I've heard some horror stories from the Toronto area but I've heard similar horror stories about hospitals and clinics in New York etc, unless you have zounds of cash for premium insurance or are able to just go elsewhere for treatment.
I've also heard the same about some clinics and hospitals in London, so I'm making what I feel is a fairly safe assumption that huge cities have congestion problems with medical services. They have congestion problems with everything else so it would make sense.
The largest place I've ever lived was Halifax, and I've never experienced anything close to what you describe, or had anyone in my immediate friends/family circle experience it. Excepting one Aunt that lived in Toronto for awhile.
I don't know where the hell you've been living but if I have something thats urgent enough to bother the doctor for I get seen to within a few hours. Which is acceptable.
As for the prescriptions and regular checkups... just don't be dense and make your next appointments as you leave.
If it is actually something serious you will be seen by a specialist almost immediately. I blew my knee out badly and saw a specialist about surgery inside 12 hours, and there was a 4 hour flight in between there as I was in the Arctic at the time.
If you have that much of a problem then you're one of those folks that goes to the doctor for every sniffle and I'm glad you're in Korea.
Its a public system, and free here. So people like you clog the damned system to hell. There are new initiatives with the health care lines that are thankfully reducing this problem however.
No, using very very rough population numbers to demonstrate the absolute numbers difference. 1 person in 100,000 for canada with a population of about 30,000,000 is 300 people. 1 person in 100,000 in the US with a population of 300,000,000 is 3000 people.
I just didn't think anyone reading slashdot would be dense enough to need that explained to them.
Alaska still has trees even. Some parts of Canada don't, but where the majority of the population in Canada lives the climate is fairly similar to New York or Vermont.
The general population in the US is so grossly misinformed about our system that since we are neighbours, it can only be intentional spreading of misinformation by special interests.
Specialist salaries are not capped in Canada, only General Practitioner salaries.
You, as most Americans, are grossly misinformed about our health care system
You are only partially right about having the wealthy market cornered. Wealthy Americans routinely travel the globe to get treatments everywhere.
You just *think* you have the wealthy market cornered because anyone with good health insurance gets to stay in a 4 star hotel while they recover. Also because, well, America did have that market cornered at one time.
In reality your political interests, largely religious, are currently influencing your policy makers to the extent that new, successful high-tech treatments are being banned in America or going through 20 years of unnecessary hoops. So wealthy Americans are increasingly seeking treatment in european countries, Japan, Australia, Canada, and everywhere else across the globe.
Going to the US for medical treatment in Canada is similar to Americans going to Europe for treatment for certain diseases.
Some things are just rare and have facilities located elsewhere. Not many Canadians ever receive health care in America at all, ever.
If the Canadian Health Care says no to something its probably because it just hasn't been approved in Canada. A significant portion of the health care Canadians go south of the border for is the same sort of health care that a US citizen would go into Mexico or China for. They heard about it, and its not legal here yet, but they want to try it anyway.
Because Americans are flying into Ottawa on a daily basis to get our Universally provided advanced surgery procedures done. Ones that cost more than they do in America because we charge an arm and a leg to Americans for the privilege of getting in line to get the same services Canadians receive merely for paying their taxes.
Less than 0.1% of Canadians have ever received health care in America for even a broken arm while on vacation.
Yeah, that reeks of "Our health care system would fail if not for the american system propping it up"
Many people anecdotally agree. Your hospitals in the US are sometimes more lavish than hotels. Who the hell isn't going to say the care is better there?
In canada you get what you need to live. Which is the important bit. The living.
The climate is REALLY fucking reaching because we have a much harsher climate and have many many more people per capita die to exposure than you do.
The demographics and lifestyles are very very very similar. Go to Ontario, then go nearly anywhere in the northeastern US. You can't really tell much difference.
I already mentioned that some Canadians go to the US for treatment, and thats already largely explained. A population that is over 10x ours has a larger need for rarer treatments, thus has more facilities better equipped to deal with it. Its generally a 4-6 hour or less flight to get there. Why would they open a specialized clinic for it here?
