>>>regulation traces back to lobbying from big pharma
Which they would not be able to do if it were not for government politicians who signed the 1987 Clean Air Treaty that banned the CFC inhalers. So once again we're back to the root cause being - government.
Instead of $500/year for internet, I pay $180 for internet. I don't cut net service completely, just as I did not cut my cellphone service completely, but instead just downgraded to a cheaper option.
>>>Definitions like "Unlimited" and "Free" have real world meaning that can be altered in contract.
Yes I know. That's why you need to read the contract before you sign it. I read my Verizon contract and it clearly states unlimited means unlimited hours, not unlimited gigabytes. I suspect virtually all ISPs contracts are the same, therefore it's disingenuous for the signer to claim it means something else.
>>>I waive my right to sue them, participate in class action or have a jury trial.
Yeah except that you don't. Congressional and Constitutional law supersede contract law, as paypal.com discovered when they were drug into court and the Judge nullified large chunks of the user agreement, because he argued that citizens can not "sign away" their rights. He then order paypal to refund money to its users who had been defrauded.
That's because the few dinosaurs that survived the Asteroid Extinction evolved into warm-blooded feathered lizards... and by the time homo erectus arose, those feather lizards had become birds.
The problem is that "sick" is easy to define in case of disease (you start coughing or sneezing or become feverish). What does "sick" mean in terms of computers? If I have a spambot on my machine that's pretty obvious, but what if I'm a president of a club that sends-out messages to ~1000 members every week to keep them informed? What if I'm bittorrenting Linux distributions - will that setup a flag & quarantine my machine?
The change needs to come from the top down. The Congress needs to get strict and say, "Everybody's budget is cut 75% across the board. You figure out which workers to layoff to make the new 25% budget work." Then in the following year FAA, FDA, FCC, and other top-level managers can explain how the new 25% budget was sufficient or not sufficient to do their job, and justify why they should get increases. In most cases though I suspect they'll discover they can operate with a 25% budget just fine.
Please stop insulting my homosexual neighbors. This is no more acceptable than telling jokes about Pollacks or saying, "Boy that's gay," when you really mean, "That's ugly." It demeans both your target and your self.
>>>I said that you are providing a positive statement without any proof
Yes well I don't have time to read the 10 million pages of health and insurance-related legislation that Congress has passed over the last 80 years. I'm sorry if that offends you, but as Representative Conyers commented, "Who has time to read the bill? It's too long and would require two lawyers to explain what it means. We don't have time for that."
Precisely. I don't have time to do that research, but I know for a fact that if an insurance company says, "We can't provide Iphones for heating-impaired persons; only medically-approved devices," it's not because they don't want to provide the cheaper option to their loyal customers (and save money for themselves). It's because their lawyers are telling them it's currently illegal to provide non-certified equipment.
>>>It's easy to claim that the government imposes some maximum limit of care by law
Strawman argument - that's not what I said. What government imposes is a minimum amount of care, which seems like a good idea but has unintended consequences, like not letting a hearing-impaired person get a cheap Iphone but instead have to spend $4000 on a government-approved gadget. Or forcing asthma suffers to buy "environmentally friendly" inhalers that cost $40 a piece, instead of the cheaper $2 versions that they've been using for the last fifty years. (See my signature).
Government doesn't set-out to be evil. On the contrary most politicians are trying to do good. But government, being a monopoly, often creates bad results due to the unintended side effects. And citizens suffer because of it.
There's no doubt in my mind - insurance is a scam. But there's also no doubt in mind that government is a *bigger* scam. If I don't like Nationwide I can cancel my coverage and refuse to pay. If I don't like Comcast I can (and have) cancel my television service. If I don't like Microsoft I can choose Apple or AmigaOS or Linux.
If I don't like the proposed Government Healthcare Bill I can opt out and --- get fined $2000 a year for that decision. Hmmm.
