I suspect "losing face to face communication" has less to do with technology and more to do with parents not scheduling time to be with the kids. They toss the kid a piece of technology and say, "That will keep them busy" while they go off to do the dishes or whatever.
My nieces and nephews love their tech, but they still speak just fine with me, because I put-in the time to play with them. Is it hassle? Yes sometimes, but it's worth it.
In most cases kids quickly lose interest. "I want I want I want" quickly becomes "I'm bored" as the novelty wears off and the phone disappears into a drawer.
I was discussing this with my boss a little while ago, and he said his kids destroy half the stuff he buys for them, and that when we were growing-up we appreciated things more. And I replied, "That's because we didn't have anything. I had one record player and I treasured it like it was gold." He laughed and conceded the same was true for him.
>>>With AMD's reputation for producing hot-running processors...
Don't you mean Intel? After all their early 90s Pentiums were the first CPUs to spark the "you could fry an egg" jokes. And the Pentium 4 sitting in my computer is a major power hog (~90 watts), and it's just a single core.
Anyway 40 watts for six processors isn't really that bad. About 7 watts each.
I think her boss was named Humphrey Jass (aka Hugh Jass).;-) Also what's up with that measly fine? Given the poor economy it will probably take her a year to find another job, so she should receive one year's salary. (IMHO). Teach these corporations not to mistreat the citizens.
If he had lived in a modern U.S. or EU society, or even under the old Roman Republic, he would have had a right to freedom of religion so he'd probably have never been arrested. And if he was arrested, he'd have a right to trial by a judge to see if any laws had been violated, or if he was just somebody expressing an opinion and free to go.
Instead what he got was a show trial and a simple up/down vote by the Demos (the people). Mob rule in essence.
I wonder what explanation Apple's engineers have for the laptops that spontaneously smoked & sizzled? I think it's clear the flaw lies in the Lithium battery not the user, and Apple should simply SAY that rather than deny it. Like so: "Dell recently started it's corporate blog called dellone2one.com. One of posts is dedicated to Dell's infamous "flaming notebook" from Osaka. Dell thinks that it was a fault in a lithium ion battery cell, which caused laptop to burn.
I'm glad all my laptops use NiMH, since it's been around quite a big longer (almost 20 years) and the bugs have been removed. I'm sure Lithium batteries will be a great product to own... circa 2020.
Some might think your comment is callous, but it's also accurate.
We ALL die eventually, and given my family history my death probably will be from heart attack. That's one of the reasons I eat zero-fat food as much as possible - so I'll still be (relatively) healthy when I die at 90 or 100, rather than paralyzed like my grandfather spent his last two decades.
However I end-up, I still don't expect people to pay for MY expenses, anymore than I expect them to buy me a new computer when it dies, except as a last resort (I have no money). i.e. A safety net.
One ambulance ride + ER visit == 20,000??? Hardly. My brother's wife had surgery AND spent 3 nights in a private room, and the whole thing only cost $13,000.
My father had an outpatient pacemaker install, and it cost only $6000. Later when he needed an ambulance visit to his home, it was a mere $60.
When I was working for General Dynamics two years ago they used a similar material. Its main purpose was to prevent the resistors or ICs from "popping off" like popcorn during heavy vibration.
I've heard of Turing, but did not know about his "persecution" by his own government. These types of things often don't make it into the textbooks, just like over in Europe you probably never heard of the U.S. government's nuclear experiments on non-whites (second-class citizens in the 1950s).
Democracies often kill their best and brightest, simply because they are "odd". The most famous example is Socrates who had committed no crime, but was killed with a simple majority vote by his Athenian neighbors. That's why most modern liberal societies are Not democracies (rule of 51%) but instead Republics (rule of law), in order to protect basic individual rights.
>>>.people may have an expectation of privacy where none actually exists.
Correct. And the summary is wrong about libraries deleting private information. I went to the library a few weeks ago, after having not visited the place since 1996, and they still had all my records on file. The question people should be asking: "Does it matter?" In this case no it doesn't matter if they find-out I borrowed a copy of Judge Joseph Story's Constitutional Interpretation, but this could be dangerous if another Emperor Napoleon came-along and scoured through information to uncover his enemies.
