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User: DennisInDallas

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  1. uh, 10 days is two weeks on Americans Are Seriously Sick · · Score: 1

    you have the unions to thank for the 5 day work week you insensitive, white-collar clod.

    But, the observation that the US of Alien idea of associating the cost of health care with employment being at least partly to blame is spot on.

    When the relationship between the HC Insuarance provider and the patient is temporary, as it is when provided as a benefit of employment, there is an incentive to defer treatment. Every other ascpect of out lives we buy into the concept that preventative maintenance and early detection reduces costs. What do we say about computer programs; when it works it should say nothing but when it fails it should do so noisily and early. Your health care provider is going to treat you within the terms of the agreement that they have with the insurance carrier, he who pays the piper calls the tunes. You may think that the little black spot is a matter for concern, but if the provider is only going to treat the things that the carrier pays for, and what you pay the provider for is covered under the agreement between the provider and the carrier as well.

    If the insurance carriers were concerned about the cost of medical care over the life of the patient rather than the cost over the length of the contract (employers tend to switch from time to time) there would be a much greater emphasis on nipping it in the bud.

    Of course there is another concept popular in this modern USofA, it's generally cheaper to replace it than it is to repair it. Which again takes us back to the lack of incentive for the employer to pay for medical treatment of the worker.

    Insurance is designed to mitigate risk by distributing the cost across a group. Kinda like a simple machine distributes the load across a greater distance. Grouping the insured by the company that they work for makes less sense the longer I look at it. Before long people with certain genes won't be able to get jobs, regardless of their skills, training, attitude, etc.

    My boss has only a limited interest in my health. He has a wholely different perspective on it than I do. Why does he have so much control over my health care and I have so little. (yes, that's a period)

    Oh yeah, I pay way more than the deductible every year, I think a lot of people do - otherwise there wouldn't be Flexible Spending Accounts. Or people would only fund their FSA to the deductioble.

  2. storing enery by pumping water on Store Your Own Juice · · Score: 1

    I don't even remember where, it was back in the '70s... what we refer to as a micro hydro electric set up now. But he had some wind and solar too and one of things that he was doing when he had a surplus from the wind/solar was to pump water up into a tank so that he could use it to generate with on those calm dark nights. I don't think that those turbines would work well backwards as a pump, but what do i know

  3. the devil hisself? on The Comedy of Scott McNealy · · Score: 1

    You do see a lot of successful religious endeavors spending the bulk of their efforts being against something, homos or drugs or popularly elected south american presidents. I think that they do this because it's easier to get people excited about being unhappy about something than it is to get them excited about being content. and it's hard to sustain being excited about good things without slipping into that contented complacency. That new car buzz never seems to outlast the payments - maybe that's more of a short coming of materialism as a spiritual center.

    ANYWAY, I remember people refering to the use of different text editors as a "holy war". People argue over aspects of this industry being art or science, wholely missing the truth that this is religion.

    I think that Sun would have gone the way of Control Data or Harris or Honeywell a long time ago if it wasn't for the religious fevor that the tiger brought to the table. I'm sure he wrestles with his own demons, but all and all I think he's left us with a pretty impressive checked list.

  4. Re:People with Too Much Personality on Behavioral Interviews for New Hires? · · Score: 1

    I don't know for certain, but the rumor was repeated to me from enough sources that it began to look true...

    The guy behind the selectric would "convalesce" between revisions.

    I think designing things like that would probably be enough to send one over the edge - I have no problem with that. The part I don't get is why he would come back for more.

    Just trying to fix the buggers invaded my dreams. I was so glad when the decwriter made the scene.

  5. Re:Marriage Vs. Single on The Impact of Episodic Gaming · · Score: 1

    married? may I suggest bridge. Have 5 other couples over once a month, play a rubber at three tables then move the winners east and the losers west. When your partner wins the bid you bring drinks.

  6. conflicting questions on Is Corporate Speak Invading Your IT Department? · · Score: 1

    Necessary evil? - no.
    To climb the corporate ladder? - yes.

  7. Re:shot on goal - wide on Americans Gearing up to Fight Global Warming · · Score: 1

    you and Bush are both on crack! Burning is burning and it doesn't make any difference if it's a fossil fuel or a agricultural fuel - if you're burning it you're emitting carbon into the atomosphere. But then you seem to emit a lot anyway.

