The problem is when people don't realize (or don't care) that entry level IT is often going to get you entry-level capability. A little server that does nothing but NAT, you can probably hire that teenager one of your co-workers knows and be fine. Low-level help desk stuff, no problem. Simplistic networking, sure. But if you're, say, Sony with tens of millions of users and tens of millions of credit cards stored on your system, you had damn well better find people much more qualified to the particular tasks you need accomplished.
In other words, there's no issue with the barriers to entry for IT; there's an issue with people being unable to comprehend or unwilling to pay for the appropriate people for a job.
"The theft of our customer data was a completely amateur, wholly preventable action whereby somebody stumbled on our unprotected psn.playstation.com/customer-data.xml data dump?"
Of course they're going to claim it was carefully planned, professional and sophisticated (what the fuck is a sophisticated hack, anyway?), because the implication otherwise is that they didn't take the proper precautions to secure that data. With such a "sophisticated" attack, gosh, how could they be expected to prevent it? And more importantly, how can they be sued for being as incompetent as pretty much everybody who does not work for Sony assumes that they are?
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I wouldn't read anything into the fact that they said it. They're trying to get Congress off their back.
As you eluded to at the end of your post, it depends on circumstances.
My program takes over three seconds to load. Well, okay. Did it used to take that long? If not, why is it taking that long now? Is it the Windows slow-down effect? Did some program update bloat the software up, or introduce worse code? Is my computer busy doing something else, and if so, is it because I asked it to or because one of those other things is true of some other program or yet another piece of software saw fit to pump four badly-coded "helper" apps into my startup that I neither want nor need? Some of these things should--rightly--piss me off; others not so much.
My game isn't responsive? Should it be? How old is my hardware? Am I above the requirements? Input lag, video lag, Internet lag?
Waiting for pages to load on 56k was annoying, but it was expected. If I'm loading at 56k speeds with a 8Mb down connection, shouldn't I have the right to be impatient (assuming there aren't other major transfers going on sucking the bandwidth of course)?
In other words, I'm okay with things being laggy if there's a good reason for them to be laggy. If they're laggy because people write shoddy code or bloat their applications or webpages up with loads of unnecessary crap, usually installed for THEIR benefit and not mine, then yeah, I get impatient. I think that's justified.
The over-zealous help combat the over apathetic...
Do you? Or do you alienate the middle by focusing on hypotheticals that even you acknowledge will be seen by most as paranoid and over-zealous?
This isn't some math equation, where you registering a +20 on the GiveAShits scale balances out a couple guys with a -10 GiveAShits output. Unless there is some massive, highly funded contingent of paranoid and over-zealous types out there that I am unaware of, you can't do this by yourself. You need to reach the middle--the "apathetic"--and convince them that what you believe is what they should believe. I don't believe you can accomplish that if the typical reaction to your comments is for people to roll their eyes and walk away. And if you can't accomplish it, then no matter how much projects like this may or may not be necessary they aren't likely to be reality.
What's your point? That was a story; this is real life. The fact that it's excellent advice doesn't mean it's some sort of legal or even moral concept that must be adhered to.
911 paramedics, for example, are legally prohibited from refusing a call even if they know beyond all doubt that the person making the call is a fucking liar who does nothing but waste their time and put actually sick people at danger. Why? Because even assholes sometimes do get sick, and the fact that they're assholes doesn't mean they don't deserve help.
In the justice system, there are two possibilities. One is that your lawsuit is frivolous, meaning without any legal merit. This is seldom declared, but if it is there are legal avenues for sanctions up to and including disbarment. They're not used enough, but they're there. If it's not, meaning there is legal merit to your claims even if you are ultimately ruled against, why should it matter that you're 0 for 500? Attempt 501 might be a winner.
In context, Righthaven's claims for seizure of the domain names was rejected -- not their lawsuit in its entirety, which means the judge believes there's no legal concept supporting seizing the domains but not that their lawsuits are, themselves, without enough merit to be heard. If they're fucking with a federal judge, that's an awfully dangerous game that these people want no part of and he can and should lay the smack down on them. But it has nothing to do with the merits of their overall suits, only what they're seeking. Of course it should be heard, and if they're right this time, there should be justice done (yes, for both parties--a judgment that cripples somebody's life over the text of a newspaper article is hardly justice).
Some political views are bad. There's no way around this.
Sure there is, because you're begging the question. You've already assumed the validity of whatever metric you choose to evaluate good and bad (sounds like a form of utilitarianism) and are already hard at work evaluating measures according to that. When you're talking good or bad, as in a moral sense, that is truly the biggest question.
Utilitarianism is a pretty strong philosophy, but it's certainly not without its problems. It would support my medically experimenting and killing thousands of people if it lead to a breakthrough that saved the lives of tens of thousands (or millions). Is that good or bad? Is it generally good for people or generally bad?
You might be able to get around it slightly by using rule utilitarianism instead; experimenting on people against their wills and killing them is bad, even if it occasionally leads to massively beneficial outcomes. Fair enough -- but do you make an exception for those situations? If there is some sort of plague sweeping the continent, are you justified in killing some to save many?
And how do you measure "the most good" anyway? Killing 5 instead of 10 may be the most good you can get in a situation, but what about killing 5 instead of seriously maiming 10? What about killing 5 instead of letting 8 die? And who is fit to judge that, anyway?
In short, it's not so simple. Determining "good" and "bad" is either entirely subjective on its own, or requires choosing any of a series of systems which all have their own flaws. It is the hardest part in the equation; philosophically, an impossible part. Really, all your position boils down to is "positions that don't conform to what I think is good are bad." That's what most of us think, but it's not exactly rigorous or uncontestable and is predicated entirely on what you think.
Ah, fanboys. Simply beyond logic yet always assuming they have something to contribute. Or maybe blindly defending anything Apple does, even if it is the lamest possible defense that can be envisioned, is their "contribution."
Apple sells a brand. A shiny, glossy brand -- which has somehow become a status symbol.
Don't get me wrong, some of their products are quite good. I'm writing this message on a Macbook Pro which I love. The iPod is a nice device (though hardly leaps and bounds above the majority of its competition anymore). I don't own an iPhone or an iPad, because really, I'm just not paying that damn much for an electronic -- with vendor lock in to boot!
