Barrier to entry for anybody to ever publish one of these stories should be having the "perpetual motion machine" turn a generator that powers a machine that makes more perpetual motion machines out of raw materials. When they can do that, then maybe we'll listen to their claims that there is no energy input.
Life expectancy at birth, and average life expectancy are drastically different numbers. While life expectancy at birth is an interesting number, the average life expectancy (sorry for the crappy link. The data from the CDC website isn't tabulated by country on a single page, and all the other reference docs were PDF) of the entire population (Thus including those born in the past, who are already incurring health care costs) is, in my opinion, more relevant to this discussion, and was the number I was referencing.
We can both parrot statistics all day, 'cause there are plenty to support both sides of the argument. The things that close the argument for me are in your own final link. There's the "Access to healthcare" section, which is as negative a thing as you could possibly say about Canada's system, but the biggie is in the "Price of healthcare" section. The US Government pays for care for 15% of the population under a federal health care plan today. That plan only covers a subset of the costs, and the government still pays 35% more per person for that coverage than Canada does for their system. Economies of scale comments and all that, are bullshit in this argument for the following reason: Those 15% represent a population that is equal in size to all of Canada, but the US government spends more on them for less coverage. The structure of the US government makes it impossible for it to ever provide univeral healthcare that is both of high quality and cost effective. So I don't care what other countries do. It doesn't matter. I'd rather stick with the system we have, rather than let the US government waste my money. Especially since my willingness to work hard and adapt my skillset as needed means the current system favors people like me.
There was a lot of talk about network neutrality from the Democrats before they took control of congress. Now that they are in power and those buckets full of money are in the offing, they seem to have suddenly shut the fuck up about the importance of network neutrality.
That's called pandering, and it's what all mainstream politicians do to get elected before going back to doing the same crap they always did. It's also why Hillary and McCain started campaigning so early this year; they needed to do a lot of pandering to get the people they wanted to vote for them to forget what they actually stood for.
GTA4 is still going to be on the PS3. $50 million for some downloadable content is just as stupid as paying $350 million for Rare (lauded as the deathblow for Nintendo at the time). But if Microsoft wants to blow more of their cash, I'm all for it. It's $50 million less they have available to use patent trolling.
There is nothing impartial about pardoning someone. The act itself indicates that the individual being pardoned has either already been convicted by a jury or that his conviction is a forgone conclusion.
Pardoning and commuting a sentence aren't the same thing.
I never can figure out why people get all guilty-acting and concerned when they set the alarm off with an item the cashier failed to de-activate. For starters, if you just keep walking nobody bothers to do anything about it, and they didn't do anything wrong...
When did we all become programmed to believe that we should be submissive to anybody who cares to claim authority over us?
There are many possible explanations (I'm not sure which is the correct one). It is not obvious that your statistic means I'm wrong.
For example, we could be less-healthy on average (stereotypical american obesity anyone?). We could be (we are) older on average than the countries you listed. We have longer life expectancies than those countries as well. Neither France nor Canada show up in the top 20 of industrialized nations (perhaps because we spend more to keep people alive towards the end of their life?). We could spend more on elective procedures that aren't covered in those countries. It could be all of those things combined.
Why is universal healthcare cheaper/better than the alternative? Here are just a few reasons:
Why is universal healthcare more expensive/worse than what we have now? Here are just a few reasons:
Shielding individuals from the costs of their care provides no incentive for people to make economical health care choices
Because of our new "College-prep" high school curriculum, people grow up not knowing how or when it is appropriate to take care of themselves. Combined with low cost access to health care, this will increase needless use of the system more than it alread does.
An overworked system will lead to demand out-pacing supply (higher costs), more mistakes (higher cost & lower quality care), and reduced access (waiting lists anybody?).
Regulating drug costs is a whole other issue, with economic consequences far outside of the health care industry. It's playing with fire. You will see massive job losses, probably recession from the subsequent stock market crash, decreased new research, or research moving out of the US, or huge tax revenue based expenditures to keep research going... It's not a slippery slope. It's a cliff.
How would I fix the health care system? Well I'd start by teaching more in health class than how to use a condom. Like how to fix yourself when you have the flu instead of creating thousands of dollars in health care costs; then start turning people away after basic triage at the ER when they show up with non-threatening symptoms. I would provide universal care.... for children under the age of 18, who would then grow up healthier reducing costs on the system. I would end prescription drug advertising directly to end-users. And I would allow insurance companies to charge more for obese people and smokers. A lot more. And then get over it when people can't afford to be saved from themselves.
