The differences between a state-run and HMO-sponsored healthcare system aren't terribly different, apart from the massive administrative overhead associated with the HMO-based system.
I've been through both types of systems, and doctors tend to have varying levels of indifference in both types of system.
People love to complain about the NHS, though at the end of the day, the statistics seem to show that they're doing a pretty good job.
(Dental care, IMO, on the other hand, is a completely different game, for whatever reason.)
That may be, but it still isn't an excuse for the poor state of conditions in the US.
The rural village of 10,000 people I lived in in Scotland had vastly better public transport than another town that I lived in, 20 miles outside of New York City. Later on, I moved to Virginia, and things were even worse still (not to mention the traffic).
Why would the government pay her to not grow food on her farm?
That sounds like one of the cushiest jobs in the world. The government is literally paying someone for doing nothing (that isn't a state or federal employee).
All of the state and federal employees work their asses off for miserable salaries.
Why the hell has the myth of the cushy government job been perpetuated? The government is a terrible place to work, which is possibly why it's so darn incompetent.
Really? Although the Union Jack doesn't tend to be flaunted around like the American flag, I've seen plenty of Scottish and English flags on and around public buildings.
Having grown up in the US, I found the pledge thing creepy from a pretty early age (not to mention that the punishment for *not* taking the pledge was absurdly severe). However, I don't see a problem with flying the flag around government buildings as a symbol of identity.
For instance, Tesco use tiny flag-stickers to indicate domestically-produced produce and meat. Makes sense, IMO...
As a 4th-year Physics undergrad, I have to voice my opinion that I absolutely can't stand Feynman's texts.
They're nice to glance at, but approach the subject in a considerably different manner than any of the other renowned physics texts.
Similarly, his proofs were terse to the point of being difficult to follow. I'll admit that my mathematical intuition isn't the greatest, though I can't help but think that this was intentional on Feynman's part, as to weed out those with weak mathematical skills from his freshman lectures. This makes them rather frustrating to use as a general reference. Similarly, the texts are largely theoretical, and offer little advice with regard to problem-solving.
Personally, I've had good experiences with the Landau/Lifshitz series of texts, and it's hard to go wrong with Griffith's books on EM and QM. Goldstein's text on Classical Mechanics is also a well-known classic.
That's not to say that that Feynman's texts are all bad. Some sections are outright brilliant, and he actually takes the time to explain himself rather extensively in many sections, which many physics (and math) writers frequently neglect to do. I keep a copy of all 3 volumes on my bookshelf, as they are occasionally handy. However, I wouldn't dream of using them as my only reference.
There hasn't been a Soyuz-related fatality since 1971, and the vehicle has undergone 3 major design revisions since then.
I would argue that it's unfair to include the early Soyuz launches (or Apollo 1 for that matter), considering that the problems which caused the failures were entirely eliminated, and the vehicle proved to be extremely robust afterward.
The same can be said (to a lesser extent) for the Challenger, but not Columbia, as the tiles remain extremely vulnerable.
There have been 2 Soyuz launch failures since 1971, both in which the entire crew survived thanks to the launch-abort system. (One blew up on the pad, and the other had a stage-separation failure that caused the craft to invert before the LES activated)
In its current design, the Soyuz is probably the inherently safest and most reliable spacecraft in existence.
Actually, I think he's been doing pretty well so far.
The FISA thing was regrettable, but he does seem to be keeping his promise of keeping lobbyists and conflicting interests out of his cabinet and staff.
Considering that the guy hasn't taken office yet, this is a massive step in the right direction.
Politicians need to react to situations in the moment. The FISA thing was regrettable, although he offered a reasonable explanation as to why he voted for it, and openly objected to the immunity clauses.
If NASA demonstrate down the road that they are irresponsible stewards of the $2bn, I wouldn't blame Obama if he pulls the money.
The worrying thing about that is that it'd just turn SpaceX into another Lockheed. (Honestly, the idea of massive corporations that exist only to sell things to the government seems more than a little counterintuitive)
Secondly, Falcon's not quite ready. We need *something* in the interim. Right now, Soyuz makes the most sense for ISS crew launches, while the Shuttle is still our only reasonable option for launching large payloads to the ISS (eg. the Alpha Mass Spectrometer) or repairing the Hubble.
