If you ever have to again, point out that they are covered under HIPAA regulations and those call for guarantor information to not be SSN#s explicitly. Paying premiums counts (as I understand it, IANAL, but I have experience writing software in this arena)
Then how do you make Social Security claims (or Medicare/Medicaid)? My health insurance ID number isn't as private as my SSN but its still how I receive health insurance. It seems even if we made SSN#s public, a new equivalent system would need to be built which would have the same problems.
Everyone uses Experian. You can't get a credit card, student loan, mortgage, lease, rental agreement, rent a car, buy a car, lease a car, or in most situations get a job without Experian and the two other credit agencies being used. This has as much relevance to the ACA as it does a Toyota Corolla or Home Owners Associations.
Are you seriously arguing that people are wrong thinking while misusing the term "costs" in capital letters three times?
Consumers don't pay "COSTS". Consumers pay "PRICES." This is a fundamental concept in economics and lacking comprehension of it means no discussion of economics is worthwhile. If consumers didn't pay prices that included profit, then the entire system wouldn't function.
The insurance company negotiates "PRICES" with the hospital/hospital network, set where the hospital can make a profit (even if its non-profit, since they can then use it to expand, increase pay, etc). Or the uninsured individual pays a considerably higher "PRICE" for the same treatment both because of the laws of economy of scale, because hospitals can write off losses at higher rates for non-payers in those cases for tax benefit and because collecting from self-pay accounts requires additional man hours and almost always results with a higher Accounts Receivable average.
Individuals and employers pay insurance PRICES, set by the insurance companies for various plans. Those prices do include profits. They have to pay for advertising, lobbying, claim processing, price negotiation and maintenance of price lists, bill collection from employers/purchasers of insurance, legal fees, executive pay and yes profit for shareholders as well as paying for healthcare itself.
This is why Medicare/Medicaid has much lower costs. First, they set prices, rather than truly negotiating them. A single procedure will cost two different amounts at different hospitals even with the same insurance, but not under government coverage. Second, they don't advertise, they don't negotiate, they don't have shareholders or profit, they don't have bill collection. Medicare overhead is 1-2%. Private insurance varies from 11% to 30% depending on what you include.
(Current HCIS Developer in a Billing Application) Considering Medicare/Medicaid already has considerably lower overhead and the NHS in the UK have much less Administrative costs, I think you perhaps are not well informed on overhead costs.
"According to Reuters, Potsdam University in Germany is now teaching social skills as part of their IT courses. This is intended to 'ease entry into the world of work'. The 440 students enrolled in the master's degree course will learn how to write flirtatious text messages and emails, impress people at parties and cope with rejection(s)."
The class is taught by a superficial model, who will fall in love with the nerdiest student at the end of the semester after realizing that he is beautiful on the inside.
Each week the nerds will be tested on a combination of technical ability and geek trivia to win immunity to the social challenge. The loser of the challenge will have to leave the show to the bellow of Ogre from "Revenge of the Nerds."
You realize that Bell Labs was a profit-seeking entity right? And that Unix was provided for a fee as early as 1973? That in fact Bell Labs required a (small) fee per license in its agreement with AT&T? The only reason it hadn't been done from the start was a) lack of market and b) AT&T was operating under a consent decree regarding the Bell monopoly that prohibited it from non-telephone commercial activity. Since Bell Labs insisted, it required a very small fee. It was free (speech) because distributing binaries when there wasn't even a universal architecture and the only users were professionals would have been silly. It was not free (beer) at any stage.
Open Source? Yes, as irrelevant a comparison as that is to today's world. Free Software? No. Software's practical foundations are rooted in commercial (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC) or military. Neither of those are "free software"... at least not in any way resembling what that means now. When computers cost a years salary and were only owned by a few hundred institutions in the world, it is unsurprising that there was no "many eyes" interactions driving innovation.
Those large institutions and closed source might now produce inferior products, but that is irrelevant to earlier realities, regardless of what ideology might make you want to believe
Isn't it at least plausible that the group "Eva" belongs to lived in Northern Asia, despite having characteristics that we would now identify with Southern Asia? Perhaps a later group migrated in that direction, driving Eva's group over the land bridge much in the way ethnic groups worked in Europe (subsequent waves tending to push preexisting ethnic groups).
Alaska is a state the size of a small city and Wasilla is not a city. Sure, maybe in Alaska it qualifies as one but nowhere else. I grew up in a town in Massachusetts and that town had twice the population of Wasilla.
Hell, I grew up in a town in Massachusetts with twelve times the population of Wasilla. And Wasilla is essentially bankrupt because Palin messed up an attempt to seize land through eminent domain to build a sports complex.