As far as correlation =/= causation, its a bullshit strawman in this case. Our lifestyles are slightly different because we are taught differently. Our health care, because its publicly funded, for the public good, deals a LOT in preventative treatment and education on how to avoid things.
Guess what? Preventative treatment and education are extremely effective and extremely cost effective. The fact that we're living longer while spending less than 1/5th of your per patient spending is plenty of evidence of that.
Our improved lifestyle is a direct result of these organizations. The school milk program, the Canada Food Guide that was released in the 60s and continues to this day... etc... all government funded, all related to or directly funded by our universal health care.
Try getting your fucking Insurance company to invest in education.
I apologize for being curt with you but I've had it with people like you touting the virtues of a system that is partially responsible for your country being on the verge of circling the drain for the last 5 years
You also fling communism around... communism isn't the answer, a socialist democracy on the other hand is fan-fucking-tastic. Ask us, or the Norwegians, or the Swedes... or any one of another dozen countries that are thriving in what are for america very troubled times, all thanks to our socialist systems.
I should also point out that at Americas most successful it was damned close to a socialist government anyways.
Canada has a single payer government system. Its a PROVEN PROCESS.
Canadians live longer than Americans, by something like 3-4 years now. Yes the outlier cases of super specialized treatment send people from here south of the border into the US, however that is largely because we just don't have the population to support services for the things that affect 1 in 100,000 people and are pretty damned expensive.
1 in 100,000 people in Canada is 300 people.
1 in 100,000 people in the US is 3000 people.
Now why don't we play with some grade 2 math and guess which country has better centralized care for that sort of condition?
The funny part of it all is that Americans are coming to Canada for health care for some issues. With the population difference that should in no way happen.
One company has already made genetically identical clones in china already. They even gave some rabbits human DNA at one of the government labs. That one kicked up quite a fuss, I'm not sure why you didn't hear about it.
Probably something to do with you sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "nananana I can't hear you".
A lot of the problem is the cutting edge research IS NOT happening in your back yard so you know nothing about it nowadays.
As for mice, they've succesfully grown and transplanted whole livers into mice and they are working on monkeys now.
Not to mention the fact that an experimental stem cell treatment in the UK cured someone that was BLIND from a direct tissue injury that was previously completely incurable, and is still completely incurable by any other means.
The thing is, you're not experimenting on humans. They wont' even allow research on IVF leftovers, which are human embryo's that we literally toss into the bin. If they're going to be binned anyways...
Mice AND Monkeys have been done already. In the 90's. They developed a lot of the techniques to manipulate the genes and stem cell stages from animal testing. You will never hear about the fact that its already gone through animal testing from the opponents to it however.
The major thing is that its a new bio-tech that is VERY dependant on DNA being very similar, and by very similar, 99% is not enough. Orders of magnitude not enough. For real research you need to use embryonic stem cell research to advance state of the art stem cell development to where we can manipulate cells from various areas of the body into the stem cells we need in order to repair damage done to the body.
Most of the work that NEEDS to be done on embryonic stem cells are the foundational work to learn how to properly differentiate stem cells into what we need them to be. The research is being done right now to learn how to get regular cells back into stem cell form but finishing that trick is still a decade or more off. Time we could be using to learn the rest of the process. Embryonic stem cells as a treatment was never the end game. They can work for certain things(and personally I'm all for using them for that) but the end-game is using your own cells to cure you. Doing so will have a MUCH higher success rate and lower side-effect rate.
By opposing the research you are, in effect, merely wasting time. You probably have parents and/or grandparents.
If they die in the next 5 years by something that could be cured by stem cells and you are still opposing stem cell research, you may as well have killed them yourself. Stem cells are as big a breakthrough for medical science as the computer was for transmitting information, materials research, and engineering. The more we know, the faster we know it, the more and faster things we can do. Stem cells and their surrounding technologies can cure not many, but MOST diseases that are currently considered incurable.
