That's not what compression I'm referring to, though. I'm referring to the way that many producers simply put a -9 crunch limiter on the 2-mix, creating a brick of sound with little dynamic range - but hey, it's LOUDER now! Compressing for headroom is different from limiting for loudness.
You would think people would have figured out how terrible/. was five years ago and moved on to more clever internet sites, like Fark. (Replying to remove a wrong moderation, bleah.)
Maybe you just have to get some crossover between guys who just spent 10 hours raiding in WoW with girls who just spent ten hours raking hay in Farmville.
In a nutshell, Ravitch was a big supporter of the new way forward for schools during the Bush administration. She backed the testing for No Child Left Behind, she stumped for charter schools and voucher systems - y'know, right-wing ideas. Over the past few years, she's looked at the data, and she's since changed her mind dramatically. She's cited research that charter schools aren't improving grades, that they're more likely to simply poach better students, and that the quality of private schools swings widely despite a few positive stories. She's noted that the standardized testing from NCLB has simply been setting a lower bar while students continue to decline in standardized tests that haven't changed over the years.
That's not to gloss over the issues that liberals bring to the table in supporting teacher's unions. Moving to a more creative, more individualized issue of study would require ditching much of standardized testing as well as reducing the benefits of tenure that the old guard of the teachers' unions support, in order to encourage younger teachers to be experiment. It's also going to mean that we need parents who will oblige when teachers want to stop teaching to the test and try slightly "dangerous" things. It's also going to mean that those creative younger teachers are going to need to be paid a salary due to talented people - it's sort of a free market principle that good talent won't work for cheap.
All of those things do not neatly fit into a left-right spectrum. It's more about libertarian-vs.-authoritarian, and the leaders of both parties in the U.S. right now fall to the authoritarian side of their parties' values.
Much for the same reason I don't support the privatization of our police forces, fire response, safety inspections, military, city planning, and other social services. Just because things are bad now doesn't mean you can't screw them up worse by putting them into for-profit hands.
Those of you mods who are browsing at -1 and wondering why there are so many negative moderations goign on, as well as several trolls blasting the game one way or the other, be warned that people who play Heroes of Newearth generally have it out for the people who play League of Legends, and vice versa. The HoN'ers think that LoL'ers are spoiled kids who don't appreciate true deep, balanced gameplay and need someone to explain how you actually make a good game. If you've ever dealt with hardcore EVE players, this should sound familiar. The LoL'ers think the HoN'ers are a bunch of elitist asshats who would rather berate other players constantly than just sit back and enjoy a game.
I've seen threads on the LoL boards where the forum moderators for the two different games get into shouting matches with each other. It's not a pretty relationship between the two games, and bad blood spouts up anywhere either game is mentioned.
I'm sorry that the parent post was marked troll (possibly some angry guy who got stuck laning with too many noobs in LoL.) I was gonna mark it underrated but thought a direct response might be a bit better.
I'm someone who actually enjoys LoL. I've been playing it quite a bit with friends recently and taking in the sheer joy in flashing next to someone with Cho'Gath and nomming on their face. But everything the parent poster said is correct - LoL is geared to a more casual fanbase. It still has a learning curve that takes several plays to get the hang of, but it's not nearly as bad as DotA/HoN.
There's also a lot less going on in the game. The characters are stripped down to a bit more basic elements. Which is not to say that's a BAD thing - much like some people prefer older versions of Civilization to the new versions with a hundred different things going on in them, or how, y'know, Chess doesn't have a lot of rules to it. LoL is to team-RTS what WoW is to MMO's, while HoN is a bit more like EVE in that respect. If you like games with denser, more cerebral play, look into HoN - if you want something a little more pick-up-game fun, look into LoL.
Fat addiction is not sufficient to explain the United States obesity epidemic because fats are just as addictive in Sweden, Japan and Uruguay as they are in the United States but we only have an obesity epidemic here.
Government policy in the United States is designed to promote obesity by socializing the costs of obesity. The first cost is the food itself, which the government pays for in the forms of, to name two, food stamps and the earned income tax credit. Everyone in the United States is required, by law, to pay for food to feed fat people. Really. The second cost of obesity, greatly increased medical care, is now socialized as well.
Uh, dude, America has the LEAST socialized health and welfare policies of the first-world nations. I don't think you can blame socialized medicine for the obesity epidemic when we don't have universal health care like all those skinnier nations do, and we have a much weaker safety net for people who can't afford food on their own. If you want an insight into how government policy influences food choices, you might instead want to look into farm subsidies for certain kinds of produce.
However, as much "damage" as health care reform may pose to incubment Democrats, Republicans shot themselves in the foot by using the filibuster an unprecedented number of times, even on legislation that THEY introduced. Democrats would be foolish not to use this to their advantage.
