You've never had the flu? Ever? Come now. I had pneumonia when I was four years old, which was almost certainly a complication of the flu. I've probably caught it a dozen times since then.
Actually, for the Roman Empire one, he may be thinking of the Antonine Plague of 166 A.D., which may have wiped out up to a third of the population, and is believed to have been measles or more likely smallpox (both viruses). Still, I'm not sure if one pandemic outbreak is sufficient evidence for the success of a given disease on an evolutionary scale. After all, we were eventually able to wipe smallpox from the face of the Earth -- something we've tried doing to other diseases with only limited success -- so what does that say about the viability of smallpox overall?
Making a virus more 'deadly' is usually not very good for the virus. If it's host dies, so does it's habitat. Not to mention the host can no longer really spread it.
Be careful with that kind of thinking, because it's not strictly true. There's an oft-repeated saying that all diseases will naturally become less deadly over time because it doesn't pay to kill your host -- but in some cases it does pay.
Consider something like cholera. Cholera gives you horrific diarrhea and vomiting, and the resulting dehydration can kill you pretty quickly, especially if you're very young or otherwise infirm. Going by the above-stated theory, that would normally be bad -- except that cholera exists in all your excretions, and other people can catch it from coming into close contact with those excretions. What's more, the normal route of infection is via contaminated water supply -- so if your excretions can make it back to the water supply, more's the better for cholera. Who cares if you drop dead?
Similarly, malaria doesn't need you up and walking around to infect people. You can be lying on your deathbed and a mosquito can still fly in through the window, bite you, and then fly off and bite someone else. That's why, though malaria has been known since the dawn of human history, it never seems to become less of a health threat to humans. There's simply no evolutionary pressure in that direction.
True, neither cholera or malaria is caused by a virus. But I just wanted to point out that the "evolution favors keeping your host alive" theory is rather too simplistic for the bigger picture of human disease.
This is a recurring theme and everybody likes to bitch about the names of open source projects. However, as a member of the press, I'd like to chime in -- just this once -- and say that if an open source project made enough of a difference to anybody, I wouldn't care if it was called the GIMP or KBoner, and neither would my editors.
If Megan Fox walked up to you and said, "Hi, my name is Yakspit Cox-Feces," would it make much of a difference to you? If anything, I figure it would make it an even better story...
some journalists tend to write about certain corporations they have stocks in.
I don't doubt that what you say is true, but I'd like to point out for the people who will inevitably take your statement as gospel that this practice is generally regarded as a breach of journalistic ethics. The New York Times company, for example specifically prohibits journalists who cover business stories from playing the market.
The trade press is less stringent about such things, but good journalists everywhere are well aware of financial conflicts in their reporting and take steps to mitigate such. Some tech reporters I know choose not to invest in any technology stocks. I myself own no individual stocks in any tech companies, though I do hold some mutual funds which may or may not contain such stocks. I invest based solely on the performance of the fund and make no particular effort to find out what specific companies may be represented.
As with any field, there are always a few bad apples.
When a reporter is dealing with a company, there is generally an information gatekeeper: either an internal PR department or an outside agency hired for the purpose. Even if you know an employee at a given company personally, usually they are not empowered to talk to the press directly without first consulting with their PR team.
This can be a drag because it means reporters are typically subjected to the usual bland, spoon-fed sing-song about how great and wonderful everything at the company is. But on the plus side it means you have a contact to talk to.
If I shoot an email to Waggener-Edstrom asking about something Microsoft is doing, I will probably get a response back within 24 hours, and often more quickly than that. The PR people will ask me the basic questions: Why do you want to know what you are asking, where is it going to be published, what is your deadline? And from then on, it will be their job to ferret out the right person to answer my questions, and if they deem that the good press I stand to give Microsoft will be valuable enough, they will take it upon themselves to pester that person into answering my questions in a timely fashion.
Obviously, this type of thing is fairly infeasible with many open source projects, why is why it's valuable to have this discussion about how to make open source projects more accessible to the press.
As a member of the press, I certainly can't make you, an open source developer, "drop everything now and focus on me." It will never surprise me in the slightest if you choose to ignore me completely -- a lot of big companies do that, too. But on the other hand, there are a lot of small companies with products already shipping who would absolutely kill for the chance to talk to me, just to get their names in print -- and often, I just don't have time for them.