Refilled/off brand ink cartridges are commonplace, and most people expect to be able to use them with a new printer. If the printer is designed to prevent that, it should have a label. In large type it should read: "This printer is designed to prevent the use of third-party ink". The text should be larger than any other text on the box except for the product name and brand name, and it should be on the front.
I don't know how anybody could think that secretly embedding technology like this into a device isn't a deceptive sales tactic.
They did before that too. The G3 powerbooks have two sliding tabs on the keyboard. The keyboard flips up and you can access the processor card, hard drive, memory, and mini-PCI slot.
In my experience, you're right, but it is changing.
In the past, the long hours were compensated. Not necessarily with cash, but with equity which would reward you amply for your time if your hard work paid off. Recently the trend has been to expect the devotion and effort with significantly less potential reward in the event of success.
However, small companies/start-ups are still reluctant to replace employees; preferring instead to keep the people who are already familiar with the task at hand. In fact many are reluctant to hire new grads at all, and only want 'senior' people.
What? This won't happen until the "human race" has a common enemy.
What makes you think we'd stop fighting with each other if we had a common enemy. There are plenty of human societies right now who have a common enemy, yet still kill amongst themselves.
Having said that, I'm sure Apple service agents will be able to replace the battery (...a purpose designed case-opening tool and a supply of replacement back covers would make it rather easier)
From seeing the Think Secret pictures, I agree. A special tool for removing the bottom half of the back, four screws, and a soldering iron and you're in. You probably don't even have to send it back to Apple. I've seen in-store cell phone repair techs perform more complex operations than that.
It wasn't too long ago when those types of electronics repairs were common, but today's typical geek can't remember back far enough to the times when nothing inside your PC was socketed/slotted, and every repair required solder; and when every town had a radio & television repair shop with tube testers and a permanent smell of flux inside.
My experience matches yours, however none of my 30+ coworkers are concerned that they look stupid with a Blackberry or Treo clipped to their belt (they practically all do it), and isn't that what we're talking about here? They're not out "picking up chicks/guys", or worrying about appearances at some night club or trendy bar. They're just doing what they enjoy/have to do.
You do realize that if the failure rate was 5% there would be an excellent chance that you could know that many people that have a 360 and have no issues, right?
Even the anecdotal evidence doesn't add up. There are too many stories out there about people with dead 360s relative to the stories about other systems for this to be a non-issue. Personally, I know six people with 360s, and all but one of them have had to send at least one back. It's not the one guy who went through 11, or 14, or whatever that concern me. It's the many, many stories of the guys who have had to send one or two back.
There has got to be some percentage of issues, and that means there's a non-zero possibility that somebody could receive many consecutive consoles with problems. The reason this is a story is because the issue rate would have to be pretty high, or this guy would have to be *really* unlucky to have this many systems with different types of issues.
There are definitely issues with some of these consoles. There always are when you ship millions of something. The question here is how common the issues are. You could know dozens of people who haven't had a problem at all, and the issue rate could still be higher than is acceptable. Additionally, the issue rate could be significantly higher for the returned/refurbished units. Whatever is going on though, it seems reasonable to expect some straight answers from Microsoft, preferably about what the issues are and how common, but at the very least about why they let the problem become so bad for this one guy before stepping in and making sure they had done everything in their power to fix his problems.
...still no word on the price for the service. Either AT&T is being clinically stupid (are people going to wait in line to find out they can't afford the plan?), or they know that as soon as the plan price is announced all those would-be line waiters will stay home.
That is clearly bullshit. I'm sure that Microsoft hasn't claimed that, so you're probably drinking some fanboy blogger's cool-aid.
If the $50 fee was to keep griefers away from the system, then it would be a one time fee. But it's not. It's an annual fee. An annual fee that is clearly intended to "guarantee" the $150+ of attached revenue they need to generate to make a profit on the system.
They're not charging to keep the quality of the service up. They're charging to make money.
A month or so before the March Game Developers Conference, Nintendo's PR agency approached us about a hush-hush new content initiative that the company had been cooking up [...] What's more interesting is that Nintendo isn't only seeking WiiWare from established publishers and developers like Ubisoft and Sega. At a Nintendo developer's conference earlier this week, the company informed attendees that it was seeking from indie developers as well. Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas;
So, the same thing that Microsoft and Sony are already doing? Why's it so hush-hush then? Wouldn't they want to tell people ASAP that they're not missing the boat?