Alaska has about 600K residents. Obama's district as a State Senator had 1/3 that population and as a Senator he shares a district that is 20+ times that of Alaska.
Palin is the least qualified major party candidate for VP in the last century.
Most recreational drugs are recreational because they produce an altered state of consciousness. Alcohol does the same thing. If you study a subject (say physics) while intoxicated, your recall of the material will be higher when intoxicated. It stands to reason that a similar phenomenon could exist with video games. They practice stoned so they play better stoned.
I'm not sure if that really counts as a "performance enhancing drug" though.
Your argument would be stronger if not knowing or caring who someone was didn't effect whether you listened to an argument, or trusted it as a source of information and/or analysis.
Excluding the biggest terror attack in US history as a means to measure "keeping us safe" is more than a little disingenuous, don't you think? Besides, the Administration itself acknowledges that terrorism is stronger now than in 2000.
They tested for normal extroversion. However, extroversion on the Internet - where the email name is most relevant - and extroversion in real space is not necessarily the same.
Personality tests are (reasonably) based around extroversion in normal social interactions. I think its fairly well accepted that one's introversion/extroversion on the Internet is not necessarily the same as in "meat space". Perhaps "honey bunny" is shy in real life but using the freedom and anonymity of the web to act as she would like to be able to act in real life without consequences. The reserved accountant in real life could be the brash bon vivant at their computer.
Granted, a similar variation would be likely for other attributes, but I would be surprised if extroversion was the trait most likely to have a radical change (increase).
For instance, take the standard far-right (USian) position on climate change (unproven and if it does exist not made by man). They aren't making a decision where the transitional costs of moving away from fossil fuels is greater than the potential harm from climate change. This position is fundamentally ignorant.
The same type of issue exists across the spectrum where facts are denied because political ideology wills them to not be true. Many of these issues are scientific - Intelligent Design, AIDs in the past, the relative utility of embryonic stem cells vs adult stem cells, whether people are homosexual by nature or by choice - but not all of them (the Founding Fathers were evangelical fundamentalists for instance).
These politicians are worse than someone who might make a different choice than you even if their non-choice defaults to your preferred position because they are fundamentally ignorant, incompetent and/or lying. Better to have someone with whom you can have an honest and civil disagreement than someone who refuses to even acknowledge reality.
The franchise was already lost. A new Star Wars movie is coming out to theaters and its not even close to being the #1 geek movie of the summer. Even if you took out the superhero movies and Star Trek, its still lagging behind. Ten years ago that would have been inconceivable as even re-releases were huge.
Barack Obama believes we need to update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated.
Is pretty important there huh?
# Reform the Patent System: A system that produces timely, high-quality patents is essential for global competitiveness in the 21st century. By improving predictability and clarity in our patent system, we will help foster an environment that encourages innovation. Giving the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) the resources to improve patent quality and opening up the patent process to citizen review will reduce the uncertainty and wasteful litigation that is currently a significant drag on innovation. With better informational resources, the Patent and Trademark Office could offer patent applicants who know they have significant inventions the option of a rigorous and public peer review that would produce a "gold-plated" patent much less vulnerable to court challenge. Where dubious patents are being asserted, the PTO could conduct low-cost, timely administrative proceedings to determine patent validity. As president, Barack Obama will ensure that our patent laws protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and collaboration.
But really, do you think electing "someone who is incompetent" who voted for the DMCA and who has no solutions for intellectual property issues, is against net neutrality, and who one has no reason to believe who support the reform of the DMCA? Against someone who not only already holds pro-technology and rational intellectual property rights as his stated positions already, but has demonstrated an understanding of the new information paradigm and would likely have Lawrence Lessig as a top technology advisor?
Your logic has one HUGE hole in it. This is not a fix. Its already part of the models that carbon is being sequestered - the only question was where. This research does not at all settle that matter anyway, but its in no way a demonstration that the accepted climatology is wrong in its evaluation of global warming.
The "Chewbacca" defense is not going to work anymore. If we find out that OJ bought the knife at a flea market, that doesn't somehow prove that he didn't do it. If we find that the desert is where the carbon we already know is being sequestered ends up, that doesn't say anything about climate change.
First, your link is wrong. You are linking to the vote on when to come back from adjournment which occurred on the 31st. Adjourning passed 213 - 197 today, the first.
Second, you have anything to back up your claims on oil prices dropping? The Bush Administration's own Department of Energy says that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."
One aspect of the pending FBI investigation centers on Young's role in securing a $10 million earmark in the $286.5 billion highway bill passed in 2005. The earmark, which was inserted in the bill after final passage by the House of Representatives and Senate, was for a study of a highway ramp sought by a Florida real estate developer. At a fundraiser while on a trip to Bonita Springs, Fla., to inspect the site, Young received more than $40,000 in donations.
CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss reports there was chaos on the Hour floor as Republican leaders passed the bill by holding a five-minute vote open for almost 50 minutes until they could convince two Republicans to change their votes.
They buttonholed lawmakers for last-minute lobbying as Democrats complained loudly that the vote should be closed. Finally two GOP lawmakers switched from "no" to "yes," giving the bill's supporters the margin of victory.
(additional examples) It is against House rules to keep a vote open in order to alter the outcome.
a recorded vote by electronic device shall not be held open for the sole purpose of reversing the outcome of such vote.
"Abusive holds" is difficult to quantify but I'd point towards Tom Coburn's extensive holds.
Your argument is essentially that they acted inappropriately because their adjournment was premature and was therefore a premature adjournment.
There was a perfectly valid vote where a majority chose to adjourn. Republicans wanted to take control of the agenda. They were not allowed to. The Senate had adjourned the day before. Its grandstanding by a party too used to being able to bully Democrats.
The Dems abused the rules (and yes the Republicans do this too, but not nearly as much) in an attempt to prevent those folks from speaking.... When it comes to gaming the system, the donkeys in both House and Senate have shown far less restraint than the elephants.
This was not an abuse of rules, nor would any reasonable observer claim the Democratic Party members have "abused" the rules as aggressively (nor broken as many) as the Republicans who control the House for the previous 12 years. Simply adjourning - which cuts off formal floor debate inherently - is not comparable to changing bills after they had been passed, holding votes open longer than permissible or the abusive use of holds (in the Senate). Your claims to the contrary are transparently partisan.
What you do is ask how often does the Speaker order the lights, microphones, and cameras shut down when the House adjourns? (C-SPAN is contracturally required to carry whatever is being said in the House regardless of whether or not it is in session).
I know Congress has a deserved reputation for wasting money, but somehow I don't think they keep all the microphones, cameras and lights on in the months they spend adjourned. And C-Span is not contractually required to carry what is being said in the House regardless of whether or not its in session; you invented that out of whole cloth. They frequently don't show House debate - for instance if there is a major political story or an important House committee meeting. To make such a suggestion implies an almost total lack of familiarity with the channel.
The Ds adjourned. They didn't let the Republicans control the agenda. Boo-hoo. The House is designed for majority rule and the Republicans should get used to it since few 'experts' think they'll have more than 200 members next term.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The mantra was not "No Taxation!" but "No Taxation without Representation." The Libertarian ideal of the Founding Fathers is not grounded in reality. Adam Smith AND Thomas Paine favored a progressive tax rate. The Boston Tea Party was about the Crown allowing the East India Company to use their own agents instead of independent local merchants as it was about taxes. The idea that tyrants are acceptable as long as they don't hold the scepter of state was not their ideology.
-A single 8K frame requires 200 MB of data. -The Dark Knight is officially listed at 2hrs 30 minutes (150 minutes= 9000seconds) -Total usage 100 TB (5 frames a Gig, 5120 per T, 512,000+ frames)
200 MB/frame x 9,000 sec/movie x 24 frames/second = 43200000 MB=42187.5 GB = 41.2 TB. If the frame rate was 60 frames/second then that would be the whole film (no retakes, extras, bloopers etc).
I never realized the sheer amount of compression that is going on between the raw footage and getting it into a DVD.
Slashdot Mirror
If you ever have to again, point out that they are covered under HIPAA regulations and those call for guarantor information to not be SSN#s explicitly. Paying premiums counts (as I understand it, IANAL, but I have experience writing software in this arena)
Then how do you make Social Security claims (or Medicare/Medicaid)? My health insurance ID number isn't as private as my SSN but its still how I receive health insurance. It seems even if we made SSN#s public, a new equivalent system would need to be built which would have the same problems.
Everyone uses Experian. You can't get a credit card, student loan, mortgage, lease, rental agreement, rent a car, buy a car, lease a car, or in most situations get a job without Experian and the two other credit agencies being used. This has as much relevance to the ACA as it does a Toyota Corolla or Home Owners Associations.
Are you seriously arguing that people are wrong thinking while misusing the term "costs" in capital letters three times?
Consumers don't pay "COSTS". Consumers pay "PRICES." This is a fundamental concept in economics and lacking comprehension of it means no discussion of economics is worthwhile. If consumers didn't pay prices that included profit, then the entire system wouldn't function.
