The wealthy can always afford treatment regardless of politics.
In all countries with state provided health care wealthy people provide for themselves if they can afford it.
The important point is that poor people have medical service that far exceeds what they could get otherwise.
Even in a country like Mexico, where the state provided service is far from perfect (I have painful experiences of this) many people without any means receive proper medical treatment that they could not afford otherwise.
This is of course much better in rich countries like Canada, the UK or Norway.
Imperfect, hell yes, but at the very least you know that there is a service you can rely on if needed.
I know how the rabid anti-Castro types work: throw innuendo, half truths and incendiary propaganda against any positives that had come from the Cuban Revolution.
They are incapable of rational thinking and will go fuming in the mouth after any positive aspect of life in Cuba.
I will deal with only the first bits of the link being referenced, because frankly I don't have much time or inclination to deal with vulgar propaganda, but somebody has to do it I suppose.
First let me state what may not be obvious: I am disillusioned with the government in Cuba, like many Latinamericans that came of age during the Cold War, there was a time I looked at Castro and Che Guevara like heroes. But reality and and open mind (that the poster I am replying to clearly lacks) as well as the opportunity to travel to several Communist and former Communist countries, made clear that those Revolutionary Heroes had failed their peoples badly. The economics did not work, democracy, even the type envisioned by Communism inside the single party, did not exist, freedom of expression was crushed, personality cult was paramount (which created weak societies politically), repression was widespread. In synthesis, the balance is very negative.
But, and this is a big but, it is just not fair to lie about the achievements of the people in power, no matter how flawed they have been and how pernicious in other aspects they have proved.
I will not deal with the pictures of the hospital. The website says they are of a hospital in Havana. We only see a building with cows in front of it. With no independent verification I would only say that you should not believe all what you find in the Internet.
But the 2nd link in the page is more interesting (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galler ies/cubahealth/pages/page1.html), here we are first showed photographs of the dire situation in Cuban hospitals and clinics.
But for the person that is not lazy, and that knows that real journalists have to cite their sources, can go to read the actual article, which I quote and comment:
"Although health care has continued to be a high government priority, with overall expenditure increasing 17 percent between 1989 and 1994, according to PAHO, the lack of foreign currency is reflected in sharp decreases in health care investment, a growing scarcity of drugs and the inability of the health care sector to easily obtain disposable medical supplies and replacement parts for aging, pre-revolution equipment made in the United States."
So actually the Cuban government increased health spending when the Berlin Wall fell. Unsurprising considering that Soviet aid was gone, but still positive.
"These shortages, while not affecting overall public health indicators, have resulted in increases of treatable conditions such as acute respiratory infections and intestinal infectious diseases, among others. Food intake in Cuba has fallen below nutritional requirements in recent years."
So public health indicators are not affected. And here I refer you to the WHO website if you are so inclined. Or the OEA (Organizacion de Estados Americanos in Spanish). Or whatever other credible source you care to find (anti-Castro websites, given their nature, are not credible).
I need somebody to explain how health indicators, as recognized by international bodies, have not fallen, but in the other hand treatable conditions have increased, this seems paradoxical and may need more explaining, but overall health indicators are positive and this can't be denied.
Finally:
"The Cuban government, and many Cubans, blame the shortages and general decline in the quality of health services on the embargo. While the sale of most pharmaceuticals and medical supplies are not prohibited under its terms, U.S. government procedures for selling drugs to Cuba are "difficult, discouraging and cumbersome," according to an Oxfam America study, and few companies participate. Many products are not available in ot
the http:/// is not casual. it simply wasn't clear back then that you would not need to specify the protocol used in the future.
The idea of linking documents in a computer network was revolutionary and in spite of all the flash and youtubes and what have you, that simple idea is the core of the Internet as we use it today.
THe disparate bits and pieces to create it where all around the place but it took the ingenuity of Sir Tim to put all those bits together in a stroke of simplicity and genius.
-Offer a free guarantee to any distributor of Free OSes that they will not pursue any patents. Something legally binding would be nice.
-Work with Linux distros distributors and maintainers to remove any patent encumbered bits in Linux creating distros free of MS patents (this for the US market of course, in the EU and many other places this is mooth point and MS's sable rattling looks idiotic and vacous).
-Work in high visibility interoperability projects.
In other words, show good faith.
This divide an conquer using the small commercial Linux distros (and to their eternal shame, Novell) shows there is no good faith on their side. They will continue with this idiotic series of agreement, more reminiscent of a gangster's protection racket, until the big players (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware and others) are the only ones left.