But that's not why most people buy them anymore. They buy them because they're seen as hip and cool. Of all the people I know who own Apple devices, not one of them have ever talked about the technical merits or the ease of use or the integration. These are, by and large, not technical users; they're not comparing hardware or software and looking for the best fits for their needs. They see the phones, maybe a few apps, and go "that's cool" -- to the tune of several hundred dollars in purchases.
My best friend sent me an IM the other day. "Do you think an Apple Cinema Display is worth the money?" "Almost never." "Almost never? It sounds like there's room to convince you." "It's not my money, you don't need to convince me." "I'm going through an 'I need to buy Apple' phase again." Well, at least he can admit it. And I was with him when his Mac arrived -- it was all about setting it up and how it looked. He bought the little iPod doc thing because it went along with his huge new Apple monitor.
Yes, it's anecdotal -- but it's also reality, a reality that so many people are loathe to admit for some reason. Not everybody is like this. Some people absolutely do weigh its merits and buy it for intelligent reasons, but I think it's safe to say that we are long past the point where those people make up a majority of Apple's sales.
What worries me is the 5% cases where it's either hardware like a network scanner that worked with proprietary software or some unique app.
That's a valid concern in general, but in this specific case if a company with at least 10,000 employees wasn't dilligent enough to make sure any hardware and custom software they needed to do their jobs ran in linux, the problem is huge and nothing at all to do with linux.
You make it sound as though I can fill up a room with people, force them to all sign on the dotted line and fill the room with nerve gas.
Nah. But ironically, in most states, the only thing stopping you from avoiding the wrongful death lawsuits with your paperwork is the concept of strict liability ("that was SO fucking dangerous that it doesn't even matter if they signed away their right to sue you"). You'll still go down for murder, of course, though you might have grounds to argue down the charges.
Anyway, my point is this: You can't necessarily circumvent the law, but if you can legally get people to sign (click) away their ability to sue for their rights, you're most of the way to where you want to be. Unless a state AG or other authorized governmental entity steps in, Sony would be in the clear. Even if they did, it's bad but not nearly as bad as it could--and should--be for them.
I really only installed Linux on my PS3 because I could, but I never used it.
And I never even got to the install it step, but that doesn't mean it wasn't something that influenced my decision to buy. More to the point, a product I paid for is getting less and less features. Other OS is gone from my console after I bought it. Playstation Network has been down for two days and counting, rumor has it because it was hacked for free games. PS3 Slim dropped hardware backward compatibility and eventually stopped bothering supporting software compatibility (luckily for me I have the original) -- I can't speak for others, but that would have ABSOLUTELY been the difference between a sale and not a sale for me; I have too many old PS2 games that I'm not going to just throw away. The cherry on top? This is being done to me, a legitimate, paying customer, because of the fear that somebody, somewhere might be pirating games. Sony, that ship has sailed. Ages ago. And if the Air Force wants to build a cheap supercomputing cluster with them, it's none of your fucking business once they buy it. Don't like it? Don't sell your hardware at a loss.
Did I have a choice in these magical disappearing features? Technically yes. I could have chosen to render my PS3 useless for anything that touches the Internet -- no 'net play, no Netflix, no roster updates for my sports games, etc. That's not a choice in any real sense of the word. It's a choice like a mobster telling you it would be a shame if anything happened to your business leaves you a choice of whether or not to pay them. You do it or your shit gets broken. How this is not a collossal and incredibly damaging class action lawsuit, I truly have no idea. In that I have to side with the OP; there's obviously some idiocy in US law that prevents it. (And yes, to the best of my recollection somebody did try and was shot down.)
I mean, look, I share your feelings -- I truly do. I think the fact that our lives can be boiled down to a set of various numbers is pretty disgusting in a lot of ways.
But the reason we do this is because, culturally, we feel we need to make these decisions and we have devised specific criteria for them. We feel there is value to a number that denotes how good we are with credit, how much of a risk we are to insurers, and other such. If that is the case, then I would prefer it be done with computers and done fairly and uniformly. If I'm going to be denied a house because of one of my numbers, or have my insurance rates hiked because of another, I want it to at least be the same situation for others in my situation and not because somebody forgot to carry the one on their worksheet or interpreted my response different than a different examiner.
In that sense, this is a really good use of computers. If there is any value to the ESRB system (which I'm not particularly sure of), then it may as well be administered uniformly and fairly.
Now whether or not the system itself has any value is certainly open to debate in each case. Whether it is really the best choice for our society is certainly open for debate. And of course, whether the tests are an accurate representation of what we hope they're an accurate representation of is open for debate as well. But these systems exist because the people who use them find value. The people who are debating lending you money want to know your credit score; insurance providers want the answers to their questionnaires; many stores use ESRB ratings to determine whether or not games are stocked and (some!) parents use them as a guide for what is an isn't appropriate for our children.
If it's a monster, it's one of our own creation, by our will. It may be sad, but it is what we want--and so long as we want it, it's what we deserve. May as well be consistent about it. Boiling disparate things down into a number is, at the very least, a result that is fairly unambiguous.
It sounds good, and it's definitely what they should be doing. But the request puzzles me. "I need a non-root account to your server?" Why? What is that going to accomplish?
If they're truly interested in security and HIPPA compliance, there are a lot of things they could justifiably ask for or do, including: A full audit of the machine's software (which would require more than a user account in most cases, even if only temporarily), isolation of the machine from the rest of the internal network (nothing to do with anybody but IT), requiring the server be moved to a physically secure location (again nothing to do with an account), ensuring valid setup of the server and any encryption required either by law or common sense (this data is being stored on this Internet-exposed server even if it's not on the main VLANs--and again, nothing to do with a user account), drawing up or requiring documentation and policies regarding the data to be used in this system (nothing to do with a user account), etc. That's twenty seconds of thinking from somebody who is a "tinkerer." I'm sure you IT Pros can come up with others.
Which makes this request very odd to me, so much so that I would have found it considerably less odd if they had asked for root or an unrestricted sudo account to begin with. IT should definitely be involved, and this should definitely have gone through them to begin with--if for no other reason than because if a calendar server is useful for one department it might very well be useful for others and they could scale the solution up without duplicating effort--but that doesn't mean that the "lusers" should be McDonalds clerks subserviently taking and delivering ITs orders any more than IT should be.
And frankly, your attitude is a perfect example of why nobody ever gives IT the benefit of the doubt. "I'm on the side of what's good and right and company-saving and you're a luser trying to usurp my authoritai!" No. Shut the fuck up. You're doing your job--maybe, or maybe you're on a powertrip; it really depends what you're doing and what you're asking, doesn't it?--and they're trying to do their jobs more efficiently.
