Well a 10" tablet is quite silly. And here on/., we will call tablets "content sipping" devices in a way meant to be derogatory. Many of us consume content like the newspaper. And a 7" tablet really is the most convenient form factor. Also for personal move watching. Laptops only work if you have a flat surface. Good luck on an airplane (unless you're in first class) or by the pool or while you're waiting for your kid to finish swimming lessons. 2 in 1 convertibles are nice, but holding a 10" screen gets tiresome. I don't mind it but my wife wouldn't even consider it. Takes away from the enjoyment. Unless you feel compelled to dash of an answer to your email within seconds, sometimes *reading* it on a tablet while out and about makes sense. After thinking you can go home and formulate an intelligent response.
Android is the most popular mobile OS and Google hasn't been able to leverage their size to push much of anything. Google Plus? I think Google also has a music service? In this case, the services are probably so similar that it's hard for consumers to tell them apart and the convenience of being preloaded may be enough. But this is only true in parity product situations.
I hate to argue with somebody who is actually doing something when I'm not (I work for a company that provides all of the tools we need). But the cost of office subscriptions is *much* cheaper than the purchase prices in the past. Office used to run around $100 for the purchase. And then upgrades every other year were in the $60 range for an average of $80/year. Now a subscription is $60/year! So unless you were going to stay on old versions, the subscription model is price competitive.
Insurance companies add overhead (15% overhead to be exact) but they typically make up for this (and more) by being able to negotiate better rates. The alternative would be mandated rates (or single player). However with single payer (or in many traditional insurance plans), the patients have no incentive to think about costs at all. This is hugely problematic as there is a wide range of expensive (and marginally useful) treatments out there. In single payer, the government becomes the only insurance company and decides what care you do or do not get. This isn't awful. But with no other changes, single payer will give everybody overpriced healthcare until such time as the country can't afford it. High-deductible plans actually seem like a good choice (whether private or government financed, but no country has HSA-like single payer system).
One result of this is that we are seeing many "urgent care" places spring up. You go there is you aren't sure how serious something is. I've gone there and been told to just tough it out costing my insurance only like $80 vs an expensive ER visit. I've gone there and told that I'd better get to the emergency room soon or I'll end up being an amputee. Cost an extra $80 over just going to the emergency room but still savings. Consumers have to have an incentive to control their healthcare costs. Those are very difficult to put together. It's not an easy problem.
Over 60 are not necessarily a higher risk for auto insurers. They have a higher accident rate. But they tend to be driving slower and cause less damage. A dozen parking lot fender benders have a much lower payout than one ramming into a school bus.
Don't worry. They've already found a way around this. Now bars have drink specials on the most feminine drink. i.e. anything pink with an umbrella in it is only $2. has the same effect. If a man really just wants to get plastered, he can buy those too. End result is mostly the same.
I don't know. I think this seems ripe for a challenge. If I can charge seniors less, why can't I charge them more. I imagine nobody is bothering to sue because not too many restaurants have as much scale as Tinder. If somebody does sue, I imagine that they will win. However, restaurants will just structure the discount differently (something that Tinder can't do). Many restaurants offer "early bird" specials. Who can eat dinner at 4pm on a Tuesday? Realistically only seniors. (Although if you want to take an afternoon off to save $1 on sandwich, go for it). Also many of them have "senior portions." You get less food for less money. But probably 20% less food for a 10% discount. So it's probably not a good deal unless you are late enough in life that you have low caloric needs.
And emergency claims rarely (if ever) get denied. In fact we seem to have the opposite problem. Insurers are paying obscene amounts to out of network providers (with whom they haven't pre-negotiated) in emergency situations. I've heard of $100k for a one hour consult in an emergency room and insurance has paid it. Again they have to pay out 85% (or more) in claims so you can't blame the insurance companies profits for the problems with our medical system.
They tell you the price up front. And if you don't want to pay them, you can do it yourself. And if you don't like the price, you can go to another shop. I don't think this is much of an issue at all. Mechanics seem to charge incredibly high rates. But I don't think that should be illegal.
