Think before you go to a spammy ISP.
I guess you've never heard of whitelisting. It matters not one whit to me if I block, for instance, AOL, if I never get email I want from AOL. Sure, they have "millions" of legitimate customers. I don't need or want their email at all. If your ISP blocks AOL, and won't let you get email from AOL, then it's time for a new ISP. Fortunately, I run mailservers for a living, so I understand the technology. I don't depend on email for anything critical. I call, fax, or send a letter.
As they say on News.Admin.Net-Abuse.Email, "My server, My rules."
While I agree with you on much of your post, I feel that you've left out some vital points.
Technology management did not understand that which they managed. There is some evidence that they actually avoided it.
Technology management did not listen to those that ran the technology, did not want to listen, and did not make them stakeholders in the process.
Technology management did not communicate unrealistic expectations to the rest of the management team.
Technology management trew a buch of people at a problem not just ill defined, but not really defined at all.
There were no mile post checks in the project.
I think the single most critical flaw in the plan was the refusal to deal with the possibillity of failure at any point in a very complex task. What threw even more sand in the gears was to expect miricle workers from a work force demoralized and denigrated to "tech monkeys". Not stated in the article or any comments was the fact that the CIO and his managers activaly insulted the people actually doing the work, and missed few changes to tell them just how worthless they (the workers) really were.
In any team effort, you have the 1-5% of the workforce that are star preformers, and it sounds like they managed to tick them all off.
Only now, a few thousand readers out there expect me to blithely produce an answer to the problem of what to do to bring Microsoft into the civilized world. Well, I say it can't be done.'"
It's easy to stop Microsoft. It's not likely, but it is easy. Here are some things just off the top of my head:
Federal Marshals. "Mr. Gates, Mr. Balmer, come with us please."
"FBI & DHS! We're here for the source code. All of it. OK geeks, fan out, find it, put it up on Source Forge."
Shame. (won't work for every employee of MS. Some people are born to lick boots and forget the rest of the world as long as they get theirs. Look at spammers.)
"Note to all US fininatial institutions. Please remit all Microsoft balances to the government."
OK, so how is Cringly right?
Well, he's right that MS can't be beaten in court under current laws. The law takes too long and is subject to tinkering by elected officials that can be bought. By the time a court can nail 'em, they've wiggled out of it one way or another. And that assumes that the prosecution is vigiourous in it's persuit.
He's right that a better product won't beat them. MS's market share is too strong. Look at Java vs MSVM, IE vs. Netscape, Kerbros, NTFS, loads of other things I don't even know about. MS just covers them in a tidal wave of geegaws, freebies, and propritary technology that no one else can interoperate with. They get tied up like a fly in a spiderweb with suits, patents, copyrights and trade secrets.
OK, so why is a monolithic MS a bad thing? Ask the shippers when railroads cooperated in pricing. Ask interurban railroads about Firestone and their tactics. Ask yourself when you buy gas if OPEC is a good thing for you. Look at the telephone choices you have now vs. when AT&T ruled the roost. Ask chicken ranchers about ADM.
If you are one of those people that can ignore history and current events, then nothing I'll say to you will change your mind that a MS monopoly is a bad thing.
History shows that a better product won't beat a monopolistic product without the government stepping in. I can't recall a single instance when something with the largest market share lost that share without governments stepping in and putting a stop to it and opening up the market to free trade. Most of the time I do not trust the government, but this another instance when there isn't any other way.
"Microsoft has announced a program to 'establish a vibrant community of computer refurbishers... who will be authorized to re-install its Windows operating system... The refurbished PCs will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity (COA) and a special End User Licence as evidence of a legally installed operating system.'
Because, Saints forbid! that someone actually do something to a computer that MS doesn't bless!
One wonders if MS has ever heard of illegal product tying, the principal of first sale, the MS consent decree, and
unrevocable rights of users. Naaa. They just fork over more money to the elected officials and pretend the law doesn't apply to them.
I've been sitting on a domain name for a while, I think now is the time to put it to work.