If as educated individuals we cannot sell ourselves on the safety of the procedures how do we ever expect the uneducated masses to accept them?
Kind of like that time we almost destroyed the ozone layer, right?
I'll err on the side of caution until I'm absolutely sure, thank you very much.
(But seriously, the mechanics of the CFC-ozone reaction are downright scary. Given a few more years, we could have done some serious irreversible harm)
I'm not a huge KDE fan, but Amarok is definitely one of the better named OSS products out there.
Although it does take a second to realize what the name means, it's unique, memorable, and even includes the 'K' in a non-obnoxious fashion. It's just a pity that the software itself could use a bit of polish on the UI front.
On the other hand, some of the 'K' puns in the rest of the KDE suite are outright painful.
Oh, and for %*#$&* sake, somebody please (even if you have to make a fork, where the only change is a new name)
However, finding a match is notoriously difficult. It's nowhere remotely as simple as finding a blood donor.
Many times, a donor can be found within the recipient's immediate family. However, when this is not possible, the odds of finding a match quickly diminish (particularly for minorities). A minority donor without a match in his/her immediate family has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of finding a match.
I might as well take this opportunity to plug the National Marrow Registry, which you should totally join as a service to humanity.
A desktop OS will have services and programs enabled that specifically disqualify it from being a server OS. Programs that listen on network ports, dont provide any kind of authentication to access devices or write to files, dont have a thorough firewall. A webserver should listen only on webserver specific ports and those necessary for remote admin. I can think of less than 10. (do a `netstat -a|grep LISTEN` and count the ports your desktop is listening on and then do the same on a server(http,ftp,ssh,rsync,and some specifics for server type like imaps or smb).
Huh? This sounds like a bad idea for both server and desktop alike.
Firstly, it's pretty well-worn knowledge by now that it's a darn good idea to run a firewall in any context, unless you positively, absolutely trust your local network.
Second, any extraneous services should either be disabled by default on a desktop machine, or be able to be disabled quite easily. As you mentioned, it's a trivial task to take a look at what ports are open, and is equally trivial to close those ports and/or kill the underlying processes if necessary.
Microsoft learned this lesson with Windows 2000. By stripping down their "Server" OS, they (possibly inadvertently) produced what was arguably the desktop best operating ever made by the company. Sure, it didn't come bundled with much, although that was a large part of the beauty of it. Most of the "value-added" features that came with XP were crap, and rarely used by anybody. For its time, it was fast, stable, secure, and quite easy to use. The architectural differences between the 'Server' and 'Workstation' versions were virtually nonexistent.
Unfortunately, they forgot whatever lessons they might have learned with Win2k, and came out with XP, which though a step up from 98/Me!, wasn't nearly as fast or secure as 2k, and eventually Vista, which predominantly added bloat, and none of the much touted architectural improvements that were supposed to have been in the pipeline.
Would you prefer that all policy discussions take place behind closed doors?
Although I suppose there's a fine line between 'communications' and 'propaganda,' this genuinely seems to be the former.
I genuinely don't get the idea why Americans seem to be advocates of a unfriendly, bureaucratic government. Why do we insist that government websites are as ugly and unnavigable as possible? Why do tax forms have to be written in the least comprehensible English possible?
A little discontent can certainly be a good thing, though it certainly shouldn't be a crime for the government to try to please its people.
How come this doesn't apply at all to patents and research environments?
In most labs I've known, the researchers have absolutely no rights to their own work, and potentially receive no special credit for any breakthroughs that they might achieve.
Slashdot Mirror
The differences between a state-run and HMO-sponsored healthcare system aren't terribly different, apart from the massive administrative overhead associated with the HMO-based system.
I've been through both types of systems, and doctors tend to have varying levels of indifference in both types of system.
People love to complain about the NHS, though at the end of the day, the statistics seem to show that they're doing a pretty good job.
(Dental care, IMO, on the other hand, is a completely different game, for whatever reason.)
That may be, but it still isn't an excuse for the poor state of conditions in the US.
The rural village of 10,000 people I lived in in Scotland had vastly better public transport than another town that I lived in, 20 miles outside of New York City. Later on, I moved to Virginia, and things were even worse still (not to mention the traffic).