It's all a matter of perspectives. Does it make sense for your open source project to get some good press coverage? If no, then my press inquiries are no burden to you. If yes, then is it reasonable to complain about the way in which the opportunities to gain press coverage present themselves? It's not like I'm asking you if I can borrow twenty bucks; I'm offering you what you want. If you don't have time or can't be bothered to take me up on my offer, then maybe it's your process that needs to be modified somehow, not mine (or those of the various publications which I may represent).
I think I recall that there are lots of work that involve the spatial geometry of molecules.
Yes. Elementary chemistry is pretty much just what is stuck to what, but once you get into organic chemistry, spatial geometry is pretty much half the class.
"Because it is there" is not a good justification. This is called impulse buying and is another huge indicator in having poor money management skills.
Your reasoning is totally bizarre. Buying iPhone games is impulse buying? Did you ever consider that people might buy iPhones instead of other phones because they end up waiting in places like the airport, and they think it's a good deal that they can spend a buck on a game to have some fun with?
Besides, I was not arguing "because it's there." One way to evaluate the true cost of any purchase is to examine the opportunity cost -- that is, the value of the other option, the one you had to give up in order to gain the option you chose. For example, posting on Slashdot costs nothing, but it still has an opportunity cost because all the time you waste posting on Slashdot is time you could spend working and earning money. If you're sitting in an airport, however, and you can't work, and a dollar will basically buy you nothing tangible in any of the stores in that airport with which to amuse yourself, then the opportunity cost of spending a dollar on an iPhone game is pretty low. Sure, you could just sit there like a lump. But again, who are you to say that's a "better idea" than parting with four essentially-worthless quarters?
Not true, people have a choice. In many transfer airports in Asia there is a fast train line directly into the city, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore being the popular stopovers from Australia are good examples.
Bet those trains cost more than a dollar. And the opportunity cost is that you might not make it back to the airport in time and you'll miss your connecting flight.
Face it, you don't really have a point at all. You just like being an insufferable prick. In fact, if you want to know the real value of a dollar, if we were having this conversation in an airport I would gladly give you one if you agreed to go somewhere else.
Man. Not in San Francisco, believe me. Even when beers come with a big "99 cents out the door" sticker on them, the liquor stores typically pull them off.
Airports are bad (and loaded) examples as they are captive audiences, the usual rules around supply and demand don't apply so products and services are often priced at many times their value
True. But they are also places people go and spend a lot of time hanging around in, and often they have little choice as to how much time they spend there. When they do go, however, they often tend to have their iPhones with them.
but I suspect you chose the airport for this particular reason.
I chose the airport because the OP described iPhone apps as "trivial airport games."
Telling me what a dollar will not buy is indicative of poor money management and using this as an excuse to justify a purchase is even worse.
Why? Telling me what to spend my dollar on is indicative of self-righteous arrogance, mainly. If it makes me happy to spend a dollar, what is so wrong about that?
So what is the value of a dollar? A beer? Nope. A newspaper? Not the New York Times. A pack of gum? Not the fancy "winter-blast" chiclet kind. A comic book? Not in years. Paperback book? Sure, if you can get seven more dollars. Let's see... that leaves us with a can of Coke (but not a bottle), or maybe a candy bar (but not the king sized kind).
But let's raise the stakes a little bit... what's the value of a dollar when you're stuck in an airport? Anyone? Anyone..? So if you can kill a four hour layover in an airport by spending $1 to download a "trivial airport game," I'd say that sounds like a marker for market success, not failure.
The thing about fiction publishing is that it's an entertainment medium. It's a basic fact of human nature that neither war nor economic depression nor famine nor "growing up" will ever eliminate the human desire for entertainment. Can you say the same of elementary algebra?
Give a man a fish, and he'll feed himself for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll never need to buy an illustrated guide to fishing.
In a sense, what Tor and Baen are doing is comparable to what Google is doing with software. Google can afford to build an innovative browser and give it away for free -- source and all -- because Google isn't in the business of making money off software. Google is in the business of making money off the Web.
Give a man a book, and he'll keep himself warm for an hour. Teach a man to read -- teach him the JOY of reading -- and you've built a market for books.
Textbooks aren't about the joy of reading. In fact, some of the most awful reads I've ever endured have been in textbooks. Textbooks are designed to accompany classroom discussion, experiments, homework assignments, and all of the rest of the rigmarole that goes along with coursework. As such, many are practically illegible. Most people I know wouldn't willingly pay a dime for a textbook -- save that they're forced to.
Sorry, I agree with the GP and think yours is the awful advice. The GP wasn't saying to "sacrifice your style" or that you shouldn't "write what you're passionate about" -- but these are technical books we're talking about, not novels. There are a great many technical details that go into the formatting, organization, and layout of such books. A publisher won't work with a manuscript that deviates too far from their established style.