For example rather than sending spam, perhaps they are being used to host the sites mentioned in spam with those obviously disposable hostnames.
This has been documented as happening. Search newsgroup News.Admin.Net-Abuse.Email and.Sightings for examples. Some set the DNS records to expire after 5 minutes and rotate their trojan-ed webpages over home broadband connections.
This would seem to confirm Virus creators are sharing more code."
And writing them for the same reason for the same people. Money from spammers. Look how many of those new viruses open back doors for proxies and steal email addresses. I don't think that it is so the virus writers can send love notes anonymously.
by hoarding that 70% of the data, accessible only within the mainframe,
Let me guess. You've never worked on 3270, IRMA, twinax, DB-2, HDLC, SDLC, or SNA, huh? DB-2 has ODBC connections. That's hardly "locked up".
There are several reasons to use a mainframe computer, some are:
Speed (Try doing dependent calculations on a cluster. Doesn't work well.
Cost containment (for existing equipment)
Reliabillity (Failed CPU? Restart the task elsewhere.)
Documentation (IBM documents the proper way to wash your hands after using the bathroom. In detail. With pictures. And a support number if you misplace the soap. One vendor of main frames, since out of business, frequently beat me to the office with a replacement part when something failed. Try that with your on site Dell waranty!)
Auditable security
control over what happens, by whom, and when.
Geographic dispersal
Support
Support
Did I mention Support?
That said, and AGAIN, there are some tasks that do not lend themselves to a mainframe environment. Just as there are some tasks that do. Being an absolutist and stating things that are untrue undermine your legitmate point that mainframes were not always so easy to get data out of by other systems.
And here I thought TCP/IP stood for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. Little did I know it realy ment Trained Carrier Pigon/Inflight Pigon.
Well, when the pigon does what pigons do, is that considered an ICMP-Packet-Administratively-Denied?
Users don't care about complexity they don't see.
I would find managing a set of proxy servers easier than mandating cookies on sites I don't control. Besides, ever hear of remote proxy configuration? I use it all the time at my job. That way I don't have to have 25,000 desktop computers with proxy settings. I configure a setting, whambo. done.
And Proxy servers? Come on. Ninety nine-plus percent of users have never heard of (and will never hear or have a reason to hear of) proxy servers. Besides, isn't running a server just a tad complex when all you want to do is tell your browser: "Don't load these sites"? Absolutly it is. Now, when you want to do something with a user that may activly try to evade your cookie, and sites that don't want to do cookie detection, come back and tell me again how doing something with cookies is going to help.
But blocking port 80 outbound, setting up a proxy server on port 8080, and no access except through a proxy of one sort or another, you'll start to see some benifits. Not the end user, as such, but as the ISP. Like, reduced bandwith?
Now, the simple solution if you want to keep from loading some site or other is to put it in your local host file. Even windos has one. Put in the domain, tell it the IP is 127.0.0.1. There. And you don't even have to have the site you don't control do something with a cookie.
I'm not even an expert in the field, but, i had my own email subdomain (mydomain.somedomain.com) more than 15 years ago. I've still got the reciepts to prove it, so, it will be acceptable as 'demonstrateable prior art' in just about any court in the world, except the courts of the usa.
Incorrect. That would be an absolute killer for a patent as an example of pubically accessable prior art. I can't think of anything better as an example of prior art, except perhaps RFC 799 published in 1981. Of course, I am not an attorney, your milage may vary, contents may have settled in shipping.
AOL recently identified me as a spammer and blocked all future email from me to my friend in Paris, following a fairly rapid exchange of emails between us concerning tickets for a newly announced gig that I knew she would love to go to, but were not visible to her for some reason.
And what was AOL's reaction when you complained? You did submit a complaint, right?
But in this case we're back to square one - we're already fighting KNOWN spammers like Ralsky...
There's nothing new in that. But do you seriously think, AOL will pay dozens of employees to find out just WHETHER a spam is "legit" (in the sense that it's really advertising the target site) or "fake" (in the sense that the real goal is to get the target site blocked)? This will become some seriously tough piece of work!
