Let's cut to the chase: I have first hand experience working with Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers. The first two cannot find their collective asses with both hands; the latter, while expensive, have been efficient. In healthcare, as in life, there are just two things: time and money. You'll get what you need with government-run healthcare if you're prepared to stay on top of the agencies like white on snow, writing the letters, making the phonecalls, hammering away, every day, every month: the government may not have a Death Panel execute your great aunt Tillie, but by the time she gets the care she needs she may wish she was dead.
So long as the patient is not putting the money directly into the pocket of a doctor or hospital, s/he is relying upon a bureaucracy to do so. The private insurance company bureaucracy is hands-down faster and more efficient than the government bureaucracy. Please don't tell me you are surprised by that fact.
So why not try and get a job in the NFL for such an 'easy job' at 6X the pay for a year or 2?
Because after you get hit enough times in the head while not wearing a helmet, you get addled to the point where you're lucky to remember your own name, let alone what career path to follow.
Y'see, American football players wear helmets not because they are "pussies," but BECAUSE THEY CAN!
Give it a couple of years and it will be referred to as our "Outlook Orientation," and the government will commission a study to see if depressed people are being properly represented in grade school textbooks.
I used to read European news sites and blogs, and wonder why they would write the word "football" when they meant "soccer." Then I reminded myself that I was reading a European news site or blog, and I would feel really, really foolish. But that was years ago, and I've become much more cosmopolitan now.
why is another Windows PC considered Slashdot front page material?
My guess is that the majority of slashdot readers use Windows. Many of them won't admit it (here), much in the same way a fan of pop music will keep mum when he sits down at a cafeteria table he suspects is populated exclusively with sniffy jazz enthusiasts, but that only makes them a Silent Majority.
Slashdot has grown way, way, beyond it's Linux / Buffy / Anime roots, as has "geekdom" itself. It would be foolish for the editors not to acknowledge this by not running stories of interest to "mainstream tech enthusiasts," who I suspect are the majority of its readers.
FWIW, I've been using Linux since 1994, but still have a Windows box because I need to run some client's apps that are Windows-only. Both OS's have their failings, both have their charms.
Didn't some of the founding fathers publish a series of letters highly critical of the King's government before the revolution?
There is a difference -- practical and emotional, if not necessarily legal -- in speaking Truth to Power and saying that a private citizen is a whore. The Founding Fathers knew they had no chance if the King sent a squad of soldiers to their house in the middle of the night, but they were all about "settling differences like men" when it came to perceived personal insults (just ask Alexander Hamilton...)
The Fashion Institute of Technology is the Manhattan-based Acme Trade School for those people who find the Acme Trade School for plumbers and air conditioner repairmen too "icky."
Let me state at the outset that I am a big fan of just about everything Eve.
Disclaimer out of the way, the dirty secret in Eve is that it's real tough to make money as a "glamorous combat pilot." Hi-Sec miner, hi-sec industrialist -- you're swimming in cash. But that's not the glamorous, exciting game one sees in the promos that attracts the curious to play the game. THAT game, the "pew pew" of lasers, the mighty racket of autocannons blazing, the squeal of the drones as they shred your enemies' armor -- exciting as all hell, but costly. The profit margin just ain't there, unless you're really, really good. If you're part of a large null-sec Corp that can replace your ships when they (inevitably) are wiped out when you are jumped by a much larger force, you'll get by, but if you're some lone wolf sociopathic space pirate, you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.
These are the guys who are the ISK farmers' clients. These guys, who comprise most of the lo-sec game (as opposed to hi-sec and null-sec) are the players affected by the farmer clamp-down. What will be the fall-out when they can't run to their real-world "suppliers" to re-tool? Will these guys leave the game? Join a more established Corp? Switch careers? Grow up? It'll be interesting to watch...
It's always been about epic myths and magic, Good versus Evil, Greek Tragedy, etc. Except on different planets, not in a mist-shrouded past of Earth. To criticize it's light saber technology is like criticizing Xena's chakram physics.