The insurance company negotiates "PRICES" with the hospital/hospital network, set where the hospital can make a profit (even if its non-profit, since they can then use it to expand, increase pay, etc). Or the uninsured individual pays a considerably higher "PRICE" for the same treatment both because of the laws of economy of scale, because hospitals can write off losses at higher rates for non-payers in those cases for tax benefit and because collecting from self-pay accounts requires additional man hours and almost always results with a higher Accounts Receivable average.
Individuals and employers pay insurance PRICES, set by the insurance companies for various plans. Those prices do include profits. They have to pay for advertising, lobbying, claim processing, price negotiation and maintenance of price lists, bill collection from employers/purchasers of insurance, legal fees, executive pay and yes profit for shareholders as well as paying for healthcare itself.
This is why Medicare/Medicaid has much lower costs. First, they set prices, rather than truly negotiating them. A single procedure will cost two different amounts at different hospitals even with the same insurance, but not under government coverage. Second, they don't advertise, they don't negotiate, they don't have shareholders or profit, they don't have bill collection. Medicare overhead is 1-2%. Private insurance varies from 11% to 30% depending on what you include.
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/
(Current HCIS Developer in a Billing Application) Considering Medicare/Medicaid already has considerably lower overhead and the NHS in the UK have much less Administrative costs, I think you perhaps are not well informed on overhead costs.
Each week the nerds will be tested on a combination of technical ability and geek trivia to win immunity to the social challenge. The loser of the challenge will have to leave the show to the bellow of Ogre from "Revenge of the Nerds."
You realize that Bell Labs was a profit-seeking entity right? And that Unix was provided for a fee as early as 1973? That in fact Bell Labs required a (small) fee per license in its agreement with AT&T? The only reason it hadn't been done from the start was a) lack of market and b) AT&T was operating under a consent decree regarding the Bell monopoly that prohibited it from non-telephone commercial activity. Since Bell Labs insisted, it required a very small fee. It was free (speech) because distributing binaries when there wasn't even a universal architecture and the only users were professionals would have been silly. It was not free (beer) at any stage.
Open Source? Yes, as irrelevant a comparison as that is to today's world. Free Software? No. Software's practical foundations are rooted in commercial (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC) or military. Neither of those are "free software"... at least not in any way resembling what that means now. When computers cost a years salary and were only owned by a few hundred institutions in the world, it is unsurprising that there was no "many eyes" interactions driving innovation.
Those large institutions and closed source might now produce inferior products, but that is irrelevant to earlier realities, regardless of what ideology might make you want to believe
Isn't it at least plausible that the group "Eva" belongs to lived in Northern Asia, despite having characteristics that we would now identify with Southern Asia? Perhaps a later group migrated in that direction, driving Eva's group over the land bridge much in the way ethnic groups worked in Europe (subsequent waves tending to push preexisting ethnic groups).
Hell, I grew up in a town in Massachusetts with twelve times the population of Wasilla. And Wasilla is essentially bankrupt because Palin messed up an attempt to seize land through eminent domain to build a sports complex.
Alaska has about 600K residents. Obama's district as a State Senator had 1/3 that population and as a Senator he shares a district that is 20+ times that of Alaska.
Palin is the least qualified major party candidate for VP in the last century.
Most recreational drugs are recreational because they produce an altered state of consciousness. Alcohol does the same thing. If you study a subject (say physics) while intoxicated, your recall of the material will be higher when intoxicated. It stands to reason that a similar phenomenon could exist with video games. They practice stoned so they play better stoned.
I'm not sure if that really counts as a "performance enhancing drug" though.
I'm pretty sure the research shows all Diebold voting software is an unsafe environment.
Your argument would be stronger if not knowing or caring who someone was didn't effect whether you listened to an argument, or trusted it as a source of information and/or analysis.
Excluding the biggest terror attack in US history as a means to measure "keeping us safe" is more than a little disingenuous, don't you think? Besides, the Administration itself acknowledges that terrorism is stronger now than in 2000.
They tested for normal extroversion. However, extroversion on the Internet - where the email name is most relevant - and extroversion in real space is not necessarily the same.
Personality tests are (reasonably) based around extroversion in normal social interactions. I think its fairly well accepted that one's introversion/extroversion on the Internet is not necessarily the same as in "meat space". Perhaps "honey bunny" is shy in real life but using the freedom and anonymity of the web to act as she would like to be able to act in real life without consequences. The reserved accountant in real life could be the brash bon vivant at their computer.
Granted, a similar variation would be likely for other attributes, but I would be surprised if extroversion was the trait most likely to have a radical change (increase).
For instance, take the standard far-right (USian) position on climate change (unproven and if it does exist not made by man). They aren't making a decision where the transitional costs of moving away from fossil fuels is greater than the potential harm from climate change. This position is fundamentally ignorant.
