I'm learning Ruby now, after programming in Perl for a majority of my time in the last 10 years or so. Ruby is very Perl-ish at times, but the OO stuff is a lot cleaner and easier to learn. I'm enjoying it. It's the first OO language I've felt comfortable in.
I don't flippantly take my insurance for granted. I maximize my use of it. I'm diabetic. I know all about how much health care costs - I pay for it on a daily basis. And, yes, my rates have just about doubled in the past ten years, but costs of everything rise. Since the insurance is automatically deducated from my paycheck pre-tax, it helps keep my taxable salary a little lower. Every bit counts.
But to insinuate that only the rich can afford drugs -- as the original post did -- is to heavily misrepresent the situation in this country in a classic class warfare kind of way.
Lee Iacocca is also spearheading an effort to fund research being done for a cure that's apparantly seen some early good results. Check out JoinLeeNow.com for all the details.
I understand the numbers game and can appreciate the effort being made towards Type 2. I wonder if Type 2 is just more easily researched, or if it's strictly the numbers game that gives us all these advances in treatment that we juvenile diabetics never see. (Oh, wait, the inhalable insulin might be coming soon. Right. They've been promising that for 20 years.)
Someday, one of these announcements will actually help those of us with Juvenile Diabetes (Type 1), who have to take multiple shots a day and not just pop a pill.
Nobody will pay that much for the pills -- you shouldn't attempt to make this into a class warfare thing. Insurance companies will pick up the bulk of the costs, as they do for most medicines these days, which is also why drug prices can inflate so easily. Most people don't pay the actual posts of the pills, and then they complain when their co-pay for their $100 drug goes from $5 to $10. I worked in a pharmacy long enough to see that happen first hand.
It's like tech in many ways -- it always starts off expensive, and slowly drops in price with time. When the patent comes off and generics come into the market (often made by the same company) then you'll see a significant price drop.
Interesting. Some say that the article is not biased and so I shouldn't take potshots at it (I'm not -- just at the summation of it), while you're saying that the summary accurately reflects the tone of the piece.
I think it would be more productive to use a more neutral article to tell this story, so that the topics of conversation following it up would be more along the lines of the pro's and con's of net neutrality, and not what the intentions are of the editors who choose to write copy the way they do.
Couching a story like this in such intentionally-flammable language is not a help to anyone on any side.
How so? The aforementioned repeated and unnecessary mentions of the specific party the editor chose to use, particularly in light of the intended audience for the piece. Ironically enough, he's getting just what he wanted -- extra attention for flamebait copy.
I think that's what this comes down to -- if a Slashdot commenter wrote that summary up, it would be modded down for being obvious flamebait.
He's not necessarily referring to the article, itself, but rather the spin Slashdot has placed on it. Slashdot, in this case, is acting in the biased manner. Clearly, this writeup is a hit piece on the Republican party, a reflection of the opinions of the submitter and the moderator who approved it. There's no reason to refer to the committee as "Republican-controlled" in the writeup. Congress is controlled by the Republicans, so all of the committees will be, as well.
The repeated use of party definitions on an article which will clearly be the subject of much derision from the Slashdot crowd, is an obvious attempt at scoring political points, not relating a story. Too bad.
Am I the only one who had to read the excerpt from the review a few times to understand it? The use of commas and "however" is confusing, to say the least.
I went to the original article and searched on the word "However." On the second page, it's used three times inside of one paragraph.
When I found the original quoted sentence, I didn't understand it any better. There's a different between writing and speaking. With the proper voice inflection, that sentence is perfectly understandable. In cold writing, though, it's confusing.
Quick fix: Remove the "however" from the sentence, and replace it with a period. Make it two sentences and the whole thing makes perfect sense again.
I don't know if this holds true with NASA, specifically, but people often claim "budget cuts" when the increase in spending is limited. It's called Baseline Budgeting. Every line item has an assumed C.O.L.A. increase, basically, and if you don't increase spending by that much, it's considered a cut.
The best example of this is the school lunch program c. 1996. Congress proposed increasing spending by 1.6%, which was less than the 2% raise the program had had in previous years. The Congressional leaders were branded as (bascially) child-starvers for "cutting the program." They did no such thing. More money chanelled into it, but it was less than otherwise forecast.
The more I follow the world of computing, the more repetitive it gets. I've heard this argument for Linux and Mac and others, as well. "They're only safe because they're such a small target."
While this is no doubt true, I think it vastly underestimates the community reactions to combat the malicious hackers. One of the reason Firefox, for example, is so strong is that it can fix a loophole within 24 hours of finding it. There are enough eyeballs to catch the problem, as it were. An open source project can have a patch to fix a problem inside of a day. Something like Windows is a giant security hole because nobody's updating it nearly that fast, if ever at all.
