Oh no! It's almost as if advertisers are completely unaware of statistics and thus fail to adjust the price paid for viewed ads to compensate for the expected skew. Oh, wait. Crisis averted; they do.
I don't know what advertisers (or financiers) call it, but scientists call it the "margin of error", and I'm pretty sure that it is taken into account that some ads will be served that aren't viewed. Just like your (the hypothetical you, if you were a webmaster) web site's page hit counter would count me as two unique viewers if I viewed your site both from home and from work, but that the small percentage of users that viewed your website from multiple locations, and the corresponding few that share a computer or browse from behind the same proxy or NAT server, cause an acceptably small impact on the accuracy of your data.
I think that the point Ars is trying to make is that while yes, the ad blockers were created to block the truly hideous ads, they over-zealously also block the more acceptable ads, thus punishing the sites that refuse to run the obnoxious ads, even though they aren't contributing to the problem. His argument that sites are lured into running those such bad ads is a little more flimsy, however, as it seems to me that such a decision would only accelerate an already existing death spiral as more customers are either turned away or convinced to use ad blockers. I guess if the ad hosting companies that serve those ads pay more per click or view or something, then this might make some sense, but I don't have any experience with ad revenue structuring, so I don't know how much more financially tempting it is to run one ad over another.
Why can't I get ads I would be even remotely interested in?
Probably because you block ads, therefore preventing the ad hosting companies from developing a history of your browsing habits with which to create better targeted content. So when you do finally unblock ads you have to suffer whatever random ads their confused algorithm throws your way. It's a vicious cycle, I know, but if you are genuinely open to targeted advertising then you have to sacrifice a little of your privacy. If you want to continue to enjoy free content on the Internet, you (maybe not you personally, but a significant percentage of the population) have to accept some level of advertising. I hate the obnoxious ads just as much as the next person, but the problem also is that ads that stay conveniently and quietly out of the way are also easy to ignore, and thus ineffective. Obnoxious ads annoy users and so perform the opposite of their intended function, so there is a very fine balancing act where everybody (well, most everybody) has to make some sacrifice for the system to work.
Slow ad servers, however, are unforgivable. Or, more accurately, poorly designed websites that require ad content to be loaded before the page can be properly rendered that are then tied to slow ad servers, are unforgivable. If I could view the page content while the ads are being downloaded, then I could obviously care less if they ever finish loading. Waiting for 30 seconds to see the content I originally came to see while watching a commercial (like on TV) is one thing, waiting 30 seconds TO EVEN watch a commercial AND the content I originally came to see (as with a slow ad server) is quite another.
I do appreciate your argument that an algorithm, knowing nothing else about you, and thus just beginning to build its database on you, should take note that you are browsing a tech site and provide tech targeted ads like video games and computer hardware. But then again, personal grooming products and magazines that frequently feature scantily clad females is not all that unexpected of an (stereotypical) interest for that demographic.
Similar to organizations that buy patents with the intent to make them open to all, I think that there should be a think tank that tries to come up with and preemptively patent bad ideas to keep them out of the hands of greedy organizations. Focused advertising, draconian worker "motivation" schemes, etcetera, are all good candidates. And, if there is enough of a war chest, it could attempt to buy existing bad patents in order to lock them down, though I fear that would simply incentivize third party development of consumer (and employee) unfriendly patents.
Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time you know."
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me."
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
But at what point does this switch from DRM to software as a service? Once you start streaming data from a server, it is more akin to the MMO model (even if it is just single-player) than owning the game title. Of course, if (unlike most MMOs) the game remains static, then it merely takes a single inside leak of the server side data to allow the setting up of private servers for cracked clients. At a certain point, side-chanel attacks become more feasible, and they typically require changing human behavior to prevent, which is much more costly.
I tend to wonder at the accuracy of that assumption. I think that drug dealing is a lot like acting - people see all the famous actors and say "I can get rich as an actor", but don't notice that it is only the top one percent or so that truly make it - the rest struggle to get by, or make a moderate living at best. Additionally, as a drug dealer, you also have to avoid the law - being wildly successful for 5 years then getting caught and put in jail for ten to twenty makes flipping burgers more profitable an endeavor over the long term. Not to mention the rather short life expectancy of many of the most successful due to "competition".
So, short term, yeah, dealing (or many types of crime) is easier than making money legally. But long term, you either have to be really good, and thus invest much effort in staying one step ahead of both the law and those looking to "replace" you, or you lose the advantage that crime had, and then some. And if you are investing the required effort successfully, you likely could have done equally well working legitimately. Sure, there are the Dons and Columbian drug lords that are the exception, but again - only the top 1% or less enjoy that privilege.