I get joejobed, first thing I do is call my ISP. If someone complains about spam, first thing they do is to contact the isp. Gee, I'm beginning to think that jobjob objections are a red herring in this arguement.
Blocking sites (all ports, not just 25) is a fast and effective way to stop spam.
It isn't like cutting off an arm or leg. If a mistake is made, or a job job, it's easy enough to remove the block.
It is a short term project. Once the major spammers learn that spamming only results in getting kicked off the ISP or your ISP gets blocked, there is no profit and no point in spamming any more. They move on to other, easier scams.
that with the negative backlash, some legal, that has occured against blacklist maintainters of all sorts (causing the SPEWS mainttainers to go anon), the fine people at NANOG will be smart enough to leave it alone. Not to say that some motivated members might not do it, but NANOG ain'ta gonna touch it.
SPEWS has always been anonymous, they didn't "go anonymous".
If NANOG would block CHINANET, KRNET, and a few rogue providers here (4.0.0.0/8) I think we would see spammers getting discon'ed very quickly, rather than the 2-3 years we see for some. As soon as the spammers are booted, the ISP would get delisted.
The major problem is that ISPs don't have a problem with their IP being blocked outbound on port 25, but blocking their IP space and dropping their routes would give them a lot of problems. Take for instance this listing on SpamHaus. Been listed since Sep 24, 2003. Yet old AlRal has been happily spamming the world for a long time from there.
AlRal and his ilk are the reason why I don't accept packets from APNIC, RIPE, TWNIC, and LATNIC except by whitelisting.
Why not build this capability into browsers? Follow the cookies handling model.
That adds a level of complexity that isn't needed. Simply use proxy servers on out bound connections. If they want filtering, use one set. No filtering, use another.
Many have already noted the comments where a DDOS may be launched via sending out spam in order to deliberately draw the attention of IP blocking filters, but at the same time, it is also worth noting that many web servers have multiple domains on one IP address using both virtual directories and virtual domains. In fact, almost every ISP does this, in order to give their users a place to oput Mom and Dad's pictures with the kids, etc.
Run it like SPEWS. You don't get blocked unless the problem has been going on for a while or the people are known spammers.
The idea is the web site hoster is doing the spaming. The way this works in the real world is the idot that is tring to sell something talks to some spamers who convince them that its an op-in list and pays like $5000 to send his crafted message out.
If they are so stupid that they think they can lease an "opt-in" list, then they are too stupid to be allowed to have web traffic.
The problem with your point here is that there isn't any way to tell a stupid web site operator from a lying spammer. Spammers like stupid people. In fact, spammers are stupid people.
for Microsoft to require a.NET/Passfart/Flopmail account for service! Oh, wait...
You know, it's a damn good thing that MS has.NET. I mean, *every* one knows how undependable things like YP, NDS, Kerberos, and SHH are...
OK, all joking aside, I am really ticked that a common authintication system that works darn near everywhere isn't available. Every OS wants to piss in the cup and change the flavor when it comes to users and logins. Novell wants NDS, Microsoft wants.NET/Active Directory, Unix gives several choices but none work all that well with the other (non-Unix) OS'es, most won't work with applications.
I can't tell you how many times the big cheese come around and say "We want single sign on. Make it happen." and then spend the next few weeks proving to them that signle sign on is just really a bunch of marketing hooey. (Oh, yeah, they also want it to work with external sites, too. Sheesh. Imagine when it gets hacked. Now the hacker gets access to everything internal (via VPN) and since most nitwits use the same password everywhere, probally their bank account and porn sites that arn't part of the system. Sheesh.)
Bad, bad, bad. Is it so much to ask for due process here? I mean it's part of our own set of friggen laws. Is it so much to ask that the Feds follow the laws before they make new ones?
Yes. Now sit down, shut up, and QUIT ASKING QUESTIONGS. ZIEG HEIL! Protect the Father er... HOME Land!