In this instance, not only is calling someone a "skank" an opinion, but the person - as a model - is essentially a public figure.
Is she a celebrity? I've never heard of her. My wife does voice-over work and is a news anchor on a bunch of local radio stations. You've never heard of her, but is she "essentially a public figure" and fair game? I know dozens of people who act in and produce independent films, they're all over IMDB, you've never heard of these performers, but they're professional actors and movie producers. Are they "fair game?"
How many people have to recognize your name before you are a "public figure" and thereby forfeit your right to know the identify of your accusers?
Lookit, you want to call Bush a Nazi Warmonger or Obama an Incompetent Puppet, or speak any kind of Truth to Power, I will be shoulder to shoulder with you on the ramparts in defense of your Freedom to Speak, you're a Patriot. You want to call a lady a "skanky ho," try to damage her reputation, and then hide like a coward, you are a Cad.
The Internet has changed many things, but it has not changed everything.
It's not a race, number one. And the Varsity is always better than the Junior Varsity, because, well, they're older.
That said, it still does not play out as you would think. From a PvP perspective, you may have a player that focuses on getting into a battleship as soon as possible, and does so, with a minimal number of the skills to pilot a battleship *well*. Meanwhile, his PvP opponent, a month behind in skills (let's say), is in an assault frigate and is properly and thoroughly skilled. The "newer" player wins. But what does he win? After a half-hour of stalking and fighting his prey, the victor claims a worthless husk of a battleship filled with crappy gear barely worth selling. While in that same time period, the peaceful miner, "younger" even than the Assault Frigate pilot, makes millions of ISK (revenue) and literally laughs all the way to the bank. Battleship boy had the bigger ship, the frigate guy kicked his butt but doesn't have enough money to pay for his own ammunition, and the miner cleans up while playing the videogame equivalent of watching grass grow. Who's the better/smarter player?
There's no right answer. Part of what makes the game so intriguing.
This would never fly in a modern MMO, as it requires that player to plan ahead from the very beginning or to re-roll once they learned how the system worked.
A number of third party software tools exist for Eve which allow a player to plan his character skills out across years, if he so desires. And the player can have a "neural re-mapping" once a year to change his attribute numbers -- the stuff like Charisma, Intelligence, Willpower, etc. -- which affect how fast he learns new skills, so if he made a choice early on to be a combat pilot and wants to change to an industrialist, the transition is not so dire.
It means that players have to pick their fights wisely, be more opportunistic, be more alert, and maybe go around in pairs or impromptu groups to increase their chance of survival.
That's the PvP in Eve. And there are no classes, just skills that take a fixed and finite time to acquire (i.e., no such thing as "power leveling"). A group of small ships, with skilled pilots, can bring down a battleship. DPS, range, speed, tank, evasion, cloaking, resistance to specific types of damage, capacity to make money, and a hundred et ceteras all exist on a highly granular scale, and all affect play immensely. I can't imagine that there are two players in the game with the same sets of skills.
But you'd be amazed at the whiners, who don't fight wisely, aren't opportunistic, aren't alert, fly around by themselves, lose their ships, then cry that the game is too hard or that the players are "mean." Others join the game and ask, "What's the best ship?" and are baffled when told "There is none." WoW and EQ have bred a "sprint for the Uber" that takes a while to get out of the system...
...when it's Geekipedia. You're insane if you consult Wikipedia for any real-world event -- especially a one that happened in recent memory or is still unfolding -- but there's no better one-stop for an overview of the 4th season of Buffy or Lightsaber faux-physics. So... count your blessings. Hopefully the site will morph from an omnipedia of spurious repute to a Pop Culture bible that's the final word on the stuff it does well.
Like calling for a meeting in a room with no chairs, the Slashdot forms discourage lengthy messages, which, after you've read enough "essays" on Slashdot, you recognize is a Good Thing.
