I downloaded the ROM, and it works fine. How is this possible?
How can MAME emulate hardware which is 'Apparently based on a Russian minicomputer/PC of the day'? Doesn't the fact that the software works on MAME mean that the basic game hardware must be some stock system from the west?
Well, it may be that my situation is unique. It happens that if I get insurance via my employer, it'll cost me around $140/month, and it'll cost my employer an additional $140/month. I pay far less than that (about $80/month) to self-insure. My policy isn't as cushy as the work-offered one, but it's all the insurance that I need.
My experience, talking to my peers, is that they assume that they could never buy their own insurance, they repeat the story about collective-buying-power and unimaginable-expense, but they never actually shop around. In my case, it really paid off to consider the alternative.
I would, of course, prefer it if the the US provided some form of state-sponsored or -organized health insurance. Sometimes, though, I think that employer-based insurance works against this goal, because it renders the cost of insurance invisible to many voters (as an intangible 'benefit' rather than an in-your-face cost.)
True, COBRA would keep me insured for 18 months. But the real reason I have insurance is to protect me against a lifetime of chronic illness (or, say, the birth of a child with expensive medical needs.) 18 months just won't cut it, for that. Being self-insured, I can keep my policy for ever, and never need to approach a new company on hands and knees with a pre-existing condition. Does COBRA really protect against that?
Why do people always talk about pay and benefits as though they were orthogonal? Getting benefits is just like getting more money, except you don't get to choose how to spend it.
Me, I ask for more money, and I use that money to buy the health insurance of my choice. The insurance isn't deductible, of course, which means that it costs a bit more, but it's more than worth it since I get to choose my own (inexpensive) plan rather than my company's needlessly-costly one. And, if I do lose my job, I'll still be insured.
When I tell people this, they look at me like I'm from another planet. What am I missing?
I agree with everything you've said, but I'd still like to put a bit more muscle behind the 'DNA as code' analogy. Ignoring the role that the ambient cellular environment plays would be foolhardy, true. But so would ignoring the role that hardware plays in the interpretation of software. The thing that makes the DNA the interesting part is that cells are the same from organism to organism, whereas DNA varies. Similarly with hardware and software.
It feels to me like your criticism could be leveled at a desire to understand a program by looking at the source code. "the actual branching, jumping and iteration happens in the ALU, not in the code, so the code is the wrong place to look," and so on.
Genes, I'll grant you, are the exciting bits of a chromosome, because they (generally) correspond to proteins that can be identified and detected. But, I'm not entirely clear on why they are the primary focus of genetic research.
We all seem pretty comfortable discussing DNA as though it were computer code, so let's follow that metaphor a little further. If I point at a big mess of C code (say, a console app) and ask 'What does this code do?' an amateur might be tempted to scan it for printfs, puts's, and other 'output signifiers.' But really, if that's all you look at, you don't have a clue what the actual funtion of the code is. All those boring scanf's, if/thens and operators are really important.
My rudimentary education in genetics has me convinced that DNA in a living cell has the ability (like C code) to switch, jump, branch, and (most importantly) operate recursively on its own resultant proteins. And yet, the DNA spans between genes are generally referred to as 'useless' or, in this case, 'meaningless drivel.' Am I missing something, or is this exactly where the good stuff is?
And, viewed from this angle, isn't counting genes as pointless as counting KLOCs?
Slashdot Mirror
I downloaded the ROM, and it works fine. How is this possible?
How can MAME emulate hardware which is 'Apparently based on a Russian minicomputer/PC of the day'? Doesn't the fact that the software works on MAME mean that the basic game hardware must be some stock system from the west?
Well, it may be that my situation is unique. It happens that if I get insurance via my employer, it'll cost me around $140/month, and it'll cost my employer an additional $140/month. I pay far less than that (about $80/month) to self-insure. My policy isn't as cushy as the work-offered one, but it's all the insurance that I need.
My experience, talking to my peers, is that they assume that they could never buy their own insurance, they repeat the story about collective-buying-power and unimaginable-expense, but they never actually shop around. In my case, it really paid off to consider the alternative.
I would, of course, prefer it if the the US provided some form of state-sponsored or -organized health insurance. Sometimes, though, I think that employer-based insurance works against this goal, because it renders the cost of insurance invisible to many voters (as an intangible 'benefit' rather than an in-your-face cost.)
True, COBRA would keep me insured for 18 months. But the real reason I have insurance is to protect me against a lifetime of chronic illness (or, say, the birth of a child with expensive medical needs.) 18 months just won't cut it, for that. Being self-insured, I can keep my policy for ever, and never need to approach a new company on hands and knees with a pre-existing condition. Does COBRA really protect against that?
You can use money to buy insurance.
Why do people always talk about pay and benefits as though they were orthogonal? Getting benefits is just like getting more money, except you don't get to choose how to spend it.
Me, I ask for more money, and I use that money to buy the health insurance of my choice. The insurance isn't deductible, of course, which means that it costs a bit more, but it's more than worth it since I get to choose my own (inexpensive) plan rather than my company's needlessly-costly one. And, if I do lose my job, I'll still be insured.
When I tell people this, they look at me like I'm from another planet. What am I missing?
> when have we EVER installed a pro-american
> government in order to obtain resources?
I believe the fellow was referring to Panama, a country that didn't even exist until the US decided that they wanted to build a canal there.
Come to think of it, I believe the equator runs through Columbia. Time for a second helping?
I agree with everything you've said, but I'd still like to put a bit more muscle behind the 'DNA as code' analogy. Ignoring the role that the ambient cellular environment plays would be foolhardy, true. But so would ignoring the role that hardware plays in the interpretation of software. The thing that makes the DNA the interesting part is that cells are the same from organism to organism, whereas DNA varies. Similarly with hardware and software.
It feels to me like your criticism could be leveled at a desire to understand a program by looking at the source code. "the actual branching, jumping and iteration happens in the ALU, not in the code, so the code is the wrong place to look," and so on.
Genes, I'll grant you, are the exciting bits of a chromosome, because they (generally) correspond to proteins that can be identified and detected. But, I'm not entirely clear on why they are the primary focus of genetic research.
We all seem pretty comfortable discussing DNA as though it were computer code, so let's follow that metaphor a little further. If I point at a big mess of C code (say, a console app) and ask 'What does this code do?' an amateur might be tempted to scan it for printfs, puts's, and other 'output signifiers.' But really, if that's all you look at, you don't have a clue what the actual funtion of the code is. All those boring scanf's, if/thens and operators are really important.
My rudimentary education in genetics has me convinced that DNA in a living cell has the ability (like C code) to switch, jump, branch, and (most importantly) operate recursively on its own resultant proteins. And yet, the DNA spans between genes are generally referred to as 'useless' or, in this case, 'meaningless drivel.' Am I missing something, or is this exactly where the good stuff is?
And, viewed from this angle, isn't counting genes as pointless as counting KLOCs?