Article summary: Wii games for download next year, actual article content with interview next week. The rest is fluff.
Slashdot Mirror
They don't charge me $60 to turn on the game on broadcast TV.
Barrier to entry for anybody to ever publish one of these stories should be having the "perpetual motion machine" turn a generator that powers a machine that makes more perpetual motion machines out of raw materials. When they can do that, then maybe we'll listen to their claims that there is no energy input.
Life expectancy at birth, and average life expectancy are drastically different numbers. While life expectancy at birth is an interesting number, the average life expectancy (sorry for the crappy link. The data from the CDC website isn't tabulated by country on a single page, and all the other reference docs were PDF) of the entire population (Thus including those born in the past, who are already incurring health care costs) is, in my opinion, more relevant to this discussion, and was the number I was referencing.
We can both parrot statistics all day, 'cause there are plenty to support both sides of the argument. The things that close the argument for me are in your own final link. There's the "Access to healthcare" section, which is as negative a thing as you could possibly say about Canada's system, but the biggie is in the "Price of healthcare" section. The US Government pays for care for 15% of the population under a federal health care plan today. That plan only covers a subset of the costs, and the government still pays 35% more per person for that coverage than Canada does for their system. Economies of scale comments and all that, are bullshit in this argument for the following reason: Those 15% represent a population that is equal in size to all of Canada, but the US government spends more on them for less coverage. The structure of the US government makes it impossible for it to ever provide univeral healthcare that is both of high quality and cost effective. So I don't care what other countries do. It doesn't matter. I'd rather stick with the system we have, rather than let the US government waste my money. Especially since my willingness to work hard and adapt my skillset as needed means the current system favors people like me.
That's called pandering, and it's what all mainstream politicians do to get elected before going back to doing the same crap they always did. It's also why Hillary and McCain started campaigning so early this year; they needed to do a lot of pandering to get the people they wanted to vote for them to forget what they actually stood for.
None of the GTA games were Playstation exclusive.
GTA4 is still going to be on the PS3. $50 million for some downloadable content is just as stupid as paying $350 million for Rare (lauded as the deathblow for Nintendo at the time). But if Microsoft wants to blow more of their cash, I'm all for it. It's $50 million less they have available to use patent trolling.
Pardoning and commuting a sentence aren't the same thing.
I never can figure out why people get all guilty-acting and concerned when they set the alarm off with an item the cashier failed to de-activate. For starters, if you just keep walking nobody bothers to do anything about it, and they didn't do anything wrong...
When did we all become programmed to believe that we should be submissive to anybody who cares to claim authority over us?
It's still in stark contrast to Sony's "If you already bought this game for PSP, you can download it to your PS3 for free" policy.
And why is the new Nintendo and Microsoft downloadable content getting free ad-space when Sony has new games available this week too?
Sending the bills to the government will make that problem worse not better.
Dentists, some primary care doctors, and most walk-in clinics that I've seen have price lists. This information should be spread more widely.
There are many possible explanations (I'm not sure which is the correct one). It is not obvious that your statistic means I'm wrong.
For example, we could be less-healthy on average (stereotypical american obesity anyone?). We could be (we are) older on average than the countries you listed. We have longer life expectancies than those countries as well. Neither France nor Canada show up in the top 20 of industrialized nations (perhaps because we spend more to keep people alive towards the end of their life?). We could spend more on elective procedures that aren't covered in those countries. It could be all of those things combined.
Why is universal healthcare more expensive/worse than what we have now? Here are just a few reasons:
Regulating drug costs is a whole other issue, with economic consequences far outside of the health care industry. It's playing with fire. You will see massive job losses, probably recession from the subsequent stock market crash, decreased new research, or research moving out of the US, or huge tax revenue based expenditures to keep research going... It's not a slippery slope. It's a cliff.
How would I fix the health care system? Well I'd start by teaching more in health class than how to use a condom. Like how to fix yourself when you have the flu instead of creating thousands of dollars in health care costs; then start turning people away after basic triage at the ER when they show up with non-threatening symptoms. I would provide universal care.... for children under the age of 18, who would then grow up healthier reducing costs on the system. I would end prescription drug advertising directly to end-users. And I would allow insurance companies to charge more for obese people and smokers. A lot more. And then get over it when people can't afford to be saved from themselves.