The whole thing should have been handled differently from the get-go, but that doesn't make you god. Try losing the attitude and realize that your entire job and the only reason you receive a paycheck is supporting the work these "lusers" do that bring in the money to puff up your ego.
It's biased, yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean "wrong" or "without value."
If somebody can build a business around FTP, I think that's a testament to its relevancy right there. And who better to comment on it than somebody who deals with it and clients who use it every day?
I wouldn't ask the guy if his product is the best on the market, but as a comment on the underlying protocols... why not?
Obvious question though: Does the pirate version include the game's DLC?
It certainly can, yes. And since step #1 for pirated DLC is "don't let it phone home," it obviously wouldn't have a problem when the auth servers go down.
Well you're right, but I think there's a bit of a cause-and-effect issue with what you're saying.
This sort of service--which I PERSONALLY think is silly, by the way--does not cause people to become lonely and isolated, incapable of participating in a valid relationship. People are likely to turn to this service because they are already that way, and are trying to satisfy their human needs for socializing that they aren't able to satisfy normally.
Now obviously, most people will agree but say to that "all the more reason to get out and try for real," but I think that tends to just be strong evidence that most people have no real appreciate for the severity of mental issues. They obviously want relationships or they wouldn't seek a service like this out, but equally true is that there is something going on that has prevented them from acheiving them.
Truly helping these lonely, isolated people involves first figuring out what is making them lonely and isolated. You'll get a lot of commonalities arising, I'd think, but also no rules. It's something that can definitely be different for everybody. "Just go out and try forming these relationships" is kind of like telling a depressed person "just be happy" and thinking you've given them great advice. It's not that easy; there's more going on than that. They definitely need to do that -- but if they were capable of doing it they would be. Step one is working on whatever is blocking them from feeling or being capable. If services like this help them out while they work on that, then so be it -- I'm not going to judge them for it, particularly with how prevalent feelings of isolation and loneliness is in suicides.
It's not necessarily as easy as you make it sound. A table with fifty sales tax rates, hell, that's pretty easy. But it's nowhere near the reality of the situation.
Let's start with the simpler complication. I live near Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois. Illinois has a sales tax. So does Cook County. So does the city of Chicago. Do I pay Cook County tax on top of the Illinois tax? If I lived in the city, would I pay Chicago sales tax as well?
And how much? There are a often exceptions and exemptions to taxes, and the more localities you involve in the calculations the more complicated it is. Are food products taxed? Baby formula? What constitutes a food product? Certainly edible lingerie shouldn't qualify, should it? In the city of Chicago, again as an example, there is a "fat tax" on sodas and select other merchandise that does not apply to, say, water. Cigarette taxes. Etc, etc.
Where does the purchase take place? If I'm in Illinois buying from Amazon in California, do I play Illinois sales tax or California? If the latter, that's going to disproportionately help a certain handful of states where lots of e-commerce sites are headquartered -- how long before the other states get uppity about it and start trying to re-tax your purchases anyway?
I don't have any problem paying sales tax for my online purchases. In fact, most stores I shop at already DO tax me -- if that money is not (reliably) going to my own state, I would certainly prefer that it did. But I do think step #1 is to address all of these ambiguities and lower-level tax games that various localities play. If we're going to tax Internet purchases, it should be as simple as a SELECT rate FROM tax_rates WHERE state='IL' and some multiplication.
I'm going to complain about the server thing, though not from the angle you're expecting.
The very first thing any good programmer learns is not to trust user input. With dedicated servers, that is less of an issue because the server itself is under your control. With P2P "servers," every client is potentially a server -- meaning hacks on their end are "the truth" because the server says so.
I don't believe I have ever experienced a single level of prestige in MW2 that I was not at least partially prestige hacked, just by clicking "Find Game" and happening to be dropped into a server that wants to do it to me. Often times, this has occurred even without my MOVING much less making a single kill. I remember one in particular where I logged in and heard nothing but tubes detonating, but it sounded like they were coming out of a freakin' chain gun. I looked down and saw the score was something like 1 million to 800,000,000, so I left the server. That was enough to be prestige hacked. With custom servers supposedly prohibited, can anybody explain to me why my client can't know that a Team Deathmatch game has a maximum possible 75 kills I could have made?
Now, prestige hacks are annoying--one of the reasons I prestige is to play my way back up--but ultimately they're a positive occurance (the only real difference is that I suddenly have access to all my guns and equipment instead of a subset of them) so I can overlook them slightly.
But please explain to me why, other than "Infinity Ward took the cheap-ass non-server route and then took the cheap-ass don't-validate-against-idiocy route to compound it," that the last hack server I was on TOOK AWAY EVERYTHING I HAD? I was the same rank, the same prestige -- but I had no titles, no icons, no lifetime kills on any of my weapons. My lifetime kill to death ratio was 0:0. My lifetime won-lost ration was 0:0. They forgot to clear my lifetime assists and lifetime ties, which made for an amusing sight. Why in the bloody fuck should my client possibly accept the notion that I played a game where I not only killed nobody (unlikely but plausible), but had negative kills? And deaths? It even changed the name of my first custom class to "WTF??????" Why the hell would a P2P server even have access to that fucking information, much less be able to write it?
Then, yes, there are the regular concerns with a lack of dedicated servers. The game becomes progressively more unplayable as the night drags on. I'm alright up until about 7-8PM Central time. At about 10pm, my ping doubles to the point where I will just mysteriously die, like when I fire shots or knife somebody and watch their killcam and I did none of those things. If I play into the early mornings, 2-3 AM, it becomes unplayable in nearly every game. Occasionally I stumble into a game with a good host, but that's pretty fucking rare when the people you're playing against are suddenly comprised almost entirely of Russians, Australians and Asians, many of whom I am convinced have a tin can with a string as an Internet connection.
They had an awesome concept with their multiplayer, one I really enjoyed, but they blew it. I didn't buy Black Ops, partially because of this (partially because it is from a different creator and partially because I know the entire Infinity Ward crew is gone from the series). There's an excellent chance I will not be buying Modern Warfare 3. Even if it has dedicated servers. Because they've simply ruined my goodwill with their cheapass tactics and terrible coding.
I enjoy the multiplayer, I really do. But if there is anything "stunning" about it, it's how many gaping holes there are.
