It's true that various key designs are difficult to duplicate, impossible if you don't have the correct equipment. I was making fun of the line in TFS that said "Do Not Duplicate" contributed to the difficulty of duplicating the key.
I think it's more likely you've fallen victim to the phenomenon of unrealistic view of probabilities, like people who fear terrorism but drive like idiots, which is much more likely to kill them.
Imagine all the millions of asshats who use Twitter every day. They probably generate tens of thousands of tweets similar to the UK example you cited, but you don't read about tens of thousands of similar arrests every day, do you?
So, you think the odds are "probably about zero", so let's say *only* ten thousand asshat tweets are generated every day, and the chance that the twits' "only a handful of followers" took it seriously was one in ten thousand - viola, there's one per day.
No need to posit nefarious use of surveillance there. Train your sights on the more likely abuses - high profile criminal cases, "terror cell plots unmasked", and more importantly, usage of data to make the rich richer. That's where the problem actually lies.
Your assumption that I've never seen a hospital bill is wrong, just like your stubborn insistence that posted rates are the answer, to the extent that you haven't even addressed my point on payment based on outcomes in what, 4 replies?
You don't even know *why* those bills look like that. I, however, *do* know why, and the answer can be found in a comparison with the music industry, in which I have considerable experience, along with health insurance, including working for providers, insurers, and recovery audit contractors. I leave it to you to educate yourself with that hint about the music industry.
Since you're not making any progress in this discussion, please feel free to have the last word with another post that misses the mark. I won't bother to read it.
Colonoscopy for a sinus infection is a silly and frivolous example. A better example would be, two patients with sinus-related problems, but one is an infection and the other is some chronic condition. Whether the physician gets paid the same for the same procedures/tests on both patients is NOT incenting them to produce the BEST OUTCOME for each patient. Paying them based on how quickly and completely each case is resolved, and the wellness of the patient does improve outcomes.
Focusing on the amount paid for a procedure, any procedure the physician happens to throw at the patient is, at best, incomplete and ineffective. I don't know why you resist the idea that this is important, but that's your business.
Since you don't seem to get it, let's not continue this, it's pointless.
No, I think you missed my point. I don't care if Dr. K. charges the same for procedures A, B, C, D for me as he does for you, if he fails to address my actual problem, and improve my quality of life following treatment. If Dr. K. is instead paid on how well I do, he is then motivated to treat me for a better outcome, not for the procedures he can get away with billing, regardless of what he charges.
The whole point is that instead of doing procedures A, B, C, D for two patients, the doctor instead treats them as individuals and does procedures A, B, D for patient one, and A, B, C for patient two, and also orders a nurse to follow up patient one for meds compliance, because that patient is at risk.
We are not cars. We need the medical industry to stop treating us like we are.
"Guess how long you will need to wait for a ELE? With high probability something on the order of millions of years! "
Sound familiar? You wrote that. You have no idea how long until the next ELE, so downplaying the urgency to do something now that we can is just... odd. The one that did for the dinosaurs 65M years ago would probably kill all humans, even if not at once. Don't know why you think you have to go back 4B years for a genuine ELE.
Anyway, I didn't say you said what Asimov described, I said I was reminded of it. English! Words mean what they mean!
AC above is correct, the CMS bills are itemized. I worked at a CMS Recovery Audit Contractor, and we used any excuse, any at all, to deny as much of the payments as possible to the providers post-care, in order to get a ~5% commission on the recovery.
Our manager overlord often said, "Let them keep making the same mistakes, I just want the money."
No, "posted rates" may lower dollar expenditure, but will worsen patient care. What we really need is a rational, universal system of payment based on outcomes. Doctors, hospitals, other care facilities all do better when their patients do better.
In the places where this has been tried, it works quite well.
This reminds me of a talk that Isaac Asimov gave at my university, which he permitted me to print in my SF magazine for the princely sum of $15.
He was making fun of the Moral Majority and other ignorant types who dismiss the idea we need to look for asteroids like the dinosaur killer from 65 million years ago, because "after all, it happened 65 MILLION YEARS AGO, so the next one won't happen for ANOTHER 65 million years!"