Besides that, even the techniques that work in Monkeys and Mice may not(and in many cases has already been proven do not) work in humans. We are AT the human trial stage, and have been for many areas in stem cell research for the last 10+ years.
Lets see nearly all of the countries inside the EU, the US, and Australia. Which eats up the majority of the R&D spending budgets globally.
Leading research in the field is currently being done in China in less than optimal non-state-of-the-art facilities thanks to idiot religious fanatics now allowing embryonic stem cell research.
The US has a loophole that allows using lines of stem cells created prior to their own ban, but it more often than not leads the US researchers off chasing wild geese. Instead of having a good set of empirical data providing good evidence that stem cell type B will grow into tissue C because the embryonic stem cells are very easy to differentiate, and then figuring out how to revert the patients own cells into the needed stem cell type, they're forced into guessing that "based on the genetic patterns in THREE lines of embryonic stem cells we think that this might happen if we start looking here."
Contrary to popular belief amongst their detractors Embryonic stem cells will likely never be harvested en-masse to make cures available. We can't yet manipulate the DNA to be identical to anyone elses. At best they might be able to use a womans own eggs to produce a solution for that one woman.
However, at this stage of the game while we are still largely on fact-finding missions embryonic stem cells are like hitting the jackpot. Only you have a few millions of idiots touting sanctity of life and such nonsense.
Oh, I'm sorry I forgot to mention creatives piece of shit that would scrap the hard drive on a drop of 3 feet, because it was, you know, a hard drive. Besides the fact that it was over double the size of the iPod. There is a reason the Nomad didn't sell very well.
The specific storage technology I'm talking about incorporated some very very good motion/drop resistance.
The first version was 5gb, I get it confused in my memory with the gen immediately afterwards that had a 2gb version, my apologies.
That just makes it worse however. The best MP3 player with the iPods level of endurance on the market when it was released was based on solid state memory and only had about 512mb-1gb of storage on an expensive model, more expensive in many cases than the 2gb iPod.
Also: Just look at the bloody Nomad. It probably caused a womans ovaries to shrivel up on sight. Nearly anything would have been better but they went with "Biege is fantastic and we like that its been the generic color of all computer hardware for the last 30 years+".
Having seen a Nomad IRL the form factor was crap too but even if they had just made the thing black it would have been more acceptable.
The Nomad II was creative trying to give people what they want and failing. Less storage than an iPod(due to solid state storage to get the size) and much worse UI.
Not that the iPod had a terribly fantastic UI, but it did work, and keep working.
Um, none of the others could compete on the same level due to Apple locking in very key technology to increasing the storage size of their MP3 players at the time.
I personally was going to buy one because I could simply drop my entire mp3 collection onto it.
No more "Aww, I wish I'd loaded song x today"
However my use case for it was very limited.
Nothing was available in the way of any serious competition until flash memory advances were made to allow similar storage sizes to the original two versions of the iPod.
The 2gb iPod was eight times larger in terms of storage than its next closest competitor when it was released.
I'm not saying they don't have good track records. Though in my, and many others in my areas experience(was actually talking to a mechanic about this earlier today), honda has a shit track record. We have a lot of hills though and the transmissions were consistently getting fucked for about 25 of the last 30 years. Its only the last 5 years ish they've done well on most of their vehicles. Toyota had this problem to a lesser extent but has had it fixed for over 10 years now.
I'm saying that the total cost of ownership is still higher. The base price is fairly competitive, but it still costs an arm and a leg to fix one if something goes wrong, and they're designed so tightly that it doesn't take a lot for something to go wrong. If you take a lot of them into much outside of pretty mundane city/highway driving they start sprouting problems like weeds. On Corollas from 1995-2002 or so it wasn't the transmission, it was the exhaust, part of the thing up near the engine was jutting out below the car too far, design flaw for anywhere with less than perfect roads.