If its a metadata/database issue in a system funded by the US government, its a US government/taxpayer issue by defaul
The problem is - as I think I understand it - the metadata of the sites in question say "gay," and the porn filter kicks it out. Now, is that because the porn filter coding is bad, the vast majority of "gay" metadata'd sites are in fact NOT porn, but blogs discussing, I dunno, the latest upholstery patterns? Then, yeah, there is a metadata/database problem that needs fixing. If, however, the vast majority of gay metadata'd sites in fact ARE porn, then the filter-coders are spot-on and perhaps something else needs fixing, which is beyond the scope of this tech site discussion.
when most US taxpayers undoubtedly don't care whether or not people abroad watch porn
If it is represented, either rightly or wrongly, that the increased bandwidth for porn surfing is costing the American taxpayer a penny more than it would cost for provisioning a porn filter, than it would be a public relations time bomb NOT to install the porn filter. Most Americans don't care who watches porn, domestically or abroad, unless it's going to cost them money, in which case then, yes, they'll start to care very much. The US is not "helping a foreign government keep its gay population from accessing the wider international community;" they're adding porn filters. If you're telling me that all gay community sites that do not contain porn are being classified at the filter level as "porn," then that is a metadata/database issue, not a US Government/Taxpayer issue.
This can help others where they can not see the content from the US. Hulu and others come to mind. Oh right, it isn't censorship if it isn't done by the government. Hulu has not been granted the license to distribute some content beyond the U.S. In some cases those distribution rights have been given to other entities, in other cases the rights may have been more expensive than Hulu wanted to pay, given the limitations of global-play ad sales.. In all cases, it was a business decision. Information may "want to be free," but network television does not. To even imply "censorship" is just ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
The writers of dystopian science fiction are getting a great boon from the current administration, if no one else is.
Let's cut to the chase: I have first hand experience working with Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurers. The first two cannot find their collective asses with both hands; the latter, while expensive, have been efficient. In healthcare, as in life, there are just two things: time and money. You'll get what you need with government-run healthcare if you're prepared to stay on top of the agencies like white on snow, writing the letters, making the phonecalls, hammering away, every day, every month: the government may not have a Death Panel execute your great aunt Tillie, but by the time she gets the care she needs she may wish she was dead.
So long as the patient is not putting the money directly into the pocket of a doctor or hospital, s/he is relying upon a bureaucracy to do so. The private insurance company bureaucracy is hands-down faster and more efficient than the government bureaucracy. Please don't tell me you are surprised by that fact.
I didn't know the technicians working for Lockheed and Boeing were civil servants. I stand corrected.
So why not try and get a job in the NFL for such an 'easy job' at 6X the pay for a year or 2?
Because after you get hit enough times in the head while not wearing a helmet, you get addled to the point where you're lucky to remember your own name, let alone what career path to follow.
Y'see, American football players wear helmets not because they are "pussies," but BECAUSE THEY CAN!
Give it a couple of years and it will be referred to as our "Outlook Orientation," and the government will commission a study to see if depressed people are being properly represented in grade school textbooks.
I used to read European news sites and blogs, and wonder why they would write the word "football" when they meant "soccer." Then I reminded myself that I was reading a European news site or blog, and I would feel really, really foolish. But that was years ago, and I've become much more cosmopolitan now.
An especially scary phrase when it applies to healthcare, no?
Did I miss a meeting?
Wow. Just... wow.
why is another Windows PC considered Slashdot front page material?
My guess is that the majority of slashdot readers use Windows. Many of them won't admit it (here), much in the same way a fan of pop music will keep mum when he sits down at a cafeteria table he suspects is populated exclusively with sniffy jazz enthusiasts, but that only makes them a Silent Majority.
Slashdot has grown way, way, beyond it's Linux / Buffy / Anime roots, as has "geekdom" itself. It would be foolish for the editors not to acknowledge this by not running stories of interest to "mainstream tech enthusiasts," who I suspect are the majority of its readers.