  8. treason on Climate Researchers Feeling Heat From White House · · Score: 0, Troll

    There is NO global warming! Scientists that claim otherwise should be charged with treason. We can not tolerate this type of irresponsibility in a time of war. They can't really be scientists at all or they would be saying these things. They're just a bunch of Godless commies that want to say bad things about our president. They're probably all child pornographers, too. TAP their phones this instant!

  9. shot on goal - wide on Americans Gearing up to Fight Global Warming · · Score: 1

    I thought the goal was to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing the combustion of fossil fuels would address that goal, switching to another combustible fuel - not so much. I think you're missing the point.

    But I agree that there are a lot of similarities between the Bush administration and the strong federal leadership of Germany during the 30s & 40s.

    Nobody can say that Bush doesn't listen to the people, we just think he ought to get a warrant first.

    Of course Bush doesn't even recognize that there is a goal, to him global warming is just something made up by those people that the geeky kids who did well in school grew into. Any attempts to reduce emissions would be bad for the economy and therefore bad for Americans... Let the people in Venezuela, Chile and Brasil worry about emissions.

  10. four more years! on Americans Gearing up to Fight Global Warming · · Score: 1

    I really believe that W has a plan to wean us gracefully from our addiction to oil...

    The potential of a huge windfall for his buddies precipitated by a global demand outpacing supply can't hold a candle to his sense of caring for the American people.

    Speaking of W and plans...

    Q- You know the big difference between viet nam and iraq?
    A- W had a plan for getting out of viet nam

  11. 70% willing to take the bus on Americans Gearing up to Fight Global Warming · · Score: 1

    I call bull shit. I think they mean that 70% of respondants are willing to mark the box on the survey indicating that they think taking the bus is a good idea and everybody else should do it.

    If 70% of the people were taking the bus there would be a lot fewer cars on the road.

    Maybe they meant 70% of the people would take the bus if they didn't have a fancy new car with air conditioning and 7 speakers.

    Or 70% of the people would take the bus if the bus ran down the street in front of their house and they put a bus stop in front of their neighbor's house.

    or 70% would take the bus if they hadn't already invested in so much in cards with an incapatable architecture

  12. just another reason on Ballmer Babies Banned From iPods and Google · · Score: 2, Funny

    I usually can't work up a lot of pity for the obscenely rich, but it's really got to suck to be a little balmer - for so many reasons

  13. Re:Make no mistake on Microsoft's Not So Happy Family · · Score: 1

    lemme see if I got yer logic straight...

    Bush is really HELPING the people by launching a new crusade and the patriot act will ultimately strengthen the bill of rights.

  14. lake wobegone on Misconfigured Webserver, Threats to Call FBI · · Score: 1

    were all the children are above average

  15. Re:95% Rant; 5% Interesting Ideas on Game Devs Burn Another House Down · · Score: 1

    you'll read faster when you stop moving your lips

  16. RFID tags on Solving the Home Library Problem? · · Score: 1

    I read a nice little bit of sci-fi on salon wherein one of the sub-plots was a home organization system with semi-transluscent boxes and rfid tags on every thing... then when you needed to find an item you went to the console, queried for the item by any of the index columns and once the item was selected it was located by its tag and the box was lit up, or the item was lit up and it glowed through the box - I'm not sure. It was just fiction anyway.

    The current state of the tags doesn't seem to support this; the small enough tags (price tags) need to be within about 6-12" of the reciever and the tags with the range (toll tags) are too big and cumbersome to glue to a book. But I haven't looked at the specs in a while and things are always changing.

    I suppose that a smart bunny could build a reciever into the shelf in such a way thatit was convienent to scan the book when it was stored on the shelf and transmit the id to the database, then it would just be a matter of lighting up the shelf when book was identified as a search target. I guess just having the database spit out the shelf location at which the book was stored would be acceptable without the lighting up part, but turning on lights is pitching to my wheel house when it comes to hardware hacking.

    But then there is the matter of discipline, if you remove a book from the shelf with the intent of replacing it as soon as you check this one reference and then the kettle boils, the database will continue to show the book as being on the shelf and the damn thing will be on the floor in front of the throne. You'll need one of those fancy Japaneese robots to roam around your house and discipline you when you fail to follow procedure.

