An interesting aspect of space exploration is that it's the only frontier we've ever attempted to explore with decent maps already in hand.
In the past, from Moses to Marco Polo to Columbus, maps were impossible. They tried to draw them as they went along.
We'll probably never again be at a point where we say "What in the heck is out there?" We'll never again have Uncharted Territory. But rather we say "What in the heck will that look like up close." In a way it's kind of sad to lose that mystery. But in a way it's pretty cool to explore Charted Territory that has never been explored before.
A silly example of the difference this makes is turning off the Fog Of War on your favorite video game... Profoundly changes the whole nature of the game. No more thinking you landed on the coast of India and getting the name of an entire race wrong. All the mysteries start and stop with the limitations of our "long range sensor sweeps". I don't know where I meant to go with this... I guess it's sad on one hand that "totally uncharted territory" is forever gone, but on the other hand the trade off in speed of discovery, safety, return on investment, etc, will be pretty incredible, and well worth it to all but the terminally romantic.
2) Insure it. Pay the extra money to insure it up to 3 grand (your time invested is worth $$ too). And pack it insanely well. Assume they're going to punt it out of the truck into a puddle.
3) Ship it Fed Ex "Signature Required", then if you aren't home when it arrives they'll keep it at a Fed Ex pick up location. Very safe, although you'll have to go a mile or 3 to get it.
Fed Ex is the only carrier I have NEVER had a problem with. UPS is choice number 2. There is no chioce number 3.
Man how bored do you have to be to post shipping instructions to Ask Slashdot? How slow does the world have to be moving for Cliff to post this?
Oohhh neat, there's a puffy cloud outside that sort of looks like the internet.
Lame policies are due to exiting employees who have hurt companies. All I'm talking about is getting out the door with your belongings, whether they be documents, files, hardware or a favorite mug. If you work some place a long time, you make a home there. I just think it's prudent to watch your back, and even the playing ground as much as possible. Nowhere did I advocate harming a company.
I would never bribe, again it's just more even footing. They are less likely to scoff in your general direction or treat you like a trespasser if they also want something from you. I only know of other peoples' layoff and exit problems, I've been lucky myself, so far. For every honorable layoff story, there must be at least a hundred sketchy ones.
Critical Update #S15896b: This update will prevent the software from automatically replying to many types of spam sent using the HTML format.
Critical Update #S15897: This update will prevent MS Anti-Spam from automatically deleting certain payment-due notices from certain online services, notably, AOL and your electric company.
Security Update #5498443676a: This update will prevent a malicious spammer from using javascript to turn your installation of MS Anti-Spam into an open SMTP gateway.
Please do not interrupt this automatic update process, which has been activated for your convenience and protection.
> "..according to one of the employees who was cut, it felt as though they were treated like criminals."
It feels like that here in the US as well. It's really a shame. The only thing you can do is take preventative maintenance. For every file you keep at work that you want to keep after you're fired, burn it to disk, or email it home, or log in remotely and copy it, keeping as up-to-date as your needs call for. It's also not a bad idea at work to heavily encrypt things like your resume, locally stored personal email, and anything else personal you might have. Sure they can fire you and delete it, but they can't look at it. Having something at home on permanent loan, like a company laptop (even better, with sensitive data on it) also helps for when you want your USB drive, 8 port hub, speakers, flash card reader, and optical mouse back.
The times when you are least likely ever to get fired are the times to arrange this sort of minor parachute, not the day after they announce layoffs.
> If everyone is able to buy their way into the carpool lane doesn't that defeat the purpose? Isn't the carpool lane supposed to reward drivers for reducing their fossil fuel emmissions?
Not only that but by taking away the incentive to carpool you put MORE cars on the road, increasing the atrocious traffic problem.
If they were really smart, they'd use eBay to sell special transit passes to a "Rocket-Ride Park & Ride" system, to ride a bus/shuttle that travels in the carpool lane. If it's subsidized through eBay pass sales, they can afford a "build it and they will come" attitude. This would allow for enough shuttles that they wouldn't have to stop so many times on the way in - thus a fast commute, AND less cars on the road.
Marvel was in or near bankruptcy all through the 90's, until they restructured their entire business model around their intellectual property, rather than around selling paper comic books. The stock has gone from a few dollars to over 20 bucks in a very short time, in a bear market no less, due to their success. It would be very silly of them indeed not to protect their ONLY valuable asset.