Sorry but that IS what British citizens call it, because they are tried of hearing a bunch of dictatorial bastards say "no". That organization's job is to DENY care and reduce costs.
>>>The worst idea NICE had to do with a drug that prevented blindness. Because of its expense you could only get the drug free on the NHS if you had only one eye. Unfortunatly if youy had two eyes you didn't get the drug free. The media storm that occured when one paitent lost an eye >>>
Thanks. Yet another story to add to my arsenal. This shit doesn't happen in the U.S. because even if one hospital says "no" you can drive to another hospital who will say "yes" and get the drug. We don't have a monopoly, dictatorial organization controlling us. An oligarchy is not liberty.
My brother's wife needed a hysterectomy, and a week after she said, "Let's do it and get it done," she was in the hospital surgery room. She had no money (it was covered by her employer), but still it got done very quickly. How long would the same thing take in Canada or the UK? Months?
In the UK they have an organization called N.I.C.E. but the citizenship calls it "Nasty". Why? Because that agency's job is to say "no" when somebody wants a procedure (i.e. rationed care). For example there was a 21-year-old young woman who appeared on CNN that wanted a PAP smear due to her family history of cervical cancer. She was trying to be preventative. The UK "N.I.C.E." organization told her no. Three years in a row she was told no.
Well at age 24 she developed cancer. The belief that having government care is "better" is a false one. At least in the U.S. this woman could have gone to a doctor, handed-over $400, and the PAP performed immediately. In the UK she just got shoved aside. The U.S. also has one other thing in its favor: It's not a monopoly.
If you're earning over 50,000 (like me) you can afford to buy your own health insurance.
Just as you can afford to buy your own food, your own housing, your own car, et cetera. You don't need government assistance. We *choose* not to buy insurance for various reasons. Like being 20-something or 30-something and in good health and therefore not needing it. Or in my case, I consider insurance a scam. Why would I pay around $3000/year for insurance when it's cheaper to just give my doctor $200 per year in cash. .
>>>when you consider the number of people on medicare, medicaid, and VA benefits you will find you already have a significant minority, (maybe even a majority)
Don't exaggerate. It's only around 15%... mostly people over 65. That's how "safety nets" work - everyone else takes care of themselves with their own resources, and the government acts like a safety net to catch those who can't. PLUS you have the benefit of competition between doctors which drives-down costs. Competition is better than a monopoly that has no incentive to cut prices (think Comcast or Cox or Verizon) or to improve quality of service (think the phone company).
You can't win an argument unless you first identify the enemy you are fighting against. That's why Vietnam was such a mess, and why Iraq is heading down the same path. Nobody seems to know who they were fighting.
The enemy I fight is "big government" which currently is identified by the Democrats. As government grows, individual freedom shrinks, and I don't believe a person is free if he does not control his own savings account (which is a product of his labor). Might as well put-on chains and sell yourself to your neighbors. I don't mind paying taxes to build a navy to protect our homes from outward invasion, but I'll be damned if I want to buy my neighbor a shiny new Lexus, or my chainsmoker friend a new pair of lungs.
You have a right to healthcare. Or cars. Or tickets to the football game. Or wahtever else makes you happy. You do NOT have a right to turn your neighbors' into slaves and force them to buy that stuff for you. Pay your own bills.
The CARB and EPA both regulate NOx so that cars only emit a few thousandths of a gram per mile. Their main concern is not the ozone layer, but the effects of ground-level pollutants on human lungs.
Yeah well I AM biased. I admit that freely, unlike certain liars on NBC or CNN who claim to be unbiased. I don't like the Comcast monopoly, I don't like the Verizon monopoly, I don't like the Microsoft virtual monopoly, and I sure as hell don't want an Uncle Sam monopoly over my body's health. I want freedom to choose, for myself, to pay the bills as they roll in - same way I paid cash for my car.
Do you know how much tax my grandfather paid when he was in his 20s? 0%.
That's right - nothing. Only people who earned more than approximately $200,000 were taxed for income. Why is it that our society was able to get by with no income tax on lower/middle income citizens in the 1920s, but today we cannot? It makes no sense to me.