Seriously, these things start out with the whole kit and kabootle thrown in. Unless congress is asleep at the switch (and many times they are) a lot of it gets thown out. In this "wish list", they are throwing in child porn and terrorism to get the knee jerk votes. If there are no pressing things happening (like 9-11), then a lot will be pared out and thown away. Unfortunately, the current US government seems content to allow almost anything in the name of "security".
Now, when are they really going to focus on security? That's a damn good question. All the "increased" "security" I see at airports and shipping terminals seems designed to irritate the general public by thowing a "we're doing something about security" in their face more than to actually increase security in any way. People tend to forget that Nazi Germany, North Korea and China are/were very secure. The question is do we in the US wish to follow those examples?
A five minute google would find thousands of useful hits.
Two problems here:
You are correct. Most people can't be bothered to do any search.
Those that do bother get lousy results.
For instance, I needed an electronics part the other day, and did a search on the part name. I got millions of hits. Most were for some band or other, so I searched again with the names of the people in the band as excluded. I still got tons of stuff. I excluded the word music. Still tons of hits on that damn band. (I listened to a bit of their music. Sounds like cats mating in a canning factory. Yuck.)
After two hours of searching, I finally got it pared down to where there were two or three hits on what I was looking for, and only a few thousand for what I wasn't. The exclude list on the search was just freakin' insane.
Microsoft's move here was very valuable. Imagine all the bugs and broken software avoided simply by not releasing any software. Fantastic! No problems from upgrading! When was the last time you did a MS upgrade and had ZERO problems?!
The major problem is that in Texas, you can't see the Doctor's record. Period. I thought that was a Federal thing, but I guess not.
What the insurance co's say is that:
People go for Jackpot Justice. Tell it to my dead mother, killed when the Doctor was fired, refused to let the new doctor into the nursing home, and withdrew all medications. Did we sue? No. Somehow a autopsy was "mistakenly" cancelled by the attending doctor, the same one that was fired.
The huge awards given drive up policy costs: False, the stock market has more to do with it, plus the 4% of doctors that are sued 80% of the time. Get rid of that 4%. Don't let them practice.
Average award for malpractice? Don't know. Many are settled out of court and the award sealed.
So, given that, I can sympatize with high policy costs, but I think the real problem in Texas is that the insurance industry owns the state government lock, stock, and greedy out-thrust hand. For example, on a 100,000 home, the homeowner's insurance rate is 2,900.00 a year. And it doesn't cover water damage for the most part. A law was passed when Dubbya was Gov. requiring insurance to pay for damage to homes caused by foundation problems. They only pay if a water or sewer line breaks, not for any other reason. Oh, yeah, if you have ropes of mold growing due to a water leak, fix it yourself. Insurance pays nothing.
I loved it when the neighbor ran into my garage door and knocked it down. My homeowers wouln't pay, his car insurance said "File on your homeowner's". I eventually paid for it myself.
So when someone says that it's all the suits that cause rates to go up, I laugh. It's not.
Come on, the British viewpoint may not be that wrong. American liberalism has proven a bad strategy for fighting poverty.
The only thing American Liberalism for fighting poverty has going for it is that it is better than the compassionate conservitave "let's fight poverty by giving money to the rich."
Leaving an area unregulated makes it open for control by those with more power than most individuals can muster. It's like the old west, where the fastest gun rules. Personally, I'd prefer not to have to draw a gun to enforce my rights. As a first resort, I mean.
Slashdot Mirror
Think before you go to a spammy ISP.
I guess you've never heard of whitelisting. It matters not one whit to me if I block, for instance, AOL, if I never get email I want from AOL. Sure, they have "millions" of legitimate customers. I don't need or want their email at all. If your ISP blocks AOL, and won't let you get email from AOL, then it's time for a new ISP. Fortunately, I run mailservers for a living, so I understand the technology. I don't depend on email for anything critical. I call, fax, or send a letter.
As they say on News.Admin.Net-Abuse.Email, "My server, My rules."
Technology management did not understand that which they managed. There is some evidence that they actually avoided it.
Technology management did not listen to those that ran the technology, did not want to listen, and did not make them stakeholders in the process.
Technology management did not communicate unrealistic expectations to the rest of the management team.