My grandfather bought another Civic a little less than 3 years ago and while the transmission hasn't gone yet, it is starting to lose a LOT of power on hills. It has 70,000 km on it, so its not anywhere near breaking warranty, if it doesn't go soon however it will probably just limp past warranty period and die. Again, a lot of hills, and the problem is mostly corrected, but in his use case the vehicle just can't take the punishment. I would put money on an equivalent in anything except maybe some dodge vehicles in a domestic car to last well past that. Mostly because thats what most people drive up that way, and they just work.
Most of the people I know who have never had problems with car x have never owned car x past 3 years. They're ALL pretty universally good up to at least 3 years these days. Its what happens afterwards thats a pain.
I'm in Canada, and I'm not blaming the foreign car manufacturers, but for whatever reason, it is fairly expensive to fix anything. More normal wear items like brake pads are similar cost, which is why I don't even bother mentioning it as a difference. Replacing the calipers is a hell of a lot more expensive though.
However as soon as something bigger or more complicated/specific goes, you're out a massive amount of cash.
Having spoken with several mechanics on the matter over the years however a lot of the reason with some foreign vehicles is the placement of things. They're basically labour intensive to fix for a lot of various items. Though this is also becoming less of an issue.
Now, Jags, BMW's, and VW's(most of the euro manufacturers) don't apparently suffer from that as much, however the Asian(Japanese mostly) car companies apparently tend towards it. Thats mostly a design philosophy thing, labour is cheap over there.
Its slowly becoming viable to own a VW here as something more than a status symbol or an "I love VW" thing. Not sure why most of the rest of the foreign car companies aren't headed quite as swiftly in that direction.
The Calipers would go more frequently and the pads and rotors would wear out faster, thats basically what I meant.
Calipers arent supposed to wear out frequently.
The civics we had for 7 and 8 years respectively and had the brakes done once on the 7 year old one and twice on the 8, the Chev we had for 10 and had them done probably 7-8 times. So the chev was worse for general maintenance. However BOTH civics had the transmissions go, twice on one and three times on the other(though to be fair one of those times was mostly the dealerships fault).
The thing is, for me, these items HAVE to be considered together as they make up the total cost of owning the vehicle. If the transmission is going to burn out on average every 40-50k km then it is a wear item.
Tires I do not consider in this number simply because a goodyear tire is a goodyear tire, no matter what vehicle its on. You're attempting to equate them as apples and apples when they're really apples and oranges.
The brakes are made and spec'd by the company, thus they are a part of the total cost of ownership. The only thing that matters as far as tires go is if the tires cost an extra couple hundred bucks due to a wierd size on a car or something, which almost never happens so its basically a non-issue.
A lot of it was bias. Honda somehow had a reputation for good cars and(while this is anecdotal) my family owned two civics while they were supposedly one of the best cars out there for reliability...
Overall our chev cavaliers ran better, and longer without major problems. There were more minor problems(brake pads, calipers) but the transmission and engine etc never went... while the transmission on the civics was about as reliable as a just-out-of rehab crackhead at a drug dealers house with a pile of coke left out on the coffee table.
Overall what I've found is that foreign cars, pretty much all of them, VW, Toyota, Honda etc, run longer without any problems, but cost you more in the long run anyways due to the fact that when they do get a problem its invariably 2k+ to fix, whereas a $200 brake job once a year is much easier to swallow.
It can be well past assumed. The Canadian intelligence organization(CSUS) specifically trains their agents against US operatives, and most of the largest breaches of data never go anywhere because the US are the ones that get it in the first place.
Whoever is responsible gets quietly fired and no one ever hears about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Corporatocracy, ah ye hellish beast.
Also known in Canada as Harperatocracy.
I still have no idea where you were.
I've heard some horror stories from the Toronto area but I've heard similar horror stories about hospitals and clinics in New York etc, unless you have zounds of cash for premium insurance or are able to just go elsewhere for treatment.
I've also heard the same about some clinics and hospitals in London, so I'm making what I feel is a fairly safe assumption that huge cities have congestion problems with medical services. They have congestion problems with everything else so it would make sense.