FWIW, I've been using Linux since 1994, but still have a Windows box because I need to run some client's apps that are Windows-only. Both OS's have their failings, both have their charms.
Didn't some of the founding fathers publish a series of letters highly critical of the King's government before the revolution?
There is a difference -- practical and emotional, if not necessarily legal -- in speaking Truth to Power and saying that a private citizen is a whore. The Founding Fathers knew they had no chance if the King sent a squad of soldiers to their house in the middle of the night, but they were all about "settling differences like men" when it came to perceived personal insults (just ask Alexander Hamilton...)
The Fashion Institute of Technology is the Manhattan-based Acme Trade School for those people who find the Acme Trade School for plumbers and air conditioner repairmen too "icky."
Happy to help...
Let me state at the outset that I am a big fan of just about everything Eve.
Disclaimer out of the way, the dirty secret in Eve is that it's real tough to make money as a "glamorous combat pilot." Hi-Sec miner, hi-sec industrialist -- you're swimming in cash. But that's not the glamorous, exciting game one sees in the promos that attracts the curious to play the game. THAT game, the "pew pew" of lasers, the mighty racket of autocannons blazing, the squeal of the drones as they shred your enemies' armor -- exciting as all hell, but costly. The profit margin just ain't there, unless you're really, really good. If you're part of a large null-sec Corp that can replace your ships when they (inevitably) are wiped out when you are jumped by a much larger force, you'll get by, but if you're some lone wolf sociopathic space pirate, you'll be holding your ship together with duct tape and using hurled rocks as ammo in no time.
These are the guys who are the ISK farmers' clients. These guys, who comprise most of the lo-sec game (as opposed to hi-sec and null-sec) are the players affected by the farmer clamp-down. What will be the fall-out when they can't run to their real-world "suppliers" to re-tool? Will these guys leave the game? Join a more established Corp? Switch careers? Grow up? It'll be interesting to watch...
It's always been about epic myths and magic, Good versus Evil, Greek Tragedy, etc. Except on different planets, not in a mist-shrouded past of Earth. To criticize it's light saber technology is like criticizing Xena's chakram physics.
In this instance, not only is calling someone a "skank" an opinion, but the person - as a model - is essentially a public figure.
Is she a celebrity? I've never heard of her. My wife does voice-over work and is a news anchor on a bunch of local radio stations. You've never heard of her, but is she "essentially a public figure" and fair game? I know dozens of people who act in and produce independent films, they're all over IMDB, you've never heard of these performers, but they're professional actors and movie producers. Are they "fair game?"
How many people have to recognize your name before you are a "public figure" and thereby forfeit your right to know the identify of your accusers?
And Civilization lurches slightly forward.
Lookit, you want to call Bush a Nazi Warmonger or Obama an Incompetent Puppet, or speak any kind of Truth to Power, I will be shoulder to shoulder with you on the ramparts in defense of your Freedom to Speak, you're a Patriot. You want to call a lady a "skanky ho," try to damage her reputation, and then hide like a coward, you are a Cad.
The Internet has changed many things, but it has not changed everything.
skills that a new player could never catch
It's not a race, number one. And the Varsity is always better than the Junior Varsity, because, well, they're older.
That said, it still does not play out as you would think. From a PvP perspective, you may have a player that focuses on getting into a battleship as soon as possible, and does so, with a minimal number of the skills to pilot a battleship *well*. Meanwhile, his PvP opponent, a month behind in skills (let's say), is in an assault frigate and is properly and thoroughly skilled. The "newer" player wins. But what does he win? After a half-hour of stalking and fighting his prey, the victor claims a worthless husk of a battleship filled with crappy gear barely worth selling. While in that same time period, the peaceful miner, "younger" even than the Assault Frigate pilot, makes millions of ISK (revenue) and literally laughs all the way to the bank. Battleship boy had the bigger ship, the frigate guy kicked his butt but doesn't have enough money to pay for his own ammunition, and the miner cleans up while playing the videogame equivalent of watching grass grow. Who's the better/smarter player?