The movies are great fun, the games are fun, and they're slated to do a lot more of both. They have to aggressively protect their IP, copyrights, and trademarks. The lawyers make them. They are not the RIAA or even Disney, they're just doing what it takes to stay in business, and their business is licensing fees. So give them a break and be glad they're no longer bankrupt, and that they have achieved the clout necessary to get movies made that are worlds better than say.. Superman III.
I disagree. I should only have to get permission before doing something that would otherwise be illicit. Suspicious is a far cry from illicit. If I'm sneaking through the forest on public ground with a gun do I need to carry a banner that says "I'm here to shoot deer, not people"? That would be ridiculous. Unless you actually break in somewhere the internet is a public place. Port scanning is a walk through the neighborhood. If I'm driving a candy apple red ferrari (suspicious) do I need get permission to take it on the road first and promise that I won't speed? Innocent until proven guilty is more than just a legal convention. It's common courtesy, and it's convenient. Getting permission to do every single benign yet possibly suspicious activity is inconvenient to the point of being debilitating.
Not to mention that whole attitude scares me to no end. I already have to "Get Permission" and prove I'm not a terrorist every damn morning before I'm allowed to go up the elevator to do the job they pay me for. What next? Checkpoints at major intersections to prove we're not carrying bombs? Next thing you know they'll be violating people's rights, holding suspicious people in prison without trial without pressing charges. Oh wait, they're already doing that.
This whole call-the-cops first and ask questions later scheme is getting frightening.
I feel like I need a T-shirt that says "I'm not doing anything whatsoever that is illegal. I specifically plan to do nothing whatsoever that is even remotely illegal. If you deem my actions suspicous for any reason, you just don't have all the facts. Relax".
Or maybe it's more practical if we all just spend an hour every morning getting permission for every single thing we're going to do that day?
Hogwash. Just because someone stops to check out your fancy place, window shop, or see if your roof needs work (maybe leave you a flyer) doesn't mean they're casing the joint. When your security system involves hunting down (and usually trying to prosecute) those who merely seem suspicious, then you are the intrusive one who has stepped over the line. This is true whether you're a sysadmin or Uncle Sam.
Do not blame doctors for lining their own pockets. 3 groups take all the blame: The American Medical Association, Health Insurance, and Lawyers.
Lawyers: Because every hospital AND every doctor has to have multimillion dollar liability/lawsuit protection. This is why you agrounds, were asked to get with their program or leave. Their insurance company requires that they operate this way. Their lawyers require it. They have to protect themselves from lawsuits. That's why the Ambulance ride cost so much, because they need to be insured against lawsuits. To make matters worse, they have to do everything 3 times and get concurrency/agreement from other doctors all to ward off the lawsuits. So not only are you paying for insurance, you're paying for more doctors time and more procedures all to protect against lawsuits. There goes well over half of your $773 / mo. In this case, it's the legal system that has failed us, not doctors or the medical system.
Health Insurance: Even though drug Foo2 is the best, fastest cure, and the one your doctor actually prescribed to begin with, in order to get coverage you must try drug Foo1 for 60 days first to see if it works because its far cheaper, and hey, it might work, or you might drive off a cliff during those 2 months, either way the insurance co avoids paying for the high cost drug. The stockholders win, the patient loses. OR, you go two months with ineffective meds and you have to pay 2 months of copay to the pharmacist for something you don't even want. The Insurance co ends up covering both drugs, but hey, they only need their strategy to succeed 1 time in 50 for the numbers to work in their favor, because another large hunk of your $773/ mo bill is used to subsidize the priciest 1% of drugs that a few other people need. Don't blame the doctors.