Technology management trew a buch of people at a problem not just ill defined, but not really defined at all.
There were no mile post checks in the project.
I think the single most critical flaw in the plan was the refusal to deal with the possibillity of failure at any point in a very complex task. What threw even more sand in the gears was to expect miricle workers from a work force demoralized and denigrated to "tech monkeys". Not stated in the article or any comments was the fact that the CIO and his managers activaly insulted the people actually doing the work, and missed few changes to tell them just how worthless they (the workers) really were.
In any team effort, you have the 1-5% of the workforce that are star preformers, and it sounds like they managed to tick them all off.
It's easy to stop Microsoft. It's not likely, but it is easy. Here are some things just off the top of my head:
Federal Marshals. "Mr. Gates, Mr. Balmer, come with us please."
"FBI & DHS! We're here for the source code. All of it. OK geeks, fan out, find it, put it up on Source Forge."
Shame. (won't work for every employee of MS. Some people are born to lick boots and forget the rest of the world as long as they get theirs. Look at spammers.)
"Note to all US fininatial institutions. Please remit all Microsoft balances to the government."
OK, so how is Cringly right?
Well, he's right that MS can't be beaten in court under current laws. The law takes too long and is subject to tinkering by elected officials that can be bought. By the time a court can nail 'em, they've wiggled out of it one way or another. And that assumes that the prosecution is vigiourous in it's persuit.
He's right that a better product won't beat them. MS's market share is too strong. Look at Java vs MSVM, IE vs. Netscape, Kerbros, NTFS, loads of other things I don't even know about. MS just covers them in a tidal wave of geegaws, freebies, and propritary technology that no one else can interoperate with. They get tied up like a fly in a spiderweb with suits, patents, copyrights and trade secrets.
OK, so why is a monolithic MS a bad thing? Ask the shippers when railroads cooperated in pricing. Ask interurban railroads about Firestone and their tactics. Ask yourself when you buy gas if OPEC is a good thing for you. Look at the telephone choices you have now vs. when AT&T ruled the roost. Ask chicken ranchers about ADM.
If you are one of those people that can ignore history and current events, then nothing I'll say to you will change your mind that a MS monopoly is a bad thing.
History shows that a better product won't beat a monopolistic product without the government stepping in. I can't recall a single instance when something with the largest market share lost that share without governments stepping in and putting a stop to it and opening up the market to free trade. Most of the time I do not trust the government, but this another instance when there isn't any other way.
Because, Saints forbid! that someone actually do something to a computer that MS doesn't bless!
One wonders if MS has ever heard of illegal product tying, the principal of first sale, the MS consent decree, and unrevocable rights of users. Naaa. They just fork over more money to the elected officials and pretend the law doesn't apply to them.
I've been sitting on a domain name for a while, I think now is the time to put it to work.
Some people watch a sucide on line, some watch Jerry Springer and others. Both are exploitation of human misery.
This has been documented as happening. Search newsgroup News.Admin.Net-Abuse.Email and .Sightings for examples. Some set the DNS records to expire after 5 minutes and rotate their trojan-ed webpages over home broadband connections.
And writing them for the same reason for the same people. Money from spammers. Look how many of those new viruses open back doors for proxies and steal email addresses. I don't think that it is so the virus writers can send love notes anonymously.
Let me guess. You've never worked on 3270, IRMA, twinax, DB-2, HDLC, SDLC, or SNA, huh? DB-2 has ODBC connections. That's hardly "locked up".
There are several reasons to use a mainframe computer, some are:
Speed (Try doing dependent calculations on a cluster. Doesn't work well.
Cost containment (for existing equipment)
Reliabillity (Failed CPU? Restart the task elsewhere.)
Documentation (IBM documents the proper way to wash your hands after using the bathroom. In detail. With pictures. And a support number if you misplace the soap. One vendor of main frames, since out of business, frequently beat me to the office with a replacement part when something failed. Try that with your on site Dell waranty!)
Auditable security
control over what happens, by whom, and when.