Why isn't parent modded up? I hate that asshole Zimmerman as much as the next person, but the quality that makes us civilized is that we apply our high-falutin' standards regardless of the subject.
Come on people, you can describe Zimmerman in the most vile terms to express your opinion of him - what does it add to your position (and credibility) if you also threaten to kill him?
Not arguing here (we're all friends here), but look into some of the stories of the remote operators. One told about being ordered to target a dwelling, out of which ran what looked like a "very short person", just before the missile hit. That figure was completely obliterated. The operator asked his spotter for more information about it, and was told, "it was just a dog". It seems as though there's a callous disregard for innocents in these operations, even after you discount the helicopter pilots who joked about the insurgents they tore to shreds with the cannon (who turned out to be journalists).
A better definition of collateral damage (that matches what the U.S. military and three letter agencies are actually doing) would be something like, "You're sitting in a trailer in Texas, watching a live feed from the UAV you're piloting over Pakistan, when you see a group of young men. Your supervisor tells you they're insurgents and you should kill them. You fire a missile at the group, entirely dismembering every one of them. They were standing next to a woman holding a baby who was walking by. She and the baby are splattered all over the ground." THAT'S collateral damage. Not just the woman in the baby, but between 0 and ALL of the group of young men identified as insurgents.
This is another case of "people are stupid, inobservant lumps who don't understand probability".
This is one data point, nothing to make any assumptions on. If you had perfect knowledge of all the people involved in that hacker conference, and what happened to them in the months leading up to the conference, you'd see all sorts of strange occurrences in their lives that ALSO don't imply nefarious government action.
Remember, this is the country where airline travel decreased by 30% after 9/11. Sure, there were multiple factors - one of them is certainly fear of terrorism. Were those people safer using *any* other form of transportation? Of course not.
You bet they do. I worked at a company where they made money by taking back payments to medical providers on any pretext at all; slightly incorrect treatment code, less than ironclad medical necessity, etc. The asshole VP encouraged the staff to come up with any creative scheme to examine claims data to justify taking back 100% of the payment so the company could get their 5% commission. And he blocked every request by the CLIENT to give advice to the providers on correcting their mistakes because as he said, "I want them to keep making the mistakes - I just want the money."
Presumably he doesn't treat his family like objects when he's done bloodsucking every day.
Carrying a retirement obligation as a liability on the bookd does not count as pre-funding, and that's just what over half of companies do in this country. Just a fact, you can look it up. Bloomberg is a good source.
You are the one who mentioned companies who do a better job than the post office, referring to package delivery. Sure, they do great; they aren't required to provider universal service. I'm well aware that only the U.S. Postal Service can deliver letters, but perhaps YOU don't know, or just ignore that essential fact that if your paragons of private industry COULD deliver letters, they would cherry pick only the profitable areas, and NOT PROVIDE UNIVERSAL SERVICE, WHICH IS ONE OF THE MAIN MISSIONS OF THE POSTAL SERVICE. (You love caps so much, I thought I'd oblige).
You also ignore that the postal service is micro managed by congress. Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe CANNOT RUN THE POST OFFICE LIKE THE BUSINESS YOU SCREAM IT SHOULD BE - when he proposed eliminating Saturday service, congress just said no. They also interfere with the consolidation of low-value post office locations, because Congressman X wants to keep the jobs in his district. With that load of retards second-guessing every decision, I'd like to see YOU do better.
So, keep hatin', hater. You have a bug up your ass for the Postal Service. I should have known something would emerge from the woodwork to rail against it. (Go ahead and post another condescending rant, but I won't read it. I'm done arguing with something that doesn't think.)
The service it provides is only "good" and "reliable" when you have nothing to compare it to. So let me clue you in on a little history.
(lots of rant, some more assumption that I know nothing about the post office, some resentful personal anecdote, blah, blah, blah...)
But don't believe the propaganda. "Pre-funding" is what ALL private businesses do. At least, those that offer retirement at all. They pay into an investment fund, and that's all the money there is. They don't have the option (as the Post Office used to) of simply promising outrageous retirement benefits willy-nilly, without having to worry about where the money was going to come from. Which, of course, was the whole problem.