The AMA: Arguably one of the most self-serving immoral group of shucksters ever to organize. The original purpose of the AMA was to lobby for laws that made prescriptions a requirement. Back in the late 1800's before antibiotics, doctors could do about 2 things, set broken bones, and alleviate pain. Got pneumonia? Take some morphine. If you had no broken bones, the only way to get you to go pay a doctor for something was to require BY LAW that you get a prescription for the pain reliever. The next evil thing the AMA did was to make law school extremely selective, long, difficult, and expensive Why does it cost more to become a medical doctor than it does to become a doctor of organic chemistry? Lab fees?? Heck no. Simple, the less doctors there are the more demand there is so the more they can charge. Why does a podiatrist have to learn all about the mucus system and neuro-chemical pathways in the brain, but has to learn almost nothing about nutrition? Simple, to keep the number of podiatrists down. If nutrition was complex enough and had its own arcane language you can bet it would be required as well. Why does an Ear, Nose, & Throat doctor need to learn all about the ovaries? Same reason. That's why medical school takes so damn long. That's why you have to wait months to get in to see a dermatologist. Because there aren't many people who can get into, afford, and then survive the schooling. So there are far too few doctors. Granted that some of this is warranted is some cases, brain surgery for instance. But the process to become a podiatrist or a dermatologist should be nowhere near as long and arduous as the process to become a neurosurgeon. Yet it is for the most part. Low Supply + High Demand = High Price. You ever hear of doctors competing on price?? No way. It's not really their fault though, that's just the way the market works in their case. In fact it's so out of hand now that a cheap doctor isn't thought of as benevolent, he's thought of as a third-rate hack! 99% of doctors, 99% of the medical industry, are not to blame her
> Point four: If there are multiple groups competing to write a standard for the same thing, it is probably a safe bet that the technology being standardized isn't ready for standardization. This is the point I was really trying to make
This is the crux of it really. Seems to me he is saying 'Where possible, let standards take care of themselves. Let the market decide.'
Pretty insightful if you ask me. 3 different committees arguing over a standard for something that exists in beta/draft forms only is counter-productive. Instead, build all the versions, and let the market decide.
Examples of the market deciding a standard: VHS vs. Beta, IP vs. IPX, Photoshop vs. Everything Else, Horsepower. Ethernet vs. Token Ring, etc., etc.
Beta was supposedly better, but it didn't end up mattering (if it had mattered the market would've chosen Beta). Horsepower is a "bad standard" if you ask any literate engineer, but it's a good standard in that the market likes it, everybody's mom 'gets' it. The market forced Novell to adopt IP, because IPX sucks. The market usually makes good decisions.
Imagine if a committee got together back in the 80's to decide on LAN standards and because everybody was using NetWare, and 2 committee members were Novell employees, and 2 were from IBM, they decided on IPX ("Heck IPX is a great way to keep our LAN secure from that internet thing") and Token Ring. [shudders and turns pale].
I'll take the market's decisions over a committee's 95 times out of 100.
For a good quick analogy on how hard it is to predict the weather vs. how hard it is to predict climate change, just drop a crisp new dollar bill out of your hand. Now try to predict exactly where it will land. Fairly impossible to do. That's weather prediction.
Now take 20 steps to your left and do it again. The only thing you can correctly predict is that the dollar bill will almost certainly land well to the left of its former landing position. That's climate prediction.
While no analogy is perfect, that one seems to be very successful at conveying the principles to the uninitiated.
is a hell of lot more than a butterfly flapping its wings in China.
It occurs to me that we could use more research and that maybe we ought to deal with weather modification on an international level (global weather maps, climate history, meteorological cooperation) rather than on a more local one?
Not crying 'Wolf' here but it wouldn't be a bad idea.
Re:Dang it, there goes my stomach lining...
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
>But at least there's the proposal for a "federal antispam SWAT team". I'd pay good money to see a live video stream of that take-down.
I hate to say it, but I hope the SWAT team proposal fails. How will the Federal SWAT team know who to raid? If they can trace a spammer they can trace activists, dissidents, anybody who might be a terrorist, they can trace anybody. Sure they can do it now to a large degree, but if there's a Federal SWAT team they'll need access to some sort of system right? Something like the Terrorist Information Awareness network or Carnivore but geared specifically towards email and only email. The SWAT team has to be efficient right? Mistakes would make them look real bad.
The worst thing spammers will do is cause even more loss of privacy, loss of open mail relays, and an increase of government monitoring of email.
I'm not entirely sure but I think for now I'd rather wear out my delete key a bit more and wait for better technical solutions. The legal solutions are just much too likely to be worse than the problem.
It's not about living somewhere else. It's about living in lots of somewhere elses. Such that if one somewhere else were destroyed there would still be humans left in the universe/galaxy.
