So, any scientist working on anything which produces something the rest of us are willing to pay money for is to be silenced?
Whatever the researchers posted would be open to review by other participants and could be commented upon. An actual dialog would do both sides some good, as they could both gain a better understanding of an alternative view and possibly incorporate that into future product development (or dispel myths and other false information).
But heck yeah, lets jump up and down and force anyone we might not agree with into the closet so nobody could ever hear what they have to say. It's becoming the American way.
A person gives up an incredible amount of privacy but their life hardly becomes an open book for fishing expeditions.
In this case, the web site was out there for the world to see, but it seems to me it's up to the media or competing campaigns to capture what they think is useful information, not demand the other campaign provide it.
A candidate is not yet an elected official and not subject to open-records or FOIA rules. Not to mention, I'd think it's unrealistic to ask ANYONE to provide old web site data. I'd hate to have to provide historical snapshots of websites I operate. I probably could in many cases, but why should I be expected to?
Frankly, if I were Reid's campaign I'd be embarrassed to admit I was so inept as to not have collected all that information when it was out there.
Well, I'm embarrassed. I started out keeping my inventory in a spreadsheet. Then I got lazy and quit doing that. Finally, whenever I would pull a component from one of those plastic drawers a previous poster had mentioned, I'd peer inside and think to myself "I'm running a little low on 10k resisters, I'd better get more."
As an amateur radio operator I've questioned how D-Star could be legal. In a nutshell, D-Star implements a method of encoding radio communications in a way that can also be interpreted as encrypted (ie WEP/wifi on steroids). Since the FCC and the ITU (international telecommunications union) dictate that "no encryption or other privacy techniques may be used".
Since there is a proprietary chip made by a single manufacturer and a fee must be paid for the use then this would seem to violate the above rule. Every other digital and analog mode of communication is defined to the extent that an amateur radio operator could construct hardware to send, receive, encode, and decode the information... except D-Star.
However, the French couldn't see the big oak in front of them, they had to decide that their big brother authority is threatened.
Peter Cottontail would be proud... and it's all my fault! Who would have thought that the mere mention of an old o-scope experience, in a digression from my Heisenberg reference, in a digression from a neutrino discussion would have lead to digressing into a lament of O-scope technology, digressing into a discussion of analog-to-digital conversion, taking us to a discussion of gate arrays.
Yeah, but I remember 10mhz scopes and a lot of the instructors are 60's/70's guys who have been watching technology speed by.
Heck, I've been running like heck and it's still speeding by! I remember when 100mhz scopes were bleeding edge and now I have an "old" used one on my bench. Sheesh!
I was 17 and in finishing my senior year of high school in college starting on my electronics degree. But the lesson stuck with me. I also made the remark that the significance of grounds was over-rated back then. My lab professor said I'd probably live to eat those words. Oops.
There's always the possibility that this is just a variation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle at work. Maybe it all works, we're just gumming it all up by trying to be "God".
No, I'm not saying we shouldn't try, just that we may discover we're the variable.
I remember going crazy troubleshooting a circuit with an O-Scope and the freakin' thing would more-or-less work while I was monitoring the signals. Turns out it was a capacitance issue and the probe was introducing enough capacitance to make it work, but not consistently and seemingly 'random' - but really depending upon the relative position of the scope probe and how close to the tip I was choking it when measuring. Ever since then I've had a real appreciation for Werner:).
It would be foolish for BP to not do some PR work. Setting aside most folks ignorance of business for a moment, people are invested in BP (as with most corporations) and the company has an obligation to do everything it can to promote a good public image to ensure the shareholders get a return on their investment. There are pile of people who have BP in their retirement fund portfolio. There are BP employees who would like to have a job tomorrow, not to mention contractors and vendors. They'd be idiots to no try to put their message out.
I haven't heard President Obama say he wants to kick the collective asses of government officials who put together the a response plan that has yet to be implemented, suddenly changing the dispersant BP can use, and generally changing the pre-planned rules of engagement the government REQUIRED the oil companies to prepare for. No, Obama and the propagandists in the media won't talk about the bungling of all this from the government's side.