The point he was making is that WebKit (a rendering engine, NOT a browser) is BSD licensed, they used it to create their Chromium browser (including extensive JavaScript optimizations - V8 - which they DID do from scratch) and released that under BSD. Unlike Apple (for example), who took the BSD licensed WebKit, did significantly less with it when they built Safari, and kept the result locked up.
unauthorized IP distribution = piracy
on
Making Sense of ACTA
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
<tinfoilhat>
From the article: efforts at the international level to fight counterfeiting and piracy
I have to wonder at the increase and sudden newsworthiness of Somalian piracy during the private talks around ACTA. When it comes time to present it to the public, talk of counterfeiting and piracy will elicit images of counterfeit currency and Somalian pirates and the average Joe that hasn't read much about the document will assume that those opposing it are a bunch of crazies. Finally, the years of equating unauthorized IP distribution with piracy will come to fruition for our dark masters.
</tinfoilhat>
In all seriousness, though, whether planned by some diabolical secret cabal or not, I can see this confusion being purposefully used to sway the view of the common citizen.
I read your eulogy to Linda. It seems to me that she refused to see a doctor even after urging from friends and family. I don't see how this is related to cost as you make no mention of cost being an issue, simply her time and or a fear of doctors/hospitals. Same with Jim, though money appears to have been a factor with him, I don't see why a regular checkup is such a hassle. I am sincerely sorry for your loss, and don't mean to sound flippant, but I don't really see cost as the problem in these cases.
As for malpractice, fighting suits in court is expensive, win or lose. Yes, you typically only lose if you are still at fault, but keeping lawyers on retainer and paying them for time when you are sued still costs a pretty penny, even if you always win. You seem to have an active dislike for doctors and the medical profession as a whole, so I can see where your emotional response comes from, but I have known a few doctors (one of my best friends that I have known since high school is one) so I know for a fact that there are more than a few good eggs in that profession. So, I prefer my Kool-aid to yours - it tastes more like truth.
You're never going to bring the cost of a transplant down where ordinary people, even modestly wealthy people, can afford it.
And no one will ever need more than 64k of RAM. The simple fact is that predictions like this are unfounded. Such surgeries are becoming less expensive all the time, and many surgeries that years ago were exorbitantly expensive are fairly routine and affordable now. Granted, most of these are cosmetic surgeries, but just like economies of scale, the more commonplace they become, the less they cost. I can foresee easily in my lifetime almost every organ transplant surgery performed today costing less than $10,000 (in today's money of course), making it affordable to all but the poorest of the poor. Just like stocks though, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but at least my prediction has trends to back it.
we are fools to not follow their winning examples.
I'm going to acknowledge this for the obvious troll that it is. Please read what the people living in those countries think of their health care system. They are dying because the wait to even see a doctor is dangerously long. The wealthy can go to countries (like the US) where health care is privatized, but the poor don't have that option, so you are simply proposing that we trade one system you claim doesn't work for the poor for another. At least here there are numerous options to get the health care now and either go bankrupt to avoid paying the bill, or appeal to any number of existing government programs to help cover it (or get a loan and pay it for years), but it sure beats dying without ever even having the opportunity to see a doctor.
Your last two paragraphs are, well, confusing. You claim I am ignorant on the subject - thank you for being civil, by the way - and yet you claim that I have argued against providing access to health care for all, and am thus heartless. I am pretty sure I said that it is available (which is quite different form my arguing that it shouldn't be available), though from your examples apparently only to those responsible enough for their own care to seek it. If you want the government to coddle you and force you to see a doctor regularly, then I have to agree with you that the current level of access is woefully insufficient. However, if you posit that it isn't the government's job to coddle its citizens from cradle to grave and do everything for them, then the level of access is quite good (though we both agree too costly), though I won't argue that it can't be improved - and in fact laid out such options in the GPP.
In short, bilking taxpayers to cover the cost of a bureaucracy is not going to solve the problem of expensive health care. Even you acknowledge that expensive middlemen are part of the problem. Making them government middlemen is not an improvement.
Just looking at the number of expected lives saved, it kind of answers the question "what is left once you are the richest man in the world?". First, you are a billionaire in dollars, then you strive to become a billionaire in lives saved. If that isn't buying your way into Heaven, I don't know what is.
That of course ignores the validity of the estimates, but still, I wish more people in this world measured wealth in terms of "lives saved" or "lives improved" rather than just dollars. Hate on Bill all you like, but selfish or not, this is a noble deed.