Geographic dispersal
Support
Support
Did I mention Support?
That said, and AGAIN, there are some tasks that do not lend themselves to a mainframe environment. Just as there are some tasks that do. Being an absolutist and stating things that are untrue undermine your legitmate point that mainframes were not always so easy to get data out of by other systems.
Well, when the pigon does what pigons do, is that considered an ICMP-Packet-Administratively-Denied?
I would find managing a set of proxy servers easier than mandating cookies on sites I don't control. Besides, ever hear of remote proxy configuration? I use it all the time at my job. That way I don't have to have 25,000 desktop computers with proxy settings. I configure a setting, whambo. done.
And Proxy servers? Come on. Ninety nine-plus percent of users have never heard of (and will never hear or have a reason to hear of) proxy servers. Besides, isn't running a server just a tad complex when all you want to do is tell your browser: "Don't load these sites"?
Absolutly it is. Now, when you want to do something with a user that may activly try to evade your cookie, and sites that don't want to do cookie detection, come back and tell me again how doing something with cookies is going to help. But blocking port 80 outbound, setting up a proxy server on port 8080, and no access except through a proxy of one sort or another, you'll start to see some benifits. Not the end user, as such, but as the ISP. Like, reduced bandwith?
Now, the simple solution if you want to keep from loading some site or other is to put it in your local host file. Even windos has one. Put in the domain, tell it the IP is 127.0.0.1. There. And you don't even have to have the site you don't control do something with a cookie.
Incorrect. That would be an absolute killer for a patent as an example of pubically accessable prior art. I can't think of anything better as an example of prior art, except perhaps RFC 799 published in 1981. Of course, I am not an attorney, your milage may vary, contents may have settled in shipping.
Quit sending AOL accounts email. Tell them that the daily/weekly/monthly newsletter is on the web site, they want to read it, vist the site.
Simple, no?
And what was AOL's reaction when you complained? You did submit a complaint, right?
I get joejobed, first thing I do is call my ISP. If someone complains about spam, first thing they do is to contact the isp. Gee, I'm beginning to think that jobjob objections are a red herring in this arguement.
Blocking sites (all ports, not just 25) is a fast and effective way to stop spam.
It isn't like cutting off an arm or leg. If a mistake is made, or a job job, it's easy enough to remove the block.
It is a short term project. Once the major spammers learn that spamming only results in getting kicked off the ISP or your ISP gets blocked, there is no profit and no point in spamming any more. They move on to other, easier scams.
SPEWS has always been anonymous, they didn't "go anonymous".
If NANOG would block CHINANET, KRNET, and a few rogue providers here (4.0.0.0/8) I think we would see spammers getting discon'ed very quickly, rather than the 2-3 years we see for some. As soon as the spammers are booted, the ISP would get delisted.
The major problem is that ISPs don't have a problem with their IP being blocked outbound on port 25, but blocking their IP space and dropping their routes would give them a lot of problems. Take for instance this listing on SpamHaus. Been listed since Sep 24, 2003. Yet old AlRal has been happily spamming the world for a long time from there.
AlRal and his ilk are the reason why I don't accept packets from APNIC, RIPE, TWNIC, and LATNIC except by whitelisting.
That adds a level of complexity that isn't needed. Simply use proxy servers on out bound connections. If they want filtering, use one set. No filtering, use another.
And the spammer that owns 3-4K domains? Many do. There isn't an easy way to search for them all, but a very easy way to block an IP range.
Run it like SPEWS. You don't get blocked unless the problem has been going on for a while or the people are known spammers.
If they are so stupid that they think they can lease an "opt-in" list, then they are too stupid to be allowed to have web traffic.
The problem with your point here is that there isn't any way to tell a stupid web site operator from a lying spammer. Spammers like stupid people. In fact, spammers are stupid people.
You know, it's a damn good thing that MS has .NET. I mean, *every* one knows how undependable things like YP, NDS, Kerberos, and SHH are...