You're statement seems to miss the point. Of course you're right that any other place will likely eventually have huge problems similar to those we now have here on earth. The point is that earth is a single point of failure. We should work to fix that. AKA, we shouldn't keep all our ova in one basket.
My +1 to you sir (it's all I've got to give in reply)>
The fact that it could possibly be used against people not doing anything illegal is the problem. These bills are too general in what they restrict, and while the provisions can (and likely will) certainly be used against those doing illegal things, it's not much of a stretch to use them against law-abided people as well.
Take the DMCA (the actual DMCA) for example. It was never intended to be used to cover security flaw disclosures, or garage door openers, or printer catridges, but it's being interpreted by some to cover exactly those things. This interpretation is based on what's written, not on what that bill was intended to cover. And it's that potential that we need to worry about.
Well, I'm not laid off, yet. I'm in the keeping-my-fingers-crossed stage.
So I've been getting ready for it by beefing up the ol' photography skills and equipment inventory. I just picked up the Canon 550 Speedlight wireless flash system (REALLY nifty btw, 2 flashes slaved off of a wireless module that fits in the flash shoe) and I've volunteered to shoot a friend's wedding which is actually coming up this weekend. It'll be the first in what is hopefully a long and fruitfull wedding portfolio. Be nice if I could include a link to all the work (personal, non-wedding) I've done, maybe show-off that I don't entirely suck, but the site's still in its infant stage. The plan is just to move the whole she-bang along at a slow and steady pace. If the pink slip ever comes...well, it's amazing how enough free time can transform a hobby. There's a part of me that even wants the slip to come so I'll get off my ass and make the career change.
Being careful what I wish for though...
Re:The chances of being hit by a tornado are small
on
Surviving Tornadoes
·
· Score: 1
Hey good answers. I especially relate to the HOME theme. I'm posting from Pittsburgh, PA. This is my home. Hey, we have the second highest number of bridges in the world (Venice is first, but only if you count foot bridges), and the finest people I've ever met. We also have floods pretty often, and 1 or 2 tornados each year.
I totally agree about the pretentious a-holes and everything else you said about Southern Cal. I hated it there. I guess it always amazes me when I fly across country the way the great plains look. Looks like the worst place in the world to me. Of course I'm used to driving through tunnels, up and down mountains, and across bridges to get anywhere. Tulsa sounds like it's very similar in size, cost of living, light pollution, and distance to rural areas, as Pittsburgh.
I should have guessed that the HOME theme would be prevelant since that's how I feel about my town. But everywhere else I've ever been totally lacks that kind of attitude. Pittsburgh is the only place I've ever known where you can go on vacation to Chicago or Honolulu and go into a Pittsburgh bar and meet actual Pittsburghers there having an Iron City and saying 'yinz' and you walk in and say "Go Stillers" and everybody tells you their name. You go into a "New York" bar in some other town and all you get is locals looking for a big hotdog.
So if Tulsa has that kind of Home Town feeling and Home Town people then it must be a pretty fine place. That alone makes it worth living somewhere.
On a serious note, here in the US we use those bags for everything. Then we stuff them in a drawer or next to the fridge and reuse them much of the time. You don't see them littering our streets much at all. If South Africans feel it's okay to litter these bags everywhere, then they'll feel fine about littering other things too. The law might help a little, but you can't clean up your town or country without first cleaning up the prevailing attitude about littering.
For an example check out American Samoa. The whole island looks like New Orleans after Mardi Gras. Trash everywhere. You can't drive down a road without the car in front of you tossing crap out the window. It's disgusting. If you ask about it the locals just smirk like you're the foolish one... Hey the storms and ocean eventually wash everything away right? How silly to actually collect it and put it somewhere out of sight! A strong littering law there would certainly generate some cash for the government, but it would be even worse than speed limits here; no one would really believe in it, and no one would really follow it.
First they would have to do a huge public awareness campaign and market cleanliness as COOL and responsible, and market littering as ignorant and old-fashioned. They'd have to teach school children to yell at their parents (like they do here about smoking), and give awards to clean-up crews. Then the law would MEAN something, other than fine revenue for the state.
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting aspect of space exploration is that it's the only frontier we've ever attempted to explore with decent maps already in hand.
In the past, from Moses to Marco Polo to Columbus, maps were impossible. They tried to draw them as they went along.