Every citizen in the US has access to health care, it just isn't subsidized. Whether your employer subsidizes it or your government does, it still comes out of your pockets. Subsidization just adds more paperwork and middle men, driving up the cost that we all must bear. The problem is that health care is too expensive, and we need to bring the cost down to everyone, not just those benefiting from employer or government subsidies. The way to do this is not addressed in any plan brought before Congress thus far. The Republicans had it half right in their speeches against the health care plan - lack of competition between insurers, etc makes insurance expensive, but I either missed the part where they addressed the costs of actual health care or they failed to address them. Artificial controls on new doctors entering the system (medicare funding of training hospitals for residencies), insane malpractice insurance costs due to a sue-happy populace and overworked doctors (inhumane working shifts), big pharma pushing the over prescribing of unneeded medications, etc, - these are the heart of the matter that needs addressing.
Let doctors treat patients as they are sworn to do rather than being looked over by bureaucrats and special interests, and not only will the quality of care improve, the cost will also drop. Invest in better health care science and educating people on proper health maintenance with the money saved and it won't be long before people are looking back on this time as an unfortunate dark age in health care.
And how do you propose to end this slide? Let's see.
Unless we can get our factories coming back, stop the outsourcing, etc.
I see. Let's think about this a bit before we stick it to the Bolsheviks. Factories are a means of employing untrained labor. In this, we compete with any number of "third world" nations and perpetuate similar standards of living. The pre-eminence of the US on the world stage is largely due to scientific leadership. Mothballing that to return to the factories and the farms is throwing away our future as a leading nation (perhaps not all bad) and our accustomed standard of living with it. While exploiting massive amounts of unskilled labor and keeping them in poverty may solve a short term problem, it creates a much more dangerous long term one.
So, yes, lets bring back some factory jobs, but lets also bring back jobs for our country's educated. Lets keep NASA and other scientific endeavors going so that we can invest in our future even as we solve our short term problems. Losing that talent to other nations is arguably worse than letting other nations vacuum up our natural resources.
Get our industries back. Period.
Good plan. However, we export entertainment and technology as well. Killing our scientific research impacts both of those industries. So let us not destroy one industry in order to bring back another, let us try to keep them both, and if we have to choose, let us choose the one that carries us farther, the one that has weathered the depression better, and that has the power to help us maintain our economic lead in the long term.
too expensive for the USA to be doing until we're back working again with GOOD PAYING jobs, not the near-poverty stuff we've been gravitating toward for the last 5 decades
Factory work is not good paying jobs (unless you are part of a big union, in which case you are likely destroying your industry from the inside as evidenced by the auto workers). Factory work is minimum wage labor cranking out physical products that (usually) were designed by educated and scientifically supported research. Now, NASA doesn't corner the market on that research, admittedly, and it may not be the most efficient program for promoting such research, but the solution is to fix it, not scrap it altogether. The reason the US has been gravitating towards near-poverty jobs for the last 5 decades is because the religious right and liberal media have been systematically destroying the nation's interest in science and higher learning. Nerds are socially inept and so don't get the girl, jocks get the multi-million dollar sports contract, movie stars are political geniuses, evolution is bunk, and so on. Other than a brief push towards the end of the 1960s (lead by the space program), science has been under constant attack by those that are afraid of progress and the betterment of the masses.
How should we fix NASA? Well, before going to the moon, we should develop technologies that allow us to stay there long term. Means not just of surviving in a harsh environment, but flourishing in it. Habitat technology needs to be improved significantly. Recycling technology, not just for potable water, but for biological waste management and material re-use as well, must also be improved. Advancements in these areas have obvious and major applications back here on Earth - this is not money being spent frivolously for pie in the sky grandstanding, but the sort that supports the "resources spent on space have a tenfold return" statement that NASA supporters love to spout. That's just one example, and though the existing plan for returning to the moon deserves to be scrapped, and private industry probably should pick up the slack for heavy lift rockets, NASA has a place and an important purpose.
Pork, meet barrel. If the project is allowed to complete, funding stops. If they keep canceling it and starting over, the funding never stops, and no actual progress has to be shown; it's free money!
That would be awesome, but the rules governing lawyers explicitly favor full representation. While in certain limited circumstances you can enter a scope of limited representation, generally the court just won't let you be in just for a motion like that. So a lot of your suggestions aren't just allowed us.
Certainly the lawyer might be bound to stick with the client for the long haul, but the client is under no similar obligation. If they do not like your quote for continuing to try the case, they are free to find another lawyer. The point is, you let them know up front the fees for each part of the trial, not as hourly rates, but as fixed price parcels. They are free to take advantage of each service as the see fit.