If you're only interested in publishing as a vanity project, by all means do like the guy from No Starch Press says and look for a printer, rather than a publisher. But if you're looking to publish a book that reaches the broadest possible audience, you'll want to go with an established publisher -- and in those cases, there are often fairly strict requirements. It doesn't affect what you'll be able to write, per se, but if you get too far before you begin working with a specific publisher, you'll just make a ton more work for yourself before you're able to actually submit the manuscript. No point in doing much beyond a couple of sample chapters to show the acquisition editors what kind of book you're talking about (and whether you can actually write it).
So if main outsourcing company is IBM, you can probably feel pretty safe that nothing's going to happen, and if it does, IBM has very deep pockets in case you have to sue them.
Maybe. Don't believe IBM is necessarily expensive, though -- or reliable. As far as I've seen, they'll take any job that promises cash money. A guy I know once outsourced building a start-up e-commerce site to IBM, who promptly handed over his small-potatoes job to some little shop in Eastern Europe, which promptly screwed the pooch and blew his deadlines because it suddnely had some "more important" emergency job to take care of. As a result, he couldn't show his prototype in time to get a round of funding, so in essence they put him out of business. Could he sue? Maybe. For how much? Dunno. Is he happy he went with big, trustworthy IBM? Not really.
In many cases, people have sensitive information that they are handling on their servers, and whether or not to trust the IT staff is a valid question.
Valid, but still kind of stupid. What about building security guards? They have keys to every room in the building, which means they have physical access to all your stuff. Some of them even carry guns, which means your entire staff is at risk of being slaughtered whenever they're in the building.
I'm with the guy who said that if you call yourself "manager" of anyone and you have to ask/. for the answer to a question like this, you might consider stepping down.
Well, here's a recent photo of that skeleton and there's no such card. You can read the printed sign if you zoom in close enough, and it says nothing about the gender of the skeleton. So either you're making it up or someone put the card there without the Exploratorium's knowledge. (Anyone who has been to the Exploratorium knows that this is NOT the kind of museum where docents and security guards walk around shushing you and keeping you from touching stuff.)
Good call on the California Academy of Sciences, though. It was closed for many years, but it reopened not long ago to rave reviews. Unfortunately, however, that also means it draws huge lines, so if you go, try to go on a weekday and get there early.
If the guy can live on his own he should sure as hell be able to surf the net alone.
Well...about that. Increasingly, one of the terms of release for sex offenders is that they register themselves as sex offenders. Sometimes, communities will require that sex offenders inform all of their potential neighbors that they are sex offenders before they move into the neighborhood. And it's not uncommon for sex offenders will be given restrictions, such as that they aren't allowed to be within 200 yards of a school. In some densely-populated urban areas, that effectively makes it impossible for them to find a place to live. So, hey... if they're booted off the Internet as well, what else is new?
It's too late for you, but I learned that not every health practitioner is as evil as "the system" would have you believe. When I got a stress fracture in the bones of my foot once -- the foot swelled up and I couldn't walk on it -- I called a local private health clinic to see if I could get an appointment for someone to look at it. They said no, not for a few weeks, but then they walked me through a series of questions about how it hurt, where was it swelling, etc. In the end, they gave me the same advice you got, free of charge (which, BTW, was what I was expecting to hear, so lucky I got to hear it without having to pay anything).
I'll grant you your point. But it's still a far cry from "I spent all my money on shoes," which is what the OP seemed to be saying. Anytime you end up in need of catastrophic medical care, it's a totally unforeseen expense and you often have no choice but to pay it. Even if you technically don't pay the money, you might still end up in bankruptcy court.
Most people have no conception of how much medical bills actually cost in the U.S. these days. I had a friend who walked out of her front door one morning, twisted her ankle on a spot of broken sidewalk, had to go to the emergency room and have surgery to put a few screws into her bone, and ended up with a bill for $30,000 USD. She went from maybe $2,000 debt to $32,000 debt in the span of one afternoon. Add to that it was months before she could walk again, so she lost her job as a stagehand. You're telling me she should have been more diligent in her financial planning?
Slashdot Mirror
You've never had the flu? Ever? Come now. I had pneumonia when I was four years old, which was almost certainly a complication of the flu. I've probably caught it a dozen times since then.
