If it's really IR, of the see through walls variety and not just "near" IR of the TV-remote variety, you need to chill the entire system from the optics to the CCD to eliminate "dark" noise. Liquid nitrogen temperatures are probably good enough, and relatively convenient.
Actually, Raytheon introduced a non-cooled thermal imaging sensor awhile ago. I believe it's called a microbolometer, and you can buy the bare circuit board and sensor for something like $5000. It's what's made the $5k-$15k devices possible, as opposed to $25k+ like they used to be.
Still way out of the "reasonable" price range though. It's too bad, because I'd *love* to have one.
The problem when you watch the original Aeon Flux animated series is that other than people having the same names, it has little in common.
I disagree.
There are definitely some significant differences, but consistency wasn't exactly a hallmark of the original animated version. Aeon Flux died on a regular basis, Trevor Goodchild turned out to be (for one episode at least) a hollow shell controlled by a Custodian - which was itself controlled by a strange little bean-shaped thing, etc.
I watched some of the episodes after seeing the movie. It had been awhile, and I was surprised just how much was from the original series (spoilers):
- (Obviously) Sithandra and the run across no-man's-land - Trevor's cloning experiments - The in-phase/out-of-phase thing - The odd flat/detached acting - Una (although she isn't Aeon's sister in the series) - The Relicle and Aeon climbing up its tail is right out of "War," although it has a different purpose in that episode - The jungle outside the city at the end is from the jungle-outside-the-cities episode of the series - The end of the film story is similar in spirit to the end of the animated series, just under different circumstances - The "lady in red getting snatched" shot in the film vs. "lady in red gets shot by a sniper, then dragged into a hidden closet by two soldiers" in the series. - The past lives thing is reminiscent of the animated episode about the drug that erases peoples' memories.
I'm sure there's others, and I haven't finished re-watching the original series yet.
Obviously no Hollywood studio was going to make a film exactly like the original series. But I thought they did a pretty credible job in keeping the same feeling. There were certainly some believability gaps, but that's hardly an issue when we're talking about a film based on a series where a secret agent travels between two connected cities via cars that open a passage between each other through a giant zipper in the freeway.
Camera with thermal imaging in the eye ball and then smoke grenaes. done deal.
Thermal imaging equipment is incredibly expensive. A non-hardened camera is generally $10k-$15k, although I've seen used models for as "low" as $5000. I would expect that an Eye Ball equipped with one would cost about ten times what the standard ones do.
The military could still afford them, but police? And even military purchasing departments would (I hope) be a little hesitant to hand close to twenty thousand dollars in hardware to a soldier with the intent of them pitching it into a dangerous area.
One of his emails talked about how he couldn't wait to teach this course to throw his position against ID in "their big fat face."
I think that would have been pretty awesome.
He could have set up the classroom like a "professional" wrestling ring, and done the whole "I'm coming for YOU, creationists! BLARRRR!!!" brandishing a folding chair menacingly thing.
"Zones" were quite possibly the dumbest design flaw in the history of web browsers, arguably exceeding even the decision to "integrate" the browser with the OS.
It's a big benefit to us at work (I do systems engineering).
Obviously we want our users to be very well protected from external websites, but for ones on the company intranet or ones that belong to partner companies, it's great to be able to relax the security so that businesspeople don't have to worry about unsigned code warnings when they use some of the legacy web apps we have out there.
Ideally there would be no need for different settings and we'd phase out those ancient web apps, but we don't have the resources to make it happen right now.
The one change I'd like to see to the model is rather than having four fixed groups, start with one and let the user or admin add additional groups as necessary.
The worst offender I know of is the point of sale system marketed by a large multinational corporation who will remain nameless.
The company I work for had to pay them extra to modify the application, because until then there were a number of service accounts (e.g. SA on SQL) that had passwords identical to the usernames, and changing them would break the software. Every once in awhile I'll see the same system in another chain's store, and I have to resist the temptation to try them out.
IIRC, Microsoft SMS prior to 2003 would also completely break if you changed the passwords on the service accounts once you set up the system.
Digg is great for articles, but the comments are generally awful. Slashdot has some editorial problems, but there are a ton of smart people who post comments here, which I find very valuable.
Seriously, the number of people who only have non PC workstations is so low as to be complete noise.
I own an Amiga 2000 in addition to my x86 workstation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to browse the web with it if someone decides to make something that only plays on Workbench.
The Nintendo D pad was digital, as compared to the analog Intellivision.