The Founder of the Democratic Party Thomas Jefferson said that corporations should not exist. They challenge power of the People's government, either directly or via corruption.
I agree. If corporations wish to operate within U.S. borders, then they should have all rights stripped-away from them. No right to free speech. No right to lobby or bribe Senators. Rights belong to human beings but corporations, being as inanimate as a rock, have no rights. If someone like Bill Gates wants to donate money to support Obama's relection, that's cool, but if Microsoft wants to donate then they should be blocked.
>>>That did cost me. A staggering 320 Swedish Kronar or 46 US$.
This is not correct. It actually cost you $46 U.S. plus about $10,000 per year in taxes. That's the thing that people always forget - government services are neither free nor cheap, and oftentimes cost more than if you just paid the bill directly. I pay about $200 a year for my annual doctor visit, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than ~$10,000*50+ years == over $500,000 in lifetime health taxation.
Sometimes when I consider statistics like these I think I'd be better-off living off the government dole (about $12/hour according to Reason Magazine) rather than try to work and earn money myself. $12 is not bad for sitting on your ass all day long watching television or surfing the net.
>>>we don't face interesting questions such as "would I rather lose the house or the leg?"
Neither do we. There are only 8 million U.S. citizens who face this question. The other ~290 million U.S. citizens are already-covered by private or government programs, and they don't have to face that question at all. The politicians are engaging in FUD to score votes, and you are falling for it.
>>>I'd have to think that the US is by far the most corrupt industrialised country in the western world. When private companies (looking to make a profit) can provide cheaper health care than the government (who isn't looking to make a profit), something is very wrong, and the answer to that is usually corruption. >>>
The UK Government is no better. About two-third of the staff inside UK Health Services are bureaucrats, not medical personnel. I'd say the US is second, and the UK takes first place as the most-corrupt country. Or maybe Austrlalia is first. Or maybe Italy is first. It's hard to tell.
Maybe it's not really an issue of place, but an issue of organization. Government is an organization that not only holds a monopoly on the market, but also a monopoly on individual wallets. That kind of power attracts men filled with avarice and ambition, and doomed to be corrupt. That has been true for over 2000 years, going all the way back to the Roman Democratic Republic, and the Athenian Democracy, and it's still true today.
Monopoly of any kind is something which needs to be avoided.
If you think the government does not regulate how insurance companies can spend their money, then you are naive. They regulate virtually everything regarding medicine, even what kind of inhalant you can (or can not) use for asthma patients. See my signature.
This "insurance is supposed to cover medical devices" comes directly from government regulation. Even if an insurance company like Nationwide wanted to provide coverage to buy an Iphone for their hearing-disabled customer, they could not do it, else they'd be fined by the U.S. Congress.
"Colonize" didn't exist until the printer Benjamin Franklin started using it (and the British printers criticized him for turning a noun into a verb). These are called inkhorn words, because it's as if they magically sprung from the ink well. Some succeed while others like Bush's "misunderestimate" or Jefferson's "undamage" did not.
>>>like Red Hat or roll their own spin of Red Hat.
So in other words the Navy has come full-circle to where they were in 1997. Prior to that the Navy (and military in general) did all hardware and software development internally. They switched to Commercial products on the theory that it would be cheaper to just buy the stuff off the shelf. Now after having experienced the Microsoft world, I guess they decided to go back to self-developed software.
Many people have compared defense work to "white collar welfare". I think the private companies are more frugal than that, since they are constantly cutting costs & laying-off workers, but having worked at the FAA it seems like a sound argument. I saw government workers sitting around doing nothing but surfing the net day-after-day. The FAA could lay-off 75% of the workforce and not notice any drop in output.
But of course if the FAA did that, then the politicians who represent those workers would scream bloody murder, and the layoffs would be canceled.
You make a good point. Microsoft's other main competitor, Apple, doesn't provide service updates for anything older than 10.5 (2007). Why should MS support anything older than that?