Then MS would have 2 options: go to court (they will lose whatever happens: most of their "patents" would be found to be without merit, and the ones where they are found to have a point, according to the courts, will be swiftly removed from the corresponding distros).
So in other words, these companies are entering in agreements in which they are getting nothing in return.
Sun does not sell music and needs Engineers to innovate and technicians to fulfill their service obligations.
It is not Sun fault if pure IT companies are less valuable than media ones (which Apple has become), to compare 2 companies profiting in such disparate fields is completely pointless.
That guy is talking about the desktop experience. This thread clearly is talking about the internals and overall performance. These 2 issues do not intercept very often, specially since the discussion we are having is centering clearly in machines firmly palced in a datacentre.
To leverage the development of all other people out there.
There is little point of keeping reinventing the wheel when there are concerted efforts from other people doing the same.
The Solaris internals are so different (and superior frankly) to Linux's that to state they are chasing Linux because they feel inferior is a bad joke.
Sun has been mostly a services company, even at times when they were writing they own tools for their hardware, they always sold you a packaged service with hardware, software and support. They did not care much about you installing Solaris in many machines, simply because they were no chasing licensing as their main source of revenue.
I am sure they are not as stupid as you claim them to be, but go on, convince us, show us where they have misappropriated the role of representatives of the FOSS community (heck, Stallman is the father of the GPL and Emacs, he has as much right to talk and represent people as Linus does).
If Linux is never 0wnd by the likes of MS and Novell it will be more thanks to the work of Stallman & Co in the legal arena than to the efforts of Linus and the Linux developers. Without the legal framework created by Stallman they would be completely toast by now (companies would have run away with the code and developers would have no incentive to contribute just for corps to make money without helping everybody else).
If Linus had gone along with BSD or closed source we wouldn't have the alternative we have today. The BSDs are all nice and what have you, but many developers and corporations sharing their work sure as hell want something in return, the GPL grants them exactly that.
Many people here seem to be scared of a person with solid principles, but in an era when not even politicians have a resemblance of them, to some it seems strange there are still people out there willing to be consistent even if they are not popular.
Sun, even during its darkest days, always has promoted (or at least paid lip service) to open standards, has released bunches of stuff to the development community (NFS and OpenOfice, to name only two), have truly innovated (Java, NFS, SPARC architecture) and in general have shouldered their way into their position of importance based on offering a good product, not based on threatening their costumers with patent violation bullshit, breaking the law, or strong arming unfairly their business partners.
Some people have this paranoid view of corporations out to screw anybody in order to make profits. This is clearly bullshit. Many people get along quite well with big corporations, and many corporations can and do make profits while maintaining and promoting and attitude of good ethical standards.
Say what you wish about Sun, or about Schwartz, I have mostly good things to say about both, during many years where other companies have really been out to screw their clients, users and partners Sun has behaved mostly impeccably, I have seen how they will fall over backwards to lend a hand when needed (and this in several countries, so clearly there is corporate culture that encourages this) which is certainly difficult in the business world but not utterly impossible as some derided minds would like us to believe.
Coincidentally they have been more consistent since then and have started to make profits again. I doubt that is due to chance or incompetence.
Schwartz is clearly a friend not a foe, so you could put your baseless skepticism to rest about this one, go anc chek his blog, he has been singing to the same tune for quite a while.
The other part is all the companies and people that made email a central part of how they do business.
The smtp protocol is not adequate for this, and although the spammer should be punished for abusing the system one has to wonder how fair it is to do so given the system's propensity to be abused.
Slashdot Mirror
They have feathers, lay eggs and most of them can fly.
We eat a few of them daily, or in special occasions (Xmas, US's Thanksgiving Day, etc).
He certainly offered sites for Soviet Missiles.
But this was after the US supported an invasion, plotted to oust the new government and threatened Moscow from Turkey.
It was not like Cuba pulled out their paranoia out of nowhere.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
The wealthy can always afford treatment regardless of politics.
In all countries with state provided health care wealthy people provide for themselves if they can afford it.
The important point is that poor people have medical service that far exceeds what they could get otherwise.
Even in a country like Mexico, where the state provided service is far from perfect (I have painful experiences of this) many people without any means receive proper medical treatment that they could not afford otherwise.
This is of course much better in rich countries like Canada, the UK or Norway.