Obama and the news-hounds won't talk about the government decisions that forced oil wells to be drilled five miles underwater where dealing with a problem is nearly impossible. Nor will they mention this problem could have been resolved in hours if it had been in 50 or 500 feet of water. Or maybe even on land in the midwest or Alaska.
Nope, we'll just all jump on the last guy to touch the ball regardless of all the fumbles committed along the way by all the other players and then complain about gas prices.
Then folks want to trash BP for trying to put their message out. Who knows, it could even be the truth. I'm sure someone besides our a** kickin' president can be the messenger of truth every once and a while.
I"m glad to see so many had the same initial reaction as I did. If there were 50 hives rather than two and the trend continued then I'd say they were on to something. In this case it's not all that clear. Was on hive just more efficient and effective than the other? Was on geographically located so it had to cope with different environmental factors? Bad genes?
Hopefully they'll try this with a respectable sample size sometime soon.
Wow, you spent for years in the Small Magellanic Cloud? That would give you some practical experience with space:).
I agree congress could meddle with military/space programs just as they do with NASA, but the military does seem to not get yanked around as much as NASA does per budget dollar.
It is annoying that our government is spending us into oblivion but won't send any of it to actually going there:).
The Shuttle was a goat from the first test flight. The original design was for fully reusable components and all liquid fuel. Constant budget cuts and politics took a great idea and destroyed it.
Why solids? A Powerful Senator from Utah, where Morton-Thiokol is based. and NASA's director hailed from as well. Couple that with Congress and the White House back in the early 70's constantly cutting budgets. Solids are easier to design with, just more expensive to operate in a reusable configuration. An alternative solid design by another vendor (Aero-concepts I think) actually had the necessary tangs and O-rings to ensure there wouldn't be a Challenger style disaster - but they weren't based in Utah. As a matter of fact, their proposal was to ship them on barges due to proximity to Kennedy, minimizing the probability of warping - another constant problem caused by shipping the solids from Utah to Florida on train cars.
Why that big throw-away tank? Because a fly-back vehicle was abandoned due to design budget cuts by Congress. So now we have a throw-away tank and poorly designed solid rocket boosters on a system that was originally intended to have neither.
It wouldn't surprise me if Congress and the White House doesn't manage to repeat the same mistakes made almost 40 years ago.
It isn't denial of the scientific method by most people who disagree on Global Warming theory. It's the fact that the researches abandoned the scientific method by discarding facts that invalidated, or at least cast serious doubt upon, critical components of the theory.
In reality, many in the Global Warming Research community are the flat-Earth types. Sailors came back announcing they lost sight of shore and didn't fall off the edge of the planet and were called heretics and often eliminated. Don't want to spread false information you know.
In comes the Global Warming researchers who find evidence their data has flaws. Bury the evidence. Luckily for them they were all on the same page so the 'scientific method' could be ignored in the interest of promoting dogma and protecting research funds. Then the emails and other information surface. What happens? Those who want to point out the Earth may not be flat are called names like wackos. Usually accompanied by overall anti-Conservative rhetoric and references to fringe elements.
It looks to me like there's plenty of flat-Earth thinking spread across the ideological spectrum.
Sound familiar?
... for me. It might be cool, but I do have a vision problem that makes 3D glasses useless for me. I haven't seen any recent attempts at 3D, but I'm hoping it doesn't still have that weird echo/shadow look to it so I can enjoy the movie in 2D without feeling like I'm going to walk out bug-eyed:).
I am in complete agreement with you on this sir. CPR, First Aid, and training with CERT, CAP, Red Cross, Salvation Army and others will be of great help in an emergency.
CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) is a volunteer system usually run by local fire departments to train civilians in basic emergency response. I found this training very interesting and it is designed for almost anyone to understand and complete - often over a few Saturdays. Best of all, it's sanctioned by the local Emergency Management Agencies and lets you become familiar with the local first responders.