Actually, for the Roman Empire one, he may be thinking of the Antonine Plague of 166 A.D., which may have wiped out up to a third of the population, and is believed to have been measles or more likely smallpox (both viruses). Still, I'm not sure if one pandemic outbreak is sufficient evidence for the success of a given disease on an evolutionary scale. After all, we were eventually able to wipe smallpox from the face of the Earth -- something we've tried doing to other diseases with only limited success -- so what does that say about the viability of smallpox overall?
Making a virus more 'deadly' is usually not very good for the virus. If it's host dies, so does it's habitat. Not to mention the host can no longer really spread it.
Be careful with that kind of thinking, because it's not strictly true. There's an oft-repeated saying that all diseases will naturally become less deadly over time because it doesn't pay to kill your host -- but in some cases it does pay.
Consider something like cholera. Cholera gives you horrific diarrhea and vomiting, and the resulting dehydration can kill you pretty quickly, especially if you're very young or otherwise infirm. Going by the above-stated theory, that would normally be bad -- except that cholera exists in all your excretions, and other people can catch it from coming into close contact with those excretions. What's more, the normal route of infection is via contaminated water supply -- so if your excretions can make it back to the water supply, more's the better for cholera. Who cares if you drop dead?
Similarly, malaria doesn't need you up and walking around to infect people. You can be lying on your deathbed and a mosquito can still fly in through the window, bite you, and then fly off and bite someone else. That's why, though malaria has been known since the dawn of human history, it never seems to become less of a health threat to humans. There's simply no evolutionary pressure in that direction.
True, neither cholera or malaria is caused by a virus. But I just wanted to point out that the "evolution favors keeping your host alive" theory is rather too simplistic for the bigger picture of human disease.
This is a recurring theme and everybody likes to bitch about the names of open source projects. However, as a member of the press, I'd like to chime in -- just this once -- and say that if an open source project made enough of a difference to anybody, I wouldn't care if it was called the GIMP or KBoner, and neither would my editors.
If Megan Fox walked up to you and said, "Hi, my name is Yakspit Cox-Feces," would it make much of a difference to you? If anything, I figure it would make it an even better story...
some journalists tend to write about certain corporations they have stocks in.
I don't doubt that what you say is true, but I'd like to point out for the people who will inevitably take your statement as gospel that this practice is generally regarded as a breach of journalistic ethics. The New York Times company, for example specifically prohibits journalists who cover business stories from playing the market.
The trade press is less stringent about such things, but good journalists everywhere are well aware of financial conflicts in their reporting and take steps to mitigate such. Some tech reporters I know choose not to invest in any technology stocks. I myself own no individual stocks in any tech companies, though I do hold some mutual funds which may or may not contain such stocks. I invest based solely on the performance of the fund and make no particular effort to find out what specific companies may be represented.
As with any field, there are always a few bad apples.
When a reporter is dealing with a company, there is generally an information gatekeeper: either an internal PR department or an outside agency hired for the purpose. Even if you know an employee at a given company personally, usually they are not empowered to talk to the press directly without first consulting with their PR team.
This can be a drag because it means reporters are typically subjected to the usual bland, spoon-fed sing-song about how great and wonderful everything at the company is. But on the plus side it means you have a contact to talk to.
If I shoot an email to Waggener-Edstrom asking about something Microsoft is doing, I will probably get a response back within 24 hours, and often more quickly than that. The PR people will ask me the basic questions: Why do you want to know what you are asking, where is it going to be published, what is your deadline? And from then on, it will be their job to ferret out the right person to answer my questions, and if they deem that the good press I stand to give Microsoft will be valuable enough, they will take it upon themselves to pester that person into answering my questions in a timely fashion.
Obviously, this type of thing is fairly infeasible with many open source projects, why is why it's valuable to have this discussion about how to make open source projects more accessible to the press.
As a member of the press, I certainly can't make you, an open source developer, "drop everything now and focus on me." It will never surprise me in the slightest if you choose to ignore me completely -- a lot of big companies do that, too. But on the other hand, there are a lot of small companies with products already shipping who would absolutely kill for the chance to talk to me, just to get their names in print -- and often, I just don't have time for them.
It's all a matter of perspectives. Does it make sense for your open source project to get some good press coverage? If no, then my press inquiries are no burden to you. If yes, then is it reasonable to complain about the way in which the opportunities to gain press coverage present themselves? It's not like I'm asking you if I can borrow twenty bucks; I'm offering you what you want. If you don't have time or can't be bothered to take me up on my offer, then maybe it's your process that needs to be modified somehow, not mine (or those of the various publications which I may represent).
Just a thought.