Yes I know we have Social Security/Medicare now, which requires a 15% flat tax on all workers to maintain, but I still don't see why we need income tax on lower/middle incomes. If I was president the graduated rate would be 0% for the first $100,000. That would help ease the burden.
Alright. Let's take your numbers ("84% have some sort of coverage"), and also remember to subtract the illegal immigrants which would not qualify for governmentcare even if it passed, that gives us:
16% without coverage -5% number of non-citizen Americans (according to CBO) -6% (0.16 times 0.37) YOUR numbers of persons who voluntarily choose not to buy insurance even though they could afford it ==== 5% of U.S. citizens left-over who *want* insurance but do not have private or government care. This five percent figure is still very small, and therefore we do not need a government monopoly takeover of the industry anymore than we need a government takeover of the car or computer industries... all we need are minor fixes such as extending Medicare to that small 5% of persons. That's it.
>>>American system spends more on health care than any other country
So? Americans spend more on EVERYTHING. That's just the nature of our country - we like to spend gobs of money. We spend more on cars. We spend more on houses. We spend more on videogames and DVDs and computers. That's not a negative result.
My brother's wife need a hysterectomy, and a week after she said, "Let's do it and get it done," she was in the hospital surgery room. She had no money (it was covered by her employer), but still it got done very quickly. How long would the same thing take in Canada or the UK? Months?
In the UK they have an organization called N.I.C.E. but the citizenship calls it "Nasty". Why? Because that agency's job is to say "no" when somebody wants a procedure (i.e. rationed care). For example there was a 21-year-old young woman who appeared on CNN that wanted a PAP smear due to her family history of cervical cancer. She was trying to be preventative. The UK "nasty" organization told her no. Three years in a row she was told no. Well at age 24 she developed cancer.
The belief that having government care is "better" is a false one. At least in the U.S. this woman could have just gone to a doctor, handed-over $500, and the PAP would have been performed immediately. Yes it's true we have about 3% of the population without private or government coverage, but that still leave 97% who ARE covered and CAN get healthcare when they need it.
The U.S. also has one other thing in its favor:
-It's not a monopoly like Comcast or Cox cable. People have *choice* and choice means freedom to run your own life as you see fit.
And the Democrats do? Folks like Obama and Pelosi keep saying "we have 50 million uninsured Americans" but never once name a source for that "50" figure, do they? They are practicing that old rule-of-thumb: If you repeat a lie often enough, the people will believe it.
AND YES I listed the Washington Examiner and the "CBO", aka the Congressional Budget Office, for the first 3% figure. Plus I listed the BBC-TV for the other waiting time/mortality figures. Learn some reading comprehension.
>>>"Watch out, he's been to europe... he might judge us!"
Yes. Europeans have developed this "Americans are dumb" paradigm, and then they go about insulting us based-upon that false presumption. There's nothing more idiotic (or dangerous) than a person stereotyping a group of people.
The "3 percent" statistic comes from the Washington Examiner, which got its numbers from the CBO. To put it briefly - most people who believe they are "uninsured" are actually eligible for government programs like Medicare, COBRA, and SCHIP. A lot more people (about 20 million) are wealthy enough to get insurance but don't want it (like me).
That leaves just 3% of Americans who *want* health insurance but are not covered either privately or by government.
And while I am posting this message, here are some more stats to consider: UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES 8 months - cataract surgery 11 months- hip replacement 12 months- knee replacement 5 months - slipped disc 5 months - hernia repair SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE 100%- United States 90% - Canada 77% - United Kingdom
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect "losing face to face communication" has less to do with technology and more to do with parents not scheduling time to be with the kids. They toss the kid a piece of technology and say, "That will keep them busy" while they go off to do the dishes or whatever.
My nieces and nephews love their tech, but they still speak just fine with me, because I put-in the time to play with them. Is it hassle? Yes sometimes, but it's worth it.
In most cases kids quickly lose interest. "I want I want I want" quickly becomes "I'm bored" as the novelty wears off and the phone disappears into a drawer.
