The WORST connectors are the trapezoidal HDMI connectors. Not only are they orientation specific, but they are often used on heavy cables that pull on the connector causing it to lose contact, and even bend the pins in the socket.
Add in the fact that the data rate is like a zillion bytes per second and there is an encryption handshake that must go just right at the start and you have a clusterfuck.
Did you read the article? It isn't just the Chinese. R&D spending is growing. Other nations are increasing their R&D too. Except in the US R&D funding has been dropping as a percentage of GDP since 1985.
Uh no. Drop the 4 cities and you still have COUNTRIES like Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Estonia, Taiwan, Ireland etc etc whupping the USA bad on this particular test.
It doesn't change the conclusion the we are getting fucked by our education system one teeny bit.
Results among the states varies a lot. For example Massachusetts is fully competitive with the Asian countries. On the TIMSS exam (generally thought to be more difficult than the PISA test) Massachusetts finished sixth in the world in mathematics, and second in the sciences for it's 8th grade students.
High levels of achievement ARE attainable in the US. It isn't a matter of cultural problems, or the society we live in. It's a matter of politicians and parents adopting the attitude that it can be done, and sticking to that idea. Effective reform though is not something that can be done overnight. Massachusetts has been at it for 20 years.
Really this has nothing to do with centralized planning and everything to do with the fact that outsourcing custom software is fraught with pitfalls.
10-15 years ago re-engineering was all the rage in the private sector. Lots of companies bought into custom app development with huge price tags done by the very same players that are doing these exchanges.
Guess what. The failure rate there was something like 90%.
The first day of treatment was by far the most expensive. Like about 80%. There were two surgeries, diagnostic imaging and so forth. Getting medical coverage after the first day would have covered 2 days in the hospital and rehab from the broken arm/separated shoulder, but that's about it.
Really I'd expect healthy young people would have most of their medical needs from accidents or pregnancies. You time to plan for the care for the latter, but not the former.
I could make a long list, but let's just pick one example of something that actually happened to my wife. She was shopping in a supermarket one day, and stepped back on to a section of floor that had been used at one time for a display freezer chest. For some reason the support for that section of floor had been removed the previous day (I guess they were planning some kind of modification) and it fell in.
My wife fell partially into the hole and got some pretty unpleasant injuries including a few broken bones. She was then taken to the hospital and treated for he injuries.
We then sued the grocery store and recovered damages about a year later.
If it weren't for health insurance we would have been out of pocket for some pretty substantial medical bills for that year. We might have had to take a loan to pay.
Sure you can pay the fine. I don't care. But there are some things you might want to have insured, and health is one of them.
Much of the existing infrastructure is in poor repair and many of the COs just digitize calls and transfer them to private VOIP networks. Mostly it's just the last mile that is still copper.
Sandy did the same thing to the middle Atlantic east coast last year. Some areas had no power for two weeks. About 1/3 of the cell towers went out too. The ones that worked though offered full service, not just local calling. It took about 3 days for full cell service to come back - in some cases carriers were pooling resources to get coverage. For example I'm on T Mobile and for a while my phone indicated I actually connecting to AT&T's network. There were few gas stations open for the first week and gas lines where hours long in some areas. The natural gas system and water supply were about the only utilities that continued working in most areas, and even there the water supply was touch and go because of lack of power.
Cable service was mostly down, however my neighbor's Verizon FIOS was operational the whole time.
POTS was mostly ok except in some coastal areas it was severely affected by flooding. Some areas did not have the copper lines repaired and are working off cell service which is being supplied at regulated tariff rates to fixed phones.
I also remember when growing up whenever we had power outages including the Great Blackout of 1965 that the phones kept working.
Based on what we saw from Sandy I don't think there is any intrinsic reason that wireless or fiber service could not be hardened to the point where it is just as reliable as POTS if not more so.
Jeff Smith has no training as a scientist. He's great at teaching yogic flying though. A quick search on him will immediately turn up the fact that he's a charlatan. He is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine leader, someone who is quite successful in spreading fear and false information.
Slashdot Mirror
\You do not need a US Passport to travel to Canada.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_entry_into_Canada_by_land#Documentation
Stalin killed 50 million of his own citizens. That's a pretty big step up from what's going on in the US.
There is no evidence that this action is anything but voluntary.
Come back when these journalists are actually being restrained.
The WORST connectors are the trapezoidal HDMI connectors. Not only are they orientation specific, but they are often used on heavy cables that pull on the connector causing it to lose contact, and even bend the pins in the socket.
Add in the fact that the data rate is like a zillion bytes per second and there is an encryption handshake that must go just right at the start and you have a clusterfuck.
HDMI connectors seriously need an upgrade.
Did you read the article? It isn't just the Chinese. R&D spending is growing. Other nations are increasing their R&D too. Except in the US R&D funding has been dropping as a percentage of GDP since 1985.
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/s2194/conten2a.htm#7
Uh no. Drop the 4 cities and you still have COUNTRIES like Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Estonia, Taiwan, Ireland etc etc whupping the USA bad on this particular test.
It doesn't change the conclusion the we are getting fucked by our education system one teeny bit.
Watch out. The US is losing ground in areas like scientific papers.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2011/mar/28/china-us-publisher-scientific-papers
In fact China may surpass the US this year.
I agree - unions have nothing to do with it.