Why would the government pay her to not grow food on her farm?
That sounds like one of the cushiest jobs in the world. The government is literally paying someone for doing nothing (that isn't a state or federal employee).
All of the state and federal employees work their asses off for miserable salaries.
Why the hell has the myth of the cushy government job been perpetuated? The government is a terrible place to work, which is possibly why it's so darn incompetent.
If HP have *any* brains at all, they'll cut everything else they have going on to bring this to market.
If everything works out, the development of this technology could almost be as important as the development of the transistor was in the 20th century.
Now, can we start pooling out money to buy this technology from of HP to put in the public domain for the benefit of mankind?
He already appointed Ms. Clinton.
Both of them have already said that this is not the case at the present.
I suppose this could be why David Bowie's Space Oddity wasn't sung as a duet.
Really? Although the Union Jack doesn't tend to be flaunted around like the American flag, I've seen plenty of Scottish and English flags on and around public buildings.
Having grown up in the US, I found the pledge thing creepy from a pretty early age (not to mention that the punishment for *not* taking the pledge was absurdly severe). However, I don't see a problem with flying the flag around government buildings as a symbol of identity.
For instance, Tesco use tiny flag-stickers to indicate domestically-produced produce and meat. Makes sense, IMO...
How come the USA can spend trillions bailing out stupid bankers but only has a couple of million for this sort of thing?
Because that's all the researchers needed at this stage?
Good News Everybody! This will very soon cease to be the case.
HTML 5 specifies a <video> element. Firefox 3.1 will support this, with the Ogg Theora codec included out of the box.
As a 4th-year Physics undergrad, I have to voice my opinion that I absolutely can't stand Feynman's texts.
They're nice to glance at, but approach the subject in a considerably different manner than any of the other renowned physics texts.
Similarly, his proofs were terse to the point of being difficult to follow. I'll admit that my mathematical intuition isn't the greatest, though I can't help but think that this was intentional on Feynman's part, as to weed out those with weak mathematical skills from his freshman lectures. This makes them rather frustrating to use as a general reference. Similarly, the texts are largely theoretical, and offer little advice with regard to problem-solving.
Personally, I've had good experiences with the Landau/Lifshitz series of texts, and it's hard to go wrong with Griffith's books on EM and QM. Goldstein's text on Classical Mechanics is also a well-known classic.
That's not to say that that Feynman's texts are all bad. Some sections are outright brilliant, and he actually takes the time to explain himself rather extensively in many sections, which many physics (and math) writers frequently neglect to do. I keep a copy of all 3 volumes on my bookshelf, as they are occasionally handy. However, I wouldn't dream of using them as my only reference.
There hasn't been a Soyuz-related fatality since 1971, and the vehicle has undergone 3 major design revisions since then.
I would argue that it's unfair to include the early Soyuz launches (or Apollo 1 for that matter), considering that the problems which caused the failures were entirely eliminated, and the vehicle proved to be extremely robust afterward.
The same can be said (to a lesser extent) for the Challenger, but not Columbia, as the tiles remain extremely vulnerable.
There have been 2 Soyuz launch failures since 1971, both in which the entire crew survived thanks to the launch-abort system. (One blew up on the pad, and the other had a stage-separation failure that caused the craft to invert before the LES activated)
In its current design, the Soyuz is probably the inherently safest and most reliable spacecraft in existence.
Actually, I think he's been doing pretty well so far.
The FISA thing was regrettable, but he does seem to be keeping his promise of keeping lobbyists and conflicting interests out of his cabinet and staff.
Considering that the guy hasn't taken office yet, this is a massive step in the right direction.
Politicians need to react to situations in the moment. The FISA thing was regrettable, although he offered a reasonable explanation as to why he voted for it, and openly objected to the immunity clauses.
If NASA demonstrate down the road that they are irresponsible stewards of the $2bn, I wouldn't blame Obama if he pulls the money.
The worrying thing about that is that it'd just turn SpaceX into another Lockheed. (Honestly, the idea of massive corporations that exist only to sell things to the government seems more than a little counterintuitive)
Secondly, Falcon's not quite ready. We need *something* in the interim. Right now, Soyuz makes the most sense for ISS crew launches, while the Shuttle is still our only reasonable option for launching large payloads to the ISS (eg. the Alpha Mass Spectrometer) or repairing the Hubble.