You're right, but that doesn't mean it isn't a mitigating factor that can be used during sentencing. If he can get a 20 year sentence reduced to a 10 year sentence, that would be a huge win for him.
However, the government is a customer too and is free to choose a product that happens to be in the unique position of having competitors who think their products are better.
Sort of.
The government is a customer, but it's not any customer. It has a legal obligation to pay the least amount of money for whatever solution they need, and therefor there are only three possible reasons a department should choose Company A over Company B: 1) Company B's product does not meet the requirements; 2) Company B's product would cost more than Company A's; 3) Company B has previously operated in bad faith or incompetently with the government, meaning that even though theirs was the cheapest and technically meets the requirements, there is good and documented reason to go with another provider.
In that sense, "criticiz[ing] that software and tout[ing] their own" is actually a necessary step of the process. Either Google's offering was more expensive and they want to argue that Microsoft's does not properly meet the requirements, or (probably more likely) Google's was cheaper and they're trying to show that they do. If Microsoft's doesn't, that's fine too -- it's another path to the same victory.
I agree with him. However, that hinges on the definition of "whether it benefits the public," and I don't agree that the definition in this case is "if Internet2 [is] going to fix problems with the [commercial] Internet" (though I can also agree that that probably is what most people would think).
They're using public information--your license plate during your travels on public property (roadways)--to determine something. IE, if the car was reported stolen, etc. It's pretty clearly constitutional, even on its face -- and definitely when one looks at the decisions that have already supported these issues.
Whether or not it should be is another issue entirely. I don't think it is unreasonable to assume the Founders had no way to properly imagine technology such that you could be automatically, technologically tracked anywhere you went, nor do I find it a stretch to believe that had they considered such a possibility that they would have been strongly against it. As I am, and as anybody with any respect for privacy should be.
The reality is, America has gone too far down the "tough on crime" path. Most people just couldn't care less what we do to criminals, even if they're only accused criminals at the time. Right now they're using it for terrorism and to check for stolen cars and things like that. It won't be long until they link it to some sort of road usage tax, like in the UK. And that is the beginning of the ability for the government to know where you are at almost any point of your life. That's ridiculous.
Technically you're right, because good scientists will not say that they prove anything. Evolution is, however, a scientific theory with immense evidence in support of it. It is just about as close to proven as we can get. If one called it proven, one would be so close to correct that it is barely worth pointing out that it's wrong.
From a non-religious point-of-view, there is absolutely no reason that evolution should be granted any merit beyond intelligent design.
Yes, there is.
Evolution is a scientific theory. That means it is falsifiable (disprovable), test- and re-testable, observable, and has predictive value. In evolution's case, it is also strongly supported by scientific evidence and observation over several hundred years. Intelligent design is a theory in the sense of somebody standing up and saying "I have a theory about that!" It means nothing more than a guess that may or may not be educated. That doesn't necessarily mean it is WRONG, but it is not scientific -- and it can never be proven to be wrong for that reason, even if it is. That is why evolution should be granted merit beyond intelligent design. Even if they both turned out to be right, one is science and one is not. If schools want to teach ID in schools, I would support that; but it should be done in a theology class, or perhaps a contemporary history class. It should not be held up as science because it is demonstrably not science, nor even scientific. The value of science is in the process, not the conclusions. ID dismisses that process entirely.
Why are all evolution vs. intelligent design debates always really just deism vs. atheism debates?
They don't have to be. There's nothing at all to say that somebody can't stand up and say "evolution is the natural means by which God has chosen to execute his plan," and indeed, many people do.
The reason there is so much conflict is because--and I don't mean to be insulting--of people like you who make statements like you did that they should be on equal footing, or that it is just a theory, and because people who push ID typically aren't doing so as an investigation into possible truth, but rather an attempt at a pseudo-scientific explanation of their faith. When you do that, you're going to get all sorts of people on edge and they're all going to jump on you and point out all the difference I just did, just like I just did. (Though I hope at least that you consider I am trying to be respectful!)
Why can't anyone consider the possibility of intelligent design without asking 'who'? [. ..] Intelligent design does not predicate a deity.
This is rather tangential, but I actually disagree. You could argue some sort of creator force or power without necessarily invoking a deity, but once you start talking about intelligent design--a plan, and a means of enacting that plan through natural forces--how is that not a deity? It may not be the god of the Bible, or any god we even know on Earth -- but you've essentially personified it, and what is a deity other than a personification of ultimate power and knowledge?
But again, that has nothing to do with evolution and it's purely my philosophical bent on it.
If you want full disclosure from me, I'm somewhere between atheist and agnostic -- where tends to vary. I'm moving more toward agnostic as I get older, but I would never hold up ID or faith as scientific. They don't belong in the same discussions because they are simply not the same things.
Good point. And indeed, it's the entire way the system is set up that lends itself to that.
A few years ago, my brother woke up with a blood clot in his arm. They wheeled him into surgery and keep him in the hospital for a few nights. His hospital bill was something like $30,0000.
Now, let's put aside how ridiculous that number truly is for a moment because it's tangential to the point. They handed him a bill that said "$30,000 plox!" But he did what we would consider the responsible thing and he had insurance, and there was a few little notes underneath that in essence said "but really, we have a deal with insurance companies so it's only $10,000." Insurance paid pretty much all of it.
Now stop and think about that. People with insurance--people who will actually get their bill paid--pay less. Not out of pocket, the actual bill is less. Most Americans do have insurance, which means the vast majority of the time, the system (doctors, hospitals, etc) get the lower price -- a price they can obviously operate at and still enjoy the fairly comfortable lifestyles of people in those professions. What about that higher bill? Two possibilities. One is nobody pays. The more likely one is that the government pays--you and I pay. But not the $10,000 the insurance company has to deal with, but rather a full $30,000 fleecing (or as much of the full $30k as they can squeeze out of them anyway). Different price points for different abilities to pay... we can talk about moral or legal issues all we want, but there is at least a cool logical component to that -- but not if you're charging more for the people who can afford less!
A $300,000 hospital stay because we wouldn't pay for a $700 tooth problem? That's exactly how the system wanted it. The insurance companies, with their cadre of lawyers and lobbyists, pay nothing. The American taxpayers, through their government, pay 430 times more than they should have on top of our own insurance premiums and our politicians tell us it is because of a lack of personal responsibility on the part of the patient.
That sounds about right, doesn't it?