And sadly, Democrats WILL be that foolish. The DNC has never properly taken advantage of the Republicans' hypocracy. They should have been pointing out up and down all the dirty tricks that the GOP used to pass the prescription drug benefit several years ago, a bill that added a trillion dollars to the deficit over several years with no offsets to pay for it, and they should have pointed it out every time the GOP whined about the arm-twisting in this bill or the overall cost. But Dems are too polite for that, and that politeness will get them killed at the polls in November.
1) What is in it to stop the premiums going up as the money from subsidies comes in? In other words, will the basic laws of supply and demand in a free market not still apply? This bill does not seem to limit the dynamics of the free market.
Just to throw in behind what the other commenters are saying, the bill also sets up a national "marketplace" for health insurance providers, which theoretically allows people to purchase insurance from a wider range of providers and might break up some of the local oligarchies. Combine that with the fact that you can't be excluded for pre-existing conditions anymore, allowing you to move to different providers without being denied for previous care, and you might see a situation where prices stabilize due to an increase in competition. Granted, I'm not immediately holding my breath that it'll work out as planned.
It was just an example, though I would argue that memorizing your multiplication tables is a lot like memorizing your verb tenses - it's something that enables understanding of other math when you can pull that stuff out quickly instead of having to rely on a calculator for everything.
The current plans include a national marketplace for selling insurance across state lines, so you're getting that. The Republicans reject this because they simply want the system opened and free, but many liberals are leery of this idea after seeing what good it did to the credit card industry. Simply opening everything up would allow health care companies to move to the state that affords them the least possible regulation and consumer protection and sell to the country from there.
2. Limit lawsuit payouts.
A handful of states have already done this, to the effect of not bringing consumer prices down by any appreciable amount. The bill as it was being worked on a few months ago included pilot programs to reduce the number of lawsuits as a whole by providing for more doctor openness and mediation to prevent the cases from going to court in the first place.
3. Reduce the FDA requirements....canada sells the same meds for much less and they don't have such a stringent approval process?
I'd imagine that Canada also has more stringent price controls, and the government won't pay for drugs for which the price outweighs the effectiveness. Conservatives have consistently opposed negotiating for prices on drugs, however.
4. Promote Savings Health Accounts.
We already give a tax deduction on medical fees, and if you already have health insurance, then it's very likely that you already have access to an HSA for smaller amount. There's nothing to stop you from using your HSA and shopping around at doctors right now.
5. This topic wasn't designed to discuss immigration, but guess what, that's a major cost in health care.
Citation needed. Many illegals avoid health care for fear that being under anyone's control for a while would give away their illegal status, as they do with other social services. I doubt you're going to see a lot of illegal immigrants will access to Medicare, unless they "prove" that they're natural citizens by providing a stolen social security number or the like, in which case your fixes won't make much difference anyway. I can only imagine that the place illegals might be adding more cost to the system is in emergency room care, and I'm not sure how many doctors will jive with your idea to stop and demand identification from a severely injured person.
Exercise: Call 3 local providers and tell them that you have some common malady and tell them that you have Blue Cross insurance, ask them what it will cost you, and what they will bill BC. The next day, call them all back, same malady and tell them you're paying out of pocket. If day 2 isn't a third of day 1 I will eat my shoe.
That actually happens quite a bit, considering that BCBS is a big enough provider that they can negotiate and demand discounts for services. From the anecdotes I've heard, smaller providers, general practitioners and the like, are more likely to give you the discount for paying cash, while larger providers, hospital work, are more likely to provide a discount to the healthcare provider.
While the conventional propaga^H^H^Hwisdom calls this bill hugely expensive, the CBO is stating that the bill will be mostly deficit neutral after ten years.
Re:Dear readers with mod points...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 0, Troll
Hey, I may be a karma bum, but at least I'm not a SOCIALIST.
Re:Dear readers with mod points...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I can't believe that actually worked!:)
New to Slashdot, are you?:V
Dear readers with mod points...
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I do not have anything of actual use to say about this bill, other than common talking points, unsourced blather about what this bill will accomplish, and vague appeals to antiauthoritarianism. But please mod me +5 Insightful like you're doing with everyone else, just to be fair.
The grandparent asked which liberal sources would report on this. The answer is, several of them, including the HuffPo, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Glenn Greenwald, etc. Yes, they're pissed because he said one thing and is doing the opposite, because he's not acting in a more progressive/liberal manner. Same difference. I don't understand where the "full of it" part comes into play.
Watch a little Rachel Maddow, read a little of the HuffPo, you'll be surprised just how many times liberal sources DO report on stuff like this. The liberal blogosphere is kinda pissed that Obama isn't the far-left bleeding-hear socialist that conservatives make him out to be, and they call him out on it quite a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
...And I read that as saying, maybe a woman will skin your character in WoW and try to sell the leather. D:
That's not what compression I'm referring to, though. I'm referring to the way that many producers simply put a -9 crunch limiter on the 2-mix, creating a brick of sound with little dynamic range - but hey, it's LOUDER now! Compressing for headroom is different from limiting for loudness.
You would think people would have figured out how terrible /. was five years ago and moved on to more clever internet sites, like Fark. (Replying to remove a wrong moderation, bleah.)