We'll probably never again be at a point where we say "What in the heck is out there?" We'll never again have Uncharted Territory. But rather we say "What in the heck will that look like up close." In a way it's kind of sad to lose that mystery. But in a way it's pretty cool to explore Charted Territory that has never been explored before.
A silly example of the difference this makes is turning off the Fog Of War on your favorite video game... Profoundly changes the whole nature of the game. No more thinking you landed on the coast of India and getting the name of an entire race wrong. All the mysteries start and stop with the limitations of our "long range sensor sweeps". I don't know where I meant to go with this... I guess it's sad on one hand that "totally uncharted territory" is forever gone, but on the other hand the trade off in speed of discovery, safety, return on investment, etc, will be pretty incredible, and well worth it to all but the terminally romantic.
1) Forget cheap. You get what you pay for. Sorry.
2) Insure it. Pay the extra money to insure it up to 3 grand (your time invested is worth $$ too). And pack it insanely well. Assume they're going to punt it out of the truck into a puddle.
3) Ship it Fed Ex "Signature Required", then if you aren't home when it arrives they'll keep it at a Fed Ex pick up location. Very safe, although you'll have to go a mile or 3 to get it.
Fed Ex is the only carrier I have NEVER had a problem with. UPS is choice number 2. There is no chioce number 3.
Man how bored do you have to be to post shipping instructions to Ask Slashdot? How slow does the world have to be moving for Cliff to post this?
Oohhh neat, there's a puffy cloud outside that sort of looks like the internet.
Continuing on the tedious nitpick theme...
;]
What the hell is "where it's at "?
A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.
Ya'll ain't gots no good English or ya jist wanna sound uneduhkated?
"Where is it?"
Now that would be English.
> TR: How does technology influence design?...
TR: What's wrong with product design nowadays?
How can we get design to have more of an influence on developing technologies?
Rather than the inverse as they ask it. Of course that's easy to ask, HARD to answer.
Lame policies are due to exiting employees who have hurt companies. All I'm talking about is getting out the door with your belongings, whether they be documents, files, hardware or a favorite mug. If you work some place a long time, you make a home there. I just think it's prudent to watch your back, and even the playing ground as much as possible. Nowhere did I advocate harming a company.
I would never bribe, again it's just more even footing. They are less likely to scoff in your general direction or treat you like a trespasser if they also want something from you. I only know of other peoples' layoff and exit problems, I've been lucky myself, so far.
For every honorable layoff story, there must be at least a hundred sketchy ones.
..is the process of automatically updating...
Critical Update #S15896b: This update will prevent the software from automatically replying to many types of spam sent using the HTML format.
Critical Update #S15897: This update will prevent MS Anti-Spam from automatically deleting certain payment-due notices from certain online services, notably, AOL and your electric company.
Security Update #5498443676a: This update will prevent a malicious spammer from using javascript to turn your installation of MS Anti-Spam into an open SMTP gateway.
Please do not interrupt this automatic update process, which has been activated for your convenience and protection.
> "..according to one of the employees who was cut, it felt as though they were treated like criminals."
It feels like that here in the US as well. It's really a shame. The only thing you can do is take preventative maintenance. For every file you keep at work that you want to keep after you're fired, burn it to disk, or email it home, or log in remotely and copy it, keeping as up-to-date as your needs call for. It's also not a bad idea at work to heavily encrypt things like your resume, locally stored personal email, and anything else personal you might have. Sure they can fire you and delete it, but they can't look at it. Having something at home on permanent loan, like a company laptop (even better, with sensitive data on it) also helps for when you want your USB drive, 8 port hub, speakers, flash card reader, and optical mouse back.
The times when you are least likely ever to get fired are the times to arrange this sort of minor parachute, not the day after they announce layoffs.
> If everyone is able to buy their way into the carpool lane doesn't that defeat the purpose? Isn't the carpool lane supposed to reward drivers for reducing their fossil fuel emmissions?
Not only that but by taking away the incentive to carpool you put MORE cars on the road, increasing the atrocious traffic problem.
If they were really smart, they'd use eBay to sell special transit passes to a "Rocket-Ride Park & Ride" system, to ride a bus/shuttle that travels in the carpool lane. If it's subsidized through eBay pass sales, they can afford a "build it and they will come" attitude. This would allow for enough shuttles that they wouldn't have to stop so many times on the way in - thus a fast commute, AND less cars on the road.