We desperately need health care reform in this country -- but I mean real healthcare reform. Not piecemeal. Not half-assed. Not a "solution" that says "you're hereby required to have insurance, problem solved." If we can't at least work toward that, the politicians can stop talking out of their asses about how dedicated they are to solving the problem. If I'm going to get butt-fucked, it might as well be quieter in the room.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not a problem.
The problem is when people don't realize (or don't care) that entry level IT is often going to get you entry-level capability. A little server that does nothing but NAT, you can probably hire that teenager one of your co-workers knows and be fine. Low-level help desk stuff, no problem. Simplistic networking, sure. But if you're, say, Sony with tens of millions of users and tens of millions of credit cards stored on your system, you had damn well better find people much more qualified to the particular tasks you need accomplished.
In other words, there's no issue with the barriers to entry for IT; there's an issue with people being unable to comprehend or unwilling to pay for the appropriate people for a job.
Well, what else are they going to say?
"The theft of our customer data was a completely amateur, wholly preventable action whereby somebody stumbled on our unprotected psn.playstation.com/customer-data.xml data dump?"
Of course they're going to claim it was carefully planned, professional and sophisticated (what the fuck is a sophisticated hack, anyway?), because the implication otherwise is that they didn't take the proper precautions to secure that data. With such a "sophisticated" attack, gosh, how could they be expected to prevent it? And more importantly, how can they be sued for being as incompetent as pretty much everybody who does not work for Sony assumes that they are?
Maybe it's true, maybe it's not, but I wouldn't read anything into the fact that they said it. They're trying to get Congress off their back.
As you eluded to at the end of your post, it depends on circumstances.
My program takes over three seconds to load. Well, okay. Did it used to take that long? If not, why is it taking that long now? Is it the Windows slow-down effect? Did some program update bloat the software up, or introduce worse code? Is my computer busy doing something else, and if so, is it because I asked it to or because one of those other things is true of some other program or yet another piece of software saw fit to pump four badly-coded "helper" apps into my startup that I neither want nor need? Some of these things should--rightly--piss me off; others not so much.
My game isn't responsive? Should it be? How old is my hardware? Am I above the requirements? Input lag, video lag, Internet lag?
Waiting for pages to load on 56k was annoying, but it was expected. If I'm loading at 56k speeds with a 8Mb down connection, shouldn't I have the right to be impatient (assuming there aren't other major transfers going on sucking the bandwidth of course)?
In other words, I'm okay with things being laggy if there's a good reason for them to be laggy. If they're laggy because people write shoddy code or bloat their applications or webpages up with loads of unnecessary crap, usually installed for THEIR benefit and not mine, then yeah, I get impatient. I think that's justified.
Do you? Or do you alienate the middle by focusing on hypotheticals that even you acknowledge will be seen by most as paranoid and over-zealous?
This isn't some math equation, where you registering a +20 on the GiveAShits scale balances out a couple guys with a -10 GiveAShits output. Unless there is some massive, highly funded contingent of paranoid and over-zealous types out there that I am unaware of, you can't do this by yourself. You need to reach the middle--the "apathetic"--and convince them that what you believe is what they should believe. I don't believe you can accomplish that if the typical reaction to your comments is for people to roll their eyes and walk away. And if you can't accomplish it, then no matter how much projects like this may or may not be necessary they aren't likely to be reality.
I assume he meant "appetizer," though I have never heard that shortened to "app."
What's your point? That was a story; this is real life. The fact that it's excellent advice doesn't mean it's some sort of legal or even moral concept that must be adhered to.
911 paramedics, for example, are legally prohibited from refusing a call even if they know beyond all doubt that the person making the call is a fucking liar who does nothing but waste their time and put actually sick people at danger. Why? Because even assholes sometimes do get sick, and the fact that they're assholes doesn't mean they don't deserve help.
In the justice system, there are two possibilities. One is that your lawsuit is frivolous, meaning without any legal merit. This is seldom declared, but if it is there are legal avenues for sanctions up to and including disbarment. They're not used enough, but they're there. If it's not, meaning there is legal merit to your claims even if you are ultimately ruled against, why should it matter that you're 0 for 500? Attempt 501 might be a winner.
In context, Righthaven's claims for seizure of the domain names was rejected -- not their lawsuit in its entirety, which means the judge believes there's no legal concept supporting seizing the domains but not that their lawsuits are, themselves, without enough merit to be heard. If they're fucking with a federal judge, that's an awfully dangerous game that these people want no part of and he can and should lay the smack down on them. But it has nothing to do with the merits of their overall suits, only what they're seeking. Of course it should be heard, and if they're right this time, there should be justice done (yes, for both parties--a judgment that cripples somebody's life over the text of a newspaper article is hardly justice).
Sure there is, because you're begging the question. You've already assumed the validity of whatever metric you choose to evaluate good and bad (sounds like a form of utilitarianism) and are already hard at work evaluating measures according to that. When you're talking good or bad, as in a moral sense, that is truly the biggest question.
Utilitarianism is a pretty strong philosophy, but it's certainly not without its problems. It would support my medically experimenting and killing thousands of people if it lead to a breakthrough that saved the lives of tens of thousands (or millions). Is that good or bad? Is it generally good for people or generally bad?
You might be able to get around it slightly by using rule utilitarianism instead; experimenting on people against their wills and killing them is bad, even if it occasionally leads to massively beneficial outcomes. Fair enough -- but do you make an exception for those situations? If there is some sort of plague sweeping the continent, are you justified in killing some to save many?
And how do you measure "the most good" anyway? Killing 5 instead of 10 may be the most good you can get in a situation, but what about killing 5 instead of seriously maiming 10? What about killing 5 instead of letting 8 die? And who is fit to judge that, anyway?
In short, it's not so simple. Determining "good" and "bad" is either entirely subjective on its own, or requires choosing any of a series of systems which all have their own flaws. It is the hardest part in the equation; philosophically, an impossible part. Really, all your position boils down to is "positions that don't conform to what I think is good are bad." That's what most of us think, but it's not exactly rigorous or uncontestable and is predicated entirely on what you think.
"GOOGLE DOES IT TOO! ASK THEM!"
Ah, fanboys. Simply beyond logic yet always assuming they have something to contribute. Or maybe blindly defending anything Apple does, even if it is the lamest possible defense that can be envisioned, is their "contribution."
Apple sells a brand. A shiny, glossy brand -- which has somehow become a status symbol.