CAP (Civil Air Patrol) has long been a great group to work with. The training is more involved and formal because of the military association, but the organization does a lot to build character in young people and assists citizens in being better prepared for emergencies.
Of course, Red Cross and Salvation Army are so well known, what more is there to say? They too offer great support services during disasters.
And Amateur Radio plays a part in every one of these organizations (but only a part and experience in it is not even remotely a requirement to be involved in any of these).
After September 11th there has been a push on for agencies to be able to "interop", communicate with each other using compatible radios. One of the biggest reasons for amateur radio in the past 20 years has been that local police couldn't communicate with the fire department or the state law enforcement people. Everyone was on their own frequencies and/or squelch systems. Amateur Radio operators were often the glue that allowed information to move from one level to the other since our gear was designed to communicate with as many people as possible. That's all changing now, as there is a big push for inter-agency communications.
Amateur Radio will ultimately be a third or fourth option for emergency management - but will always be useful to those groups I mentioned previously.
I remember those days, and you're right about keying octal. I remember being amazed at how fast I ultimately loaded the cassette bootloader in memory! I seem to remember something like 1444 bytes free after loading the BASIC interpreter.
I blame that blasted machine for being in this industry!
The man was one of the pioneers of the industry. I sure wish I could find one of those original 8800's to stick on a shelf. Maybe make it do one of those Cylon-like LED scans back and forth!
Talk about bringing back memories! I worked on one of those in school, repairing and calibrating the cassette interface! It's what got me hooked on computers. As I recall, after manually entering the boot-loader via the toggle switches and loading BASIC off the cassette tape we had 1444 bytes free or something like that!
All those toggle switches and lights, blinking and flashing, flashing and blinking...
Democracy is just mob rule on a larger scale. The U.S.. is, in theory, a republic. We're functioning as a Democracy and it's making a bloody mess of the place. Without the protections of individual liberty democracy will ultimately lead to enslavement of those who produce to those who don't and the enslavement of the non-producers to the government for their survival.
No, the environmental fix is to continue to progress technologically. At some point someone/company will discover a way to become fabulously rich undermining oil as the means of producing energy. That will put an end to the oil-age of our economy. Government funded wind turbines and solar panels aren't going to be the answer, you just can't get enough KW/acre and per $ of construction cost to make it practical (yet). When someone does, they'll seize on the opportunity to become fabulously rich:). Yeah, a recurring theme here.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
I agree. Even at 9600 baud you'd get 3.5MB in about an hour. I was performing data transfers @ 19200 all over the place back in the 80's, so 9600 or 4800 should be a snap. Most likely a couple hours, and at worst overnight.
The big question is do you have the software on the Xenix box to perform a file unload like that. I remember sitting in front of one once upon a time as part of an engineering project but don't remember a darn thing other than thinking this was not going to be the OS of the future, so I have no clue what is built into the OS.
Okay, the system is broken. There are things that should be done. But what is on the verge of passing now is the entirely wrong thing on moral, constitutional, and economic grounds.
Our system is broken because the consumer (patient) isn't the purchaser (the employer) of the insurance. The provider of benefits (the doctor) is paid by a party (insurance company) hired by someone other than the consumer (the patient). If the consumer (patient) is unhappy it does not good to talk to the provider of service (the doctor), he calls the payer (insurance company) who knows that the consumer (the patient) isn't the purchaser (the employer) and therefore isn't all that likely to be cooperative with the service provider (the doctor) or the consumer (the patient). The consumer (patient) can go the the purchaser (HR at his company) who didn't receive any service and has no direct relationship with the provider (the doctor), but wants to keep the cost of the payer (insurance company) down. No wonder its messed up. The private system is pretty much a more efficient version of a government one!