The largest place I've ever lived was Halifax, and I've never experienced anything close to what you describe, or had anyone in my immediate friends/family circle experience it. Excepting one Aunt that lived in Toronto for awhile.
I'm sitting here still waiting for your reality distortion field to fail.... its got some kind of crazy power supply.
I don't know where the hell you've been living but if I have something thats urgent enough to bother the doctor for I get seen to within a few hours. Which is acceptable.
As for the prescriptions and regular checkups... just don't be dense and make your next appointments as you leave.
If it is actually something serious you will be seen by a specialist almost immediately. I blew my knee out badly and saw a specialist about surgery inside 12 hours, and there was a 4 hour flight in between there as I was in the Arctic at the time.
If you have that much of a problem then you're one of those folks that goes to the doctor for every sniffle and I'm glad you're in Korea.
Its a public system, and free here. So people like you clog the damned system to hell. There are new initiatives with the health care lines that are thankfully reducing this problem however.
No, using very very rough population numbers to demonstrate the absolute numbers difference. 1 person in 100,000 for canada with a population of about 30,000,000 is 300 people. 1 person in 100,000 in the US with a population of 300,000,000 is 3000 people.
I just didn't think anyone reading slashdot would be dense enough to need that explained to them.
Alaska still has trees even. Some parts of Canada don't, but where the majority of the population in Canada lives the climate is fairly similar to New York or Vermont.
Congratulations on the effectiveness of your reality distortion field.
You must be proud.
It is exactly the same in Canada.
The general population in the US is so grossly misinformed about our system that since we are neighbours, it can only be intentional spreading of misinformation by special interests.
Specialist salaries are not capped in Canada, only General Practitioner salaries.
You, as most Americans, are grossly misinformed about our health care system
You are only partially right about having the wealthy market cornered. Wealthy Americans routinely travel the globe to get treatments everywhere.
You just *think* you have the wealthy market cornered because anyone with good health insurance gets to stay in a 4 star hotel while they recover. Also because, well, America did have that market cornered at one time.
In reality your political interests, largely religious, are currently influencing your policy makers to the extent that new, successful high-tech treatments are being banned in America or going through 20 years of unnecessary hoops. So wealthy Americans are increasingly seeking treatment in european countries, Japan, Australia, Canada, and everywhere else across the globe.
He can't, because such a case doesn't exist.
Going to the US for medical treatment in Canada is similar to Americans going to Europe for treatment for certain diseases.
Some things are just rare and have facilities located elsewhere. Not many Canadians ever receive health care in America at all, ever.
If the Canadian Health Care says no to something its probably because it just hasn't been approved in Canada. A significant portion of the health care Canadians go south of the border for is the same sort of health care that a US citizen would go into Mexico or China for. They heard about it, and its not legal here yet, but they want to try it anyway.
Routine care?
Like open heart surgeries etc?
Because Americans are flying into Ottawa on a daily basis to get our Universally provided advanced surgery procedures done. Ones that cost more than they do in America because we charge an arm and a leg to Americans for the privilege of getting in line to get the same services Canadians receive merely for paying their taxes.
Less than 0.1% of Canadians have ever received health care in America for even a broken arm while on vacation.
Yeah, that reeks of "Our health care system would fail if not for the american system propping it up"
Get a clue and come back later.
Many people anecdotally agree. Your hospitals in the US are sometimes more lavish than hotels. Who the hell isn't going to say the care is better there?
In canada you get what you need to live. Which is the important bit. The living.
The climate is REALLY fucking reaching because we have a much harsher climate and have many many more people per capita die to exposure than you do.
The demographics and lifestyles are very very very similar. Go to Ontario, then go nearly anywhere in the northeastern US. You can't really tell much difference.
I already mentioned that some Canadians go to the US for treatment, and thats already largely explained. A population that is over 10x ours has a larger need for rarer treatments, thus has more facilities better equipped to deal with it. Its generally a 4-6 hour or less flight to get there. Why would they open a specialized clinic for it here?