I think I recall that there are lots of work that involve the spatial geometry of molecules.
Yes. Elementary chemistry is pretty much just what is stuck to what, but once you get into organic chemistry, spatial geometry is pretty much half the class.
Bonds, Atomic Bonds...
(That comment was on the gizmodo site. Gizmodo user "Jrsy Devil's Food Cakeî" deserves the funny mod.)
For what? The practical joke he played on you?
That's kind of a long cab ride for me, bro.
"Because it is there" is not a good justification. This is called impulse buying and is another huge indicator in having poor money management skills.
Your reasoning is totally bizarre. Buying iPhone games is impulse buying? Did you ever consider that people might buy iPhones instead of other phones because they end up waiting in places like the airport, and they think it's a good deal that they can spend a buck on a game to have some fun with?
Besides, I was not arguing "because it's there." One way to evaluate the true cost of any purchase is to examine the opportunity cost -- that is, the value of the other option, the one you had to give up in order to gain the option you chose. For example, posting on Slashdot costs nothing, but it still has an opportunity cost because all the time you waste posting on Slashdot is time you could spend working and earning money. If you're sitting in an airport, however, and you can't work, and a dollar will basically buy you nothing tangible in any of the stores in that airport with which to amuse yourself, then the opportunity cost of spending a dollar on an iPhone game is pretty low. Sure, you could just sit there like a lump. But again, who are you to say that's a "better idea" than parting with four essentially-worthless quarters?
Not true, people have a choice. In many transfer airports in Asia there is a fast train line directly into the city, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore being the popular stopovers from Australia are good examples.
Bet those trains cost more than a dollar. And the opportunity cost is that you might not make it back to the airport in time and you'll miss your connecting flight.
Face it, you don't really have a point at all. You just like being an insufferable prick. In fact, if you want to know the real value of a dollar, if we were having this conversation in an airport I would gladly give you one if you agreed to go somewhere else.
Man. Not in San Francisco, believe me. Even when beers come with a big "99 cents out the door" sticker on them, the liquor stores typically pull them off.
Airports are bad (and loaded) examples as they are captive audiences, the usual rules around supply and demand don't apply so products and services are often priced at many times their value
True. But they are also places people go and spend a lot of time hanging around in, and often they have little choice as to how much time they spend there. When they do go, however, they often tend to have their iPhones with them.
but I suspect you chose the airport for this particular reason.
I chose the airport because the OP described iPhone apps as "trivial airport games."
Telling me what a dollar will not buy is indicative of poor money management and using this as an excuse to justify a purchase is even worse.
Why? Telling me what to spend my dollar on is indicative of self-righteous arrogance, mainly. If it makes me happy to spend a dollar, what is so wrong about that?
So what is the value of a dollar? A beer? Nope. A newspaper? Not the New York Times. A pack of gum? Not the fancy "winter-blast" chiclet kind. A comic book? Not in years. Paperback book? Sure, if you can get seven more dollars. Let's see... that leaves us with a can of Coke (but not a bottle), or maybe a candy bar (but not the king sized kind).
But let's raise the stakes a little bit... what's the value of a dollar when you're stuck in an airport? Anyone? Anyone..? So if you can kill a four hour layover in an airport by spending $1 to download a "trivial airport game," I'd say that sounds like a marker for market success, not failure.
Can you really "waive your rights against self-incrimination"? Like, now that he's waived his rights, he's required to incriminate himself?
The thing about fiction publishing is that it's an entertainment medium. It's a basic fact of human nature that neither war nor economic depression nor famine nor "growing up" will ever eliminate the human desire for entertainment. Can you say the same of elementary algebra?
Give a man a fish, and he'll feed himself for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll never need to buy an illustrated guide to fishing.
In a sense, what Tor and Baen are doing is comparable to what Google is doing with software. Google can afford to build an innovative browser and give it away for free -- source and all -- because Google isn't in the business of making money off software. Google is in the business of making money off the Web.
Give a man a book, and he'll keep himself warm for an hour. Teach a man to read -- teach him the JOY of reading -- and you've built a market for books.
Textbooks aren't about the joy of reading. In fact, some of the most awful reads I've ever endured have been in textbooks. Textbooks are designed to accompany classroom discussion, experiments, homework assignments, and all of the rest of the rigmarole that goes along with coursework. As such, many are practically illegible. Most people I know wouldn't willingly pay a dime for a textbook -- save that they're forced to.
Please. MUST we bring up boring topics like this when there's Twitter and "social media" to talk about??