Finland, for example has an excellent education system. Their teachers are fully unionized. Likewise Massachusetts.
The US states that don't have unionized teachers are also the states that do the worst on measures of education.
It beats having them shoot at you.
Maybe all you need is a ground strap and an aluminized mylar bag.
That accounts for 4 of the 25 entries ahead of the US on this list. It really isn't that significant.
Results among the states varies a lot. For example Massachusetts is fully competitive with the Asian countries. On the TIMSS exam (generally thought to be more difficult than the PISA test) Massachusetts finished sixth in the world in mathematics, and second in the sciences for it's 8th grade students.
High levels of achievement ARE attainable in the US. It isn't a matter of cultural problems, or the society we live in. It's a matter of politicians and parents adopting the attitude that it can be done, and sticking to that idea. Effective reform though is not something that can be done overnight. Massachusetts has been at it for 20 years.
http://boston.com/community/blogs/rock_the_schoolhouse/2012/12/massachusetts_aces_internation.html
Massachusetts has shown how to do it. Now all it takes is realization of what can be done and applying it elsewhere.
Really this has nothing to do with centralized planning and everything to do with the fact that outsourcing custom software is fraught with pitfalls.
10-15 years ago re-engineering was all the rage in the private sector. Lots of companies bought into custom app development with huge price tags done by the very same players that are doing these exchanges.
Guess what. The failure rate there was something like 90%.
The first day of treatment was by far the most expensive. Like about 80%. There were two surgeries, diagnostic imaging and so forth. Getting medical coverage after the first day would have covered 2 days in the hospital and rehab from the broken arm/separated shoulder, but that's about it.
Really I'd expect healthy young people would have most of their medical needs from accidents or pregnancies. You time to plan for the care for the latter, but not the former.
Once you get to be 65 you will get to experience Medicare. It's the closest thing we have to single payer in the US. It does work pretty well.
However they have coverage limits too. Stricter than many private plans.
The fact is that there is no such thing as unlimited medical care on this Green Earth.
You sign up because shit happens.
I could make a long list, but let's just pick one example of something that actually happened to my wife. She was shopping in a supermarket one day, and stepped back on to a section of floor that had been used at one time for a display freezer chest. For some reason the support for that section of floor had been removed the previous day (I guess they were planning some kind of modification) and it fell in.
My wife fell partially into the hole and got some pretty unpleasant injuries including a few broken bones. She was then taken to the hospital and treated for he injuries.
We then sued the grocery store and recovered damages about a year later.
If it weren't for health insurance we would have been out of pocket for some pretty substantial medical bills for that year. We might have had to take a loan to pay.
Sure you can pay the fine. I don't care. But there are some things you might want to have insured, and health is one of them.
Not to mention the 20% or so that have no coverage at all.
Private healthcare FTW!!
Much of the existing infrastructure is in poor repair and many of the COs just digitize calls and transfer them to private VOIP networks. Mostly it's just the last mile that is still copper.
Sandy did the same thing to the middle Atlantic east coast last year. Some areas had no power for two weeks. About 1/3 of the cell towers went out too. The ones that worked though offered full service, not just local calling. It took about 3 days for full cell service to come back - in some cases carriers were pooling resources to get coverage. For example I'm on T Mobile and for a while my phone indicated I actually connecting to AT&T's network. There were few gas stations open for the first week and gas lines where hours long in some areas. The natural gas system and water supply were about the only utilities that continued working in most areas, and even there the water supply was touch and go because of lack of power.
Cable service was mostly down, however my neighbor's Verizon FIOS was operational the whole time.
POTS was mostly ok except in some coastal areas it was severely affected by flooding. Some areas did not have the copper lines repaired and are working off cell service which is being supplied at regulated tariff rates to fixed phones.
I also remember when growing up whenever we had power outages including the Great Blackout of 1965 that the phones kept working.
Based on what we saw from Sandy I don't think there is any intrinsic reason that wireless or fiber service could not be hardened to the point where it is just as reliable as POTS if not more so.
Funny I just happen to be watching Breaking Bad on Netflix.
Ding Ding Ding Ding
You have identified the fundamental problem with our system of government.
Couple the principle of free shit with that of lack of term limits and fiat money and I am amazed we have gotten this far.
Genetic Roulette is written by a guy that teaches yogic flying. He has no training as a scientist what so ever, or any expertise in biotech.
The book itself is nonsensical.
It's like having Jenny McCarthy write a book on vaccine safety.
Here is a comparison of the contents of Genetic Roulette to actual peer reviewed science.
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/
Bullshit.
Jeff Smith has no training as a scientist. He's great at teaching yogic flying though. A quick search on him will immediately turn up the fact that he's a charlatan. He is the equivalent of an anti-vaccine leader, someone who is quite successful in spreading fear and false information.
Let's try to make it simple.
If you do a reference check with the Toronto Police this is what you get back:
http://www.torontopolice.on.ca/prcp/process.php
Note that it includes suicide attempt information.
Now be aware that suicide attempts may be exempt from doctor-patient privilege and have to be reported to police under duty to disclose laws.
http://soe.syr.edu/academic/counseling_and_human_services/modules/Suicide_Risk/ethical_and_legal_issues_of_suicide.aspx
I doubt that confidential medical records were accessed.
I'm firmly in the methodological naturalism fanboy group.