The Intellivision has a digital pad. Everything in the controller works like a modern keyboard - you're pressing two bits of plastic membrane together to make a connection.
Are you maybe confusing the controller interface with the way the controller itself works? The NES has digital connections for the controllers - they're serial ports, IIRC - but the actual buttons and pads on the NES, Genesis, and Intellivision are all digital in that they only have two positions - on and off.
I hate to ask it but has there been any footage of any game for the Rev at all yet?
No.
I'm a little astounded that people are so excited based only on what their imaginations are conjuring up as possibilities for what they assume the controller will be able to do.
The Atari 5200 and the Apple II both had analogue joysticks as standard.
They introduced the d-pad (before that you only had joysticks and possibly seperate buttons, they put it together in the classic + shape).
The Intellivision controllers were d-pads. They were just round instead of a plus.
They added shoulder buttons.
I think this could arguably be from earlier controller designs too. The Colecovision, Intellivision, and Atari 5200 all had buttons that would be "shoulder buttons" if the controller had been held sideways.
IMO Nintendo borrows concepts from other places that weren't ready for prime-time when they were originally introduced. I think their new idea is still in that category, but fortunately I'll get to see for myself if that's the case or not.
So the moral of the story is that every time you eat part of a carrot which appears to magically regenerate itself, you may in fact be contributing to the creation of a giant underground cavern and the death of a burrowing cow which is also capable of flight?
Now I know why Germans are so technically adept: apparently they instill advice about any possible situation - no matter how unlikely - in their children.
The NYT is a media company with more than $3bn annual revenues. Its journalists are highly paid with clear career goals and incentives. You're naive if you think you get any kind of accurate reporting from that kind of institution, and it shows in their selective and biased reporting.
You mean like the "accurate reporting" about Katrina by bloggers, nearly all of which turned out to be fabricated?
Blogs are the new water cooler rumour mill, not the new news media.
No kidding. I specifically researched the last claim:
A new entrant for the award is The Sun's new "The Whip" column, (which looks a bit like a blog and asks readers to email tips...) Living up to their name, they whipped Recess Monkey's story about Andrew Rosindell's dead dog Spike, the day after it appeared on his blog.
Here is the quote that "Guy Fawkes" claims was stolen from "Recess Monkey":
I HADN'T heard of Lee Scott before, but the new Tory MP for Ilford North might well be a miracle worker with hidden powers. He boasted in his maiden speech of the support he had, when campaigning, from Andrew Rosindell, Romford MP, and his dog Spike. Poor Spike, he died on St George's Day in 2002.
lford North's new MP, the irrepressibly ambitious Lee Scott, thought he would earn a few brownie points by name-checking Tory Party Vice Chairman Andrew Rosindell's dog during his maiden speech.
Lee said, "During the election, I had many visitors, including Lord Tebbit, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) and his dog Spike. I want to stop a rumour here and now--Spike did not eat any of my opponents' supporters."
No he certainly didn't because he had in fact been dead for some time. Deader than the EU constitution some might say. The loss of Spike was a traumatic experience for Rosindell and he is now accompanied by Spike's reputed son, Buster. An aide to Rosindell refused to confirm that the VC had hauled Lee in for a dressing down. He did say, "Andrew was in the chamber at the time and he had words with Lee afterwards".
Lee can be forgiven for thinking Buster was Spike as there is some filial resemblance. Saying that, there is some resemblance between Andrew Rosindell and Jeffrey Archer, but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion (without DNA evidence and a stack of lawyers).
Plagiarism? Blogga, please. They're both factual accounts of a political event in the media. The "plagiarised" article even contains information that the blog entry didn't.
All this article is doing is further reinforcing my opinion that most personal "blogs" are written by teenagers who have a vastly inflated opinion of how much other people care about them and what they write. Furthermore, most "news" blogs are entirely based on plagiarism, so the premise of TFA is pretty laughable to begin with.
Star Wars IV: A New Hope doesn't, and it's from the seventies!:)
It looks a lot better than most other films, but the original version is still pretty dated in terms of having the translucent box effect around the models from the compositing. I prefer it over some of the CG work in the Special Edition, but it is noticeable.
I was mostly thinking of low- to medium-cost TV and film, though, since B5 was made on a very tight budget. If you compare the visual of B5 to its contemporaries - MANTIS, Space Precinct, VR.5, and so on, suddenly it starts to look pretty impressive. Even Space: Above and Beyond (which had an enormous budget) didn't outdo it until after the pilot.