So stop railing against a perfectly sensible regulation. They now have to pay for things the way other organizations do. That's all that "pre-funding" means. And if a government-mandated monopoly can't start doing their jobs again, while balancing their books, then let private industry (APART from government for a change) do it. Private companies can do, and have done, a better job for less. Anybody who says otherwise just isn't telling the truth. And other government-mandated monopolies in all other areas have all managed to not just get the job done, but make huge profits in the process. But that's another story.
Fewer than half of businesses with retirement liabilities pre-fund, so thanks for the falsehood, though I admire the confidence with which you stated it. Also, calling the post office a monopoly is seriously myopic, especially when you go on to mention the private companies that directly compete with a so-called monopoly.
Okay, you don't like the U.S. Post Office. Got it.
I'll take it. The Post Office provides incredibly good, reliable service, despite the way it is micro-managed by Congress, and expected to operate like a private corporation while providing universal service, which no corporation would do, and prefunding retirement benefits for workers, some of whom aren't even born yet.
Remember, you started it with the snarky "cesspools" swipe.
Anyway, I live in a very large house on 1+ acres in a serene and heavily wooded area, with every rural activity close at hand. And also easy access to multiple cities (not like the little towns you think of as cities). You did imply you lived at least 1,000 miles from the coast, so I can only imagine what you think you know about a real city.
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that various key designs are difficult to duplicate, impossible if you don't have the correct equipment. I was making fun of the line in TFS that said "Do Not Duplicate" contributed to the difficulty of duplicating the key.
You have to be kidding - I have duplicated dozens of keys with that admonition on it. Not a single refusal from locksmiths, Home Depot staff, etc.
lol, how did you get modded insightful for something patently untrue?
I think it's more likely you've fallen victim to the phenomenon of unrealistic view of probabilities, like people who fear terrorism but drive like idiots, which is much more likely to kill them.
Imagine all the millions of asshats who use Twitter every day. They probably generate tens of thousands of tweets similar to the UK example you cited, but you don't read about tens of thousands of similar arrests every day, do you?
So, you think the odds are "probably about zero", so let's say *only* ten thousand asshat tweets are generated every day, and the chance that the twits' "only a handful of followers" took it seriously was one in ten thousand - viola, there's one per day.
No need to posit nefarious use of surveillance there. Train your sights on the more likely abuses - high profile criminal cases, "terror cell plots unmasked", and more importantly, usage of data to make the rich richer. That's where the problem actually lies.
I don't see how the GP's post contradicts the similar use of surveillance of civilian populations by more totalitarian regimes.
That Manichean worldview is not useful, because it sets up false choices.
Really? That makes them difficult to duplicate? On which planet?
Your assumption that I've never seen a hospital bill is wrong, just like your stubborn insistence that posted rates are the answer, to the extent that you haven't even addressed my point on payment based on outcomes in what, 4 replies?
You don't even know *why* those bills look like that. I, however, *do* know why, and the answer can be found in a comparison with the music industry, in which I have considerable experience, along with health insurance, including working for providers, insurers, and recovery audit contractors. I leave it to you to educate yourself with that hint about the music industry.
Since you're not making any progress in this discussion, please feel free to have the last word with another post that misses the mark. I won't bother to read it.
Colonoscopy for a sinus infection is a silly and frivolous example. A better example would be, two patients with sinus-related problems, but one is an infection and the other is some chronic condition. Whether the physician gets paid the same for the same procedures/tests on both patients is NOT incenting them to produce the BEST OUTCOME for each patient. Paying them based on how quickly and completely each case is resolved, and the wellness of the patient does improve outcomes.
Focusing on the amount paid for a procedure, any procedure the physician happens to throw at the patient is, at best, incomplete and ineffective. I don't know why you resist the idea that this is important, but that's your business.
Since you don't seem to get it, let's not continue this, it's pointless.