I was discussing this with my boss a little while ago, and he said his kids destroy half the stuff he buys for them, and that when we were growing-up we appreciated things more. And I replied, "That's because we didn't have anything. I had one record player and I treasured it like it was gold." He laughed and conceded the same was true for him.
>>>With AMD's reputation for producing hot-running processors ...
Don't you mean Intel? After all their early 90s Pentiums were the first CPUs to spark the "you could fry an egg" jokes. And the Pentium 4 sitting in my computer is a major power hog (~90 watts), and it's just a single core.
Anyway 40 watts for six processors isn't really that bad. About 7 watts each.
I agree. What she did was equivalent to what you see in many, many documents:
- SECTION TITLE
- checklist
I think her boss was named Humphrey Jass (aka Hugh Jass). ;-) Also what's up with that measly fine? Given the poor economy it will probably take her a year to find another job, so she should receive one year's salary. (IMHO). Teach these corporations not to mistreat the citizens.
If he had lived in a modern U.S. or EU society, or even under the old Roman Republic, he would have had a right to freedom of religion so he'd probably have never been arrested. And if he was arrested, he'd have a right to trial by a judge to see if any laws had been violated, or if he was just somebody expressing an opinion and free to go.
Instead what he got was a show trial and a simple up/down vote by the Demos (the people). Mob rule in essence.
Precisely.
I wonder what explanation Apple's engineers have for the laptops that spontaneously smoked & sizzled? I think it's clear the flaw lies in the Lithium battery not the user, and Apple should simply SAY that rather than deny it. Like so: "Dell recently started it's corporate blog called dellone2one.com. One of posts is dedicated to Dell's infamous "flaming notebook" from Osaka. Dell thinks that it was a fault in a lithium ion battery cell, which caused laptop to burn.
"Dell's engineering teams are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission and a third-party failure analysis lab to determine the root cause of this failure and to ensure we take all appropriate measures to help prevent a recurrence", says post. LINK: http://laptoping.com/wp-content/flaming_laptop.jpg LINK: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/sony-beancounters-tremble-as-own-vaio-batteries-come-home-to-roost-208031.php LINK: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/gizmodo-reader-witnesses-ibm-laptop-catch-fire-at-lax-201115.php
I'm glad all my laptops use NiMH, since it's been around quite a big longer (almost 20 years) and the bugs have been removed. I'm sure Lithium batteries will be a great product to own... circa 2020.
Some might think your comment is callous, but it's also accurate.
We ALL die eventually, and given my family history my death probably will be from heart attack. That's one of the reasons I eat zero-fat food as much as possible - so I'll still be (relatively) healthy when I die at 90 or 100, rather than paralyzed like my grandfather spent his last two decades.
However I end-up, I still don't expect people to pay for MY expenses, anymore than I expect them to buy me a new computer when it dies, except as a last resort (I have no money). i.e. A safety net.
Why do people always exaggerate healthcare costs?
One ambulance ride + ER visit == 20,000??? Hardly. My brother's wife had surgery AND spent 3 nights in a private room, and the whole thing only cost $13,000.
My father had an outpatient pacemaker install, and it cost only $6000. Later when he needed an ambulance visit to his home, it was a mere $60.
When I was working for General Dynamics two years ago they used a similar material. Its main purpose was to prevent the resistors or ICs from "popping off" like popcorn during heavy vibration.
I've heard of Turing, but did not know about his "persecution" by his own government. These types of things often don't make it into the textbooks, just like over in Europe you probably never heard of the U.S. government's nuclear experiments on non-whites (second-class citizens in the 1950s).
Democracies often kill their best and brightest, simply because they are "odd". The most famous example is Socrates who had committed no crime, but was killed with a simple majority vote by his Athenian neighbors. That's why most modern liberal societies are Not democracies (rule of 51%) but instead Republics (rule of law), in order to protect basic individual rights.
>>>.people may have an expectation of privacy where none actually exists.
Correct. And the summary is wrong about libraries deleting private information. I went to the library a few weeks ago, after having not visited the place since 1996, and they still had all my records on file. The question people should be asking:
"Does it matter?" In this case no it doesn't matter if they find-out I borrowed a copy of Judge Joseph Story's Constitutional Interpretation, but this could be dangerous if another Emperor Napoleon came-along and scoured through information to uncover his enemies.