I mean, who thinks "Special Effects? Lets get some old Amiga computers and use this 'Video Toaster' software. That works great!."
I think you're forgetting the general quality of computer graphics in 1993. The Video Toaster was still the best reasonably-affordable system back then.
B5 looks a bit dated now, but so does any CG- or model-based sci-fi from the early 90s.
I'm not sure I'd spend $40 just for the background material, but I have no regrets about spending $30 for the combination of background and the scripts themselves. (There's a $10 discount on each volume for the first week that it's on sale.)
Holy crap. $30+ for *one* of these books? With the implication that there are going to be more than ten of them for the complete set? That's worse than the Star Trek DVD set pricing.
For some reason, this sentence made me imagine your entire post being spoken by a quantum superposition of Aeon Flux (the cartoon version) and Ian McKellan.
Retailers will want to have the book on the shelf on launch day. It is unacceptable to have it 1-2 weeks later when the copy mill has managed to crank out its clones. If you want launch day books, the only way to get this is to work with the authors.
While I'm sure there are vast hordes camping out at Barnes and Noble until the release of the next Stephen King novel, I don't know how you can seriously claim that most or all of them would be unwilling to wait 1-2 weeks to get a copy for a significant discount.
The black berries are more durable in our experience.
They can't be *that* much more durable.
I have a Blackberry because I administer the BES at work. If I have it on my belt in the (required) holster and run, it will fall out and land on the ground, usually knocking off the back cover and the battery. It's done that on asphalt and the landing chipped off the paint - which I was surprised to find out it had. I figured the colour was from the plastic.
My vile pager, on the other hand, has proven itself virtually indestructible, and its belt clip holds it in place by friction.
My insurance hasn't turned to shit over the last two years because of socialism. It's because the "not for profit" insurance companies have decided they need hundreds of millions of dollars in profit every year, and have found any number of ways to achieve it, including:
- Raising co-payment fees - Covering fewer prescription drugs - Limiting prescription drug coverage to a certain number of doses per month - Adding asinine requirements to prescription coverage, e.g. if my doctor prescribes me certain drugs, they have to fax in a form to prove they really want me to take it... you know, the same thing the prescription slip says. - Limiting payments to specialists
The last one is the worst. Because insurance companies limit their payments, specialists seem to be raising their fees so that they end up making what they should from insured patients. If you're not insured, you pay the ludicrous full fee. In addition, because the specialist fee goes up, the co-payment amount does too if (like me) you're responsible for a percentage of it.
Hospitals and drug companies have jacked prices up into the stratosphere, also because they are capitalists trying to make as much money as possible. I went in to have my tonsils out a year ago, and some of the highlights of the bill were:
- Hundreds of dollars for the per-minute "recovery room" fee. Did I ask to be anaesthetised enough that I'd sleep in there for an extra hour? - Five hundred dollars for a probe that was a piece of plastic with a tiny steel rod embedded in one end. - Three hundred dollars for the disposable bits that attached me to the oxygen sensor. - Hundreds more dollars for the generic painkillers. Morphine costs pennies to make, and so does everything else they used.
In the end, even though I have insurance, I ended up paying about $200 EACH to the hospital, anaesthesiologist, and surgeon. And I *still* had to buy the pre- and post-op medication at my local pharmacy.
I fail to see how anyone would think it would be better in a free market. Where is the incentive to lower prices, instead of (like now) conspiring to jack them up?
Canada's health system has its problems, but it's better than ours. At least up there little girls who have tumors on their face the size of a grapefruit don't get denied care because they can't afford it.
This was 12 years ago, so I'm sure the price has gone up dramatically.
I had to take an uninsured friend to the ER a few times over the summer. It cost over a thousand dollars just to get a quick once-over. Oddly enough, staying overnight "only" added about five hundred dollars.
I mean, there's a systemic effect that's present for a limited duration. I'm not trying to "ruin love", but why should it have worked any differently?
I agree.
In my experience, infatuation (which I guess could be misrepresented as the "early stages" of love) is virtually indistinguishable from an addiction to recreational drugs. The evolutionary reasons for it seem pretty obvious - inspiring a driving need to mate with someone is a good way to ensure reproduction.
Slashdot Mirror
If it's really IR, of the see through walls variety and not just "near" IR of the TV-remote variety, you need to chill the entire system from the optics to the CCD to eliminate "dark" noise. Liquid nitrogen temperatures are probably good enough, and relatively convenient.