"My computer has an algae problem."
HD: "Well, is it blue-green algae, or just regular green algae?
"How do I tell?"
HD: "Oh for pity sake! Go to START, Programs, Algae Management."
"Ummm.. Maybe I should just shut down and go spend some time outdoors?"
What a fun slashdot interview that would be!
Scott? Taco? How about it???
Marvel was in or near bankruptcy all through the 90's, until they restructured their entire business model around their intellectual property, rather than around selling paper comic books. The stock has gone from a few dollars to over 20 bucks in a very short time, in a bear market no less, due to their success. It would be very silly of them indeed not to protect their ONLY valuable asset.
The movies are great fun, the games are fun, and they're slated to do a lot more of both. They have to aggressively protect their IP, copyrights, and trademarks. The lawyers make them. They are not the RIAA or even Disney, they're just doing what it takes to stay in business, and their business is licensing fees. So give them a break and be glad they're no longer bankrupt, and that they have achieved the clout necessary to get movies made that are worlds better than say.. Superman III.
in a retro setting, with these.
I'm sure a TON of bikini clad babes will sign up for that!
"Accurately recreate", HAHaha!
Remind me stay far far away from whatever beach ya'll will be using for this.
Get permission before I do something suspicious?
I disagree. I should only have to get permission before doing something that would otherwise be illicit. Suspicious is a far cry from illicit. If I'm sneaking through the forest on public ground with a gun do I need to carry a banner that says "I'm here to shoot deer, not people"? That would be ridiculous. Unless you actually break in somewhere the internet is a public place. Port scanning is a walk through the neighborhood. If I'm driving a candy apple red ferrari (suspicious) do I need get permission to take it on the road first and promise that I won't speed? Innocent until proven guilty is more than just a legal convention. It's common courtesy, and it's convenient. Getting permission to do every single benign yet possibly suspicious activity is inconvenient to the point of being debilitating.
Not to mention that whole attitude scares me to no end. I already have to "Get Permission" and prove I'm not a terrorist every damn morning before I'm allowed to go up the elevator to do the job they pay me for. What next? Checkpoints at major intersections to prove we're not carrying bombs? Next thing you know they'll be violating people's rights, holding suspicious people in prison without trial without pressing charges. Oh wait, they're already doing that.
This whole call-the-cops first and ask questions later scheme is getting frightening. I feel like I need a T-shirt that says "I'm not doing anything whatsoever that is illegal. I specifically plan to do nothing whatsoever that is even remotely illegal. If you deem my actions suspicous for any reason, you just don't have all the facts. Relax".
Or maybe it's more practical if we all just spend an hour every morning getting permission for every single thing we're going to do that day?
Hogwash. Just because someone stops to check out your fancy place, window shop, or see if your roof needs work (maybe leave you a flyer) doesn't mean they're casing the joint. When your security system involves hunting down (and usually trying to prosecute) those who merely seem suspicious, then you are the intrusive one who has stepped over the line. This is true whether you're a sysadmin or Uncle Sam.
GuyMannDude - WAY off.
agrounds - closer but no.
Do not blame doctors for lining their own pockets. 3 groups take all the blame: The American Medical Association, Health Insurance, and Lawyers.
Lawyers: Because every hospital AND every doctor has to have multimillion dollar liability/lawsuit protection. This is why you agrounds, were asked to get with their program or leave. Their insurance company requires that they operate this way. Their lawyers require it. They have to protect themselves from lawsuits. That's why the Ambulance ride cost so much, because they need to be insured against lawsuits. To make matters worse, they have to do everything 3 times and get concurrency/agreement from other doctors all to ward off the lawsuits. So not only are you paying for insurance, you're paying for more doctors time and more procedures all to protect against lawsuits. There goes well over half of your $773 / mo. In this case, it's the legal system that has failed us, not doctors or the medical system.
Health Insurance: Even though drug Foo2 is the best, fastest cure, and the one your doctor actually prescribed to begin with, in order to get coverage you must try drug Foo1 for 60 days first to see if it works because its far cheaper, and hey, it might work, or you might drive off a cliff during those 2 months, either way the insurance co avoids paying for the high cost drug. The stockholders win, the patient loses. OR, you go two months with ineffective meds and you have to pay 2 months of copay to the pharmacist for something you don't even want. The Insurance co ends up covering both drugs, but hey, they only need their strategy to succeed 1 time in 50 for the numbers to work in their favor, because another large hunk of your $773/ mo bill is used to subsidize the priciest 1% of drugs that a few other people need. Don't blame the doctors.