Don't get me wrong, some of their products are quite good. I'm writing this message on a Macbook Pro which I love. The iPod is a nice device (though hardly leaps and bounds above the majority of its competition anymore). I don't own an iPhone or an iPad, because really, I'm just not paying that damn much for an electronic -- with vendor lock in to boot!
But that's not why most people buy them anymore. They buy them because they're seen as hip and cool. Of all the people I know who own Apple devices, not one of them have ever talked about the technical merits or the ease of use or the integration. These are, by and large, not technical users; they're not comparing hardware or software and looking for the best fits for their needs. They see the phones, maybe a few apps, and go "that's cool" -- to the tune of several hundred dollars in purchases.
My best friend sent me an IM the other day. "Do you think an Apple Cinema Display is worth the money?" "Almost never." "Almost never? It sounds like there's room to convince you." "It's not my money, you don't need to convince me." "I'm going through an 'I need to buy Apple' phase again." Well, at least he can admit it. And I was with him when his Mac arrived -- it was all about setting it up and how it looked. He bought the little iPod doc thing because it went along with his huge new Apple monitor.
Yes, it's anecdotal -- but it's also reality, a reality that so many people are loathe to admit for some reason. Not everybody is like this. Some people absolutely do weigh its merits and buy it for intelligent reasons, but I think it's safe to say that we are long past the point where those people make up a majority of Apple's sales.
That's a valid concern in general, but in this specific case if a company with at least 10,000 employees wasn't dilligent enough to make sure any hardware and custom software they needed to do their jobs ran in linux, the problem is huge and nothing at all to do with linux.
Nah. But ironically, in most states, the only thing stopping you from avoiding the wrongful death lawsuits with your paperwork is the concept of strict liability ("that was SO fucking dangerous that it doesn't even matter if they signed away their right to sue you"). You'll still go down for murder, of course, though you might have grounds to argue down the charges.
Anyway, my point is this: You can't necessarily circumvent the law, but if you can legally get people to sign (click) away their ability to sue for their rights, you're most of the way to where you want to be. Unless a state AG or other authorized governmental entity steps in, Sony would be in the clear. Even if they did, it's bad but not nearly as bad as it could--and should--be for them.
And I never even got to the install it step, but that doesn't mean it wasn't something that influenced my decision to buy. More to the point, a product I paid for is getting less and less features. Other OS is gone from my console after I bought it. Playstation Network has been down for two days and counting, rumor has it because it was hacked for free games. PS3 Slim dropped hardware backward compatibility and eventually stopped bothering supporting software compatibility (luckily for me I have the original) -- I can't speak for others, but that would have ABSOLUTELY been the difference between a sale and not a sale for me; I have too many old PS2 games that I'm not going to just throw away. The cherry on top? This is being done to me, a legitimate, paying customer, because of the fear that somebody, somewhere might be pirating games. Sony, that ship has sailed. Ages ago. And if the Air Force wants to build a cheap supercomputing cluster with them, it's none of your fucking business once they buy it. Don't like it? Don't sell your hardware at a loss.
Did I have a choice in these magical disappearing features? Technically yes. I could have chosen to render my PS3 useless for anything that touches the Internet -- no 'net play, no Netflix, no roster updates for my sports games, etc. That's not a choice in any real sense of the word. It's a choice like a mobster telling you it would be a shame if anything happened to your business leaves you a choice of whether or not to pay them. You do it or your shit gets broken. How this is not a collossal and incredibly damaging class action lawsuit, I truly have no idea. In that I have to side with the OP; there's obviously some idiocy in US law that prevents it. (And yes, to the best of my recollection somebody did try and was shot down.)
Why?
I mean, look, I share your feelings -- I truly do. I think the fact that our lives can be boiled down to a set of various numbers is pretty disgusting in a lot of ways.
But the reason we do this is because, culturally, we feel we need to make these decisions and we have devised specific criteria for them. We feel there is value to a number that denotes how good we are with credit, how much of a risk we are to insurers, and other such. If that is the case, then I would prefer it be done with computers and done fairly and uniformly. If I'm going to be denied a house because of one of my numbers, or have my insurance rates hiked because of another, I want it to at least be the same situation for others in my situation and not because somebody forgot to carry the one on their worksheet or interpreted my response different than a different examiner.
In that sense, this is a really good use of computers. If there is any value to the ESRB system (which I'm not particularly sure of), then it may as well be administered uniformly and fairly.
Now whether or not the system itself has any value is certainly open to debate in each case. Whether it is really the best choice for our society is certainly open for debate. And of course, whether the tests are an accurate representation of what we hope they're an accurate representation of is open for debate as well. But these systems exist because the people who use them find value. The people who are debating lending you money want to know your credit score; insurance providers want the answers to their questionnaires; many stores use ESRB ratings to determine whether or not games are stocked and (some!) parents use them as a guide for what is an isn't appropriate for our children.
If it's a monster, it's one of our own creation, by our will. It may be sad, but it is what we want--and so long as we want it, it's what we deserve. May as well be consistent about it. Boiling disparate things down into a number is, at the very least, a result that is fairly unambiguous.
Are they?
It sounds good, and it's definitely what they should be doing. But the request puzzles me. "I need a non-root account to your server?" Why? What is that going to accomplish?
If they're truly interested in security and HIPPA compliance, there are a lot of things they could justifiably ask for or do, including: A full audit of the machine's software (which would require more than a user account in most cases, even if only temporarily), isolation of the machine from the rest of the internal network (nothing to do with anybody but IT), requiring the server be moved to a physically secure location (again nothing to do with an account), ensuring valid setup of the server and any encryption required either by law or common sense (this data is being stored on this Internet-exposed server even if it's not on the main VLANs--and again, nothing to do with a user account), drawing up or requiring documentation and policies regarding the data to be used in this system (nothing to do with a user account), etc. That's twenty seconds of thinking from somebody who is a "tinkerer." I'm sure you IT Pros can come up with others.
Which makes this request very odd to me, so much so that I would have found it considerably less odd if they had asked for root or an unrestricted sudo account to begin with. IT should definitely be involved, and this should definitely have gone through them to begin with--if for no other reason than because if a calendar server is useful for one department it might very well be useful for others and they could scale the solution up without duplicating effort--but that doesn't mean that the "lusers" should be McDonalds clerks subserviently taking and delivering ITs orders any more than IT should be.