Actually, Raytheon introduced a non-cooled thermal imaging sensor awhile ago. I believe it's called a microbolometer, and you can buy the bare circuit board and sensor for something like $5000. It's what's made the $5k-$15k devices possible, as opposed to $25k+ like they used to be.
Still way out of the "reasonable" price range though. It's too bad, because I'd *love* to have one.
The problem when you watch the original Aeon Flux animated series is that other than people having the same names, it has little in common.
I disagree.
There are definitely some significant differences, but consistency wasn't exactly a hallmark of the original animated version. Aeon Flux died on a regular basis, Trevor Goodchild turned out to be (for one episode at least) a hollow shell controlled by a Custodian - which was itself controlled by a strange little bean-shaped thing, etc.
I watched some of the episodes after seeing the movie. It had been awhile, and I was surprised just how much was from the original series (spoilers):
- (Obviously) Sithandra and the run across no-man's-land
- Trevor's cloning experiments
- The in-phase/out-of-phase thing
- The odd flat/detached acting
- Una (although she isn't Aeon's sister in the series)
- The Relicle and Aeon climbing up its tail is right out of "War," although it has a different purpose in that episode
- The jungle outside the city at the end is from the jungle-outside-the-cities episode of the series
- The end of the film story is similar in spirit to the end of the animated series, just under different circumstances
- The "lady in red getting snatched" shot in the film vs. "lady in red gets shot by a sniper, then dragged into a hidden closet by two soldiers" in the series.
- The past lives thing is reminiscent of the animated episode about the drug that erases peoples' memories.
I'm sure there's others, and I haven't finished re-watching the original series yet.
Obviously no Hollywood studio was going to make a film exactly like the original series. But I thought they did a pretty credible job in keeping the same feeling. There were certainly some believability gaps, but that's hardly an issue when we're talking about a film based on a series where a secret agent travels between two connected cities via cars that open a passage between each other through a giant zipper in the freeway.
Camera with thermal imaging in the eye ball and then smoke grenaes. done deal.
Thermal imaging equipment is incredibly expensive. A non-hardened camera is generally $10k-$15k, although I've seen used models for as "low" as $5000. I would expect that an Eye Ball equipped with one would cost about ten times what the standard ones do.
The military could still afford them, but police? And even military purchasing departments would (I hope) be a little hesitant to hand close to twenty thousand dollars in hardware to a soldier with the intent of them pitching it into a dangerous area.
One of his emails talked about how he couldn't wait to teach this course to throw his position against ID in "their big fat face."
I think that would have been pretty awesome.
He could have set up the classroom like a "professional" wrestling ring, and done the whole "I'm coming for YOU, creationists! BLARRRR!!!" brandishing a folding chair menacingly thing.
MC Hawking would provide the music, of course.
"Zones" were quite possibly the dumbest design flaw in the history of web browsers, arguably exceeding even the decision to "integrate" the browser with the OS.
It's a big benefit to us at work (I do systems engineering).
Obviously we want our users to be very well protected from external websites, but for ones on the company intranet or ones that belong to partner companies, it's great to be able to relax the security so that businesspeople don't have to worry about unsigned code warnings when they use some of the legacy web apps we have out there.
Ideally there would be no need for different settings and we'd phase out those ancient web apps, but we don't have the resources to make it happen right now.
The one change I'd like to see to the model is rather than having four fixed groups, start with one and let the user or admin add additional groups as necessary.
Huh? What applications have these?
The worst offender I know of is the point of sale system marketed by a large multinational corporation who will remain nameless.
The company I work for had to pay them extra to modify the application, because until then there were a number of service accounts (e.g. SA on SQL) that had passwords identical to the usernames, and changing them would break the software. Every once in awhile I'll see the same system in another chain's store, and I have to resist the temptation to try them out.
IIRC, Microsoft SMS prior to 2003 would also completely break if you changed the passwords on the service accounts once you set up the system.
In the era of Digg.com
Digg is great for articles, but the comments are generally awful. Slashdot has some editorial problems, but there are a ton of smart people who post comments here, which I find very valuable.
Seriously, the number of people who only have non PC workstations is so low as to be complete noise.
I own an Amiga 2000 in addition to my x86 workstation, but that doesn't mean I'm going to browse the web with it if someone decides to make something that only plays on Workbench.
The Nintendo D pad was digital, as compared to the analog Intellivision.
The Intellivision has a digital pad. Everything in the controller works like a modern keyboard - you're pressing two bits of plastic membrane together to make a connection.