So we replace that with a system where we pay taxes for four years before most of the benefits kick in. Then the thing balances out for the next six. But what happens when that four-years of pay-without-service money isn't there to cover the costs? Tighter regulation and 'prioritizing' of patients (ie rationing). We've yet to see the governments health-care systems: Medicare and Medicaid come in anywhere near on budget while providers are running away from them. VA hospitals are great as long as you don't get too sick, but they don't have the resources to provide consistent high quality healthcare.
This is really about co-opting a big chunk of nearly free-market money to cover the failure of the other programs. Medicare is broke, Medicaid is busting the budget, and Social Security is at cross-over - we'll be paying more money out to recipients than we've taken in AND there's no more money for the government to take from it to fund the budget, AND we have to start paying Social Security "Trust Fund" back. Think about how many times Pelosi will make odd references to medicare and medicaid. Less so Obama and Reid, but they still do it. It's because they know the only way to save those programs is to get more resources redirected from the healthcare system the rest of us use.
Get employers out of providing healthcare (let them offer a reimbursement or stipend to employees as part of the incentive package). Now we all go out hunting for health insurance like we do for our house, car, and death. I'll bet the health insurance companies get much more client friendly when its the client who can take their money elsewhere and not some drone in HR. Yeah, we'll need to tweak pre-existing conditions to deal with portability and the transition to a real independent system.
We'll need to fix tort. The lawyers won't like it, but the system is too litigious. We have to allow for doctors to not be perfect, and they can quit trying to act like they are. I'd rather have a doctor, especially in an emergency, more worried about how to save my life than cover his butt from a lawsuit later.
It is a flaw (including libc), but the fact is, we very seldom are going to create programs that aren't going to require the inclusion anyway.
I'll admit it is embarrassing because of the historical efficiency of 'C', but a program that prints a simple message or exits with an error code is not a real-world application nor a real indicator of how efficient the language is for actual application development.
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So, any scientist working on anything which produces something the rest of us are willing to pay money for is to be silenced? Whatever the researchers posted would be open to review by other participants and could be commented upon. An actual dialog would do both sides some good, as they could both gain a better understanding of an alternative view and possibly incorporate that into future product development (or dispel myths and other false information). But heck yeah, lets jump up and down and force anyone we might not agree with into the closet so nobody could ever hear what they have to say. It's becoming the American way.
Umm, it was the liberal Democrat who went running to the government to order information disclosure at the figurative point of a gun.
This barely intelligible rant with false allegations and straw men from left to far left gets a score of five for insightful? Sheesh.
A person gives up an incredible amount of privacy but their life hardly becomes an open book for fishing expeditions.
In this case, the web site was out there for the world to see, but it seems to me it's up to the media or competing campaigns to capture what they think is useful information, not demand the other campaign provide it.
A candidate is not yet an elected official and not subject to open-records or FOIA rules. Not to mention, I'd think it's unrealistic to ask ANYONE to provide old web site data. I'd hate to have to provide historical snapshots of websites I operate. I probably could in many cases, but why should I be expected to?
Frankly, if I were Reid's campaign I'd be embarrassed to admit I was so inept as to not have collected all that information when it was out there.
Well, I'm embarrassed. I started out keeping my inventory in a spreadsheet. Then I got lazy and quit doing that. Finally, whenever I would pull a component from one of those plastic drawers a previous poster had mentioned, I'd peer inside and think to myself "I'm running a little low on 10k resisters, I'd better get more."
...
I'd never thought to have an inventory program
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/business/energy-environment/09solar.html
As an amateur radio operator I've questioned how D-Star could be legal. In a nutshell, D-Star implements a method of encoding radio communications in a way that can also be interpreted as encrypted (ie WEP/wifi on steroids). Since the FCC and the ITU (international telecommunications union) dictate that "no encryption or other privacy techniques may be used".
... except D-Star.
Since there is a proprietary chip made by a single manufacturer and a fee must be paid for the use then this would seem to violate the above rule. Every other digital and analog mode of communication is defined to the extent that an amateur radio operator could construct hardware to send, receive, encode, and decode the information
However, the French couldn't see the big oak in front of them, they had to decide that their big brother authority is threatened.