But to do that the client would need to know what the impact of those concessions would be, which requires more legal advice from the lawyer, who will have a vested interest in keeping the client paying.
I addressed this in another response, but to summarize: word of mouth - lawyers are certainly able to fleece their clients, and do so now, and this system doesn't aim to prevent that entirely, just to make sure that the client has a better opportunity to know what they are getting into before they start, and also to allow the losing party some control over their costs to reimburse the winning party's legal fees. Lawyers that do poor work or cheat their clients will soon be out of business or sanctioned (or not, as current evidence shows), but these changes to the system do not suddenly open up obvious new exploits here.
In summary: The legal system is imperfect, and I have an idea how we could change it, but I think that the existing way is probably better than my proposition anyway. What do you all think?
Most doctors charge per service (or at least the hospitals employing them do) as is necessitated by HMOs. When I go to the dentist (okay, some don't consider them proper doctors, but I'm getting there), a teeth cleaning is, say, $80, whether I have almost no plaque or plaque completely covering my teeth. If the dentist decides that my case is out of the ordinary and warrants an additional fee (must replace fillings before it is safe to clean, etc), he can make that assessment prior to doing any billable work and present me with the updated estimate. The same with most medical work - an annual checkup from a doctor has a set fee, getting shots, and so on.
Now, surgeons may bill by the hour, I don't know as I've never had to make use of such services. However, looking at elective surgery (since civil suits are more comparable to optional procedures than life threatening ones as you can always opt for the alternative[1]), they can provide reliable quotes ahead of time and you are only on the hook for what they quoted. Most hourly contractors also offer a free (or low, fixed cost) consultation to determine the cost and likely results of your proposed job.
So, with that in mind, let's look at your scenarios. I understand that this is just a small sampling of what could go wrong, but even so, you should get my point.
Scenario 1: I don't know how frequently such misreadings of the law are made, but your quote to the client should have been for the motion to dismiss only. You would explain it to the client like this: "To draft this motion will be $1,000 and that is likely all that will need to be done as the case is pretty clear. However, there is always the risk that the judge may not agree. I can't quote a fee for the case without seeing why the judge denied the claim, but at a guess (NOT an official quote), it could turn into X type of a case, which would then cost you an additional $Y". The client is also free to seek other estimates from other lawyers at that point if the judge fails to dismiss the case as expected.
Scenario 2: Again, I don't know how often such a scenario occurs, but this would likely fall under the assumed risk that all professionals assume when quoting work. Some you make the expected profit on, some you make boatloads of profit on, and some you lose money on. Additionally, you could always have a clause in your contracts covering specific scenarios (such as this) that trigger a re-visit of the fees. Most contracts have such clauses for circumstances beyond the control of the entity promising the work (acts of God, etc).
Scenario 3: As in scenario one, you should quote the motion separately from the remainder of the case, though in this case you would inform the client that the motion was almost guaranteed to be denied.
In all cases, the quotes for going to trial would cover a specific set of arguments. If the client or the opposing party started going off on tangents, then you could quote additional fees for adding those in to the case (scope creep to programmers). As mentioned in the article, your client could always choose to concede points brought by the opposing counsel that do not directly pertain to the case as originally quoted. The opposing party would be made aware of the additional fees as well, as they may have to pay them if they lost, and so they could also choose whether or not to pursue their additional claims.
[1] Yes, I understand that you can also opt for the alternative in life threatening situations, but you are unlikely to. Also, many times such operations are done without your consent due to circumstances (you are unconscious or worse).
However, their win/loss history is a matter of public record, and their performance would travel by word of mouth. That, and lawyers are bound by law to try a case to the best of their ability or risk disbarment (if they are truly incompetent or found to be putting forth criminally low levels of effort). Granted, none of these provisions is foolproof, but certainly encourage an acceptable minimum level of performance if a lawyer wishes to remain in business. There will always be ambulance chasers and unethical lawyers, but at least here they won't be able to swindle you for as much. Lastly, even if all of the lawyers just put forth the minimal amount of effort, that means the opposing party's attorney will be too, making it still a fair fight.
Slashdot Mirror
Thats always a winnining strategy. Whining.
It is here on Slashdot - we change the world without ever leaving our moms' basements!
Oh no! It's almost as if advertisers are completely unaware of statistics and thus fail to adjust the price paid for viewed ads to compensate for the expected skew. Oh, wait. Crisis averted; they do.