Are you maybe confusing the controller interface with the way the controller itself works? The NES has digital connections for the controllers - they're serial ports, IIRC - but the actual buttons and pads on the NES, Genesis, and Intellivision are all digital in that they only have two positions - on and off.
I hate to ask it but has there been any footage of any game for the Rev at all yet?
No.
I'm a little astounded that people are so excited based only on what their imaginations are conjuring up as possibilities for what they assume the controller will be able to do.
Nintendo introduced the analog stick.
The Atari 5200 and the Apple II both had analogue joysticks as standard.
They introduced the d-pad (before that you only had joysticks and possibly seperate buttons, they put it together in the classic + shape).
The Intellivision controllers were d-pads. They were just round instead of a plus.
They added shoulder buttons.
I think this could arguably be from earlier controller designs too. The Colecovision, Intellivision, and Atari 5200 all had buttons that would be "shoulder buttons" if the controller had been held sideways.
IMO Nintendo borrows concepts from other places that weren't ready for prime-time when they were originally introduced. I think their new idea is still in that category, but fortunately I'll get to see for myself if that's the case or not.
So the moral of the story is that every time you eat part of a carrot which appears to magically regenerate itself, you may in fact be contributing to the creation of a giant underground cavern and the death of a burrowing cow which is also capable of flight?
Now I know why Germans are so technically adept: apparently they instill advice about any possible situation - no matter how unlikely - in their children.
The NYT is a media company with more than $3bn annual revenues. Its journalists are highly paid with clear career goals and incentives. You're naive if you think you get any kind of accurate reporting from that kind of institution, and it shows in their selective and biased reporting.
You mean like the "accurate reporting" about Katrina by bloggers, nearly all of which turned out to be fabricated?
Blogs are the new water cooler rumour mill, not the new news media.
No kidding. I specifically researched the last claim:
A new entrant for the award is The Sun's new "The Whip" column, (which looks a bit like a blog and asks readers to email tips...) Living up to their name, they whipped Recess Monkey's story about Andrew Rosindell's dead dog Spike, the day after it appeared on his blog.
Here is the quote that "Guy Fawkes" claims was stolen from "Recess Monkey":
I HADN'T heard of Lee Scott before, but the new Tory MP for Ilford North might well be a miracle worker with hidden powers. He boasted in his maiden speech of the support he had, when campaigning, from Andrew Rosindell, Romford MP, and his dog Spike. Poor Spike, he died on St George's Day in 2002.
And here is the original quote from "Recess Monkey":
lford North's new MP, the irrepressibly ambitious Lee Scott, thought he would earn a few brownie points by name-checking Tory Party Vice Chairman Andrew Rosindell's dog during his maiden speech.
Lee said, "During the election, I had many visitors, including Lord Tebbit, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell) and his dog Spike. I want to stop a rumour here and now--Spike did not eat any of my opponents' supporters."
No he certainly didn't because he had in fact been dead for some time. Deader than the EU constitution some might say. The loss of Spike was a traumatic experience for Rosindell and he is now accompanied by Spike's reputed son, Buster. An aide to Rosindell refused to confirm that the VC had hauled Lee in for a dressing down. He did say, "Andrew was in the chamber at the time and he had words with Lee afterwards".
Lee can be forgiven for thinking Buster was Spike as there is some filial resemblance. Saying that, there is some resemblance between Andrew Rosindell and Jeffrey Archer, but I wouldn't draw the same conclusion (without DNA evidence and a stack of lawyers).
Plagiarism? Blogga, please. They're both factual accounts of a political event in the media. The "plagiarised" article even contains information that the blog entry didn't.
All this article is doing is further reinforcing my opinion that most personal "blogs" are written by teenagers who have a vastly inflated opinion of how much other people care about them and what they write. Furthermore, most "news" blogs are entirely based on plagiarism, so the premise of TFA is pretty laughable to begin with.
Star Wars IV: A New Hope doesn't, and it's from the seventies! :)
It looks a lot better than most other films, but the original version is still pretty dated in terms of having the translucent box effect around the models from the compositing. I prefer it over some of the CG work in the Special Edition, but it is noticeable.
I was mostly thinking of low- to medium-cost TV and film, though, since B5 was made on a very tight budget. If you compare the visual of B5 to its contemporaries - MANTIS, Space Precinct, VR.5, and so on, suddenly it starts to look pretty impressive. Even Space: Above and Beyond (which had an enormous budget) didn't outdo it until after the pilot.