Sorry, I agree with the GP and think yours is the awful advice. The GP wasn't saying to "sacrifice your style" or that you shouldn't "write what you're passionate about" -- but these are technical books we're talking about, not novels. There are a great many technical details that go into the formatting, organization, and layout of such books. A publisher won't work with a manuscript that deviates too far from their established style.
If you're only interested in publishing as a vanity project, by all means do like the guy from No Starch Press says and look for a printer, rather than a publisher. But if you're looking to publish a book that reaches the broadest possible audience, you'll want to go with an established publisher -- and in those cases, there are often fairly strict requirements. It doesn't affect what you'll be able to write, per se, but if you get too far before you begin working with a specific publisher, you'll just make a ton more work for yourself before you're able to actually submit the manuscript. No point in doing much beyond a couple of sample chapters to show the acquisition editors what kind of book you're talking about (and whether you can actually write it).
Someone has forgotten the first rule of Loudcloud.
So if main outsourcing company is IBM, you can probably feel pretty safe that nothing's going to happen, and if it does, IBM has very deep pockets in case you have to sue them.
Maybe. Don't believe IBM is necessarily expensive, though -- or reliable. As far as I've seen, they'll take any job that promises cash money. A guy I know once outsourced building a start-up e-commerce site to IBM, who promptly handed over his small-potatoes job to some little shop in Eastern Europe, which promptly screwed the pooch and blew his deadlines because it suddnely had some "more important" emergency job to take care of. As a result, he couldn't show his prototype in time to get a round of funding, so in essence they put him out of business. Could he sue? Maybe. For how much? Dunno. Is he happy he went with big, trustworthy IBM? Not really.
In many cases, people have sensitive information that they are handling on their servers, and whether or not to trust the IT staff is a valid question.
Valid, but still kind of stupid. What about building security guards? They have keys to every room in the building, which means they have physical access to all your stuff. Some of them even carry guns, which means your entire staff is at risk of being slaughtered whenever they're in the building.
I'm with the guy who said that if you call yourself "manager" of anyone and you have to ask /. for the answer to a question like this, you might consider stepping down.
...give or take the fallacy of the mythical man-month.
Well, here's a recent photo of that skeleton and there's no such card. You can read the printed sign if you zoom in close enough, and it says nothing about the gender of the skeleton. So either you're making it up or someone put the card there without the Exploratorium's knowledge. (Anyone who has been to the Exploratorium knows that this is NOT the kind of museum where docents and security guards walk around shushing you and keeping you from touching stuff.)
Good call on the California Academy of Sciences, though. It was closed for many years, but it reopened not long ago to rave reviews. Unfortunately, however, that also means it draws huge lines, so if you go, try to go on a weekday and get there early.
If the guy can live on his own he should sure as hell be able to surf the net alone.
Well...about that. Increasingly, one of the terms of release for sex offenders is that they register themselves as sex offenders. Sometimes, communities will require that sex offenders inform all of their potential neighbors that they are sex offenders before they move into the neighborhood. And it's not uncommon for sex offenders will be given restrictions, such as that they aren't allowed to be within 200 yards of a school. In some densely-populated urban areas, that effectively makes it impossible for them to find a place to live. So, hey ... if they're booted off the Internet as well, what else is new?
It's too late for you, but I learned that not every health practitioner is as evil as "the system" would have you believe. When I got a stress fracture in the bones of my foot once -- the foot swelled up and I couldn't walk on it -- I called a local private health clinic to see if I could get an appointment for someone to look at it. They said no, not for a few weeks, but then they walked me through a series of questions about how it hurt, where was it swelling, etc. In the end, they gave me the same advice you got, free of charge (which, BTW, was what I was expecting to hear, so lucky I got to hear it without having to pay anything).
I'll grant you your point. But it's still a far cry from "I spent all my money on shoes," which is what the OP seemed to be saying. Anytime you end up in need of catastrophic medical care, it's a totally unforeseen expense and you often have no choice but to pay it. Even if you technically don't pay the money, you might still end up in bankruptcy court.
Most people have no conception of how much medical bills actually cost in the U.S. these days. I had a friend who walked out of her front door one morning, twisted her ankle on a spot of broken sidewalk, had to go to the emergency room and have surgery to put a few screws into her bone, and ended up with a bill for $30,000 USD. She went from maybe $2,000 debt to $32,000 debt in the span of one afternoon. Add to that it was months before she could walk again, so she lost her job as a stagehand. You're telling me she should have been more diligent in her financial planning?