Attacking the "evil" insurance companies is a great way to get a +5 but is completely divorced from reality. Nobody pays claims anymore. When you go to a doctor, they get pre-authorization from your insurance company. I've never heard of a visit being pre-authorized and then denied. Sure they could deny the visit up front but that's not really denying a claim. And insurance companies aren't in the business of denying care. They'd rather you get something addressed right away when it's cheaper to fix. They way you save money as an insurance provider is
(1) Encourage people to get healthy and save medical costs. (2) Encourage preventive medicine like an annual physical (3) Negotiate for discounts with the doctors.
None of those amount to denying claims. Also insurance has to pay out 85% of premiums as medical care. It's a requirement of the patient protection and affordable care act.
The batteries seem just not to be sized well enough to handle the current draw and it's a source of constant frustration. The phone probably should all be throttled from day one. But then they would all run like crap. Or you know, Apple could use better batteries that can handle the load.
More specifically the recognized that, if the battery is degraded, that running at full-speed would result in random shutdowns. The fact that the batteries they are using isn't up to the task at hand is the real issue here.
But they only give you medication while you're in the hospital. So if you come in with a trauma, they will load you up with morphine. But at some point you get sent home with a prescription. After I had my wisdom teeth out, my dentist told me to get the script filled immediately and take one right away rather than waiting until I felt discomfort (presumably because the medicine takes time to work). So if you have a lot of people leaving the hospital with a long drive home, they could be filling their scripts on the way. Although I'm guessing that there was also a lot of abuse here.
Spectre and Meltdown are only exploitable if you can already execute arbitrary code on the machine. They aren't ever an initial attack vector, so I don't understand your post at all. These require that you already have local privileges and, on the devices you initially mentioned, an adversary wouldn't already have this. They need some alternative mechanism to deliver an initial payload.
Equipment that, if an adversary can install the exploit code, is already owned. And installing the patches may cause timing issue that breaks things. In other words, the type of use for Windows XP is such that patching it would be nonsense.
This is a good post. Too bad it didn't have your karma modifier. These companies are huge and if any of them were to fail, it would send huge ripples throughout the economy. The primary difference between a real company and a financial company is that real companies use investor capital and money from creditors who get paid a return for their risk. Financial companies tend to use consumer deposits as their source of capital and, as a result, need to be treated differently. That's not to say that maybe we shouldn't look at some of these other companies but it would be a much different line of reasoning.
I read the link. It seems quite alarmist. But it didn't really address the FDIC insurance other than some fear mongering. Basically seems to be that if the FDIC can't repay your losses, you could lose money. I'm not convinced that's a real risk which is probably why this isn't get much mainstream coverage.
It doesn't seem like you are really objecting to "foreign monopolies" but really any foreign company doing business here at all. That seems reasonable at first until you realize that there really is no such thing as a foreign company anymore. What makes them foreign? Their shares are listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange even if 80% of the stock holders are in the US? What about if they are listed on NYSE but have mostly foreign ownership?
In case this question is serious, the issue is not that there won't be banks left, its that large banks have many counter-parties. And it's not transparent who those counter-parties are and what would happen to them should the bank fail. Depositors of course get paid back via the FDIC (at a cost to taxpayers). But other counter-parties may end up bankrupt as well. During the period of unwinding, it will be impossible to know which entities in the country are solvent and which ones are not. This tends to throw markets into a tizzy. And while this is happening, certain things can't get done. Like for example, the issuing of municipal debt (is the insurer solvent nobody knows). Because the US economy relies so heavily on debt ( a separate but somewhat related problem ), the economic impact would be quite significant.
Slashdot Mirror
Phones are bolstered by having batteries that wear out way to soon.