I mean, who thinks "Special Effects? Lets get some old Amiga computers and use this 'Video Toaster' software. That works great!."
I think you're forgetting the general quality of computer graphics in 1993. The Video Toaster was still the best reasonably-affordable system back then.
B5 looks a bit dated now, but so does any CG- or model-based sci-fi from the early 90s.
I'm not sure I'd spend $40 just for the background material, but I have no regrets about spending $30 for the combination of background and the scripts themselves. (There's a $10 discount on each volume for the first week that it's on sale.)
Holy crap. $30+ for *one* of these books? With the implication that there are going to be more than ten of them for the complete set? That's worse than the Star Trek DVD set pricing.
Resistance is uncertain.
For some reason, this sentence made me imagine your entire post being spoken by a quantum superposition of Aeon Flux (the cartoon version) and Ian McKellan.
There was a clone called Qbit for the Apple II.
Retailers will want to have the book on the shelf on launch day. It is unacceptable to have it 1-2 weeks later when the copy mill has managed to crank out its clones. If you want launch day books, the only way to get this is to work with the authors.
While I'm sure there are vast hordes camping out at Barnes and Noble until the release of the next Stephen King novel, I don't know how you can seriously claim that most or all of them would be unwilling to wait 1-2 weeks to get a copy for a significant discount.
Clearly the record label was assuming it was the version I still remember from grade school:
This land is my land
It isn't your land
I've got a shotgun*
And you ain't got none
This land was made for only me
* Or, in this case, lawyers.
The black berries are more durable in our experience.
They can't be *that* much more durable.
I have a Blackberry because I administer the BES at work. If I have it on my belt in the (required) holster and run, it will fall out and land on the ground, usually knocking off the back cover and the battery. It's done that on asphalt and the landing chipped off the paint - which I was surprised to find out it had. I figured the colour was from the plastic.
My vile pager, on the other hand, has proven itself virtually indestructible, and its belt clip holds it in place by friction.
Socialized health care is the rot of the world
I would argue it's capitalistic health care.
My insurance hasn't turned to shit over the last two years because of socialism. It's because the "not for profit" insurance companies have decided they need hundreds of millions of dollars in profit every year, and have found any number of ways to achieve it, including:
- Raising co-payment fees
- Covering fewer prescription drugs
- Limiting prescription drug coverage to a certain number of doses per month
- Adding asinine requirements to prescription coverage, e.g. if my doctor prescribes me certain drugs, they have to fax in a form to prove they really want me to take it... you know, the same thing the prescription slip says.
- Limiting payments to specialists
The last one is the worst. Because insurance companies limit their payments, specialists seem to be raising their fees so that they end up making what they should from insured patients. If you're not insured, you pay the ludicrous full fee. In addition, because the specialist fee goes up, the co-payment amount does too if (like me) you're responsible for a percentage of it.
Hospitals and drug companies have jacked prices up into the stratosphere, also because they are capitalists trying to make as much money as possible. I went in to have my tonsils out a year ago, and some of the highlights of the bill were:
- Hundreds of dollars for the per-minute "recovery room" fee. Did I ask to be anaesthetised enough that I'd sleep in there for an extra hour?
- Five hundred dollars for a probe that was a piece of plastic with a tiny steel rod embedded in one end.
- Three hundred dollars for the disposable bits that attached me to the oxygen sensor.
- Hundreds more dollars for the generic painkillers. Morphine costs pennies to make, and so does everything else they used.
In the end, even though I have insurance, I ended up paying about $200 EACH to the hospital, anaesthesiologist, and surgeon. And I *still* had to buy the pre- and post-op medication at my local pharmacy.
I fail to see how anyone would think it would be better in a free market. Where is the incentive to lower prices, instead of (like now) conspiring to jack them up?
Canada's health system has its problems, but it's better than ours. At least up there little girls who have tumors on their face the size of a grapefruit don't get denied care because they can't afford it.
This was 12 years ago, so I'm sure the price has gone up dramatically.
I had to take an uninsured friend to the ER a few times over the summer. It cost over a thousand dollars just to get a quick once-over. Oddly enough, staying overnight "only" added about five hundred dollars.
I mean, there's a systemic effect that's present for a limited duration. I'm not trying to "ruin love", but why should it have worked any differently?
I agree.
In my experience, infatuation (which I guess could be misrepresented as the "early stages" of love) is virtually indistinguishable from an addiction to recreational drugs. The evolutionary reasons for it seem pretty obvious - inspiring a driving need to mate with someone is a good way to ensure reproduction.