And frankly, your attitude is a perfect example of why nobody ever gives IT the benefit of the doubt. "I'm on the side of what's good and right and company-saving and you're a luser trying to usurp my authoritai!" No. Shut the fuck up. You're doing your job--maybe, or maybe you're on a powertrip; it really depends what you're doing and what you're asking, doesn't it?--and they're trying to do their jobs more efficiently.
The whole thing should have been handled differently from the get-go, but that doesn't make you god. Try losing the attitude and realize that your entire job and the only reason you receive a paycheck is supporting the work these "lusers" do that bring in the money to puff up your ego.
It's biased, yes. But that doesn't necessarily mean "wrong" or "without value."
If somebody can build a business around FTP, I think that's a testament to its relevancy right there. And who better to comment on it than somebody who deals with it and clients who use it every day?
I wouldn't ask the guy if his product is the best on the market, but as a comment on the underlying protocols... why not?
It certainly can, yes. And since step #1 for pirated DLC is "don't let it phone home," it obviously wouldn't have a problem when the auth servers go down.
Well you're right, but I think there's a bit of a cause-and-effect issue with what you're saying.
This sort of service--which I PERSONALLY think is silly, by the way--does not cause people to become lonely and isolated, incapable of participating in a valid relationship. People are likely to turn to this service because they are already that way, and are trying to satisfy their human needs for socializing that they aren't able to satisfy normally.
Now obviously, most people will agree but say to that "all the more reason to get out and try for real," but I think that tends to just be strong evidence that most people have no real appreciate for the severity of mental issues. They obviously want relationships or they wouldn't seek a service like this out, but equally true is that there is something going on that has prevented them from acheiving them.
Truly helping these lonely, isolated people involves first figuring out what is making them lonely and isolated. You'll get a lot of commonalities arising, I'd think, but also no rules. It's something that can definitely be different for everybody. "Just go out and try forming these relationships" is kind of like telling a depressed person "just be happy" and thinking you've given them great advice. It's not that easy; there's more going on than that. They definitely need to do that -- but if they were capable of doing it they would be. Step one is working on whatever is blocking them from feeling or being capable. If services like this help them out while they work on that, then so be it -- I'm not going to judge them for it, particularly with how prevalent feelings of isolation and loneliness is in suicides.
It's not necessarily as easy as you make it sound. A table with fifty sales tax rates, hell, that's pretty easy. But it's nowhere near the reality of the situation.
Let's start with the simpler complication. I live near Chicago, in Cook County, Illinois. Illinois has a sales tax. So does Cook County. So does the city of Chicago. Do I pay Cook County tax on top of the Illinois tax? If I lived in the city, would I pay Chicago sales tax as well?
And how much? There are a often exceptions and exemptions to taxes, and the more localities you involve in the calculations the more complicated it is. Are food products taxed? Baby formula? What constitutes a food product? Certainly edible lingerie shouldn't qualify, should it? In the city of Chicago, again as an example, there is a "fat tax" on sodas and select other merchandise that does not apply to, say, water. Cigarette taxes. Etc, etc.
Where does the purchase take place? If I'm in Illinois buying from Amazon in California, do I play Illinois sales tax or California? If the latter, that's going to disproportionately help a certain handful of states where lots of e-commerce sites are headquartered -- how long before the other states get uppity about it and start trying to re-tax your purchases anyway?
I don't have any problem paying sales tax for my online purchases. In fact, most stores I shop at already DO tax me -- if that money is not (reliably) going to my own state, I would certainly prefer that it did. But I do think step #1 is to address all of these ambiguities and lower-level tax games that various localities play. If we're going to tax Internet purchases, it should be as simple as a SELECT rate FROM tax_rates WHERE state='IL' and some multiplication.
I'm going to complain about the server thing, though not from the angle you're expecting.
The very first thing any good programmer learns is not to trust user input. With dedicated servers, that is less of an issue because the server itself is under your control. With P2P "servers," every client is potentially a server -- meaning hacks on their end are "the truth" because the server says so.
I don't believe I have ever experienced a single level of prestige in MW2 that I was not at least partially prestige hacked, just by clicking "Find Game" and happening to be dropped into a server that wants to do it to me. Often times, this has occurred even without my MOVING much less making a single kill. I remember one in particular where I logged in and heard nothing but tubes detonating, but it sounded like they were coming out of a freakin' chain gun. I looked down and saw the score was something like 1 million to 800,000,000, so I left the server. That was enough to be prestige hacked. With custom servers supposedly prohibited, can anybody explain to me why my client can't know that a Team Deathmatch game has a maximum possible 75 kills I could have made?
Now, prestige hacks are annoying--one of the reasons I prestige is to play my way back up--but ultimately they're a positive occurance (the only real difference is that I suddenly have access to all my guns and equipment instead of a subset of them) so I can overlook them slightly.
But please explain to me why, other than "Infinity Ward took the cheap-ass non-server route and then took the cheap-ass don't-validate-against-idiocy route to compound it," that the last hack server I was on TOOK AWAY EVERYTHING I HAD? I was the same rank, the same prestige -- but I had no titles, no icons, no lifetime kills on any of my weapons. My lifetime kill to death ratio was 0:0. My lifetime won-lost ration was 0:0. They forgot to clear my lifetime assists and lifetime ties, which made for an amusing sight. Why in the bloody fuck should my client possibly accept the notion that I played a game where I not only killed nobody (unlikely but plausible), but had negative kills? And deaths? It even changed the name of my first custom class to "WTF??????" Why the hell would a P2P server even have access to that fucking information, much less be able to write it?
Then, yes, there are the regular concerns with a lack of dedicated servers. The game becomes progressively more unplayable as the night drags on. I'm alright up until about 7-8PM Central time. At about 10pm, my ping doubles to the point where I will just mysteriously die, like when I fire shots or knife somebody and watch their killcam and I did none of those things. If I play into the early mornings, 2-3 AM, it becomes unplayable in nearly every game. Occasionally I stumble into a game with a good host, but that's pretty fucking rare when the people you're playing against are suddenly comprised almost entirely of Russians, Australians and Asians, many of whom I am convinced have a tin can with a string as an Internet connection.
They had an awesome concept with their multiplayer, one I really enjoyed, but they blew it. I didn't buy Black Ops, partially because of this (partially because it is from a different creator and partially because I know the entire Infinity Ward crew is gone from the series). There's an excellent chance I will not be buying Modern Warfare 3. Even if it has dedicated servers. Because they've simply ruined my goodwill with their cheapass tactics and terrible coding.