OK, all joking aside, I am really ticked that a common authintication system that works darn near everywhere isn't available. Every OS wants to piss in the cup and change the flavor when it comes to users and logins. Novell wants NDS, Microsoft wants .NET/Active Directory, Unix gives several choices but none work all that well with the other (non-Unix) OS'es, most won't work with applications.
I can't tell you how many times the big cheese come around and say "We want single sign on. Make it happen." and then spend the next few weeks proving to them that signle sign on is just really a bunch of marketing hooey. (Oh, yeah, they also want it to work with external sites, too. Sheesh. Imagine when it gets hacked. Now the hacker gets access to everything internal (via VPN) and since most nitwits use the same password everywhere, probally their bank account and porn sites that arn't part of the system. Sheesh.)
Yes. Now sit down, shut up, and QUIT ASKING QUESTIONGS. ZIEG HEIL! Protect the Father er... HOME Land!
Seriously, these things start out with the whole kit and kabootle thrown in. Unless congress is asleep at the switch (and many times they are) a lot of it gets thown out. In this "wish list", they are throwing in child porn and terrorism to get the knee jerk votes. If there are no pressing things happening (like 9-11), then a lot will be pared out and thown away. Unfortunately, the current US government seems content to allow almost anything in the name of "security".
Now, when are they really going to focus on security? That's a damn good question. All the "increased" "security" I see at airports and shipping terminals seems designed to irritate the general public by thowing a "we're doing something about security" in their face more than to actually increase security in any way. People tend to forget that Nazi Germany, North Korea and China are/were very secure. The question is do we in the US wish to follow those examples?
Two problems here:
You are correct. Most people can't be bothered to do any search.
Those that do bother get lousy results.
For instance, I needed an electronics part the other day, and did a search on the part name. I got millions of hits. Most were for some band or other, so I searched again with the names of the people in the band as excluded. I still got tons of stuff. I excluded the word music. Still tons of hits on that damn band. (I listened to a bit of their music. Sounds like cats mating in a canning factory. Yuck.) After two hours of searching, I finally got it pared down to where there were two or three hits on what I was looking for, and only a few thousand for what I wasn't. The exclude list on the search was just freakin' insane.
Microsoft's move here was very valuable. Imagine all the bugs and broken software avoided simply by not releasing any software. Fantastic! No problems from upgrading! When was the last time you did a MS upgrade and had ZERO problems?!
The major problem is that in Texas, you can't see the Doctor's record. Period. I thought that was a Federal thing, but I guess not.
What the insurance co's say is that:
People go for Jackpot Justice. Tell it to my dead mother, killed when the Doctor was fired, refused to let the new doctor into the nursing home, and withdrew all medications. Did we sue? No. Somehow a autopsy was "mistakenly" cancelled by the attending doctor, the same one that was fired.
The huge awards given drive up policy costs: False, the stock market has more to do with it, plus the 4% of doctors that are sued 80% of the time. Get rid of that 4%. Don't let them practice.
Average award for malpractice? Don't know. Many are settled out of court and the award sealed.
So, given that, I can sympatize with high policy costs, but I think the real problem in Texas is that the insurance industry owns the state government lock, stock, and greedy out-thrust hand. For example, on a 100,000 home, the homeowner's insurance rate is 2,900.00 a year. And it doesn't cover water damage for the most part. A law was passed when Dubbya was Gov. requiring insurance to pay for damage to homes caused by foundation problems. They only pay if a water or sewer line breaks, not for any other reason. Oh, yeah, if you have ropes of mold growing due to a water leak, fix it yourself. Insurance pays nothing.
I loved it when the neighbor ran into my garage door and knocked it down. My homeowers wouln't pay, his car insurance said "File on your homeowner's". I eventually paid for it myself.
So when someone says that it's all the suits that cause rates to go up, I laugh. It's not.
The only thing American Liberalism for fighting poverty has going for it is that it is better than the compassionate conservitave "let's fight poverty by giving money to the rich."
Leaving an area unregulated makes it open for control by those with more power than most individuals can muster. It's like the old west, where the fastest gun rules. Personally, I'd prefer not to have to draw a gun to enforce my rights. As a first resort, I mean.