Whatever. I'll just keep using XP until it crashes-and-burns, and then I'll toss this PC into the trash and get a new $300 PC at walmart with Windows 8 already-installed. That's my upgrade path.
BTW anyone want to buy a Windows 95 laptop? It's harmless (mostly).
The Navy will simply subcontract-out to Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and other defense companies to upgrade all their systems from XP to Windows 7 and fix any programs that "break" as a result. It will employ some 10,000 workers at a cost of 1.4 trillion dollars. Then it will fail to come-in on time, so they'll spend an extra 6 months and 0.3 trillion on schedule overrun.
Nudity is not porn except in the minds of mentally ill persons. And yet oftentimes mere possession of a naked photograph, even it's of your own family or yourself, will land you in jail. Witness the American students who were charged with child porn because they used their phones to shoot themselves without clothes. Why is taking a photo of yourself illegal??? It's stupidity. It's anti-liberty. Worse - fear of nude bodies is a psychological disease, and I suspect Conroy is patient zero.
"The GP is right"??? Okay. And while we're at it we should advise women to stop wearing clothes cut above the knee, or more than 2 inches below the neck. Plus we should punish people who leave their car doors unlocked. Also we should punish people who have regular windows on their homes instead of unbreakable windows.
Point - This proposal strikes me as blaming the victim. It's not a woman's fault she got raped, just because she wore revealing clothing. It's not the car or home owner's fault somebody broke in and stole. Likewise in most cases it's not the user's fault somebody used a flash or java applet to hijack his machine (it's typically the fault of the webmaster).
I think of electrons as wavicles - little chopped-off bits of waves that are bouncing-around the atom but not able to escape due to the proton's attractive force.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>regulation traces back to lobbying from big pharma
Which they would not be able to do if it were not for government politicians who signed the 1987 Clean Air Treaty that banned the CFC inhalers. So once again we're back to the root cause being - government.
Instead of $500/year for internet, I pay $180 for internet. I don't cut net service completely, just as I did not cut my cellphone service completely, but instead just downgraded to a cheaper option.
>>>Definitions like "Unlimited" and "Free" have real world meaning that can be altered in contract.
Yes I know. That's why you need to read the contract before you sign it. I read my Verizon contract and it clearly states unlimited means unlimited hours, not unlimited gigabytes. I suspect virtually all ISPs contracts are the same, therefore it's disingenuous for the signer to claim it means something else.
>>>I waive my right to sue them, participate in class action or have a jury trial.
Yeah except that you don't. Congressional and Constitutional law supersede contract law, as paypal.com discovered when they were drug into court and the Judge nullified large chunks of the user agreement, because he argued that citizens can not "sign away" their rights. He then order paypal to refund money to its users who had been defrauded.
That's because the few dinosaurs that survived the Asteroid Extinction evolved into warm-blooded feathered lizards... and by the time homo erectus arose, those feather lizards had become birds.
The problem is that "sick" is easy to define in case of disease (you start coughing or sneezing or become feverish). What does "sick" mean in terms of computers? If I have a spambot on my machine that's pretty obvious, but what if I'm a president of a club that sends-out messages to ~1000 members every week to keep them informed? What if I'm bittorrenting Linux distributions - will that setup a flag & quarantine my machine?
The change needs to come from the top down. The Congress needs to get strict and say, "Everybody's budget is cut 75% across the board. You figure out which workers to layoff to make the new 25% budget work." Then in the following year FAA, FDA, FCC, and other top-level managers can explain how the new 25% budget was sufficient or not sufficient to do their job, and justify why they should get increases. In most cases though I suspect they'll discover they can operate with a 25% budget just fine.
Here you go. Only $95!!! http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-Toshiba-Laptop-T4800CT-500-plus-Windows-3-1_W0QQitemZ190310608796QQ
And here's a lovely 266 megahertz netbook from China. Wow. Even my ancient Win95 laptop has more power - http://technorati.com/posts/xzY7CIHTC7dj1WdoEZan8RTDqpS1hKUfgiQOE8zmLOA=
>>>tea-bagger buddies.