As far as correlation =/= causation, its a bullshit strawman in this case. Our lifestyles are slightly different because we are taught differently. Our health care, because its publicly funded, for the public good, deals a LOT in preventative treatment and education on how to avoid things.
Guess what? Preventative treatment and education are extremely effective and extremely cost effective. The fact that we're living longer while spending less than 1/5th of your per patient spending is plenty of evidence of that.
Our improved lifestyle is a direct result of these organizations. The school milk program, the Canada Food Guide that was released in the 60s and continues to this day... etc... all government funded, all related to or directly funded by our universal health care.
Try getting your fucking Insurance company to invest in education.
I apologize for being curt with you but I've had it with people like you touting the virtues of a system that is partially responsible for your country being on the verge of circling the drain for the last 5 years
You also fling communism around... communism isn't the answer, a socialist democracy on the other hand is fan-fucking-tastic. Ask us, or the Norwegians, or the Swedes... or any one of another dozen countries that are thriving in what are for america very troubled times, all thanks to our socialist systems.
I should also point out that at Americas most successful it was damned close to a socialist government anyways.
Its not a fucking theory you nitwit.
Canada has a single payer government system. Its a PROVEN PROCESS.
Canadians live longer than Americans, by something like 3-4 years now. Yes the outlier cases of super specialized treatment send people from here south of the border into the US, however that is largely because we just don't have the population to support services for the things that affect 1 in 100,000 people and are pretty damned expensive.
1 in 100,000 people in Canada is 300 people.
1 in 100,000 people in the US is 3000 people.
Now why don't we play with some grade 2 math and guess which country has better centralized care for that sort of condition?
The funny part of it all is that Americans are coming to Canada for health care for some issues. With the population difference that should in no way happen.
One company has already made genetically identical clones in china already. They even gave some rabbits human DNA at one of the government labs. That one kicked up quite a fuss, I'm not sure why you didn't hear about it.
Probably something to do with you sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling "nananana I can't hear you".
A lot of the problem is the cutting edge research IS NOT happening in your back yard so you know nothing about it nowadays.
As for mice, they've succesfully grown and transplanted whole livers into mice and they are working on monkeys now.
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/rethinking-healthcare/can-reprogrammed-cells-nix-the-need-for-liver-transplants/4449
Not to mention the fact that an experimental stem cell treatment in the UK cured someone that was BLIND from a direct tissue injury that was previously completely incurable, and is still completely incurable by any other means.
http://gizmodo.com/5433391/stem-cells-cure-blind-man
No, the real reason are religious beliefs.
They use a slippery slope argument.
The thing is, you're not experimenting on humans. They wont' even allow research on IVF leftovers, which are human embryo's that we literally toss into the bin. If they're going to be binned anyways...
Mice AND Monkeys have been done already. In the 90's. They developed a lot of the techniques to manipulate the genes and stem cell stages from animal testing. You will never hear about the fact that its already gone through animal testing from the opponents to it however.
The major thing is that its a new bio-tech that is VERY dependant on DNA being very similar, and by very similar, 99% is not enough. Orders of magnitude not enough. For real research you need to use embryonic stem cell research to advance state of the art stem cell development to where we can manipulate cells from various areas of the body into the stem cells we need in order to repair damage done to the body.
Most of the work that NEEDS to be done on embryonic stem cells are the foundational work to learn how to properly differentiate stem cells into what we need them to be. The research is being done right now to learn how to get regular cells back into stem cell form but finishing that trick is still a decade or more off. Time we could be using to learn the rest of the process. Embryonic stem cells as a treatment was never the end game. They can work for certain things(and personally I'm all for using them for that) but the end-game is using your own cells to cure you. Doing so will have a MUCH higher success rate and lower side-effect rate.
By opposing the research you are, in effect, merely wasting time. You probably have parents and/or grandparents.