I don't know what advertisers (or financiers) call it, but scientists call it the "margin of error", and I'm pretty sure that it is taken into account that some ads will be served that aren't viewed. Just like your (the hypothetical you, if you were a webmaster) web site's page hit counter would count me as two unique viewers if I viewed your site both from home and from work, but that the small percentage of users that viewed your website from multiple locations, and the corresponding few that share a computer or browse from behind the same proxy or NAT server, cause an acceptably small impact on the accuracy of your data.
I think that the point Ars is trying to make is that while yes, the ad blockers were created to block the truly hideous ads, they over-zealously also block the more acceptable ads, thus punishing the sites that refuse to run the obnoxious ads, even though they aren't contributing to the problem. His argument that sites are lured into running those such bad ads is a little more flimsy, however, as it seems to me that such a decision would only accelerate an already existing death spiral as more customers are either turned away or convinced to use ad blockers. I guess if the ad hosting companies that serve those ads pay more per click or view or something, then this might make some sense, but I don't have any experience with ad revenue structuring, so I don't know how much more financially tempting it is to run one ad over another.
Why can't I get ads I would be even remotely interested in?
Probably because you block ads, therefore preventing the ad hosting companies from developing a history of your browsing habits with which to create better targeted content. So when you do finally unblock ads you have to suffer whatever random ads their confused algorithm throws your way. It's a vicious cycle, I know, but if you are genuinely open to targeted advertising then you have to sacrifice a little of your privacy. If you want to continue to enjoy free content on the Internet, you (maybe not you personally, but a significant percentage of the population) have to accept some level of advertising. I hate the obnoxious ads just as much as the next person, but the problem also is that ads that stay conveniently and quietly out of the way are also easy to ignore, and thus ineffective. Obnoxious ads annoy users and so perform the opposite of their intended function, so there is a very fine balancing act where everybody (well, most everybody) has to make some sacrifice for the system to work.
Slow ad servers, however, are unforgivable. Or, more accurately, poorly designed websites that require ad content to be loaded before the page can be properly rendered that are then tied to slow ad servers, are unforgivable. If I could view the page content while the ads are being downloaded, then I could obviously care less if they ever finish loading. Waiting for 30 seconds to see the content I originally came to see while watching a commercial (like on TV) is one thing, waiting 30 seconds TO EVEN watch a commercial AND the content I originally came to see (as with a slow ad server) is quite another.
I do appreciate your argument that an algorithm, knowing nothing else about you, and thus just beginning to build its database on you, should take note that you are browsing a tech site and provide tech targeted ads like video games and computer hardware. But then again, personal grooming products and magazines that frequently feature scantily clad females is not all that unexpected of an (stereotypical) interest for that demographic.
Similar to organizations that buy patents with the intent to make them open to all, I think that there should be a think tank that tries to come up with and preemptively patent bad ideas to keep them out of the hands of greedy organizations. Focused advertising, draconian worker "motivation" schemes, etcetera, are all good candidates. And, if there is enough of a war chest, it could attempt to buy existing bad patents in order to lock them down, though I fear that would simply incentivize third party development of consumer (and employee) unfriendly patents.
Mr Prosser said: "You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time you know."
"Appropriate time?" hooted Arthur. "Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me."
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."
But at what point does this switch from DRM to software as a service? Once you start streaming data from a server, it is more akin to the MMO model (even if it is just single-player) than owning the game title. Of course, if (unlike most MMOs) the game remains static, then it merely takes a single inside leak of the server side data to allow the setting up of private servers for cracked clients. At a certain point, side-chanel attacks become more feasible, and they typically require changing human behavior to prevent, which is much more costly.
I tend to wonder at the accuracy of that assumption. I think that drug dealing is a lot like acting - people see all the famous actors and say "I can get rich as an actor", but don't notice that it is only the top one percent or so that truly make it - the rest struggle to get by, or make a moderate living at best. Additionally, as a drug dealer, you also have to avoid the law - being wildly successful for 5 years then getting caught and put in jail for ten to twenty makes flipping burgers more profitable an endeavor over the long term. Not to mention the rather short life expectancy of many of the most successful due to "competition".
So, short term, yeah, dealing (or many types of crime) is easier than making money legally. But long term, you either have to be really good, and thus invest much effort in staying one step ahead of both the law and those looking to "replace" you, or you lose the advantage that crime had, and then some. And if you are investing the required effort successfully, you likely could have done equally well working legitimately. Sure, there are the Dons and Columbian drug lords that are the exception, but again - only the top 1% or less enjoy that privilege.