Well a 10" tablet is quite silly. And here on /., we will call tablets "content sipping" devices in a way meant to be derogatory. Many of us consume content like the newspaper. And a 7" tablet really is the most convenient form factor. Also for personal move watching. Laptops only work if you have a flat surface. Good luck on an airplane (unless you're in first class) or by the pool or while you're waiting for your kid to finish swimming lessons. 2 in 1 convertibles are nice, but holding a 10" screen gets tiresome. I don't mind it but my wife wouldn't even consider it. Takes away from the enjoyment. Unless you feel compelled to dash of an answer to your email within seconds, sometimes *reading* it on a tablet while out and about makes sense. After thinking you can go home and formulate an intelligent response.
Android is the most popular mobile OS and Google hasn't been able to leverage their size to push much of anything. Google Plus? I think Google also has a music service? In this case, the services are probably so similar that it's hard for consumers to tell them apart and the convenience of being preloaded may be enough. But this is only true in parity product situations.
A tag which is apparently blocked now. Guess no more posts containing sarcasm are allowed!
I didn't get the sarcasm either. Usually on /. we use a tag to make it clear.
I hate to argue with somebody who is actually doing something when I'm not (I work for a company that provides all of the tools we need). But the cost of office subscriptions is *much* cheaper than the purchase prices in the past. Office used to run around $100 for the purchase. And then upgrades every other year were in the $60 range for an average of $80/year. Now a subscription is $60/year! So unless you were going to stay on old versions, the subscription model is price competitive.
Insurance companies add overhead (15% overhead to be exact) but they typically make up for this (and more) by being able to negotiate better rates. The alternative would be mandated rates (or single player). However with single payer (or in many traditional insurance plans), the patients have no incentive to think about costs at all. This is hugely problematic as there is a wide range of expensive (and marginally useful) treatments out there. In single payer, the government becomes the only insurance company and decides what care you do or do not get. This isn't awful. But with no other changes, single payer will give everybody overpriced healthcare until such time as the country can't afford it. High-deductible plans actually seem like a good choice (whether private or government financed, but no country has HSA-like single payer system). One result of this is that we are seeing many "urgent care" places spring up. You go there is you aren't sure how serious something is. I've gone there and been told to just tough it out costing my insurance only like $80 vs an expensive ER visit. I've gone there and told that I'd better get to the emergency room soon or I'll end up being an amputee. Cost an extra $80 over just going to the emergency room but still savings. Consumers have to have an incentive to control their healthcare costs. Those are very difficult to put together. It's not an easy problem.
Over 60 are not necessarily a higher risk for auto insurers. They have a higher accident rate. But they tend to be driving slower and cause less damage. A dozen parking lot fender benders have a much lower payout than one ramming into a school bus.
Don't worry. They've already found a way around this. Now bars have drink specials on the most feminine drink. i.e. anything pink with an umbrella in it is only $2. has the same effect. If a man really just wants to get plastered, he can buy those too. End result is mostly the same.
I don't know. I think this seems ripe for a challenge. If I can charge seniors less, why can't I charge them more. I imagine nobody is bothering to sue because not too many restaurants have as much scale as Tinder. If somebody does sue, I imagine that they will win. However, restaurants will just structure the discount differently (something that Tinder can't do). Many restaurants offer "early bird" specials. Who can eat dinner at 4pm on a Tuesday? Realistically only seniors. (Although if you want to take an afternoon off to save $1 on sandwich, go for it). Also many of them have "senior portions." You get less food for less money. But probably 20% less food for a 10% discount. So it's probably not a good deal unless you are late enough in life that you have low caloric needs.
And emergency claims rarely (if ever) get denied. In fact we seem to have the opposite problem. Insurers are paying obscene amounts to out of network providers (with whom they haven't pre-negotiated) in emergency situations. I've heard of $100k for a one hour consult in an emergency room and insurance has paid it. Again they have to pay out 85% (or more) in claims so you can't blame the insurance companies profits for the problems with our medical system.
Why does this suck about Facebook? They have exactly what you're looking for all in one place.