He already does maintain show archives that are available to subscribers. With the right amount of hacking, one could automate the process of downloading the content daily, converting it from Real or Windows Media and into MP3 to pop onto their iPod, I suppose.
But that's the smart part about Podcasting that most people in this comments thread is missing -- it's more than just recording an MP3 and posting it on a website. The Podcasting program is a huge part of this -- a central program used to automate downloads and transfer of the files from the web to your local machine or iPod or iRiver or what have you.
It takes all the work out of checking a dozen web sites looking for things. It's an RSS Aggregator with attachments. I'm somewhat afraid that point is getting lost in this whole conversation.
I hate to be a cynic, but the only thing this will do is create a new kind of spam. Still, it's nice of Google to work to fix a problem they created.
Assuming this works and kills the incentive to overload my blog with spam comments, the spammers will just come up with another way to annoy the crap out of me, though. And I'm sure it will still involve posting 200 spam comments overnight.
Here are some things I did which have helped, though:
I killed my comments RSS feed.
Wordpress has a plugin which allows you to close all comment threads older than x number of days. I set it to two weeks, giving my visitors plenty of time to comment on "new" stories, but covering the bullseye on the older ones.
Podcasters are starting to use BitTorrent as a way to effectively distribute their non-copyright-infringing shows without choking their own bandwidth pipe.
Anything different that happens on the planet earth anymore is a direct result of global warming. Warm temps/cold temps/more hurricanes/less hurricanes/more wind/less wind/volcanos becoming active/volcanos going dormant.
Don't believe me? Wait a month for the/next/ fool proof scientific survey.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm learning Ruby now, after programming in Perl for a majority of my time in the last 10 years or so. Ruby is very Perl-ish at times, but the OO stuff is a lot cleaner and easier to learn. I'm enjoying it. It's the first OO language I've felt comfortable in.
I don't flippantly take my insurance for granted. I maximize my use of it. I'm diabetic. I know all about how much health care costs - I pay for it on a daily basis. And, yes, my rates have just about doubled in the past ten years, but costs of everything rise. Since the insurance is automatically deducated from my paycheck pre-tax, it helps keep my taxable salary a little lower. Every bit counts.
But to insinuate that only the rich can afford drugs -- as the original post did -- is to heavily misrepresent the situation in this country in a classic class warfare kind of way.
Thanks for the good news.
Lee Iacocca is also spearheading an effort to fund research being done for a cure that's apparantly seen some early good results. Check out JoinLeeNow.com for all the details.
I understand the numbers game and can appreciate the effort being made towards Type 2. I wonder if Type 2 is just more easily researched, or if it's strictly the numbers game that gives us all these advances in treatment that we juvenile diabetics never see. (Oh, wait, the inhalable insulin might be coming soon. Right. They've been promising that for 20 years.)
Someday, one of these announcements will actually help those of us with Juvenile Diabetes (Type 1), who have to take multiple shots a day and not just pop a pill.
Genetics sucks.
Nobody will pay that much for the pills -- you shouldn't attempt to make this into a class warfare thing. Insurance companies will pick up the bulk of the costs, as they do for most medicines these days, which is also why drug prices can inflate so easily. Most people don't pay the actual posts of the pills, and then they complain when their co-pay for their $100 drug goes from $5 to $10. I worked in a pharmacy long enough to see that happen first hand.
It's like tech in many ways -- it always starts off expensive, and slowly drops in price with time. When the patent comes off and generics come into the market (often made by the same company) then you'll see a significant price drop.
My DS absolutely recognizes the colors black, red, yellow, and "LOOOOOOO."
In fact, I've taken to referring to my denim pants as "LOOOOO jeans."
And I just love all the colors of the rainbow: ROY G LIV.
Gotcha. And while I can concede your point, I have to add this: He's entertaining. =)
>> Last week, Apple was going to dump OS X for MS Windows. This week, Apple is going to (or should) open source OS X.
They could do both. Open Source OS X and give control of it to the community while selling Apple computers with Windows as the operating system.
I don't think that's likely, mind you, but it's a possibility. The two are not mutually exclusive, is all I'm trying to say.
-Augie
Interesting. Some say that the article is not biased and so I shouldn't take potshots at it (I'm not -- just at the summation of it), while you're saying that the summary accurately reflects the tone of the piece.
I think it would be more productive to use a more neutral article to tell this story, so that the topics of conversation following it up would be more along the lines of the pro's and con's of net neutrality, and not what the intentions are of the editors who choose to write copy the way they do.
Couching a story like this in such intentionally-flammable language is not a help to anyone on any side.
How so? The aforementioned repeated and unnecessary mentions of the specific party the editor chose to use, particularly in light of the intended audience for the piece. Ironically enough, he's getting just what he wanted -- extra attention for flamebait copy.