Peter Cottontail would be proud ... and it's all my fault! Who would have thought that the mere mention of an old o-scope experience, in a digression from my Heisenberg reference, in a digression from a neutrino discussion would have lead to digressing into a lament of O-scope technology, digressing into a discussion of analog-to-digital conversion, taking us to a discussion of gate arrays.
... oh, look! A bunny!
Yep, Peter would be proud
Yeah, but I remember 10mhz scopes and a lot of the instructors are 60's/70's guys who have been watching technology speed by.
Heck, I've been running like heck and it's still speeding by! I remember when 100mhz scopes were bleeding edge and now I have an "old" used one on my bench. Sheesh!
An interesting take. If there was a lottery with a 1/20 chance and I'd be out buying lottery tickets :).
I was 17 and in finishing my senior year of high school in college starting on my electronics degree. But the lesson stuck with me. I also made the remark that the significance of grounds was over-rated back then. My lab professor said I'd probably live to eat those words. Oops.
There's always the possibility that this is just a variation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle at work. Maybe it all works, we're just gumming it all up by trying to be "God".
:).
No, I'm not saying we shouldn't try, just that we may discover we're the variable.
I remember going crazy troubleshooting a circuit with an O-Scope and the freakin' thing would more-or-less work while I was monitoring the signals. Turns out it was a capacitance issue and the probe was introducing enough capacitance to make it work, but not consistently and seemingly 'random' - but really depending upon the relative position of the scope probe and how close to the tip I was choking it when measuring. Ever since then I've had a real appreciation for Werner
It would be foolish for BP to not do some PR work. Setting aside most folks ignorance of business for a moment, people are invested in BP (as with most corporations) and the company has an obligation to do everything it can to promote a good public image to ensure the shareholders get a return on their investment. There are pile of people who have BP in their retirement fund portfolio. There are BP employees who would like to have a job tomorrow, not to mention contractors and vendors. They'd be idiots to no try to put their message out.
I haven't heard President Obama say he wants to kick the collective asses of government officials who put together the a response plan that has yet to be implemented, suddenly changing the dispersant BP can use, and generally changing the pre-planned rules of engagement the government REQUIRED the oil companies to prepare for. No, Obama and the propagandists in the media won't talk about the bungling of all this from the government's side.
Obama and the news-hounds won't talk about the government decisions that forced oil wells to be drilled five miles underwater where dealing with a problem is nearly impossible. Nor will they mention this problem could have been resolved in hours if it had been in 50 or 500 feet of water. Or maybe even on land in the midwest or Alaska.
Nope, we'll just all jump on the last guy to touch the ball regardless of all the fumbles committed along the way by all the other players and then complain about gas prices.
Then folks want to trash BP for trying to put their message out. Who knows, it could even be the truth. I'm sure someone besides our a** kickin' president can be the messenger of truth every once and a while.
I"m glad to see so many had the same initial reaction as I did. If there were 50 hives rather than two and the trend continued then I'd say they were on to something. In this case it's not all that clear. Was on hive just more efficient and effective than the other? Was on geographically located so it had to cope with different environmental factors? Bad genes?
Hopefully they'll try this with a respectable sample size sometime soon.
Wow, you spent for years in the Small Magellanic Cloud? That would give you some practical experience with space :).
:).
I agree congress could meddle with military/space programs just as they do with NASA, but the military does seem to not get yanked around as much as NASA does per budget dollar.
It is annoying that our government is spending us into oblivion but won't send any of it to actually going there
The Shuttle was a goat from the first test flight. The original design was for fully reusable components and all liquid fuel. Constant budget cuts and politics took a great idea and destroyed it.