I've wasted more time trying to make my Mac work properly than I have keeping my Windows box secure.
Yes, but you've looked cooler doing it, and isn't that what REALLY counts?
The point he was making is that WebKit (a rendering engine, NOT a browser) is BSD licensed, they used it to create their Chromium browser (including extensive JavaScript optimizations - V8 - which they DID do from scratch) and released that under BSD. Unlike Apple (for example), who took the BSD licensed WebKit, did significantly less with it when they built Safari, and kept the result locked up.
Unless you are female. Or a Gynecologist.
<tinfoilhat>
From the article: efforts at the international level to fight counterfeiting and piracy
I have to wonder at the increase and sudden newsworthiness of Somalian piracy during the private talks around ACTA. When it comes time to present it to the public, talk of counterfeiting and piracy will elicit images of counterfeit currency and Somalian pirates and the average Joe that hasn't read much about the document will assume that those opposing it are a bunch of crazies. Finally, the years of equating unauthorized IP distribution with piracy will come to fruition for our dark masters.
</tinfoilhat>
In all seriousness, though, whether planned by some diabolical secret cabal or not, I can see this confusion being purposefully used to sway the view of the common citizen.
I read your eulogy to Linda. It seems to me that she refused to see a doctor even after urging from friends and family. I don't see how this is related to cost as you make no mention of cost being an issue, simply her time and or a fear of doctors/hospitals. Same with Jim, though money appears to have been a factor with him, I don't see why a regular checkup is such a hassle. I am sincerely sorry for your loss, and don't mean to sound flippant, but I don't really see cost as the problem in these cases.
As for malpractice, fighting suits in court is expensive, win or lose. Yes, you typically only lose if you are still at fault, but keeping lawyers on retainer and paying them for time when you are sued still costs a pretty penny, even if you always win. You seem to have an active dislike for doctors and the medical profession as a whole, so I can see where your emotional response comes from, but I have known a few doctors (one of my best friends that I have known since high school is one) so I know for a fact that there are more than a few good eggs in that profession. So, I prefer my Kool-aid to yours - it tastes more like truth.
You're never going to bring the cost of a transplant down where ordinary people, even modestly wealthy people, can afford it.
And no one will ever need more than 64k of RAM. The simple fact is that predictions like this are unfounded. Such surgeries are becoming less expensive all the time, and many surgeries that years ago were exorbitantly expensive are fairly routine and affordable now. Granted, most of these are cosmetic surgeries, but just like economies of scale, the more commonplace they become, the less they cost. I can foresee easily in my lifetime almost every organ transplant surgery performed today costing less than $10,000 (in today's money of course), making it affordable to all but the poorest of the poor. Just like stocks though, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but at least my prediction has trends to back it.
we are fools to not follow their winning examples.
I'm going to acknowledge this for the obvious troll that it is. Please read what the people living in those countries think of their health care system. They are dying because the wait to even see a doctor is dangerously long. The wealthy can go to countries (like the US) where health care is privatized, but the poor don't have that option, so you are simply proposing that we trade one system you claim doesn't work for the poor for another. At least here there are numerous options to get the health care now and either go bankrupt to avoid paying the bill, or appeal to any number of existing government programs to help cover it (or get a loan and pay it for years), but it sure beats dying without ever even having the opportunity to see a doctor.
Your last two paragraphs are, well, confusing. You claim I am ignorant on the subject - thank you for being civil, by the way - and yet you claim that I have argued against providing access to health care for all, and am thus heartless. I am pretty sure I said that it is available (which is quite different form my arguing that it shouldn't be available), though from your examples apparently only to those responsible enough for their own care to seek it. If you want the government to coddle you and force you to see a doctor regularly, then I have to agree with you that the current level of access is woefully insufficient. However, if you posit that it isn't the government's job to coddle its citizens from cradle to grave and do everything for them, then the level of access is quite good (though we both agree too costly), though I won't argue that it can't be improved - and in fact laid out such options in the GPP.
In short, bilking taxpayers to cover the cost of a bureaucracy is not going to solve the problem of expensive health care. Even you acknowledge that expensive middlemen are part of the problem. Making them government middlemen is not an improvement.
Just looking at the number of expected lives saved, it kind of answers the question "what is left once you are the richest man in the world?". First, you are a billionaire in dollars, then you strive to become a billionaire in lives saved. If that isn't buying your way into Heaven, I don't know what is.
That of course ignores the validity of the estimates, but still, I wish more people in this world measured wealth in terms of "lives saved" or "lives improved" rather than just dollars. Hate on Bill all you like, but selfish or not, this is a noble deed.