I enjoy the multiplayer, I really do. But if there is anything "stunning" about it, it's how many gaping holes there are.
You're right, but that doesn't mean it isn't a mitigating factor that can be used during sentencing. If he can get a 20 year sentence reduced to a 10 year sentence, that would be a huge win for him.
Sort of.
The government is a customer, but it's not any customer. It has a legal obligation to pay the least amount of money for whatever solution they need, and therefor there are only three possible reasons a department should choose Company A over Company B: 1) Company B's product does not meet the requirements; 2) Company B's product would cost more than Company A's; 3) Company B has previously operated in bad faith or incompetently with the government, meaning that even though theirs was the cheapest and technically meets the requirements, there is good and documented reason to go with another provider.
In that sense, "criticiz[ing] that software and tout[ing] their own" is actually a necessary step of the process. Either Google's offering was more expensive and they want to argue that Microsoft's does not properly meet the requirements, or (probably more likely) Google's was cheaper and they're trying to show that they do. If Microsoft's doesn't, that's fine too -- it's another path to the same victory.
I agree with him. However, that hinges on the definition of "whether it benefits the public," and I don't agree that the definition in this case is "if Internet2 [is] going to fix problems with the [commercial] Internet" (though I can also agree that that probably is what most people would think).
They're using public information--your license plate during your travels on public property (roadways)--to determine something. IE, if the car was reported stolen, etc. It's pretty clearly constitutional, even on its face -- and definitely when one looks at the decisions that have already supported these issues.
Whether or not it should be is another issue entirely. I don't think it is unreasonable to assume the Founders had no way to properly imagine technology such that you could be automatically, technologically tracked anywhere you went, nor do I find it a stretch to believe that had they considered such a possibility that they would have been strongly against it. As I am, and as anybody with any respect for privacy should be.
The reality is, America has gone too far down the "tough on crime" path. Most people just couldn't care less what we do to criminals, even if they're only accused criminals at the time. Right now they're using it for terrorism and to check for stolen cars and things like that. It won't be long until they link it to some sort of road usage tax, like in the UK. And that is the beginning of the ability for the government to know where you are at almost any point of your life. That's ridiculous.
Some people choose not to block ads.
Technically you're right, because good scientists will not say that they prove anything. Evolution is, however, a scientific theory with immense evidence in support of it. It is just about as close to proven as we can get. If one called it proven, one would be so close to correct that it is barely worth pointing out that it's wrong.
Yes, there is.
Evolution is a scientific theory. That means it is falsifiable (disprovable), test- and re-testable, observable, and has predictive value. In evolution's case, it is also strongly supported by scientific evidence and observation over several hundred years. Intelligent design is a theory in the sense of somebody standing up and saying "I have a theory about that!" It means nothing more than a guess that may or may not be educated. That doesn't necessarily mean it is WRONG, but it is not scientific -- and it can never be proven to be wrong for that reason, even if it is. That is why evolution should be granted merit beyond intelligent design. Even if they both turned out to be right, one is science and one is not. If schools want to teach ID in schools, I would support that; but it should be done in a theology class, or perhaps a contemporary history class. It should not be held up as science because it is demonstrably not science, nor even scientific. The value of science is in the process, not the conclusions. ID dismisses that process entirely.
They don't have to be. There's nothing at all to say that somebody can't stand up and say "evolution is the natural means by which God has chosen to execute his plan," and indeed, many people do.
The reason there is so much conflict is because--and I don't mean to be insulting--of people like you who make statements like you did that they should be on equal footing, or that it is just a theory, and because people who push ID typically aren't doing so as an investigation into possible truth, but rather an attempt at a pseudo-scientific explanation of their faith. When you do that, you're going to get all sorts of people on edge and they're all going to jump on you and point out all the difference I just did, just like I just did. (Though I hope at least that you consider I am trying to be respectful!)
This is rather tangential, but I actually disagree. You could argue some sort of creator force or power without necessarily invoking a deity, but once you start talking about intelligent design--a plan, and a means of enacting that plan through natural forces--how is that not a deity? It may not be the god of the Bible, or any god we even know on Earth -- but you've essentially personified it, and what is a deity other than a personification of ultimate power and knowledge?
But again, that has nothing to do with evolution and it's purely my philosophical bent on it.
If you want full disclosure from me, I'm somewhere between atheist and agnostic -- where tends to vary. I'm moving more toward agnostic as I get older, but I would never hold up ID or faith as scientific. They don't belong in the same discussions because they are simply not the same things.
Good point. And indeed, it's the entire way the system is set up that lends itself to that.
A few years ago, my brother woke up with a blood clot in his arm. They wheeled him into surgery and keep him in the hospital for a few nights. His hospital bill was something like $30,0000.
Now, let's put aside how ridiculous that number truly is for a moment because it's tangential to the point. They handed him a bill that said "$30,000 plox!" But he did what we would consider the responsible thing and he had insurance, and there was a few little notes underneath that in essence said "but really, we have a deal with insurance companies so it's only $10,000." Insurance paid pretty much all of it.
Now stop and think about that. People with insurance--people who will actually get their bill paid--pay less. Not out of pocket, the actual bill is less. Most Americans do have insurance, which means the vast majority of the time, the system (doctors, hospitals, etc) get the lower price -- a price they can obviously operate at and still enjoy the fairly comfortable lifestyles of people in those professions. What about that higher bill? Two possibilities. One is nobody pays. The more likely one is that the government pays--you and I pay. But not the $10,000 the insurance company has to deal with, but rather a full $30,000 fleecing (or as much of the full $30k as they can squeeze out of them anyway). Different price points for different abilities to pay... we can talk about moral or legal issues all we want, but there is at least a cool logical component to that -- but not if you're charging more for the people who can afford less!
A $300,000 hospital stay because we wouldn't pay for a $700 tooth problem? That's exactly how the system wanted it. The insurance companies, with their cadre of lawyers and lobbyists, pay nothing. The American taxpayers, through their government, pay 430 times more than they should have on top of our own insurance premiums and our politicians tell us it is because of a lack of personal responsibility on the part of the patient.
That sounds about right, doesn't it?
We desperately need health care reform in this country -- but I mean real healthcare reform. Not piecemeal. Not half-assed. Not a "solution" that says "you're hereby required to have insurance, problem solved." If we can't at least work toward that, the politicians can stop talking out of their asses about how dedicated they are to solving the problem. If I'm going to get butt-fucked, it might as well be quieter in the room.