No, I think you missed my point. I don't care if Dr. K. charges the same for procedures A, B, C, D for me as he does for you, if he fails to address my actual problem, and improve my quality of life following treatment. If Dr. K. is instead paid on how well I do, he is then motivated to treat me for a better outcome, not for the procedures he can get away with billing, regardless of what he charges.
The whole point is that instead of doing procedures A, B, C, D for two patients, the doctor instead treats them as individuals and does procedures A, B, D for patient one, and A, B, C for patient two, and also orders a nurse to follow up patient one for meds compliance, because that patient is at risk.
We are not cars. We need the medical industry to stop treating us like we are.
"Guess how long you will need to wait for a ELE? With high probability something on the order of millions of years! "
Sound familiar? You wrote that. You have no idea how long until the next ELE, so downplaying the urgency to do something now that we can is just... odd. The one that did for the dinosaurs 65M years ago would probably kill all humans, even if not at once. Don't know why you think you have to go back 4B years for a genuine ELE.
Anyway, I didn't say you said what Asimov described, I said I was reminded of it. English! Words mean what they mean!
AC above is correct, the CMS bills are itemized. I worked at a CMS Recovery Audit Contractor, and we used any excuse, any at all, to deny as much of the payments as possible to the providers post-care, in order to get a ~5% commission on the recovery.
Our manager overlord often said, "Let them keep making the same mistakes, I just want the money."
No, "posted rates" may lower dollar expenditure, but will worsen patient care. What we really need is a rational, universal system of payment based on outcomes. Doctors, hospitals, other care facilities all do better when their patients do better.
In the places where this has been tried, it works quite well.
This reminds me of a talk that Isaac Asimov gave at my university, which he permitted me to print in my SF magazine for the princely sum of $15.
He was making fun of the Moral Majority and other ignorant types who dismiss the idea we need to look for asteroids like the dinosaur killer from 65 million years ago, because "after all, it happened 65 MILLION YEARS AGO, so the next one won't happen for ANOTHER 65 million years!"
Why isn't parent modded up? I hate that asshole Zimmerman as much as the next person, but the quality that makes us civilized is that we apply our high-falutin' standards regardless of the subject.
Come on people, you can describe Zimmerman in the most vile terms to express your opinion of him - what does it add to your position (and credibility) if you also threaten to kill him?
"...repost..." I think you meant "riposte". Otherwise, well formed sarcasm. Empty, but well formed. Nice use of the umlaut. :-)
Not arguing here (we're all friends here), but look into some of the stories of the remote operators. One told about being ordered to target a dwelling, out of which ran what looked like a "very short person", just before the missile hit. That figure was completely obliterated. The operator asked his spotter for more information about it, and was told, "it was just a dog". It seems as though there's a callous disregard for innocents in these operations, even after you discount the helicopter pilots who joked about the insurgents they tore to shreds with the cannon (who turned out to be journalists).
There's more than a little wrong here.
A better definition of collateral damage (that matches what the U.S. military and three letter agencies are actually doing) would be something like, "You're sitting in a trailer in Texas, watching a live feed from the UAV you're piloting over Pakistan, when you see a group of young men. Your supervisor tells you they're insurgents and you should kill them. You fire a missile at the group, entirely dismembering every one of them. They were standing next to a woman holding a baby who was walking by. She and the baby are splattered all over the ground." THAT'S collateral damage. Not just the woman in the baby, but between 0 and ALL of the group of young men identified as insurgents.
Yep, that's the same reason I bought a lottery ticket today. Either I'll win, or I won't. My odds are 50/50.
This is another case of "people are stupid, inobservant lumps who don't understand probability".
This is one data point, nothing to make any assumptions on. If you had perfect knowledge of all the people involved in that hacker conference, and what happened to them in the months leading up to the conference, you'd see all sorts of strange occurrences in their lives that ALSO don't imply nefarious government action.
Remember, this is the country where airline travel decreased by 30% after 9/11. Sure, there were multiple factors - one of them is certainly fear of terrorism. Were those people safer using *any* other form of transportation? Of course not.
