I didn't really understand math until I became a programmer. I understood flow control and boolean logic, but when the actual data behind the code came into play, that is when I started to understand math. I failed the same algebra 101 course at least five times before I grew up and actually got it. I'm no math wiz by any stretch of the imagination but coming from practicality first, I finally got it. When work became all about variables, constants and the logic of their interactions, things all just started to click.
From what I understand, Creutzfeldt–Jakob has a long gestation period of years but once fully manifested the patient has months to live. At least, for the one person I knew who actually had the disease, that was how it went down. For alzheimers, I don't know about gestation but it seems the disease can last many years before full degeneration or death. Mad Cow (which is the more well-know term for Creutzfeldt–Jakob, not PC at all go figure) seems to be much more aggressive and quick to complete its job of killing the patient.
After checking out Wikipedia, it seems there are a few variations and Mad Cow is actually a disease in itself which causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob, not the disease itself.
And we'll enjoy it even more when the jock who beat us up in HS is now working graveyard at the gas station and can't even afford to talk to us online even though he sits at the station with his laptop all night waiting to make change for what is now mostly a credit-card based operation. I'm not rich, but I don't mind paying $100 to be a dick!
That sounds great, but what happens if your intruder finds one of your stashed guns? I think that was the reason for the law, but it totally deters from a good old-fashioned shoot-out!
Truth be told, I know many people who keep a gun handy around here with a fully loaded clip. For me, it is more to ensure the safety of my family so my step-daugher doesn't show up with some asshole one day and show him my guns and then he decides to fire off a few rounds. Of course I'm the only one with the gun key, but kids tends to find ways around such things as safe combinations... It only takes one day where you use the safe and forget to lock it.
The people gathering and analyzing this data are looking at much more than just cost vs. life expectancy. There are many quality programs and initiatives out there which drill into specific issues such as Diabetes Management and use of the Emergency Room vs. a clinic or Urgent Care. It isn't so much about reducing cost arbitrarily, rather to do as much patient/provider education as possible to prevent those higher expenses unless absolutely necessary.
Where many people analyzing this data are getting baffled is when they see the same drug or service cost up to ten times as much for one state (or even locality within a state) vs. another. RBRVS (the Resource Based Relative Value System) takes the difference in cost geographically into account and pays doctors way differently based on their locality. Then, the savings/losses get passed on to your insurance premiums. The geographical differences in reimbursement have pissed doctors off for years. For instance, here in Santa Cruz, CA we are considered a "rural" area even though we are a fully incorporated county. Just a few miles away in Santa Clara County, they have their own distinct locality which gets paid about 130% more. A good portion of our patients actually live in Santa Clara county too!
Everybody in the industry pretty much agrees that this old regime of cost vs. reimbursement sucks, especially because it stopped being "fair" years ago if it ever was, but nobody has really offered up a viable alternative yet which we'll see materialize any time soon. Here's to hoping, though.
A dog and a gun is a good start, but they won't protect your property while you are out. Dogs can be disabled and guns only work when there is someone home to operate them. Even then, you basically need to shout out from your bedroom: "HANG ON, I'M GETTING MY GUN!" "ONE MORE MINUTE (damned the law which requires I keep my ammo separate!)... OK, FOUND THE CLIP. FULLY LOADED. I SUGGEST YOU LEAVE NOW."
That figures for a city. When I lived in San Francisco I had neighbors which would trip my alarm for fun and quickly made the cops tired of showing up. This is a troublesome catch-22 because when your system actually catches a wolf, nobody cares because they are sick of hearing it. I think in these modern times, an internet-attached system is the way to go because it can notify the owner and give them real-time video and data they need to make an informed decision about whether to actually set off a visible/audble alarm and/or notify the police. Everyone hates false positives!
There always seem to be times where VB has features over C# or vice-versa. Many of those features are library-based, so you can just include the VB library in a C# app and gain access to functions such as Str() and the My. namespace. Fact is, most of those things are still accessible to either language, there are just helper classes and methods which make things easier for their respective lagnuages.