>>>NICE is not reffered to as "Nasty" in the UK.
Sorry but that IS what British citizens call it, because they are tried of hearing a bunch of dictatorial bastards say "no". That organization's job is to DENY care and reduce costs.
>>>The worst idea NICE had to do with a drug that prevented blindness. Because of its expense you could only get the drug free on the NHS if you had only one eye. Unfortunatly if youy had two eyes you didn't get the drug free. The media storm that occured when one paitent lost an eye
>>>
Thanks. Yet another story to add to my arsenal. This shit doesn't happen in the U.S. because even if one hospital says "no" you can drive to another hospital who will say "yes" and get the drug. We don't have a monopoly, dictatorial organization controlling us. An oligarchy is not liberty.
My brother's wife needed a hysterectomy, and a week after she said, "Let's do it and get it done," she was in the hospital surgery room. She had no money (it was covered by her employer), but still it got done very quickly. How long would the same thing take in Canada or the UK? Months?
In the UK they have an organization called N.I.C.E. but the citizenship calls it "Nasty". Why? Because that agency's job is to say "no" when somebody wants a procedure (i.e. rationed care). For example there was a 21-year-old young woman who appeared on CNN that wanted a PAP smear due to her family history of cervical cancer. She was trying to be preventative. The UK "N.I.C.E." organization told her no. Three years in a row she was told no.
Well at age 24 she developed cancer. The belief that having government care is "better" is a false one. At least in the U.S. this woman could have gone to a doctor, handed-over $400, and the PAP performed immediately. In the UK she just got shoved aside. The U.S. also has one other thing in its favor: It's not a monopoly.
If you're earning over 50,000 (like me) you can afford to buy your own health insurance.
Just as you can afford to buy your own food, your own housing, your own car, et cetera. You don't need government assistance. We *choose* not to buy insurance for various reasons. Like being 20-something or 30-something and in good health and therefore not needing it. Or in my case, I consider insurance a scam. Why would I pay around $3000/year for insurance when it's cheaper to just give my doctor $200 per year in cash.
.
>>>when you consider the number of people on medicare, medicaid, and VA benefits you will find you already have a significant minority, (maybe even a majority)
Don't exaggerate. It's only around 15%... mostly people over 65. That's how "safety nets" work - everyone else takes care of themselves with their own resources, and the government acts like a safety net to catch those who can't. PLUS you have the benefit of competition between doctors which drives-down costs. Competition is better than a monopoly that has no incentive to cut prices (think Comcast or Cox or Verizon) or to improve quality of service (think the phone company).
You can't win an argument unless you first identify the enemy you are fighting against. That's why Vietnam was such a mess, and why Iraq is heading down the same path. Nobody seems to know who they were fighting.
The enemy I fight is "big government" which currently is identified by the Democrats. As government grows, individual freedom shrinks, and I don't believe a person is free if he does not control his own savings account (which is a product of his labor). Might as well put-on chains and sell yourself to your neighbors. I don't mind paying taxes to build a navy to protect our homes from outward invasion, but I'll be damned if I want to buy my neighbor a shiny new Lexus, or my chainsmoker friend a new pair of lungs.
You have a right to healthcare. Or cars. Or tickets to the football game. Or wahtever else makes you happy.
You do NOT have a right to turn your neighbors' into slaves and force them to buy that stuff for you.
Pay your own bills.
The CARB and EPA both regulate NOx so that cars only emit a few thousandths of a gram per mile. Their main concern is not the ozone layer, but the effects of ground-level pollutants on human lungs.
Yeah well I AM biased. I admit that freely, unlike certain liars on NBC or CNN who claim to be unbiased. I don't like the Comcast monopoly, I don't like the Verizon monopoly, I don't like the Microsoft virtual monopoly, and I sure as hell don't want an Uncle Sam monopoly over my body's health. I want freedom to choose, for myself, to pay the bills as they roll in - same way I paid cash for my car.
Do you know how much tax my grandfather paid when he was in his 20s? 0%.
