you're working, you're not home.
It takes some getting used to...but they'll get it eventually. Just keep the door closed.
A few options on enforcing home/work routine:
One I've seen in action - my wife works in a home office (the boss' house). When the door is open, the kids can come in but the office is "quiet space". (No toys, no yelling, no roughhousing). When the door is closed, no-one comes in unless something is on fire.
We use a variation at home for my wife's office - door open means the daughter can come in and out and hang. Door closed means Mom is working, but you can bug her if you really need to (but you should go ask Dad instead). Door locked means that you go find Dad, no matter what.
A variation I've heard of but not seen in person is installing one of those novelty stoplights outside the door (with the control inside). Use green-yellow-red for the various levels. Advantage is that you can keep the door closed all the time without sealing yourself away from your family.
Isn't that how it already works for trademarks? If you want to have exclusive rights, you either have to enforce it or lose it?
Unfortunately, while the gaming service is now available in Canada the desktop isn't yet. So I can't say if it's worth the trouble or not.
Google is trying NOT to do that. They definitely good do a better job at taking some of their inventions and making them into a product, or licensing the technology out, but Google is basically printing money, it's good to see them putting it to a good use. Any investor not happy with how google uses its resources is free to sell their shares, and stfu.
And since Google has been doing "weird science" since nearly the beginning (certainly before the IPO), you can't claim that you didn't know they were going to spend money on wacky projects. And sometimes wacky projects don't pan out. Such is life.
On the other hand, it might be the first actual sensations you've experienced since you hit the coma. You might welcome the variety.
I think the point made by the article is that we need more rigor in determining that the person is dead before the organs are removed. Obviously, they'll be dead afterwards.
There is no check for brain activity. They poke you a few times and remove your breather to see if you can breathe on your own. Note that a coma patient would fail some of those as well, and people *do* awake from comas. There is a big rush to declare you dead so that the organs can be harvested.
A "brain dead" patient is a money pinata, waiting to be whacked.
I'd be willing to believe that if the article had shown *any* evidence that an organ donor received different treatment "post-death" than non-donors.
I'll also settle for something saying that the doctors in that hospital are getting paid for removing organs for donation (hence giving them any sort of incentive to cheat). Yeah, the body might be worth two million (which feels like an inflated number), but I'd bet the doctor in the ER isn't eligible to get any of it - and if they don't get paid extra, why would they cheat?
Agreed - if my brain ain't running, I am happy to be considered "left the building". (OK, not happy, but I'm dead - I'm not *anything).
The summary is misleading as well - the "lack of informed consent" is that they don't advertise the gory details of how they keep your meaty bits fresh while they part you out. And frankly, like sausage factories and laws, people aren't really interested in the details of surgery unless it directly applies to them.
When I die I know I'm going to be parted out to help save people's lives. I don't need to know the details, since I'm not planning to be around for that part.