Please stop insulting my homosexual neighbors. This is no more acceptable than telling jokes about Pollacks or saying, "Boy that's gay," when you really mean, "That's ugly." It demeans both your target and your self.
>>>I said that you are providing a positive statement without any proof
Yes well I don't have time to read the 10 million pages of health and insurance-related legislation that Congress has passed over the last 80 years. I'm sorry if that offends you, but as Representative Conyers commented, "Who has time to read the bill? It's too long and would require two lawyers to explain what it means. We don't have time for that."
Precisely. I don't have time to do that research, but I know for a fact that if an insurance company says, "We can't provide Iphones for heating-impaired persons; only medically-approved devices," it's not because they don't want to provide the cheaper option to their loyal customers (and save money for themselves). It's because their lawyers are telling them it's currently illegal to provide non-certified equipment.
>>>It's easy to claim that the government imposes some maximum limit of care by law
Strawman argument - that's not what I said. What government imposes is a minimum amount of care, which seems like a good idea but has unintended consequences, like not letting a hearing-impaired person get a cheap Iphone but instead have to spend $4000 on a government-approved gadget. Or forcing asthma suffers to buy "environmentally friendly" inhalers that cost $40 a piece, instead of the cheaper $2 versions that they've been using for the last fifty years. (See my signature).
Government doesn't set-out to be evil. On the contrary most politicians are trying to do good. But government, being a monopoly, often creates bad results due to the unintended side effects. And citizens suffer because of it.
There's no doubt in my mind - insurance is a scam. But there's also no doubt in mind that government is a *bigger* scam. If I don't like Nationwide I can cancel my coverage and refuse to pay. If I don't like Comcast I can (and have) cancel my television service. If I don't like Microsoft I can choose Apple or AmigaOS or Linux.
If I don't like the proposed Government Healthcare Bill I can opt out and --- get fined $2000 a year for that decision. Hmmm.
The Founder of the Democratic Party Thomas Jefferson said that corporations should not exist. They challenge power of the People's government, either directly or via corruption.
I agree. If corporations wish to operate within U.S. borders, then they should have all rights stripped-away from them. No right to free speech. No right to lobby or bribe Senators. Rights belong to human beings but corporations, being as inanimate as a rock, have no rights. If someone like Bill Gates wants to donate money to support Obama's relection, that's cool, but if Microsoft wants to donate then they should be blocked.
It's time to take back our government.
>>>That did cost me. A staggering 320 Swedish Kronar or 46 US$.
This is not correct. It actually cost you $46 U.S. plus about $10,000 per year in taxes. That's the thing that people always forget - government services are neither free nor cheap, and oftentimes cost more than if you just paid the bill directly. I pay about $200 a year for my annual doctor visit, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than ~$10,000*50+ years == over $500,000 in lifetime health taxation.
Sometimes when I consider statistics like these I think I'd be better-off living off the government dole (about $12/hour according to Reason Magazine) rather than try to work and earn money myself. $12 is not bad for sitting on your ass all day long watching television or surfing the net.
>>>we don't face interesting questions such as "would I rather lose the house or the leg?"
Neither do we. There are only 8 million U.S. citizens who face this question. The other ~290 million U.S. citizens are already-covered by private or government programs, and they don't have to face that question at all. The politicians are engaging in FUD to score votes, and you are falling for it.
>>>I'd have to think that the US is by far the most corrupt industrialised country in the western world. When private companies (looking to make a profit) can provide cheaper health care than the government (who isn't looking to make a profit), something is very wrong, and the answer to that is usually corruption.
>>>
The UK Government is no better. About two-third of the staff inside UK Health Services are bureaucrats, not medical personnel. I'd say the US is second, and the UK takes first place as the most-corrupt country. Or maybe Austrlalia is first. Or maybe Italy is first. It's hard to tell.