Refilled/off brand ink cartridges are commonplace, and most people expect to be able to use them with a new printer. If the printer is designed to prevent that, it should have a label. In large type it should read: "This printer is designed to prevent the use of third-party ink". The text should be larger than any other text on the box except for the product name and brand name, and it should be on the front.
I don't know how anybody could think that secretly embedding technology like this into a device isn't a deceptive sales tactic.
The Microsoft Salute is originally known as the Three-finger Salute. Ctrl, Alt, and Delete.
They did before that too. The G3 powerbooks have two sliding tabs on the keyboard. The keyboard flips up and you can access the processor card, hard drive, memory, and mini-PCI slot.
In my experience, you're right, but it is changing.
In the past, the long hours were compensated. Not necessarily with cash, but with equity which would reward you amply for your time if your hard work paid off. Recently the trend has been to expect the devotion and effort with significantly less potential reward in the event of success.
However, small companies/start-ups are still reluctant to replace employees; preferring instead to keep the people who are already familiar with the task at hand. In fact many are reluctant to hire new grads at all, and only want 'senior' people.
What makes you think we'd stop fighting with each other if we had a common enemy. There are plenty of human societies right now who have a common enemy, yet still kill amongst themselves.
From seeing the Think Secret pictures, I agree. A special tool for removing the bottom half of the back, four screws, and a soldering iron and you're in. You probably don't even have to send it back to Apple. I've seen in-store cell phone repair techs perform more complex operations than that.
It wasn't too long ago when those types of electronics repairs were common, but today's typical geek can't remember back far enough to the times when nothing inside your PC was socketed/slotted, and every repair required solder; and when every town had a radio & television repair shop with tube testers and a permanent smell of flux inside.
My experience matches yours, however none of my 30+ coworkers are concerned that they look stupid with a Blackberry or Treo clipped to their belt (they practically all do it), and isn't that what we're talking about here? They're not out "picking up chicks/guys", or worrying about appearances at some night club or trendy bar. They're just doing what they enjoy/have to do.
Nope. And they'd never take you down for mail fraud because they can't pin a murder on you either.
Bad laws like this invite corruption.
You do realize that if the failure rate was 5% there would be an excellent chance that you could know that many people that have a 360 and have no issues, right?
Even the anecdotal evidence doesn't add up. There are too many stories out there about people with dead 360s relative to the stories about other systems for this to be a non-issue. Personally, I know six people with 360s, and all but one of them have had to send at least one back. It's not the one guy who went through 11, or 14, or whatever that concern me. It's the many, many stories of the guys who have had to send one or two back.
There has got to be some percentage of issues, and that means there's a non-zero possibility that somebody could receive many consecutive consoles with problems. The reason this is a story is because the issue rate would have to be pretty high, or this guy would have to be *really* unlucky to have this many systems with different types of issues.
There are definitely issues with some of these consoles. There always are when you ship millions of something. The question here is how common the issues are. You could know dozens of people who haven't had a problem at all, and the issue rate could still be higher than is acceptable. Additionally, the issue rate could be significantly higher for the returned/refurbished units. Whatever is going on though, it seems reasonable to expect some straight answers from Microsoft, preferably about what the issues are and how common, but at the very least about why they let the problem become so bad for this one guy before stepping in and making sure they had done everything in their power to fix his problems.
...still no word on the price for the service. Either AT&T is being clinically stupid (are people going to wait in line to find out they can't afford the plan?), or they know that as soon as the plan price is announced all those would-be line waiters will stay home.
Tell us how much the damned thing costs already!
That is clearly bullshit. I'm sure that Microsoft hasn't claimed that, so you're probably drinking some fanboy blogger's cool-aid.
If the $50 fee was to keep griefers away from the system, then it would be a one time fee. But it's not. It's an annual fee. An annual fee that is clearly intended to "guarantee" the $150+ of attached revenue they need to generate to make a profit on the system.
They're not charging to keep the quality of the service up. They're charging to make money.
So, the same thing that Microsoft and Sony are already doing? Why's it so hush-hush then? Wouldn't they want to tell people ASAP that they're not missing the boat?
Article summary: Wii games for download next year, actual article content with interview next week. The rest is fluff.
Maybe I'm getting too old, but the last time I checked somebody like this is called a bootlegger.
"ESA Initiates Police Raid Against Games Bootlegger"
And then everybody would have gotten the correct mental image of a guy who was copying and selling copied video games.