Every decision today must factor in costs, obviously. The theoretical difference between public and private health insurance is that private companies exist to concentrate money. They want to take the most money they can from you and pay the doctors as little as possible, in order to get the most profit. A public system has no interest in profits, but usually has ludicrously greater overhead. So, from an economic perspective, you only have to think about that difference. Is the increased overhead cheaper than the profits?
There are two other concerns, though. Bureaucracy is one of them. Governments are usually slower to process anything, which sucks when you need medical attention, because even when you can afford to wait without risking your life, the process is rendered incredibly uncomfortable by a disease. The other concern is vested interests. The second you start representing a net loss to a private health provider, they can simply stop paying for your expenses. Or come up with an irrelevant technical/legal recourse to why your contract should be terminated or that particular disease won't be covered. And what are your options? Fight them in court, which might take a few years that you probably won't have without treatment? Plus, how are you going to get the money to fight such a legal battle if you can't even afford your treatment? I know it sounds like FUD, but it does happen, and a lot. So that's a second consideration you have to ponder when thinking about health providers.
Me, I tend to favor the government, in both cases. For the same reason I wouldn't even think about privatizing the police, I prefer my health care being governmental. And that's while my government sucks, believe me. Proudly the world's worst in economic efficiency (greatest taxes, crappy HDI). I'm sure european citizens have it much better than I do.
You forgot to block access to the back seat. Historically, it's a major concern.
Also, I'm thinking of the fun implications of the system. You'll drive you daughter to college and the car won't start. I imagine a long, awkward, suspicious pause before you decide either to check the battery or start the sobbing and the beating...
Traditional computers are definitely about giving users control, whereas appliances are not. That said, I think that's a discussion along a different axis than where I had intended to go. The axis I was talking about was the level of hassle. Computers, because they give users more control, also offer more nuisances than locked-down devices. That's just the nature of the beast.
The distinction that I was trying to make was that a computer isn't exactly more hassle - it just has a higher learning curve. But once you get to know the ropes, full control is precisely what empowers you to keep annoyances at bay, whereas appliances will always force their whims onto you. By the way, setting up a Windows machine for gaming today is so easy it's laughable. I think the only extra step you'd have to take, compared to a PS3, is installing the GPU drivers.
and normal people are getting frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with consoles that require constant firmware updates and patches. They want an appliance, not a computer.
Actually computers still let you work while they are downloading upgrades. They also let you choose when you want to get your upgrades. And what irritates console gamers the most, from what I gather, is being forced to wait while a full Gb of updates is downloaded just so they can play their games (I still hold a grudge, Heavy Rain). I have a 512Kbps connection - and a very unstable one, to boot -, so a console like that would be highly impractical for me.
Anyway, my point is that you kind of got it backwards. Computers supposedly give you control over their behaviour - appliances are the ones who usually don't. Of course it's a highly debatable statement, given the recent trend to appliancize (shit, now I hate myself for using such a word) PCs.
Not bad, but I prefer to use one hand at 6 o'clock. I sometimes worry that it might lessen my control of the car a bit when compared to the classic 10 and 2, but it's the only position comfortable enough for a quick nap.
If I'm ever sent a C&D letter from a protection racket^W^Wlaw firm, my response will more than likely be a photograph of the original disk and the receipt (also stored in the box), accompanying the words "I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."
Are you tired and emotional? If they decided to go after you anyway, you'd bakrupt yourself paying for a defense while they argue that "your ripped copy doesn't contain the mandatory FBI anti-piracy warning and is therefore in violation of the EULA that you agreed to when you purchased the video" or some other bogus stupidity that a judge (from the court they'll pick) might even eat up. It sucks, but whoever has the most money wins. Even when they lose, since a poorer opponent just can't afford to play. And, quite ironically, they have the most money because honest people like yourself keep giving it to them instead of only downloading or avoiding the damn thing altogether.
It was read to the class. Doesn't it mean it was pornophonic? Which has to be less severe. I mean... if it were the same in terms of arousal effectiveness, I imagine radio porn would be rampant.
Wait, wait. You guys can just stop here with the insane comparisons, all right? Yes, a laptop has a lot more computing power and a keyboard. Yes, it's much more cumbersome to carry around. There are, obviously, other differences, but they don't really matter because those two are simply so big that they are the only deciding factors.
And it's sad that most/.ters won't read the review, because it is truly very complete. At one point you read
Another side-effect presents itself after a few weeks of regular use.
or
I needed to open it on the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v to access my DropBox account [...] Back on my desktop, KeePassX reported that my password database was locked
and think "a review that actually tried to use the fucking thing for weeks intead of just installing, looking around for a few minutes and writing about it? What the hell is happening to tech journalism?". Gnome Shell didn't, but Tom's Hardware scored a few points with me today.