You bet they do. I worked at a company where they made money by taking back payments to medical providers on any pretext at all; slightly incorrect treatment code, less than ironclad medical necessity, etc. The asshole VP encouraged the staff to come up with any creative scheme to examine claims data to justify taking back 100% of the payment so the company could get their 5% commission. And he blocked every request by the CLIENT to give advice to the providers on correcting their mistakes because as he said, "I want them to keep making the mistakes - I just want the money."
Presumably he doesn't treat his family like objects when he's done bloodsucking every day.
Much better than the Clockwork Orange reference! Mod parent up!
Carrying a retirement obligation as a liability on the bookd does not count as pre-funding, and that's just what over half of companies do in this country. Just a fact, you can look it up. Bloomberg is a good source.
You are the one who mentioned companies who do a better job than the post office, referring to package delivery. Sure, they do great; they aren't required to provider universal service. I'm well aware that only the U.S. Postal Service can deliver letters, but perhaps YOU don't know, or just ignore that essential fact that if your paragons of private industry COULD deliver letters, they would cherry pick only the profitable areas, and NOT PROVIDE UNIVERSAL SERVICE, WHICH IS ONE OF THE MAIN MISSIONS OF THE POSTAL SERVICE. (You love caps so much, I thought I'd oblige).
You also ignore that the postal service is micro managed by congress. Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe CANNOT RUN THE POST OFFICE LIKE THE BUSINESS YOU SCREAM IT SHOULD BE - when he proposed eliminating Saturday service, congress just said no. They also interfere with the consolidation of low-value post office locations, because Congressman X wants to keep the jobs in his district. With that load of retards second-guessing every decision, I'd like to see YOU do better.
So, keep hatin', hater. You have a bug up your ass for the Postal Service. I should have known something would emerge from the woodwork to rail against it. (Go ahead and post another condescending rant, but I won't read it. I'm done arguing with something that doesn't think.)
The service it provides is only "good" and "reliable" when you have nothing to compare it to. So let me clue you in on a little history.
(lots of rant, some more assumption that I know nothing about the post office, some resentful personal anecdote, blah, blah, blah...)
But don't believe the propaganda. "Pre-funding" is what ALL private businesses do. At least, those that offer retirement at all. They pay into an investment fund, and that's all the money there is. They don't have the option (as the Post Office used to) of simply promising outrageous retirement benefits willy-nilly, without having to worry about where the money was going to come from. Which, of course, was the whole problem. So stop railing against a perfectly sensible regulation. They now have to pay for things the way other organizations do. That's all that "pre-funding" means. And if a government-mandated monopoly can't start doing their jobs again, while balancing their books, then let private industry (APART from government for a change) do it. Private companies can do, and have done, a better job for less. Anybody who says otherwise just isn't telling the truth. And other government-mandated monopolies in all other areas have all managed to not just get the job done, but make huge profits in the process. But that's another story.
Fewer than half of businesses with retirement liabilities pre-fund, so thanks for the falsehood, though I admire the confidence with which you stated it. Also, calling the post office a monopoly is seriously myopic, especially when you go on to mention the private companies that directly compete with a so-called monopoly.
Okay, you don't like the U.S. Post Office. Got it.
I'll take it. The Post Office provides incredibly good, reliable service, despite the way it is micro-managed by Congress, and expected to operate like a private corporation while providing universal service, which no corporation would do, and prefunding retirement benefits for workers, some of whom aren't even born yet.
I (heart) U.S. Post Office.
Remember, you started it with the snarky "cesspools" swipe.
Anyway, I live in a very large house on 1+ acres in a serene and heavily wooded area, with every rural activity close at hand. And also easy access to multiple cities (not like the little towns you think of as cities). You did imply you lived at least 1,000 miles from the coast, so I can only imagine what you think you know about a real city.
And hey, did you see this? http://www.news-medical.net/news/20130723/Study-upends-common-perception-that-urban-areas-are-more-dangerous-than-small-towns.aspx
Enjoy your 20% more dangerous little town. Feel free to post a desperate response, and I'll let you have the last word (I won't even read it).
Cesspools? Okay, I'll remember to wave as I fly over your boring little burg.