  17. both of me will be happy then on Windows XP on Intel Mac Confirmed · · Score: 1

    well the two main identities anyway, it's gonna take a lot to quite the rabble in the background

  18. can't get no respect on Top 5 Reasons People Dismiss PostgreSQL · · Score: 1

    use postgres, we can even get a post about it going without about half the posts being about how some other rdbms implements date data types.

    They need Rodney Dangerfield to be the spokesperson, load up the bus with boothbabes and beer and head out to do a tour of LAN parties - then we'll get things going on.

  19. aruba on The New Face of Script Kiddiez · · Score: 1

    Kinda like that girl from Alabama that went to Aruba to somke pot and/or drink and/or other stuff that would have been illegal for her to do at home, got killed or has otherwise gone missing and sparks a large conflaguration of peoples to trying to enforce US law on foriegn soil.

    The problem with all those foreigners is that they're so foreign

  20. converge on a common chipset on Dell Opens Up About Desktop Linux · · Score: 2, Funny

    the comment about converging on a common distro seems kinda funny comin' from a guy who built his business by never selling two like motherboards.

    I guess to be fair Dell's come a long way, but it still doesn't belong in the ranks of IBM, HP or even Sun.

  21. Re:duh! on Adult Gamers and Their Ulterior Motives for Gaming · · Score: 1

    obviously not posted by the parent of a teen...

    I have to threaten the kids with grounding/loss of priv/telling their freinds that they play with the old man just to keep from getting beaten too badly.

    Conversely, I buy 'em ice cream when they let me win.

  22. Vista wont suck on Why Vista Won't Suck · · Score: 1

    ...as long as vista is the only thing running.

    None of these "issues" are casued by the O/S, it's the applications that give us all the grief. Embrace the bloat, when windows does everything you need to have done and you cease to run apps you will discover that Windows really is best. When was the last time solitare coredumped

  23. born in a cave on Prostitutes Call for a Ban on GTA · · Score: 1

    I didn't know tht we let truck drivers post here

  24. NASA goes into healthcare - the final solution on Botnet Attack Shuts Down Hospital Network · · Score: 1

    yeah, if NASA was in charge of treating illness and injury... well I don't think it would work very well to say the least. I'm sure there are some very smart people working for NASA but I don't think there would be very many of them I would want sewing my flesh. Heck, there probably isn't that many of them I would want driving the wagon to haul my bleeding butt to the hospital. Let the rocket scientist stick to their remote controled toys and find me people with strong and gentle hands to set my broken bones.

    I remember the uproar over Hillary wanting to get the goverment involved in a large scale social service funded by the tax payer. When you start talking about how NASA would run this I conjure up images of a sci-fi book I read when I was a kid. the author posed a high tech variation on Hitler's final solution - take all the miserable people and launch them away in rockets thereby ending all misery at least for those not launched.

  25. PC's need a tag to identify important systems on Botnet Attack Shuts Down Hospital Network · · Score: 1

    so that they can comunicate the information to other systems... Duh.

    30 freaking years ago the Medlab(r) system connected (via tty protocal) the SMA and the Coulter to the order entry system so that the tests were requested at the nurses station, bar coded sticky labels printed out for the phelbotomists and running the samples through 'em updated the billing system. If we were still trying to use this same technology today the buildings would colapse under the weight of all the twisted pair. Wireless connected PDAs being used so that pointy haired suits can get their email doesn't seem to make nearly as much sense as allowing doctors to access a patients chart from somewhere other than the foot of the patients' bed, and how many nurses (on H1B visas) would it take to keep those charts current. If the machines didn't talk to each other people would have to pass all that information. Using people to propagate information creates a band pass filter. They can only pass on what they understand and even then they will only transmit what they think is important.

    Has bandwidth become a commodity that needs to be rationed in inverse proportion to the importance of the use, If the information is really important you can't use IP to pass it. I would think that there the IS personel at the hospital could block off traffic to the outside world, but I suspect that the people that make the hospital work need to be able to send and receive email and ftp files back and forth to vendors and vendors need to ssh in to perform diagnostics and maintenance and stuff like that there.

    The deal is when you're out there sowing your bot seeds how do you know when your sticking on a regular bean counter's pc or a pc that is plugged up into a network with mission critical applications?