Every citizen in the US has access to health care, it just isn't subsidized. Whether your employer subsidizes it or your government does, it still comes out of your pockets. Subsidization just adds more paperwork and middle men, driving up the cost that we all must bear. The problem is that health care is too expensive, and we need to bring the cost down to everyone, not just those benefiting from employer or government subsidies. The way to do this is not addressed in any plan brought before Congress thus far. The Republicans had it half right in their speeches against the health care plan - lack of competition between insurers, etc makes insurance expensive, but I either missed the part where they addressed the costs of actual health care or they failed to address them. Artificial controls on new doctors entering the system (medicare funding of training hospitals for residencies), insane malpractice insurance costs due to a sue-happy populace and overworked doctors (inhumane working shifts), big pharma pushing the over prescribing of unneeded medications, etc, - these are the heart of the matter that needs addressing.
Let doctors treat patients as they are sworn to do rather than being looked over by bureaucrats and special interests, and not only will the quality of care improve, the cost will also drop. Invest in better health care science and educating people on proper health maintenance with the money saved and it won't be long before people are looking back on this time as an unfortunate dark age in health care.
Prop glass is made from sugar, and is quite edible (like rock candy). Next?
Our country is broke, getting moreso
And how do you propose to end this slide? Let's see.
Unless we can get our factories coming back, stop the outsourcing, etc.
I see. Let's think about this a bit before we stick it to the Bolsheviks. Factories are a means of employing untrained labor. In this, we compete with any number of "third world" nations and perpetuate similar standards of living. The pre-eminence of the US on the world stage is largely due to scientific leadership. Mothballing that to return to the factories and the farms is throwing away our future as a leading nation (perhaps not all bad) and our accustomed standard of living with it. While exploiting massive amounts of unskilled labor and keeping them in poverty may solve a short term problem, it creates a much more dangerous long term one.
So, yes, lets bring back some factory jobs, but lets also bring back jobs for our country's educated. Lets keep NASA and other scientific endeavors going so that we can invest in our future even as we solve our short term problems. Losing that talent to other nations is arguably worse than letting other nations vacuum up our natural resources.
Get our industries back. Period.
Good plan. However, we export entertainment and technology as well. Killing our scientific research impacts both of those industries. So let us not destroy one industry in order to bring back another, let us try to keep them both, and if we have to choose, let us choose the one that carries us farther, the one that has weathered the depression better, and that has the power to help us maintain our economic lead in the long term.
too expensive for the USA to be doing until we're back working again with GOOD PAYING jobs, not the near-poverty stuff we've been gravitating toward for the last 5 decades
Factory work is not good paying jobs (unless you are part of a big union, in which case you are likely destroying your industry from the inside as evidenced by the auto workers). Factory work is minimum wage labor cranking out physical products that (usually) were designed by educated and scientifically supported research. Now, NASA doesn't corner the market on that research, admittedly, and it may not be the most efficient program for promoting such research, but the solution is to fix it, not scrap it altogether. The reason the US has been gravitating towards near-poverty jobs for the last 5 decades is because the religious right and liberal media have been systematically destroying the nation's interest in science and higher learning. Nerds are socially inept and so don't get the girl, jocks get the multi-million dollar sports contract, movie stars are political geniuses, evolution is bunk, and so on. Other than a brief push towards the end of the 1960s (lead by the space program), science has been under constant attack by those that are afraid of progress and the betterment of the masses.
How should we fix NASA? Well, before going to the moon, we should develop technologies that allow us to stay there long term. Means not just of surviving in a harsh environment, but flourishing in it. Habitat technology needs to be improved significantly. Recycling technology, not just for potable water, but for biological waste management and material re-use as well, must also be improved. Advancements in these areas have obvious and major applications back here on Earth - this is not money being spent frivolously for pie in the sky grandstanding, but the sort that supports the "resources spent on space have a tenfold return" statement that NASA supporters love to spout. That's just one example, and though the existing plan for returning to the moon deserves to be scrapped, and private industry probably should pick up the slack for heavy lift rockets, NASA has a place and an important purpose.
Pork, meet barrel. If the project is allowed to complete, funding stops. If they keep canceling it and starting over, the funding never stops, and no actual progress has to be shown; it's free money!
That would be awesome, but the rules governing lawyers explicitly favor full representation. While in certain limited circumstances you can enter a scope of limited representation, generally the court just won't let you be in just for a motion like that. So a lot of your suggestions aren't just allowed us.