North Americans and Europeans are willing to pay for the true worth of the labour. If Fred is willing to do a task for $10 less than Bill, then the true worth is what Fred is asking for, not Bill.
You know... Fred just might be hungry and/or desperate, and willing to accept substandard living conditions. What you don't factor in is that, though both parties may be equally greedy, they aren't equally powerful. A company has millions of candidates to choose from and can always go for the lowest bidder. And when unemployment rate is around 10%, that means, in a country with 200 million or so economically active inhabitants, that those consist of millions of people with no job and presumably no way to pay for their living expenses, therefore willing to relocate and to take any job, whatever it pays, as long as they can subsist. That's why unions and minimum wage laws are for - to protect people from being so throughly and completely exploited. If workers and companies were really on equal footing, a CEO/board member wouldn't make 1000x more money than a factory worker (and that's a very, very conservative estimate).
Of course, a union that doesn't apply globally in a globalized market is no union at all (do notice the name), and therefore doesn't work as intended. The same can be said about minimum wage laws. Other than raising import taxes to ludicrously high levels and creating a bubble in which you can live, I have no idea how to counter the offshoring.
It depends on your focus. Mine was on "guy dissing past employer, a major competitor of his current one", so "guy dissing current employer, major competitor of a past one" would be the reversed scenario.
Of course, such reversal con be done in a plethora of ways and to varying degrees. In your example, you could also say the reverse of "guy leaving Google and then going to work for Microsoft" would be "Google leaving guy and then said guy employing Microsoft". Or "guy employing Microsoft and then Google leaving said guy", if you also want to reverse the time axis. Man, language is a mess.
I'll take a shot at answering, at least, consistently.
Why should ANYONE have to pay for movies, music, books or software?
To fund the creation of further movies, books or software.
Corollary: Why should only SOME people have to pay for movies, music, books or software?
See above. Because they liked it and want more movies, books or software from the same author.
Corollary^2: Why should anyone get PAID for making movies, music, books or software?
Given that people will do that sort of work for free anyway, that's a very good question. There's a plethora of Youtube movies, bands giving away free music, websites and blogs bigger and better written than most books out there and, of course, free software. So I guess software could be viewed like sex in this respect. People will do it anyway, and lots of it, so you might as well get it for free. But if you must have it at a particular point in time or done in a particular way that others aren't usually into, if you want that sort of control, you can pay someone to do it.
Conclusion: Actors, musicians, authors and programmers are worthless, as are their works.
As they should be, for reasons I have outlined above. Their time, however, would still be valuable, and paid for, because people want live music, new movies, new books and companies need IT staff. Those markets would probably be reduced, but in no way extinguished. And I believe quality would probably improve, since making bland movies and crappy music only to turn in a quick buck would be much less profitable, therefore letting artists be guided more by their own inspirations and less by market trends.
Man leaves job for higher paying opportunity and doesn't want everyone else to think he's a sellout.
There are a number of theories, though I don't really think this is newsworthy. Frankly, I'd be surprised if the situation was reversed: someone working for Google but saying they'd rather be working for Microsoft. Badmouthing your current employer is rare and interesting. Badmouthing your past employer, especially when it's a major rival of your current one, not so much.
I can see where this is going. People get used to selling games chaply and selling additional content. Probably something that skips some maliciously designed, otherwise mandatory annoyance, like a long, boring and unrewarding fetch quest, and gives you the ultimate weapon/key item you want right away. Some people will buy the game and just give up playing, like about 60% of gamers usually do. And the studios will therefore think the DLC is not selling well enough, since 200k people bought the game and only 90k bought the DLC. So they figure they have to make the game more annoying and transfer more of the good stuff to the DLC. Picture it like this: Skyrm, in such system, would only cost $10, but probably look and play like Sword of Sodan unless you bought about $90 of DLC.
Thank you very, very much. I didn't know about that feature and the constant miscorrection was driving me insane. No, Google, I don't want pictures of a "boy tucked in bed", thank you.
Yes microsoft is evil as well, but they don't own 80-90% of web services at the moment.
While I'm no Google fanboy, I recognize that it's a company that gives me not only search results in exchange for my information/attention. It also gives me a fairly good browser, a useful map system and a decent smartphone OS. It was also, if I recall correctly, the first to implement a free web-based office suite and huge inbox storage capacity (2Gb while Hotmail was still limited to 2Mb or 10Mb - I forget). So that's why I use it - someone will use my search information and, frankly, my search history is not the kind of personal information I care about giving away. So I let Google have it and help finance some good products and technologies. Microsoft, on the other hand, rarely gives anything for free, and when they do, it's usually crap. So even if they were equal in terms of search effectiveness, I'd still use Google. For search. Not that I'll ever use Google+, because my personal information I actually care about giving away.