Why solids? A Powerful Senator from Utah, where Morton-Thiokol is based. and NASA's director hailed from as well. Couple that with Congress and the White House back in the early 70's constantly cutting budgets. Solids are easier to design with, just more expensive to operate in a reusable configuration. An alternative solid design by another vendor (Aero-concepts I think) actually had the necessary tangs and O-rings to ensure there wouldn't be a Challenger style disaster - but they weren't based in Utah. As a matter of fact, their proposal was to ship them on barges due to proximity to Kennedy, minimizing the probability of warping - another constant problem caused by shipping the solids from Utah to Florida on train cars.
Why that big throw-away tank? Because a fly-back vehicle was abandoned due to design budget cuts by Congress. So now we have a throw-away tank and poorly designed solid rocket boosters on a system that was originally intended to have neither.
It wouldn't surprise me if Congress and the White House doesn't manage to repeat the same mistakes made almost 40 years ago.
It isn't denial of the scientific method by most people who disagree on Global Warming theory. It's the fact that the researches abandoned the scientific method by discarding facts that invalidated, or at least cast serious doubt upon, critical components of the theory.
In reality, many in the Global Warming Research community are the flat-Earth types. Sailors came back announcing they lost sight of shore and didn't fall off the edge of the planet and were called heretics and often eliminated. Don't want to spread false information you know.
In comes the Global Warming researchers who find evidence their data has flaws. Bury the evidence. Luckily for them they were all on the same page so the 'scientific method' could be ignored in the interest of promoting dogma and protecting research funds. Then the emails and other information surface. What happens? Those who want to point out the Earth may not be flat are called names like wackos. Usually accompanied by overall anti-Conservative rhetoric and references to fringe elements.
It looks to me like there's plenty of flat-Earth thinking spread across the ideological spectrum. Sound familiar?
... for me. It might be cool, but I do have a vision problem that makes 3D glasses useless for me. I haven't seen any recent attempts at 3D, but I'm hoping it doesn't still have that weird echo/shadow look to it so I can enjoy the movie in 2D without feeling like I'm going to walk out bug-eyed :).
I am in complete agreement with you on this sir. CPR, First Aid, and training with CERT, CAP, Red Cross, Salvation Army and others will be of great help in an emergency.
CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) is a volunteer system usually run by local fire departments to train civilians in basic emergency response. I found this training very interesting and it is designed for almost anyone to understand and complete - often over a few Saturdays. Best of all, it's sanctioned by the local Emergency Management Agencies and lets you become familiar with the local first responders.
CAP (Civil Air Patrol) has long been a great group to work with. The training is more involved and formal because of the military association, but the organization does a lot to build character in young people and assists citizens in being better prepared for emergencies.
Of course, Red Cross and Salvation Army are so well known, what more is there to say? They too offer great support services during disasters.
And Amateur Radio plays a part in every one of these organizations (but only a part and experience in it is not even remotely a requirement to be involved in any of these).
After September 11th there has been a push on for agencies to be able to "interop", communicate with each other using compatible radios. One of the biggest reasons for amateur radio in the past 20 years has been that local police couldn't communicate with the fire department or the state law enforcement people. Everyone was on their own frequencies and/or squelch systems. Amateur Radio operators were often the glue that allowed information to move from one level to the other since our gear was designed to communicate with as many people as possible. That's all changing now, as there is a big push for inter-agency communications.
Amateur Radio will ultimately be a third or fourth option for emergency management - but will always be useful to those groups I mentioned previously.
73 - KI4LZG
I remember those days, and you're right about keying octal. I remember being amazed at how fast I ultimately loaded the cassette bootloader in memory! I seem to remember something like 1444 bytes free after loading the BASIC interpreter.
I blame that blasted machine for being in this industry!
The man was one of the pioneers of the industry. I sure wish I could find one of those original 8800's to stick on a shelf. Maybe make it do one of those Cylon-like LED scans back and forth! Talk about bringing back memories! I worked on one of those in school, repairing and calibrating the cassette interface! It's what got me hooked on computers. As I recall, after manually entering the boot-loader via the toggle switches and loading BASIC off the cassette tape we had 1444 bytes free or something like that! All those toggle switches and lights, blinking and flashing, flashing and blinking ...