Who ever said that censorship can't be funny?
If as educated individuals we cannot sell ourselves on the safety of the procedures how do we ever expect the uneducated masses to accept them?
Kind of like that time we almost destroyed the ozone layer, right?
I'll err on the side of caution until I'm absolutely sure, thank you very much.
(But seriously, the mechanics of the CFC-ozone reaction are downright scary. Given a few more years, we could have done some serious irreversible harm)
That explains so much about Boston....
What are the benefits/limitations of an Arduino versus an FPGA?
I recently started messing around with FPGAs, and have found them fascinatingly versatile and easy to program.
...(c) imitation of J. K. Rowling's writing style in portions...
I propose a kdawson imitation thread.....
1....2.....3.... Go!
I'm not a huge KDE fan, but Amarok is definitely one of the better named OSS products out there.
Although it does take a second to realize what the name means, it's unique, memorable, and even includes the 'K' in a non-obnoxious fashion. It's just a pity that the software itself could use a bit of polish on the UI front.
On the other hand, some of the 'K' puns in the rest of the KDE suite are outright painful.
Oh, and for %*#$&* sake, somebody please (even if you have to make a fork, where the only change is a new name)
Well, that's just deceptive. Amtrak provides neither!
If said wheelchair is your only hope of mobility, virtually any price is "affordable."
However, finding a match is notoriously difficult. It's nowhere remotely as simple as finding a blood donor.
Many times, a donor can be found within the recipient's immediate family. However, when this is not possible, the odds of finding a match quickly diminish (particularly for minorities). A minority donor without a match in his/her immediate family has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of finding a match.
I might as well take this opportunity to plug the National Marrow Registry, which you should totally join as a service to humanity.
A desktop OS will have services and programs enabled that specifically disqualify it from being a server OS. Programs that listen on network ports, dont provide any kind of authentication to access devices or write to files, dont have a thorough firewall. A webserver should listen only on webserver specific ports and those necessary for remote admin. I can think of less than 10. (do a `netstat -a|grep LISTEN` and count the ports your desktop is listening on and then do the same on a server(http,ftp,ssh,rsync,and some specifics for server type like imaps or smb).
Huh? This sounds like a bad idea for both server and desktop alike.
Firstly, it's pretty well-worn knowledge by now that it's a darn good idea to run a firewall in any context, unless you positively, absolutely trust your local network.
Second, any extraneous services should either be disabled by default on a desktop machine, or be able to be disabled quite easily. As you mentioned, it's a trivial task to take a look at what ports are open, and is equally trivial to close those ports and/or kill the underlying processes if necessary.
Microsoft learned this lesson with Windows 2000. By stripping down their "Server" OS, they (possibly inadvertently) produced what was arguably the desktop best operating ever made by the company. Sure, it didn't come bundled with much, although that was a large part of the beauty of it. Most of the "value-added" features that came with XP were crap, and rarely used by anybody. For its time, it was fast, stable, secure, and quite easy to use. The architectural differences between the 'Server' and 'Workstation' versions were virtually nonexistent.
Unfortunately, they forgot whatever lessons they might have learned with Win2k, and came out with XP, which though a step up from 98/Me!, wasn't nearly as fast or secure as 2k, and eventually Vista, which predominantly added bloat, and none of the much touted architectural improvements that were supposed to have been in the pipeline.
Would you prefer that all policy discussions take place behind closed doors?
Although I suppose there's a fine line between 'communications' and 'propaganda,' this genuinely seems to be the former.
I genuinely don't get the idea why Americans seem to be advocates of a unfriendly, bureaucratic government. Why do we insist that government websites are as ugly and unnavigable as possible? Why do tax forms have to be written in the least comprehensible English possible?
A little discontent can certainly be a good thing, though it certainly shouldn't be a crime for the government to try to please its people.
This is interesting to me.
How come this doesn't apply at all to patents and research environments?
In most labs I've known, the researchers have absolutely no rights to their own work, and potentially receive no special credit for any breakthroughs that they might achieve.