The A8 is way faster than Intel's offerings, works with a 6670 in crossfire so as not to diminish its value when upgrading and can be bought without a GPU as an Athlon II X4 641. I think he was referring to the fact that going Intel forces you to pay for a GPU that you'll have no use for if you have anything better than a Radeon HD5570, which is often the case, especially with processors more powerful than, say an i3.
"Deal with it"? I though I was doing that just fine. I'm not losing my shit here, suing Intel or even registering a IHATEINTELGPUS.com. All I did was point out that buying something you'll never use is a bad deal, regardless of price.
I think AMD had the right idea: bundle a good GPU, strong enough to beat discrete graphics of past generations or it's pointless. And allow crossfire in case the user wants to upgrade, so as not to waste any resources. As for Intel, if I already have a Radeon HD5570 or Geforce 440 (quite old cards, mind you), the bundled GPU means squat to me.
Plus Llano has much more balanced GPU/CPU prowess. With Intel, you'll always be held back by poor GPU performance, so a discrete adaptor is a must for, say, games. And gamers are a huge portion of the market. Especially budget gamers, when you consider markets such as India, China, Russia, the whole latin America etc. In such markets, due to import taxes and whatnot, a $10 difference is much more significant.
That's what I'm saying. A poor, half-assed GPU adaptor bundled in every processor is pretty pointless. They are bad for you whether you need no GPU or a so-so GPU, benefitting only those who specifically need a bad-to-so-so GPU. I suppose you could argue that that's what HTPCs need, but they just go ahead and bundle it with the i5 and i7, processors that are very unlikely to be used in HTPCs. It's not like Intel isn't bound to have a few GPU duds they could sell as i3-2099s, i5-2499s or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Every decision today must factor in costs, obviously. The theoretical difference between public and private health insurance is that private companies exist to concentrate money. They want to take the most money they can from you and pay the doctors as little as possible, in order to get the most profit. A public system has no interest in profits, but usually has ludicrously greater overhead. So, from an economic perspective, you only have to think about that difference. Is the increased overhead cheaper than the profits?
There are two other concerns, though. Bureaucracy is one of them. Governments are usually slower to process anything, which sucks when you need medical attention, because even when you can afford to wait without risking your life, the process is rendered incredibly uncomfortable by a disease. The other concern is vested interests. The second you start representing a net loss to a private health provider, they can simply stop paying for your expenses. Or come up with an irrelevant technical/legal recourse to why your contract should be terminated or that particular disease won't be covered. And what are your options? Fight them in court, which might take a few years that you probably won't have without treatment? Plus, how are you going to get the money to fight such a legal battle if you can't even afford your treatment? I know it sounds like FUD, but it does happen, and a lot. So that's a second consideration you have to ponder when thinking about health providers.
Me, I tend to favor the government, in both cases. For the same reason I wouldn't even think about privatizing the police, I prefer my health care being governmental. And that's while my government sucks, believe me. Proudly the world's worst in economic efficiency (greatest taxes, crappy HDI). I'm sure european citizens have it much better than I do.
You forgot to block access to the back seat. Historically, it's a major concern.
Also, I'm thinking of the fun implications of the system. You'll drive you daughter to college and the car won't start. I imagine a long, awkward, suspicious pause before you decide either to check the battery or start the sobbing and the beating...
Traditional computers are definitely about giving users control, whereas appliances are not. That said, I think that's a discussion along a different axis than where I had intended to go. The axis I was talking about was the level of hassle. Computers, because they give users more control, also offer more nuisances than locked-down devices. That's just the nature of the beast.
The distinction that I was trying to make was that a computer isn't exactly more hassle - it just has a higher learning curve. But once you get to know the ropes, full control is precisely what empowers you to keep annoyances at bay, whereas appliances will always force their whims onto you. By the way, setting up a Windows machine for gaming today is so easy it's laughable. I think the only extra step you'd have to take, compared to a PS3, is installing the GPU drivers.
and normal people are getting frustrated by the difficulty of dealing with consoles that require constant firmware updates and patches. They want an appliance, not a computer.
Actually computers still let you work while they are downloading upgrades. They also let you choose when you want to get your upgrades. And what irritates console gamers the most, from what I gather, is being forced to wait while a full Gb of updates is downloaded just so they can play their games (I still hold a grudge, Heavy Rain). I have a 512Kbps connection - and a very unstable one, to boot -, so a console like that would be highly impractical for me.