The AMA: Arguably one of the most self-serving immoral group of shucksters ever to organize. The original purpose of the AMA was to lobby for laws that made prescriptions a requirement. Back in the late 1800's before antibiotics, doctors could do about 2 things, set broken bones, and alleviate pain. Got pneumonia? Take some morphine. If you had no broken bones, the only way to get you to go pay a doctor for something was to require BY LAW that you get a prescription for the pain reliever. The next evil thing the AMA did was to make law school extremely selective, long, difficult, and expensive Why does it cost more to become a medical doctor than it does to become a doctor of organic chemistry? Lab fees?? Heck no. Simple, the less doctors there are the more demand there is so the more they can charge. Why does a podiatrist have to learn all about the mucus system and neuro-chemical pathways in the brain, but has to learn almost nothing about nutrition? Simple, to keep the number of podiatrists down. If nutrition was complex enough and had its own arcane language you can bet it would be required as well. Why does an Ear, Nose, & Throat doctor need to learn all about the ovaries? Same reason. That's why medical school takes so damn long. That's why you have to wait months to get in to see a dermatologist. Because there aren't many people who can get into, afford, and then survive the schooling. So there are far too few doctors. Granted that some of this is warranted is some cases, brain surgery for instance. But the process to become a podiatrist or a dermatologist should be nowhere near as long and arduous as the process to become a neurosurgeon. Yet it is for the most part. Low Supply + High Demand = High Price. You ever hear of doctors competing on price?? No way. It's not really their fault though, that's just the way the market works in their case. In fact it's so out of hand now that a cheap doctor isn't thought of as benevolent, he's thought of as a third-rate hack! 99% of doctors, 99% of the medical industry, are not to blame her
> Point four: If there are multiple groups competing to write a standard for the same thing, it is probably a safe bet that the technology being standardized isn't ready for standardization. This is the point I was really trying to make
This is the crux of it really. Seems to me he is saying 'Where possible, let standards take care of themselves. Let the market decide.'
Pretty insightful if you ask me. 3 different committees arguing over a standard for something that exists in beta/draft forms only is counter-productive. Instead, build all the versions, and let the market decide.
Examples of the market deciding a standard: VHS vs. Beta, IP vs. IPX, Photoshop vs. Everything Else, Horsepower. Ethernet vs. Token Ring, etc., etc.
Beta was supposedly better, but it didn't end up mattering (if it had mattered the market would've chosen Beta). Horsepower is a "bad standard" if you ask any literate engineer, but it's a good standard in that the market likes it, everybody's mom 'gets' it. The market forced Novell to adopt IP, because IPX sucks. The market usually makes good decisions.
Imagine if a committee got together back in the 80's to decide on LAN standards and because everybody was using NetWare, and 2 committee members were Novell employees, and 2 were from IBM, they decided on IPX ("Heck IPX is a great way to keep our LAN secure from that internet thing") and Token Ring. [shudders and turns pale].
I'll take the market's decisions over a committee's 95 times out of 100.
Is your Brainus in Uranus?
For a good quick analogy on how hard it is to predict the weather vs. how hard it is to predict climate change, just drop a crisp new dollar bill out of your hand. Now try to predict exactly where it will land. Fairly impossible to do. That's weather prediction.
Now take 20 steps to your left and do it again. The only thing you can correctly predict is that the dollar bill will almost certainly land well to the left of its former landing position. That's climate prediction.
While no analogy is perfect, that one seems to be very successful at conveying the principles to the uninitiated.
is a hell of lot more than a butterfly flapping its wings in China.
It occurs to me that we could use more research and that maybe we ought to deal with weather modification on an international level (global weather maps, climate history, meteorological cooperation) rather than on a more local one?
Not crying 'Wolf' here but it wouldn't be a bad idea.
>But at least there's the proposal for a "federal antispam SWAT team". I'd pay good money to see a live video stream of that take-down.