If they die in the next 5 years by something that could be cured by stem cells and you are still opposing stem cell research, you may as well have killed them yourself. Stem cells are as big a breakthrough for medical science as the computer was for transmitting information, materials research, and engineering. The more we know, the faster we know it, the more and faster things we can do. Stem cells and their surrounding technologies can cure not many, but MOST diseases that are currently considered incurable.
Besides that, even the techniques that work in Monkeys and Mice may not(and in many cases has already been proven do not) work in humans. We are AT the human trial stage, and have been for many areas in stem cell research for the last 10+ years.
Lets see nearly all of the countries inside the EU, the US, and Australia. Which eats up the majority of the R&D spending budgets globally.
Leading research in the field is currently being done in China in less than optimal non-state-of-the-art facilities thanks to idiot religious fanatics now allowing embryonic stem cell research.
The US has a loophole that allows using lines of stem cells created prior to their own ban, but it more often than not leads the US researchers off chasing wild geese. Instead of having a good set of empirical data providing good evidence that stem cell type B will grow into tissue C because the embryonic stem cells are very easy to differentiate, and then figuring out how to revert the patients own cells into the needed stem cell type, they're forced into guessing that "based on the genetic patterns in THREE lines of embryonic stem cells we think that this might happen if we start looking here."
Contrary to popular belief amongst their detractors Embryonic stem cells will likely never be harvested en-masse to make cures available. We can't yet manipulate the DNA to be identical to anyone elses. At best they might be able to use a womans own eggs to produce a solution for that one woman.
However, at this stage of the game while we are still largely on fact-finding missions embryonic stem cells are like hitting the jackpot. Only you have a few millions of idiots touting sanctity of life and such nonsense.
The control system itself was fine, the display of the menus etc was the problem on the iPod, but something fairly quickly overcome.
As I said it wasn't fantastic, but I didn't say it was bad either.
Oh, I'm sorry I forgot to mention creatives piece of shit that would scrap the hard drive on a drop of 3 feet, because it was, you know, a hard drive. Besides the fact that it was over double the size of the iPod. There is a reason the Nomad didn't sell very well.
The specific storage technology I'm talking about incorporated some very very good motion/drop resistance.
The first version was 5gb, I get it confused in my memory with the gen immediately afterwards that had a 2gb version, my apologies.
That just makes it worse however. The best MP3 player with the iPods level of endurance on the market when it was released was based on solid state memory and only had about 512mb-1gb of storage on an expensive model, more expensive in many cases than the 2gb iPod.
Also: Just look at the bloody Nomad. It probably caused a womans ovaries to shrivel up on sight. Nearly anything would have been better but they went with "Biege is fantastic and we like that its been the generic color of all computer hardware for the last 30 years+".
Having seen a Nomad IRL the form factor was crap too but even if they had just made the thing black it would have been more acceptable.
The Nomad II was creative trying to give people what they want and failing. Less storage than an iPod(due to solid state storage to get the size) and much worse UI.
Not that the iPod had a terribly fantastic UI, but it did work, and keep working.
Um, none of the others could compete on the same level due to Apple locking in very key technology to increasing the storage size of their MP3 players at the time.
I personally was going to buy one because I could simply drop my entire mp3 collection onto it.
No more "Aww, I wish I'd loaded song x today"
However my use case for it was very limited.
Nothing was available in the way of any serious competition until flash memory advances were made to allow similar storage sizes to the original two versions of the iPod.
The 2gb iPod was eight times larger in terms of storage than its next closest competitor when it was released.
I'm not saying they don't have good track records. Though in my, and many others in my areas experience(was actually talking to a mechanic about this earlier today), honda has a shit track record. We have a lot of hills though and the transmissions were consistently getting fucked for about 25 of the last 30 years. Its only the last 5 years ish they've done well on most of their vehicles. Toyota had this problem to a lesser extent but has had it fixed for over 10 years now.