Maybe it's not really an issue of place, but an issue of organization. Government is an organization that not only holds a monopoly on the market, but also a monopoly on individual wallets. That kind of power attracts men filled with avarice and ambition, and doomed to be corrupt. That has been true for over 2000 years, going all the way back to the Roman Democratic Republic, and the Athenian Democracy, and it's still true today.
Monopoly of any kind is something which needs to be avoided.
If you think the government does not regulate how insurance companies can spend their money, then you are naive. They regulate virtually everything regarding medicine, even what kind of inhalant you can (or can not) use for asthma patients. See my signature.
This "insurance is supposed to cover medical devices" comes directly from government regulation. Even if an insurance company like Nationwide wanted to provide coverage to buy an Iphone for their hearing-disabled customer, they could not do it, else they'd be fined by the U.S. Congress.
There's nothing wrong with inventing words.
"Colonize" didn't exist until the printer Benjamin Franklin started using it (and the British printers criticized him for turning a noun into a verb). These are called inkhorn words, because it's as if they magically sprung from the ink well. Some succeed while others like Bush's "misunderestimate" or Jefferson's "undamage" did not.
>>>like Red Hat or roll their own spin of Red Hat.
So in other words the Navy has come full-circle to where they were in 1997. Prior to that the Navy (and military in general) did all hardware and software development internally. They switched to Commercial products on the theory that it would be cheaper to just buy the stuff off the shelf. Now after having experienced the Microsoft world, I guess they decided to go back to self-developed software.
Many people have compared defense work to "white collar welfare". I think the private companies are more frugal than that, since they are constantly cutting costs & laying-off workers, but having worked at the FAA it seems like a sound argument. I saw government workers sitting around doing nothing but surfing the net day-after-day. The FAA could lay-off 75% of the workforce and not notice any drop in output.
But of course if the FAA did that, then the politicians who represent those workers would scream bloody murder, and the layoffs would be canceled.
You make a good point. Microsoft's other main competitor, Apple, doesn't provide service updates for anything older than 10.5 (2007). Why should MS support anything older than that?
Whatever. I'll just keep using XP until it crashes-and-burns, and then I'll toss this PC into the trash and get a new $300 PC at walmart with Windows 8 already-installed. That's my upgrade path.
BTW anyone want to buy a Windows 95 laptop? It's harmless (mostly).
The Navy will simply subcontract-out to Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and other defense companies to upgrade all their systems from XP to Windows 7 and fix any programs that "break" as a result. It will employ some 10,000 workers at a cost of 1.4 trillion dollars. Then it will fail to come-in on time, so they'll spend an extra 6 months and 0.3 trillion on schedule overrun.
That's SOP for the government.
>>>freedom of speech means watching child porn.
Nudity is not porn except in the minds of mentally ill persons. And yet oftentimes mere possession of a naked photograph, even it's of your own family or yourself, will land you in jail. Witness the American students who were charged with child porn because they used their phones to shoot themselves without clothes. Why is taking a photo of yourself illegal??? It's stupidity. It's anti-liberty. Worse - fear of nude bodies is a psychological disease, and I suspect Conroy is patient zero.
"The GP is right"??? Okay. And while we're at it we should advise women to stop wearing clothes cut above the knee, or more than 2 inches below the neck. Plus we should punish people who leave their car doors unlocked. Also we should punish people who have regular windows on their homes instead of unbreakable windows.
Point - This proposal strikes me as blaming the victim. It's not a woman's fault she got raped, just because she wore revealing clothing. It's not the car or home owner's fault somebody broke in and stole. Likewise in most cases it's not the user's fault somebody used a flash or java applet to hijack his machine (it's typically the fault of the webmaster).
Stop punishing victims.
I think of electrons as wavicles - little chopped-off bits of waves that are bouncing-around the atom but not able to escape due to the proton's attractive force.