They tell you the price up front. And if you don't want to pay them, you can do it yourself. And if you don't like the price, you can go to another shop. I don't think this is much of an issue at all. Mechanics seem to charge incredibly high rates. But I don't think that should be illegal.
Attacking the "evil" insurance companies is a great way to get a +5 but is completely divorced from reality. Nobody pays claims anymore. When you go to a doctor, they get pre-authorization from your insurance company. I've never heard of a visit being pre-authorized and then denied. Sure they could deny the visit up front but that's not really denying a claim. And insurance companies aren't in the business of denying care. They'd rather you get something addressed right away when it's cheaper to fix. They way you save money as an insurance provider is (1) Encourage people to get healthy and save medical costs. (2) Encourage preventive medicine like an annual physical (3) Negotiate for discounts with the doctors. None of those amount to denying claims. Also insurance has to pay out 85% of premiums as medical care. It's a requirement of the patient protection and affordable care act.
Mazda's engines or race car engines? Race car engines. That's +1 Interesting. If it's the Mazda engine that's +1 Informative but also depressing
The batteries seem just not to be sized well enough to handle the current draw and it's a source of constant frustration. The phone probably should all be throttled from day one. But then they would all run like crap. Or you know, Apple could use better batteries that can handle the load.
More specifically the recognized that, if the battery is degraded, that running at full-speed would result in random shutdowns. The fact that the batteries they are using isn't up to the task at hand is the real issue here.
Yeah so it seems reasonable that people leaving the hospital went right to the pharmacy to fill their medications.
But they only give you medication while you're in the hospital. So if you come in with a trauma, they will load you up with morphine. But at some point you get sent home with a prescription. After I had my wisdom teeth out, my dentist told me to get the script filled immediately and take one right away rather than waiting until I felt discomfort (presumably because the medicine takes time to work). So if you have a lot of people leaving the hospital with a long drive home, they could be filling their scripts on the way. Although I'm guessing that there was also a lot of abuse here.
Spectre and Meltdown are only exploitable if you can already execute arbitrary code on the machine. They aren't ever an initial attack vector, so I don't understand your post at all. These require that you already have local privileges and, on the devices you initially mentioned, an adversary wouldn't already have this. They need some alternative mechanism to deliver an initial payload.
Equipment that, if an adversary can install the exploit code, is already owned. And installing the patches may cause timing issue that breaks things. In other words, the type of use for Windows XP is such that patching it would be nonsense.
This is a good post. Too bad it didn't have your karma modifier. These companies are huge and if any of them were to fail, it would send huge ripples throughout the economy. The primary difference between a real company and a financial company is that real companies use investor capital and money from creditors who get paid a return for their risk. Financial companies tend to use consumer deposits as their source of capital and, as a result, need to be treated differently. That's not to say that maybe we shouldn't look at some of these other companies but it would be a much different line of reasoning.
I read the link. It seems quite alarmist. But it didn't really address the FDIC insurance other than some fear mongering. Basically seems to be that if the FDIC can't repay your losses, you could lose money. I'm not convinced that's a real risk which is probably why this isn't get much mainstream coverage.
It doesn't seem like you are really objecting to "foreign monopolies" but really any foreign company doing business here at all. That seems reasonable at first until you realize that there really is no such thing as a foreign company anymore. What makes them foreign? Their shares are listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange even if 80% of the stock holders are in the US? What about if they are listed on NYSE but have mostly foreign ownership?
In case this question is serious, the issue is not that there won't be banks left, its that large banks have many counter-parties. And it's not transparent who those counter-parties are and what would happen to them should the bank fail. Depositors of course get paid back via the FDIC (at a cost to taxpayers). But other counter-parties may end up bankrupt as well. During the period of unwinding, it will be impossible to know which entities in the country are solvent and which ones are not. This tends to throw markets into a tizzy. And while this is happening, certain things can't get done. Like for example, the issuing of municipal debt (is the insurer solvent nobody knows). Because the US economy relies so heavily on debt ( a separate but somewhat related problem ), the economic impact would be quite significant.