I wasn't aware of the language feature you described though, which certainly can't be just "referenced" from another language. In fact, I didn't even know VB had the option of continuing code after an exception is handled. I've slightly worked around it in C# by having code in the Finally clause which calls another method, but that does seem hack-ish. However, the only situations I've had where a try block catches an exception tend to be more transactional situations where the entire function or loop should fail gracefully anyways. In most cases, I simply call a cleanup/rollback method in the catch and then a continue to go to the next iteration of a loop.
Some new features, although Microsoft has been kind enough to implement them all in both languages, leave something to be desired. When writing event handlers in VB, they seem easy at first, but can easily get cluttered. In C# they conversely seem hard at first (because the method signature does not include the event hook, you need to do that yourself). I guess it really gets down to preference at that point. It might make my code easier to read by a third-part with all the syntactical obviousness VB offers, but how easy is it in C# to create an on-the-fly delegate now with lambda expressions?
All in all though, I totally appreciate the fact that all new features seem to be first-class citizens of all.NET languages. The new Async features in 2011 for example are awesome and available to both. The sad thing is C/C++ programmers still need to rely on their own libs for async. Microsoft is providing those too though. C/C++ programmers, on the other hand, will never be in the same class as C#/VB so I can understand that they have their own paradigms/libs to solve certain problems...
I suppose you didn't bother checking out SQL Server Denali until it got renamed SQL Server 2012 in the RC either? Actually, that would be too early as well. You probably want to be certified first before using it. hehe.
No, sorry. Physics still allows for C#, which is just a half-measure above. Look it up. I'm not lying! I some countries, they even recognize the note of "H" above "G"in their music. Go figure...
I didn't really understand math until I became a programmer. I understood flow control and boolean logic, but when the actual data behind the code came into play, that is when I started to understand math. I failed the same algebra 101 course at least five times before I grew up and actually got it. I'm no math wiz by any stretch of the imagination but coming from practicality first, I finally got it. When work became all about variables, constants and the logic of their interactions, things all just started to click.
And, Failing that, you can always have the conversation converted to text and then ROT13 it. Oh, wait...
From what I understand, Creutzfeldt–Jakob has a long gestation period of years but once fully manifested the patient has months to live. At least, for the one person I knew who actually had the disease, that was how it went down. For alzheimers, I don't know about gestation but it seems the disease can last many years before full degeneration or death. Mad Cow (which is the more well-know term for Creutzfeldt–Jakob, not PC at all go figure) seems to be much more aggressive and quick to complete its job of killing the patient.
After checking out Wikipedia, it seems there are a few variations and Mad Cow is actually a disease in itself which causes Creutzfeldt–Jakob, not the disease itself.
And we'll enjoy it even more when the jock who beat us up in HS is now working graveyard at the gas station and can't even afford to talk to us online even though he sits at the station with his laptop all night waiting to make change for what is now mostly a credit-card based operation. I'm not rich, but I don't mind paying $100 to be a dick!
I like Oklahoma where you are allowed to shoot even the mail carrier for coming on your property.
That sounds great, but what happens if your intruder finds one of your stashed guns? I think that was the reason for the law, but it totally deters from a good old-fashioned shoot-out!
Truth be told, I know many people who keep a gun handy around here with a fully loaded clip. For me, it is more to ensure the safety of my family so my step-daugher doesn't show up with some asshole one day and show him my guns and then he decides to fire off a few rounds. Of course I'm the only one with the gun key, but kids tends to find ways around such things as safe combinations... It only takes one day where you use the safe and forget to lock it.
The people gathering and analyzing this data are looking at much more than just cost vs. life expectancy. There are many quality programs and initiatives out there which drill into specific issues such as Diabetes Management and use of the Emergency Room vs. a clinic or Urgent Care. It isn't so much about reducing cost arbitrarily, rather to do as much patient/provider education as possible to prevent those higher expenses unless absolutely necessary.
Where many people analyzing this data are getting baffled is when they see the same drug or service cost up to ten times as much for one state (or even locality within a state) vs. another. RBRVS (the Resource Based Relative Value System) takes the difference in cost geographically into account and pays doctors way differently based on their locality. Then, the savings/losses get passed on to your insurance premiums. The geographical differences in reimbursement have pissed doctors off for years. For instance, here in Santa Cruz, CA we are considered a "rural" area even though we are a fully incorporated county. Just a few miles away in Santa Clara County, they have their own distinct locality which gets paid about 130% more. A good portion of our patients actually live in Santa Clara county too!