The same type of issue exists across the spectrum where facts are denied because political ideology wills them to not be true. Many of these issues are scientific - Intelligent Design, AIDs in the past, the relative utility of embryonic stem cells vs adult stem cells, whether people are homosexual by nature or by choice - but not all of them (the Founding Fathers were evangelical fundamentalists for instance).
These politicians are worse than someone who might make a different choice than you even if their non-choice defaults to your preferred position because they are fundamentally ignorant, incompetent and/or lying. Better to have someone with whom you can have an honest and civil disagreement than someone who refuses to even acknowledge reality.
The franchise was already lost. A new Star Wars movie is coming out to theaters and its not even close to being the #1 geek movie of the summer. Even if you took out the superhero movies and Star Trek, its still lagging behind. Ten years ago that would have been inconceivable as even re-releases were huge.
You can't live off past glory forever.
The full quote is:
Is pretty important there huh?
But really, do you think electing "someone who is incompetent" who voted for the DMCA and who has no solutions for intellectual property issues, is against net neutrality, and who one has no reason to believe who support the reform of the DMCA? Against someone who not only already holds pro-technology and rational intellectual property rights as his stated positions already, but has demonstrated an understanding of the new information paradigm and would likely have Lawrence Lessig as a top technology advisor?
Your logic has one HUGE hole in it. This is not a fix. Its already part of the models that carbon is being sequestered - the only question was where. This research does not at all settle that matter anyway, but its in no way a demonstration that the accepted climatology is wrong in its evaluation of global warming.
The "Chewbacca" defense is not going to work anymore. If we find out that OJ bought the knife at a flea market, that doesn't somehow prove that he didn't do it. If we find that the desert is where the carbon we already know is being sequestered ends up, that doesn't say anything about climate change.
First, your link is wrong. You are linking to the vote on when to come back from adjournment which occurred on the 31st. Adjourning passed 213 - 197 today, the first.
Second, you have anything to back up your claims on oil prices dropping? The Bush Administration's own Department of Energy says that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."
Changing a bill after it had been passed
Holding open vote
(additional examples)
It is against House rules to keep a vote open in order to alter the outcome.
"Abusive holds" is difficult to quantify but I'd point towards Tom Coburn's extensive holds.
Your argument is essentially that they acted inappropriately because their adjournment was premature and was therefore a premature adjournment.
There was a perfectly valid vote where a majority chose to adjourn. Republicans wanted to take control of the agenda. They were not allowed to. The Senate had adjourned the day before. Its grandstanding by a party too used to being able to bully Democrats.
You've a great deal of unfounded claims there.
This was not an abuse of rules, nor would any reasonable observer claim the Democratic Party members have "abused" the rules as aggressively (nor broken as many) as the Republicans who control the House for the previous 12 years. Simply adjourning - which cuts off formal floor debate inherently - is not comparable to changing bills after they had been passed, holding votes open longer than permissible or the abusive use of holds (in the Senate). Your claims to the contrary are transparently partisan.
I know Congress has a deserved reputation for wasting money, but somehow I don't think they keep all the microphones, cameras and lights on in the months they spend adjourned. And C-Span is not contractually required to carry what is being said in the House regardless of whether or not its in session; you invented that out of whole cloth. They frequently don't show House debate - for instance if there is a major political story or an important House committee meeting. To make such a suggestion implies an almost total lack of familiarity with the channel.
The Ds adjourned. They didn't let the Republicans control the agenda. Boo-hoo. The House is designed for majority rule and the Republicans should get used to it since few 'experts' think they'll have more than 200 members next term.
Why was the government formed?
The mantra was not "No Taxation!" but "No Taxation without Representation." The Libertarian ideal of the Founding Fathers is not grounded in reality. Adam Smith AND Thomas Paine favored a progressive tax rate. The Boston Tea Party was about the Crown allowing the East India Company to use their own agents instead of independent local merchants as it was about taxes. The idea that tyrants are acceptable as long as they don't hold the scepter of state was not their ideology.
-A single 8K frame requires 200 MB of data.
-The Dark Knight is officially listed at 2hrs 30 minutes (150 minutes= 9000seconds)
-Total usage 100 TB (5 frames a Gig, 5120 per T, 512,000+ frames)
Minimal frame rate is ~24/s.
200 MB/frame x 9,000 sec/movie x 24 frames/second = 43200000 MB=42187.5 GB = 41.2 TB.
If the frame rate was 60 frames/second then that would be the whole film (no retakes, extras, bloopers etc).
I never realized the sheer amount of compression that is going on between the raw footage and getting it into a DVD.