Imperfect, hell yes, but at the very least you know that there is a service you can rely on if needed.
I know how the rabid anti-Castro types work: throw innuendo, half truths and incendiary propaganda against any positives that had come from the Cuban Revolution.
They are incapable of rational thinking and will go fuming in the mouth after any positive aspect of life in Cuba.
I will deal with only the first bits of the link being referenced, because frankly I don't have much time or inclination to deal with vulgar propaganda, but somebody has to do it I suppose.
First let me state what may not be obvious: I am disillusioned with the government in Cuba, like many Latinamericans that came of age during the Cold War, there was a time I looked at Castro and Che Guevara like heroes. But reality and and open mind (that the poster I am replying to clearly lacks) as well as the opportunity to travel to several Communist and former Communist countries, made clear that those Revolutionary Heroes had failed their peoples badly. The economics did not work, democracy, even the type envisioned by Communism inside the single party, did not exist, freedom of expression was crushed, personality cult was paramount (which created weak societies politically), repression was widespread. In synthesis, the balance is very negative.
But, and this is a big but, it is just not fair to lie about the achievements of the people in power, no matter how flawed they have been and how pernicious in other aspects they have proved.
I will not deal with the pictures of the hospital. The website says they are of a hospital in Havana. We only see a building with cows in front of it. With no independent verification I would only say that you should not believe all what you find in the Internet.
But the 2nd link in the page is more interesting (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/galler ies/cubahealth/pages/page1.html), here we are first showed photographs of the dire situation in Cuban hospitals and clinics.
But for the person that is not lazy, and that knows that real journalists have to cite their sources, can go to read the actual article, which I quote and comment:
"Although health care has continued to be a high government priority, with overall expenditure increasing 17 percent between 1989 and 1994, according to PAHO, the lack of foreign currency is reflected in sharp decreases in health care investment, a growing scarcity of drugs and the inability of the health care sector to easily obtain disposable medical supplies and replacement parts for aging, pre-revolution equipment made in the United States."
So actually the Cuban government increased health spending when the Berlin Wall fell. Unsurprising considering that Soviet aid was gone, but still positive.
"These shortages, while not affecting overall public health indicators, have resulted in increases of treatable conditions such as acute respiratory infections and intestinal infectious diseases, among others. Food intake in Cuba has fallen below nutritional requirements in recent years."
So public health indicators are not affected. And here I refer you to the WHO website if you are so inclined. Or the OEA (Organizacion de Estados Americanos in Spanish). Or whatever other credible source you care to find (anti-Castro websites, given their nature, are not credible).
I need somebody to explain how health indicators, as recognized by international bodies, have not fallen, but in the other hand treatable conditions have increased, this seems paradoxical and may need more explaining, but overall health indicators are positive and this can't be denied.
Finally:
"The Cuban government, and many Cubans, blame the shortages and general decline in the quality of health services on the embargo. While the sale of most pharmaceuticals and medical supplies are not prohibited under its terms, U.S. government procedures for selling drugs to Cuba are "difficult, discouraging and cumbersome," according to an Oxfam America study, and few companies participate. Many products are not available in ot
Do you remember gopher, do you?
Or even ftp using a browser.
the http:/// is not casual. it simply wasn't clear back then that you would not need to specify the protocol used in the future.
The idea of linking documents in a computer network was revolutionary and in spite of all the flash and youtubes and what have you, that simple idea is the core of the Internet as we use it today.
THe disparate bits and pieces to create it where all around the place but it took the ingenuity of Sir Tim to put all those bits together in a stroke of simplicity and genius.
Then they can develop their own OS using GPL2 or their own licensing terms.
I am sure they have the resources for that small enterprise.
MS could do several things:
-Offer a free guarantee to any distributor of Free OSes that they will not pursue any patents. Something legally binding would be nice.
-Work with Linux distros distributors and maintainers to remove any patent encumbered bits in Linux creating distros free of MS patents (this for the US market of course, in the EU and many other places this is mooth point and MS's sable rattling looks idiotic and vacous).
-Work in high visibility interoperability projects.
In other words, show good faith.
This divide an conquer using the small commercial Linux distros (and to their eternal shame, Novell) shows there is no good faith on their side. They will continue with this idiotic series of agreement, more reminiscent of a gangster's protection racket, until the big players (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware and others) are the only ones left.