Everybody in the industry pretty much agrees that this old regime of cost vs. reimbursement sucks, especially because it stopped being "fair" years ago if it ever was, but nobody has really offered up a viable alternative yet which we'll see materialize any time soon. Here's to hoping, though.
A dog and a gun is a good start, but they won't protect your property while you are out. Dogs can be disabled and guns only work when there is someone home to operate them. Even then, you basically need to shout out from your bedroom: "HANG ON, I'M GETTING MY GUN!" "ONE MORE MINUTE (damned the law which requires I keep my ammo separate!)... OK, FOUND THE CLIP. FULLY LOADED. I SUGGEST YOU LEAVE NOW."
That figures for a city. When I lived in San Francisco I had neighbors which would trip my alarm for fun and quickly made the cops tired of showing up. This is a troublesome catch-22 because when your system actually catches a wolf, nobody cares because they are sick of hearing it. I think in these modern times, an internet-attached system is the way to go because it can notify the owner and give them real-time video and data they need to make an informed decision about whether to actually set off a visible/audble alarm and/or notify the police. Everyone hates false positives!
There always seem to be times where VB has features over C# or vice-versa. Many of those features are library-based, so you can just include the VB library in a C# app and gain access to functions such as Str() and the My. namespace. Fact is, most of those things are still accessible to either language, there are just helper classes and methods which make things easier for their respective lagnuages.
I wasn't aware of the language feature you described though, which certainly can't be just "referenced" from another language. In fact, I didn't even know VB had the option of continuing code after an exception is handled. I've slightly worked around it in C# by having code in the Finally clause which calls another method, but that does seem hack-ish. However, the only situations I've had where a try block catches an exception tend to be more transactional situations where the entire function or loop should fail gracefully anyways. In most cases, I simply call a cleanup/rollback method in the catch and then a continue to go to the next iteration of a loop.
Some new features, although Microsoft has been kind enough to implement them all in both languages, leave something to be desired. When writing event handlers in VB, they seem easy at first, but can easily get cluttered. In C# they conversely seem hard at first (because the method signature does not include the event hook, you need to do that yourself). I guess it really gets down to preference at that point. It might make my code easier to read by a third-part with all the syntactical obviousness VB offers, but how easy is it in C# to create an on-the-fly delegate now with lambda expressions?
All in all though, I totally appreciate the fact that all new features seem to be first-class citizens of all .NET languages. The new Async features in 2011 for example are awesome and available to both. The sad thing is C/C++ programmers still need to rely on their own libs for async. Microsoft is providing those too though. C/C++ programmers, on the other hand, will never be in the same class as C#/VB so I can understand that they have their own paradigms/libs to solve certain problems...
I suppose you didn't bother checking out SQL Server Denali until it got renamed SQL Server 2012 in the RC either? Actually, that would be too early as well. You probably want to be certified first before using it. hehe.
It saves gas and has the added bonus of being cool as shit.
Dead recently, but not forgotten. They certainly don't issue his books as reading material in your typical creative writing class though!
Our standards seem to be getting worse. It should normally at least 50 comments.
No, sorry. Physics still allows for C#, which is just a half-measure above. Look it up. I'm not lying! I some countries, they even recognize the note of "H" above "G"in their music. Go figure...
Don't you know, the first law of Thermodynamics is: We don't talk about thermodynamics!
Man, if I only had mod points... Using the main board of a pinball machine as an example just made my day. Thank you.
Easily solved. When things are backwards, start thinking backwards. I use computer analogies all the time when talking to gear-heads.
Sorry, the book is called A World out of Time. I should have looked it up before posting!
Most notably A Land out of Time and the epic Ringworld.
Yes you can. Scan it, then put a bird on it.
Typical geek. You'd probably just start hitting the agreement's ceiling in different ways until you find a way out.
Isn't that vector-drawing in a nutshell?
I bought a motorcycle.
Stop making sense. You're killing the thread!