There's no right answer. Part of what makes the game so intriguing.
This would never fly in a modern MMO, as it requires that player to plan ahead from the very beginning or to re-roll once they learned how the system worked.
A number of third party software tools exist for Eve which allow a player to plan his character skills out across years, if he so desires. And the player can have a "neural re-mapping" once a year to change his attribute numbers -- the stuff like Charisma, Intelligence, Willpower, etc. -- which affect how fast he learns new skills, so if he made a choice early on to be a combat pilot and wants to change to an industrialist, the transition is not so dire.
It means that players have to pick their fights wisely, be more opportunistic, be more alert, and maybe go around in pairs or impromptu groups to increase their chance of survival.
That's the PvP in Eve. And there are no classes, just skills that take a fixed and finite time to acquire (i.e., no such thing as "power leveling"). A group of small ships, with skilled pilots, can bring down a battleship. DPS, range, speed, tank, evasion, cloaking, resistance to specific types of damage, capacity to make money, and a hundred et ceteras all exist on a highly granular scale, and all affect play immensely. I can't imagine that there are two players in the game with the same sets of skills.
But you'd be amazed at the whiners, who don't fight wisely, aren't opportunistic, aren't alert, fly around by themselves, lose their ships, then cry that the game is too hard or that the players are "mean." Others join the game and ask, "What's the best ship?" and are baffled when told "There is none." WoW and EQ have bred a "sprint for the Uber" that takes a while to get out of the system...
...when it's Geekipedia. You're insane if you consult Wikipedia for any real-world event -- especially a one that happened in recent memory or is still unfolding -- but there's no better one-stop for an overview of the 4th season of Buffy or Lightsaber faux-physics. So... count your blessings. Hopefully the site will morph from an omnipedia of spurious repute to a Pop Culture bible that's the final word on the stuff it does well.
...unless they could get VCs to foot the bill.
Obama's smarter than you. He gets taxpayers to foot the bill.
Like calling for a meeting in a room with no chairs, the Slashdot forms discourage lengthy messages, which, after you've read enough "essays" on Slashdot, you recognize is a Good Thing.
If its a metadata/database issue in a system funded by the US government, its a US government/taxpayer issue by defaul
The problem is - as I think I understand it - the metadata of the sites in question say "gay," and the porn filter kicks it out. Now, is that because the porn filter coding is bad, the vast majority of "gay" metadata'd sites are in fact NOT porn, but blogs discussing, I dunno, the latest upholstery patterns? Then, yeah, there is a metadata/database problem that needs fixing. If, however, the vast majority of gay metadata'd sites in fact ARE porn, then the filter-coders are spot-on and perhaps something else needs fixing, which is beyond the scope of this tech site discussion.
when most US taxpayers undoubtedly don't care whether or not people abroad watch porn
If it is represented, either rightly or wrongly, that the increased bandwidth for porn surfing is costing the American taxpayer a penny more than it would cost for provisioning a porn filter, than it would be a public relations time bomb NOT to install the porn filter. Most Americans don't care who watches porn, domestically or abroad, unless it's going to cost them money, in which case then, yes, they'll start to care very much. The US is not "helping a foreign government keep its gay population from accessing the wider international community;" they're adding porn filters. If you're telling me that all gay community sites that do not contain porn are being classified at the filter level as "porn," then that is a metadata/database issue, not a US Government/Taxpayer issue.
This can help others where they can not see the content from the US. Hulu and others come to mind. Oh right, it isn't censorship if it isn't done by the government.
Hulu has not been granted the license to distribute some content beyond the U.S. In some cases those distribution rights have been given to other entities, in other cases the rights may have been more expensive than Hulu wanted to pay, given the limitations of global-play ad sales.. In all cases, it was a business decision. Information may "want to be free," but network television does not. To even imply "censorship" is just ignorant.