Anyway, my point is that you kind of got it backwards. Computers supposedly give you control over their behaviour - appliances are the ones who usually don't. Of course it's a highly debatable statement, given the recent trend to appliancize (shit, now I hate myself for using such a word) PCs.
Not bad, but I prefer to use one hand at 6 o'clock. I sometimes worry that it might lessen my control of the car a bit when compared to the classic 10 and 2, but it's the only position comfortable enough for a quick nap.
If I'm ever sent a C&D letter from a protection racket^W^Wlaw firm, my response will more than likely be a photograph of the original disk and the receipt (also stored in the box), accompanying the words "I refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."
Are you tired and emotional? If they decided to go after you anyway, you'd bakrupt yourself paying for a defense while they argue that "your ripped copy doesn't contain the mandatory FBI anti-piracy warning and is therefore in violation of the EULA that you agreed to when you purchased the video" or some other bogus stupidity that a judge (from the court they'll pick) might even eat up. It sucks, but whoever has the most money wins. Even when they lose, since a poorer opponent just can't afford to play. And, quite ironically, they have the most money because honest people like yourself keep giving it to them instead of only downloading or avoiding the damn thing altogether.
They pay more and use less? What a shocker! Who would have thought?
I agree. Swimming is also much healthier.
It was read to the class. Doesn't it mean it was pornophonic? Which has to be less severe. I mean... if it were the same in terms of arousal effectiveness, I imagine radio porn would be rampant.
Wait, wait. You guys can just stop here with the insane comparisons, all right? Yes, a laptop has a lot more computing power and a keyboard. Yes, it's much more cumbersome to carry around. There are, obviously, other differences, but they don't really matter because those two are simply so big that they are the only deciding factors.
And it's sad that most /.ters won't read the review, because it is truly very complete. At one point you read
Another side-effect presents itself after a few weeks of regular use.
or
I needed to open it on the Dell Inspiron Mini 10v to access my DropBox account [...] Back on my desktop, KeePassX reported that my password database was locked
and think "a review that actually tried to use the fucking thing for weeks intead of just installing, looking around for a few minutes and writing about it? What the hell is happening to tech journalism?". Gnome Shell didn't, but Tom's Hardware scored a few points with me today.
North Americans and Europeans are willing to pay for the true worth of the labour. If Fred is willing to do a task for $10 less than Bill, then the true worth is what Fred is asking for, not Bill.
You know... Fred just might be hungry and/or desperate, and willing to accept substandard living conditions. What you don't factor in is that, though both parties may be equally greedy, they aren't equally powerful. A company has millions of candidates to choose from and can always go for the lowest bidder. And when unemployment rate is around 10%, that means, in a country with 200 million or so economically active inhabitants, that those consist of millions of people with no job and presumably no way to pay for their living expenses, therefore willing to relocate and to take any job, whatever it pays, as long as they can subsist. That's why unions and minimum wage laws are for - to protect people from being so throughly and completely exploited. If workers and companies were really on equal footing, a CEO/board member wouldn't make 1000x more money than a factory worker (and that's a very, very conservative estimate).
Of course, a union that doesn't apply globally in a globalized market is no union at all (do notice the name), and therefore doesn't work as intended. The same can be said about minimum wage laws. Other than raising import taxes to ludicrously high levels and creating a bubble in which you can live, I have no idea how to counter the offshoring.
Where the hell are you looking? Because I want to work there.
P.S.: Nice signature.
Both good ideas. But it'd be hard to correlate them causally.
Speak for yourself. I have never needed alcohol in order to approach a female fly.
It depends on your focus. Mine was on "guy dissing past employer, a major competitor of his current one", so "guy dissing current employer, major competitor of a past one" would be the reversed scenario.
Of course, such reversal con be done in a plethora of ways and to varying degrees. In your example, you could also say the reverse of "guy leaving Google and then going to work for Microsoft" would be "Google leaving guy and then said guy employing Microsoft". Or "guy employing Microsoft and then Google leaving said guy", if you also want to reverse the time axis. Man, language is a mess.
I'll take a shot at answering, at least, consistently.
Why should ANYONE have to pay for movies, music, books or software?
To fund the creation of further movies, books or software.
Corollary: Why should only SOME people have to pay for movies, music, books or software?
See above. Because they liked it and want more movies, books or software from the same author.
Corollary^2: Why should anyone get PAID for making movies, music, books or software?