Certainly the lawyer might be bound to stick with the client for the long haul, but the client is under no similar obligation. If they do not like your quote for continuing to try the case, they are free to find another lawyer. The point is, you let them know up front the fees for each part of the trial, not as hourly rates, but as fixed price parcels. They are free to take advantage of each service as the see fit.
But to do that the client would need to know what the impact of those concessions would be, which requires more legal advice from the lawyer, who will have a vested interest in keeping the client paying.
I addressed this in another response, but to summarize: word of mouth - lawyers are certainly able to fleece their clients, and do so now, and this system doesn't aim to prevent that entirely, just to make sure that the client has a better opportunity to know what they are getting into before they start, and also to allow the losing party some control over their costs to reimburse the winning party's legal fees. Lawyers that do poor work or cheat their clients will soon be out of business or sanctioned (or not, as current evidence shows), but these changes to the system do not suddenly open up obvious new exploits here.
"its", not "it's". Noticed that just as I pressed Submit...
Yes, it also has traces of methane in it's atmosphere...
In summary: The legal system is imperfect, and I have an idea how we could change it, but I think that the existing way is probably better than my proposition anyway. What do you all think?
I hate the fact that money perverts justice.
I think that this is what you meant to say.
Most doctors charge per service (or at least the hospitals employing them do) as is necessitated by HMOs. When I go to the dentist (okay, some don't consider them proper doctors, but I'm getting there), a teeth cleaning is, say, $80, whether I have almost no plaque or plaque completely covering my teeth. If the dentist decides that my case is out of the ordinary and warrants an additional fee (must replace fillings before it is safe to clean, etc), he can make that assessment prior to doing any billable work and present me with the updated estimate. The same with most medical work - an annual checkup from a doctor has a set fee, getting shots, and so on.
Now, surgeons may bill by the hour, I don't know as I've never had to make use of such services. However, looking at elective surgery (since civil suits are more comparable to optional procedures than life threatening ones as you can always opt for the alternative[1]), they can provide reliable quotes ahead of time and you are only on the hook for what they quoted. Most hourly contractors also offer a free (or low, fixed cost) consultation to determine the cost and likely results of your proposed job.
So, with that in mind, let's look at your scenarios. I understand that this is just a small sampling of what could go wrong, but even so, you should get my point.
Scenario 1: I don't know how frequently such misreadings of the law are made, but your quote to the client should have been for the motion to dismiss only. You would explain it to the client like this: "To draft this motion will be $1,000 and that is likely all that will need to be done as the case is pretty clear. However, there is always the risk that the judge may not agree. I can't quote a fee for the case without seeing why the judge denied the claim, but at a guess (NOT an official quote), it could turn into X type of a case, which would then cost you an additional $Y". The client is also free to seek other estimates from other lawyers at that point if the judge fails to dismiss the case as expected.
Scenario 2: Again, I don't know how often such a scenario occurs, but this would likely fall under the assumed risk that all professionals assume when quoting work. Some you make the expected profit on, some you make boatloads of profit on, and some you lose money on. Additionally, you could always have a clause in your contracts covering specific scenarios (such as this) that trigger a re-visit of the fees. Most contracts have such clauses for circumstances beyond the control of the entity promising the work (acts of God, etc).
Scenario 3: As in scenario one, you should quote the motion separately from the remainder of the case, though in this case you would inform the client that the motion was almost guaranteed to be denied.
In all cases, the quotes for going to trial would cover a specific set of arguments. If the client or the opposing party started going off on tangents, then you could quote additional fees for adding those in to the case (scope creep to programmers). As mentioned in the article, your client could always choose to concede points brought by the opposing counsel that do not directly pertain to the case as originally quoted. The opposing party would be made aware of the additional fees as well, as they may have to pay them if they lost, and so they could also choose whether or not to pursue their additional claims.
[1] Yes, I understand that you can also opt for the alternative in life threatening situations, but you are unlikely to. Also, many times such operations are done without your consent due to circumstances (you are unconscious or worse).
However, their win/loss history is a matter of public record, and their performance would travel by word of mouth. That, and lawyers are bound by law to try a case to the best of their ability or risk disbarment (if they are truly incompetent or found to be putting forth criminally low levels of effort). Granted, none of these provisions is foolproof, but certainly encourage an acceptable minimum level of performance if a lawyer wishes to remain in business. There will always be ambulance chasers and unethical lawyers, but at least here they won't be able to swindle you for as much. Lastly, even if all of the lawyers just put forth the minimal amount of effort, that means the opposing party's attorney will be too, making it still a fair fight.