I'm saying that the total cost of ownership is still higher. The base price is fairly competitive, but it still costs an arm and a leg to fix one if something goes wrong, and they're designed so tightly that it doesn't take a lot for something to go wrong. If you take a lot of them into much outside of pretty mundane city/highway driving they start sprouting problems like weeds. On Corollas from 1995-2002 or so it wasn't the transmission, it was the exhaust, part of the thing up near the engine was jutting out below the car too far, design flaw for anywhere with less than perfect roads.
My grandfather bought another Civic a little less than 3 years ago and while the transmission hasn't gone yet, it is starting to lose a LOT of power on hills. It has 70,000 km on it, so its not anywhere near breaking warranty, if it doesn't go soon however it will probably just limp past warranty period and die. Again, a lot of hills, and the problem is mostly corrected, but in his use case the vehicle just can't take the punishment. I would put money on an equivalent in anything except maybe some dodge vehicles in a domestic car to last well past that. Mostly because thats what most people drive up that way, and they just work.
Most of the people I know who have never had problems with car x have never owned car x past 3 years. They're ALL pretty universally good up to at least 3 years these days. Its what happens afterwards thats a pain.
The thing is, a lot of it was marketing, not good anecdotal evidence.
I'm in Canada, and I'm not blaming the foreign car manufacturers, but for whatever reason, it is fairly expensive to fix anything. More normal wear items like brake pads are similar cost, which is why I don't even bother mentioning it as a difference. Replacing the calipers is a hell of a lot more expensive though.
However as soon as something bigger or more complicated/specific goes, you're out a massive amount of cash.
Having spoken with several mechanics on the matter over the years however a lot of the reason with some foreign vehicles is the placement of things. They're basically labour intensive to fix for a lot of various items. Though this is also becoming less of an issue.
Now, Jags, BMW's, and VW's(most of the euro manufacturers) don't apparently suffer from that as much, however the Asian(Japanese mostly) car companies apparently tend towards it. Thats mostly a design philosophy thing, labour is cheap over there.
Its slowly becoming viable to own a VW here as something more than a status symbol or an "I love VW" thing. Not sure why most of the rest of the foreign car companies aren't headed quite as swiftly in that direction.
The Calipers would go more frequently and the pads and rotors would wear out faster, thats basically what I meant.
Calipers arent supposed to wear out frequently.
The civics we had for 7 and 8 years respectively and had the brakes done once on the 7 year old one and twice on the 8, the Chev we had for 10 and had them done probably 7-8 times. So the chev was worse for general maintenance. However BOTH civics had the transmissions go, twice on one and three times on the other(though to be fair one of those times was mostly the dealerships fault).
The thing is, for me, these items HAVE to be considered together as they make up the total cost of owning the vehicle. If the transmission is going to burn out on average every 40-50k km then it is a wear item.
Tires I do not consider in this number simply because a goodyear tire is a goodyear tire, no matter what vehicle its on. You're attempting to equate them as apples and apples when they're really apples and oranges.
The brakes are made and spec'd by the company, thus they are a part of the total cost of ownership. The only thing that matters as far as tires go is if the tires cost an extra couple hundred bucks due to a wierd size on a car or something, which almost never happens so its basically a non-issue.
A lot of it was bias. Honda somehow had a reputation for good cars and(while this is anecdotal) my family owned two civics while they were supposedly one of the best cars out there for reliability...
Overall our chev cavaliers ran better, and longer without major problems. There were more minor problems(brake pads, calipers) but the transmission and engine etc never went... while the transmission on the civics was about as reliable as a just-out-of rehab crackhead at a drug dealers house with a pile of coke left out on the coffee table.
Overall what I've found is that foreign cars, pretty much all of them, VW, Toyota, Honda etc, run longer without any problems, but cost you more in the long run anyways due to the fact that when they do get a problem its invariably 2k+ to fix, whereas a $200 brake job once a year is much easier to swallow.
It can be well past assumed. The Canadian intelligence organization(CSUS) specifically trains their agents against US operatives, and most of the largest breaches of data never go anywhere because the US are the ones that get it in the first place.
Whoever is responsible gets quietly fired and no one ever hears about it.