Given that people will do that sort of work for free anyway, that's a very good question. There's a plethora of Youtube movies, bands giving away free music, websites and blogs bigger and better written than most books out there and, of course, free software. So I guess software could be viewed like sex in this respect. People will do it anyway, and lots of it, so you might as well get it for free. But if you must have it at a particular point in time or done in a particular way that others aren't usually into, if you want that sort of control, you can pay someone to do it.
Conclusion: Actors, musicians, authors and programmers are worthless, as are their works.
As they should be, for reasons I have outlined above. Their time, however, would still be valuable, and paid for, because people want live music, new movies, new books and companies need IT staff. Those markets would probably be reduced, but in no way extinguished. And I believe quality would probably improve, since making bland movies and crappy music only to turn in a quick buck would be much less profitable, therefore letting artists be guided more by their own inspirations and less by market trends.
I'd put it differently:
Man leaves job for higher paying opportunity and doesn't want everyone else to think he's a sellout.
There are a number of theories, though I don't really think this is newsworthy. Frankly, I'd be surprised if the situation was reversed: someone working for Google but saying they'd rather be working for Microsoft. Badmouthing your current employer is rare and interesting. Badmouthing your past employer, especially when it's a major rival of your current one, not so much.
I can see where this is going. People get used to selling games chaply and selling additional content. Probably something that skips some maliciously designed, otherwise mandatory annoyance, like a long, boring and unrewarding fetch quest, and gives you the ultimate weapon/key item you want right away. Some people will buy the game and just give up playing, like about 60% of gamers usually do. And the studios will therefore think the DLC is not selling well enough, since 200k people bought the game and only 90k bought the DLC. So they figure they have to make the game more annoying and transfer more of the good stuff to the DLC. Picture it like this: Skyrm, in such system, would only cost $10, but probably look and play like Sword of Sodan unless you bought about $90 of DLC.
Thank you very, very much. I didn't know about that feature and the constant miscorrection was driving me insane. No, Google, I don't want pictures of a "boy tucked in bed", thank you.
Yes microsoft is evil as well, but they don't own 80-90% of web services at the moment.
While I'm no Google fanboy, I recognize that it's a company that gives me not only search results in exchange for my information/attention. It also gives me a fairly good browser, a useful map system and a decent smartphone OS. It was also, if I recall correctly, the first to implement a free web-based office suite and huge inbox storage capacity (2Gb while Hotmail was still limited to 2Mb or 10Mb - I forget). So that's why I use it - someone will use my search information and, frankly, my search history is not the kind of personal information I care about giving away. So I let Google have it and help finance some good products and technologies. Microsoft, on the other hand, rarely gives anything for free, and when they do, it's usually crap. So even if they were equal in terms of search effectiveness, I'd still use Google. For search. Not that I'll ever use Google+, because my personal information I actually care about giving away.
You can also make an octopus by nailing more legs to a dog, but it will be a very shitty octupus.
I don't think... I mean... the... what?!
The A8 is way faster than Intel's offerings, works with a 6670 in crossfire so as not to diminish its value when upgrading and can be bought without a GPU as an Athlon II X4 641. I think he was referring to the fact that going Intel forces you to pay for a GPU that you'll have no use for if you have anything better than a Radeon HD5570, which is often the case, especially with processors more powerful than, say an i3.
Isn't an i5 overkill for an HTPC? Unless you often reencode your media, a Pentium G620 would probably work just as well.
"Deal with it"? I though I was doing that just fine. I'm not losing my shit here, suing Intel or even registering a IHATEINTELGPUS.com. All I did was point out that buying something you'll never use is a bad deal, regardless of price.
I think AMD had the right idea: bundle a good GPU, strong enough to beat discrete graphics of past generations or it's pointless. And allow crossfire in case the user wants to upgrade, so as not to waste any resources. As for Intel, if I already have a Radeon HD5570 or Geforce 440 (quite old cards, mind you), the bundled GPU means squat to me.
Plus Llano has much more balanced GPU/CPU prowess. With Intel, you'll always be held back by poor GPU performance, so a discrete adaptor is a must for, say, games. And gamers are a huge portion of the market. Especially budget gamers, when you consider markets such as India, China, Russia, the whole latin America etc. In such markets, due to import taxes and whatnot, a $10 difference is much more significant.
That's what I'm saying. A poor, half-assed GPU adaptor bundled in every processor is pretty pointless. They are bad for you whether you need no GPU or a so-so GPU, benefitting only those who specifically need a bad-to-so-so GPU. I suppose you could argue that that's what HTPCs need, but they just go ahead and bundle it with the i5 and i7, processors that are very unlikely to be used in HTPCs. It's not like Intel isn't bound to have a few GPU duds they could sell as i3-2099s, i5-2499s or something.