Democracy is just mob rule on a larger scale. The U.S.. is, in theory, a republic. We're functioning as a Democracy and it's making a bloody mess of the place. Without the protections of individual liberty democracy will ultimately lead to enslavement of those who produce to those who don't and the enslavement of the non-producers to the government for their survival.
:). Yeah, a recurring theme here.
No, the environmental fix is to continue to progress technologically. At some point someone/company will discover a way to become fabulously rich undermining oil as the means of producing energy. That will put an end to the oil-age of our economy. Government funded wind turbines and solar panels aren't going to be the answer, you just can't get enough KW/acre and per $ of construction cost to make it practical (yet). When someone does, they'll seize on the opportunity to become fabulously rich
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
I agree. Even at 9600 baud you'd get 3.5MB in about an hour. I was performing data transfers @ 19200 all over the place back in the 80's, so 9600 or 4800 should be a snap. Most likely a couple hours, and at worst overnight. The big question is do you have the software on the Xenix box to perform a file unload like that. I remember sitting in front of one once upon a time as part of an engineering project but don't remember a darn thing other than thinking this was not going to be the OS of the future, so I have no clue what is built into the OS.
Okay, the system is broken. There are things that should be done. But what is on the verge of passing now is the entirely wrong thing on moral, constitutional, and economic grounds.
Our system is broken because the consumer (patient) isn't the purchaser (the employer) of the insurance. The provider of benefits (the doctor) is paid by a party (insurance company) hired by someone other than the consumer (the patient). If the consumer (patient) is unhappy it does not good to talk to the provider of service (the doctor), he calls the payer (insurance company) who knows that the consumer (the patient) isn't the purchaser (the employer) and therefore isn't all that likely to be cooperative with the service provider (the doctor) or the consumer (the patient). The consumer (patient) can go the the purchaser (HR at his company) who didn't receive any service and has no direct relationship with the provider (the doctor), but wants to keep the cost of the payer (insurance company) down. No wonder its messed up. The private system is pretty much a more efficient version of a government one!
So we replace that with a system where we pay taxes for four years before most of the benefits kick in. Then the thing balances out for the next six. But what happens when that four-years of pay-without-service money isn't there to cover the costs? Tighter regulation and 'prioritizing' of patients (ie rationing). We've yet to see the governments health-care systems: Medicare and Medicaid come in anywhere near on budget while providers are running away from them. VA hospitals are great as long as you don't get too sick, but they don't have the resources to provide consistent high quality healthcare.
This is really about co-opting a big chunk of nearly free-market money to cover the failure of the other programs. Medicare is broke, Medicaid is busting the budget, and Social Security is at cross-over - we'll be paying more money out to recipients than we've taken in AND there's no more money for the government to take from it to fund the budget, AND we have to start paying Social Security "Trust Fund" back. Think about how many times Pelosi will make odd references to medicare and medicaid. Less so Obama and Reid, but they still do it. It's because they know the only way to save those programs is to get more resources redirected from the healthcare system the rest of us use.
Get employers out of providing healthcare (let them offer a reimbursement or stipend to employees as part of the incentive package). Now we all go out hunting for health insurance like we do for our house, car, and death. I'll bet the health insurance companies get much more client friendly when its the client who can take their money elsewhere and not some drone in HR. Yeah, we'll need to tweak pre-existing conditions to deal with portability and the transition to a real independent system.
We'll need to fix tort. The lawyers won't like it, but the system is too litigious. We have to allow for doctors to not be perfect, and they can quit trying to act like they are. I'd rather have a doctor, especially in an emergency, more worried about how to save my life than cover his butt from a lawsuit later.
It is a flaw (including libc), but the fact is, we very seldom are going to create programs that aren't going to require the inclusion anyway.
I'll admit it is embarrassing because of the historical efficiency of 'C', but a program that prints a simple message or exits with an error code is not a real-world application nor a real indicator of how efficient the language is for actual application development.
It is a good for a yuck though.