That's right - nothing. Only people who earned more than approximately $200,000 were taxed for income. Why is it that our society was able to get by with no income tax on lower/middle income citizens in the 1920s, but today we cannot? It makes no sense to me.
Yes I know we have Social Security/Medicare now, which requires a 15% flat tax on all workers to maintain, but I still don't see why we need income tax on lower/middle incomes. If I was president the graduated rate would be 0% for the first $100,000. That would help ease the burden.
Alright. Let's take your numbers ("84% have some sort of coverage"), and also remember to subtract the illegal immigrants which would not qualify for governmentcare even if it passed, that gives us:
16% without coverage
-5% number of non-citizen Americans (according to CBO)
-6% (0.16 times 0.37) YOUR numbers of persons who voluntarily choose not to buy insurance even though they could afford it
====
5% of U.S. citizens left-over who *want* insurance but do not have private or government care. This five percent figure is still very small, and therefore we do not need a government monopoly takeover of the industry anymore than we need a government takeover of the car or computer industries... all we need are minor fixes such as extending Medicare to that small 5% of persons. That's it.
>>>American system spends more on health care than any other country
So? Americans spend more on EVERYTHING. That's just the nature of our country - we like to spend gobs of money. We spend more on cars. We spend more on houses. We spend more on videogames and DVDs and computers. That's not a negative result.
My brother's wife need a hysterectomy, and a week after she said, "Let's do it and get it done," she was in the hospital surgery room. She had no money (it was covered by her employer), but still it got done very quickly. How long would the same thing take in Canada or the UK? Months?
In the UK they have an organization called N.I.C.E. but the citizenship calls it "Nasty". Why? Because that agency's job is to say "no" when somebody wants a procedure (i.e. rationed care). For example there was a 21-year-old young woman who appeared on CNN that wanted a PAP smear due to her family history of cervical cancer. She was trying to be preventative. The UK "nasty" organization told her no. Three years in a row she was told no. Well at age 24 she developed cancer.
The belief that having government care is "better" is a false one. At least in the U.S. this woman could have just gone to a doctor, handed-over $500, and the PAP would have been performed immediately. Yes it's true we have about 3% of the population without private or government coverage, but that still leave 97% who ARE covered and CAN get healthcare when they need it.
The U.S. also has one other thing in its favor:
-It's not a monopoly like Comcast or Cox cable. People have *choice* and choice means freedom to run your own life as you see fit.
>>>you don't bother to list your sources
And the Democrats do? Folks like Obama and Pelosi keep saying "we have 50 million uninsured Americans" but never once name a source for that "50" figure, do they? They are practicing that old rule-of-thumb: If you repeat a lie often enough, the people will believe it.
AND YES I listed the Washington Examiner and the "CBO", aka the Congressional Budget Office, for the first 3% figure. Plus I listed the BBC-TV for the other waiting time/mortality figures. Learn some reading comprehension.
>>>"Watch out, he's been to europe... he might judge us!"
Yes. Europeans have developed this "Americans are dumb" paradigm, and then they go about insulting us based-upon that false presumption. There's nothing more idiotic (or dangerous) than a person stereotyping a group of people.
I'm not the asshole who tried to justify why using a "tactile phone" to text while driving is acceptable.
The "3 percent" statistic comes from the Washington Examiner, which got its numbers from the CBO. To put it briefly - most people who believe they are "uninsured" are actually eligible for government programs like Medicare, COBRA, and SCHIP. A lot more people (about 20 million) are wealthy enough to get insurance but don't want it (like me).
That leaves just 3% of Americans who *want* health insurance but are not covered either privately or by government.
And while I am posting this message, here are some more stats to consider:
UK HEALTHCARE WAITING TIMES
8 months - cataract surgery
11 months- hip replacement
12 months- knee replacement
5 months - slipped disc
5 months - hernia repair
SOURCE - The BBC, May 2009
PROSTATE 5-YEAR CANCER SURVIVOR RATE
100%- United States
90% - Canada
77% - United Kingdom
MEP Daniel Hannan said in early August, "The worst thing to be is elderly under the UK Health System..... you will be denied care and left starving in wards."
It could have been worse. He could have pulled a Nancy Pelosi and called the protesters - "unCanadian"