I think that's what this comes down to -- if a Slashdot commenter wrote that summary up, it would be modded down for being obvious flamebait.
He's not necessarily referring to the article, itself, but rather the spin Slashdot has placed on it. Slashdot, in this case, is acting in the biased manner. Clearly, this writeup is a hit piece on the Republican party, a reflection of the opinions of the submitter and the moderator who approved it. There's no reason to refer to the committee as "Republican-controlled" in the writeup. Congress is controlled by the Republicans, so all of the committees will be, as well.
The repeated use of party definitions on an article which will clearly be the subject of much derision from the Slashdot crowd, is an obvious attempt at scoring political points, not relating a story. Too bad.
It's not a bad presentation (aside from the art and lettering), but it almost lost me by using COMIC SANS for a font on the "inside front cover."
UGH
I would direct their attention to
http://www.blambot.com/
or
http://www.comicraft.com/
for better choices.
-Augie
Isn't it "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally," to include exponents?
-Augie
Am I the only one who had to read the excerpt from the review a few times to understand it? The use of commas and "however" is confusing, to say the least.
I went to the original article and searched on the word "However." On the second page, it's used three times inside of one paragraph.
When I found the original quoted sentence, I didn't understand it any better. There's a different between writing and speaking. With the proper voice inflection, that sentence is perfectly understandable. In cold writing, though, it's confusing.
Quick fix: Remove the "however" from the sentence, and replace it with a period. Make it two sentences and the whole thing makes perfect sense again.
I don't know if this holds true with NASA, specifically, but people often claim "budget cuts" when the increase in spending is limited. It's called Baseline Budgeting. Every line item has an assumed C.O.L.A. increase, basically, and if you don't increase spending by that much, it's considered a cut.
The best example of this is the school lunch program c. 1996. Congress proposed increasing spending by 1.6%, which was less than the 2% raise the program had had in previous years. The Congressional leaders were branded as (bascially) child-starvers for "cutting the program." They did no such thing. More money chanelled into it, but it was less than otherwise forecast.
Excellent points. Poor wording on my part. I think the "small target" thing is part of the reason, but not nearly the entire thing.
It's still, as you point out, the ease of entry that makes something as big a target as anything Microsoft has released in the last decade.
The more I follow the world of computing, the more repetitive it gets. I've heard this argument for Linux and Mac and others, as well. "They're only safe because they're such a small target."
While this is no doubt true, I think it vastly underestimates the community reactions to combat the malicious hackers. One of the reason Firefox, for example, is so strong is that it can fix a loophole within 24 hours of finding it. There are enough eyeballs to catch the problem, as it were. An open source project can have a patch to fix a problem inside of a day. Something like Windows is a giant security hole because nobody's updating it nearly that fast, if ever at all.
He already does maintain show archives that are available to subscribers. With the right amount of hacking, one could automate the process of downloading the content daily, converting it from Real or Windows Media and into MP3 to pop onto their iPod, I suppose.
But that's the smart part about Podcasting that most people in this comments thread is missing -- it's more than just recording an MP3 and posting it on a website. The Podcasting program is a huge part of this -- a central program used to automate downloads and transfer of the files from the web to your local machine or iPod or iRiver or what have you.
It takes all the work out of checking a dozen web sites looking for things. It's an RSS Aggregator with attachments. I'm somewhat afraid that point is getting lost in this whole conversation.
ELECTRA is listed, NOT the current Garner vehicle, "Elektra." Completely different movie. IMDB.com will have all the info for you.
I hate to be a cynic, but the only thing this will do is create a new kind of spam. Still, it's nice of Google to work to fix a problem they created.
Assuming this works and kills the incentive to overload my blog with spam comments, the spammers will just come up with another way to annoy the crap out of me, though. And I'm sure it will still involve posting 200 spam comments overnight.
Here are some things I did which have helped, though:
I killed my comments RSS feed.
Wordpress has a plugin which allows you to close all comment threads older than x number of days. I set it to two weeks, giving my visitors plenty of time to comment on "new" stories, but covering the bullseye on the older ones.
I banned inter.net.il.
Podcasters are starting to use BitTorrent as a way to effectively distribute their non-copyright-infringing shows without choking their own bandwidth pipe.
Here's one tutorial on it.
-Augie
Shhh, that's global warming too.
/next/ fool proof scientific survey.
Anything different that happens on the planet earth anymore is a direct result of global warming. Warm temps/cold temps/more hurricanes/less hurricanes/more wind/less wind/volcanos becoming active/volcanos going dormant.
Don't believe me? Wait a month for the
He did get one Jeopardy! question right -- the one about the sweater gift.
I was thinking he should start by getting a haircut.
Curse you, That 70s Show, and your influence on college fashion!