I hate to say it, but I hope the SWAT team proposal fails. How will the Federal SWAT team know who to raid? If they can trace a spammer they can trace activists, dissidents, anybody who might be a terrorist, they can trace anybody. Sure they can do it now to a large degree, but if there's a Federal SWAT team they'll need access to some sort of system right? Something like the Terrorist Information Awareness network or Carnivore but geared specifically towards email and only email. The SWAT team has to be efficient right? Mistakes would make them look real bad.
The worst thing spammers will do is cause even more loss of privacy, loss of open mail relays, and an increase of government monitoring of email.
I'm not entirely sure but I think for now I'd rather wear out my delete key a bit more and wait for better technical solutions. The legal solutions are just much too likely to be worse than the problem.
It's not about living somewhere else. It's about living in lots of somewhere elses. Such that if one somewhere else were destroyed there would still be humans left in the universe/galaxy.
You're statement seems to miss the point. Of course you're right that any other place will likely eventually have huge problems similar to those we now have here on earth. The point is that earth is a single point of failure. We should work to fix that. AKA, we shouldn't keep all our ova in one basket.
Well, I'm not laid off, yet. I'm in the keeping-my-fingers-crossed stage.
So I've been getting ready for it by beefing up the ol' photography skills and equipment inventory. I just picked up the Canon 550 Speedlight wireless flash system (REALLY nifty btw, 2 flashes slaved off of a wireless module that fits in the flash shoe) and I've volunteered to shoot a friend's wedding which is actually coming up this weekend. It'll be the first in what is hopefully a long and fruitfull wedding portfolio. Be nice if I could include a link to all the work (personal, non-wedding) I've done, maybe show-off that I don't entirely suck, but the site's still in its infant stage. The plan is just to move the whole she-bang along at a slow and steady pace. If the pink slip ever comes...well, it's amazing how enough free time can transform a hobby. There's a part of me that even wants the slip to come so I'll get off my ass and make the career change.
Being careful what I wish for though...
Hey good answers. I especially relate to the HOME theme. I'm posting from Pittsburgh, PA. This is my home. Hey, we have the second highest number of bridges in the world (Venice is first, but only if you count foot bridges), and the finest people I've ever met. We also have floods pretty often, and 1 or 2 tornados each year.
I totally agree about the pretentious a-holes and everything else you said about Southern Cal. I hated it there. I guess it always amazes me when I fly across country the way the great plains look. Looks like the worst place in the world to me. Of course I'm used to driving through tunnels, up and down mountains, and across bridges to get anywhere. Tulsa sounds like it's very similar in size, cost of living, light pollution, and distance to rural areas, as Pittsburgh.
I should have guessed that the HOME theme would be prevelant since that's how I feel about my town. But everywhere else I've ever been totally lacks that kind of attitude. Pittsburgh is the only place I've ever known where you can go on vacation to Chicago or Honolulu and go into a Pittsburgh bar and meet actual Pittsburghers there having an Iron City and saying 'yinz' and you walk in and say "Go Stillers" and everybody tells you their name. You go into a "New York" bar in some other town and all you get is locals looking for a big hotdog.
So if Tulsa has that kind of Home Town feeling and Home Town people then it must be a pretty fine place. That alone makes it worth living somewhere.
now only criminals will use.. ah forget it.
On a serious note, here in the US we use those bags for everything. Then we stuff them in a drawer or next to the fridge and reuse them much of the time. You don't see them littering our streets much at all. If South Africans feel it's okay to litter these bags everywhere, then they'll feel fine about littering other things too. The law might help a little, but you can't clean up your town or country without first cleaning up the prevailing attitude about littering.
For an example check out American Samoa. The whole island looks like New Orleans after Mardi Gras. Trash everywhere. You can't drive down a road without the car in front of you tossing crap out the window. It's disgusting. If you ask about it the locals just smirk like you're the foolish one... Hey the storms and ocean eventually wash everything away right? How silly to actually collect it and put it somewhere out of sight! A strong littering law there would certainly generate some cash for the government, but it would be even worse than speed limits here; no one would really believe in it, and no one would really follow it.
First they would have to do a huge public awareness campaign and market cleanliness as COOL and responsible, and market littering as ignorant and old-fashioned. They'd have to teach school children to yell at their parents (like they do here about smoking), and give awards to clean-up crews. Then the law would MEAN something, other than fine revenue for the state.