Then MS would have 2 options: go to court (they will lose whatever happens: most of their "patents" would be found to be without merit, and the ones where they are found to have a point, according to the courts, will be swiftly removed from the corresponding distros).
So in other words, these companies are entering in agreements in which they are getting nothing in return.
Pathetic.
We just don't like it.
If I am going to work hard for third parties to benefit, I want something in return. If it is not money, it is improvements to the code I wrote.
BSD provides neither, so frankly, no thanks.
So there is little difference in presenting things either way.
That has a name, it is collaborationism.
You forget about the role of German (and other countries') companies in WWII.
Outrageous things have been asked of corporations. Compliance was not the right answer.
.... fell appart with collaborationist German companies in WWII.
There is a point when your profits no longer take precedence in the presence of clear moral evil.
Sun does not sell music and needs Engineers to innovate and technicians to fulfill their service obligations.
It is not Sun fault if pure IT companies are less valuable than media ones (which Apple has become), to compare 2 companies profiting in such disparate fields is completely pointless.
That guy is talking about the desktop experience. This thread clearly is talking about the internals and overall performance. These 2 issues do not intercept very often, specially since the discussion we are having is centering clearly in machines firmly palced in a datacentre.
To leverage the development of all other people out there.
There is little point of keeping reinventing the wheel when there are concerted efforts from other people doing the same.
The Solaris internals are so different (and superior frankly) to Linux's that to state they are chasing Linux because they feel inferior is a bad joke.
So the BSDs out there are not direct competitors. Apple is been helped to become one.
Why don't you take the man to his word?
So the conspiracy theory regarding that bit of your argument sound implausible frankly.
Under such flawed premis gcc is also in the same boat, since you can distribute binaries without source code as well.
The Sun haters are really making up a storm in a very small tea cup.
What in the name of the bunny stops you to make the source code of your Java classes GPLed?
Sun has been mostly a services company, even at times when they were writing they own tools for their hardware, they always sold you a packaged service with hardware, software and support. They did not care much about you installing Solaris in many machines, simply because they were no chasing licensing as their main source of revenue.
I am sure they are not as stupid as you claim them to be, but go on, convince us, show us where they have misappropriated the role of representatives of the FOSS community (heck, Stallman is the father of the GPL and Emacs, he has as much right to talk and represent people as Linus does).
If Linux is never 0wnd by the likes of MS and Novell it will be more thanks to the work of Stallman & Co in the legal arena than to the efforts of Linus and the Linux developers. Without the legal framework created by Stallman they would be completely toast by now (companies would have run away with the code and developers would have no incentive to contribute just for corps to make money without helping everybody else).
If Linus had gone along with BSD or closed source we wouldn't have the alternative we have today. The BSDs are all nice and what have you, but many developers and corporations sharing their work sure as hell want something in return, the GPL grants them exactly that.
Many people here seem to be scared of a person with solid principles, but in an era when not even politicians have a resemblance of them, to some it seems strange there are still people out there willing to be consistent even if they are not popular.
Burn your bridges.
This call to isolationism is completely idiotic.
I just don't get some people here.
Sun, even during its darkest days, always has promoted (or at least paid lip service) to open standards, has released bunches of stuff to the development community (NFS and OpenOfice, to name only two), have truly innovated (Java, NFS, SPARC architecture) and in general have shouldered their way into their position of importance based on offering a good product, not based on threatening their costumers with patent violation bullshit, breaking the law, or strong arming unfairly their business partners.
Some people have this paranoid view of corporations out to screw anybody in order to make profits. This is clearly bullshit. Many people get along quite well with big corporations, and many corporations can and do make profits while maintaining and promoting and attitude of good ethical standards.
Say what you wish about Sun, or about Schwartz, I have mostly good things to say about both, during many years where other companies have really been out to screw their clients, users and partners Sun has behaved mostly impeccably, I have seen how they will fall over backwards to lend a hand when needed (and this in several countries, so clearly there is corporate culture that encourages this) which is certainly difficult in the business world but not utterly impossible as some derided minds would like us to believe.
Coincidentally they have been more consistent since then and have started to make profits again. I doubt that is due to chance or incompetence.
Schwartz is clearly a friend not a foe, so you could put your baseless skepticism to rest about this one, go anc chek his blog, he has been singing to the same tune for quite a while.
The other part is all the companies and people that made email a central part of how they do business.
The smtp protocol is not adequate for this, and although the spammer should be punished for abusing the system one has to wonder how fair it is to do so given the system's propensity to be abused.