Maybe you just have to get some crossover between guys who just spent 10 hours raiding in WoW with girls who just spent ten hours raking hay in Farmville.
With a level 70? Hah! Tell the noob to get of her ass and make 80!
And that is why she left you to go raid with a casual guild.
The music industry is saved!
:D
Not until they also invent a De-Limiter to remove all the terrible over-compression.
There's a good point here that this is not just a right-vs.-left problem. You might want to look into Diane Ravitch's opinions to see how that's going. (Here's the first link I could Google, there's more commentary around.)
In a nutshell, Ravitch was a big supporter of the new way forward for schools during the Bush administration. She backed the testing for No Child Left Behind, she stumped for charter schools and voucher systems - y'know, right-wing ideas. Over the past few years, she's looked at the data, and she's since changed her mind dramatically. She's cited research that charter schools aren't improving grades, that they're more likely to simply poach better students, and that the quality of private schools swings widely despite a few positive stories. She's noted that the standardized testing from NCLB has simply been setting a lower bar while students continue to decline in standardized tests that haven't changed over the years.
That's not to gloss over the issues that liberals bring to the table in supporting teacher's unions. Moving to a more creative, more individualized issue of study would require ditching much of standardized testing as well as reducing the benefits of tenure that the old guard of the teachers' unions support, in order to encourage younger teachers to be experiment. It's also going to mean that we need parents who will oblige when teachers want to stop teaching to the test and try slightly "dangerous" things. It's also going to mean that those creative younger teachers are going to need to be paid a salary due to talented people - it's sort of a free market principle that good talent won't work for cheap.
All of those things do not neatly fit into a left-right spectrum. It's more about libertarian-vs.-authoritarian, and the leaders of both parties in the U.S. right now fall to the authoritarian side of their parties' values.
Much for the same reason I don't support the privatization of our police forces, fire response, safety inspections, military, city planning, and other social services. Just because things are bad now doesn't mean you can't screw them up worse by putting them into for-profit hands.
Basically, yes. And the truth drives them crazy. :)
(And I do say that as one of those spoiled LoL players.)
Those of you mods who are browsing at -1 and wondering why there are so many negative moderations goign on, as well as several trolls blasting the game one way or the other, be warned that people who play Heroes of Newearth generally have it out for the people who play League of Legends, and vice versa. The HoN'ers think that LoL'ers are spoiled kids who don't appreciate true deep, balanced gameplay and need someone to explain how you actually make a good game. If you've ever dealt with hardcore EVE players, this should sound familiar. The LoL'ers think the HoN'ers are a bunch of elitist asshats who would rather berate other players constantly than just sit back and enjoy a game.
I've seen threads on the LoL boards where the forum moderators for the two different games get into shouting matches with each other. It's not a pretty relationship between the two games, and bad blood spouts up anywhere either game is mentioned.
I'm sorry that the parent post was marked troll (possibly some angry guy who got stuck laning with too many noobs in LoL.) I was gonna mark it underrated but thought a direct response might be a bit better. I'm someone who actually enjoys LoL. I've been playing it quite a bit with friends recently and taking in the sheer joy in flashing next to someone with Cho'Gath and nomming on their face. But everything the parent poster said is correct - LoL is geared to a more casual fanbase. It still has a learning curve that takes several plays to get the hang of, but it's not nearly as bad as DotA/HoN.
There's also a lot less going on in the game. The characters are stripped down to a bit more basic elements. Which is not to say that's a BAD thing - much like some people prefer older versions of Civilization to the new versions with a hundred different things going on in them, or how, y'know, Chess doesn't have a lot of rules to it. LoL is to team-RTS what WoW is to MMO's, while HoN is a bit more like EVE in that respect. If you like games with denser, more cerebral play, look into HoN - if you want something a little more pick-up-game fun, look into LoL.
Fat addiction is not sufficient to explain the United States obesity epidemic because fats are just as addictive in Sweden, Japan and Uruguay as they are in the United States but we only have an obesity epidemic here.
Government policy in the United States is designed to promote obesity by socializing the costs of obesity. The first cost is the food itself, which the government pays for in the forms of, to name two, food stamps and the earned income tax credit. Everyone in the United States is required, by law, to pay for food to feed fat people. Really. The second cost of obesity, greatly increased medical care, is now socialized as well.
Uh, dude, America has the LEAST socialized health and welfare policies of the first-world nations. I don't think you can blame socialized medicine for the obesity epidemic when we don't have universal health care like all those skinnier nations do, and we have a much weaker safety net for people who can't afford food on their own. If you want an insight into how government policy influences food choices, you might instead want to look into farm subsidies for certain kinds of produce.
There, CNN, fixed your headline for you.
Cocaine's not the drug that will give you the munchies.
To clarify, Jon Oliver did that skit.
:D
And to Jon Oliver, the good ol' days is when the Germans stopped dropping bombs on his country.
However, as much "damage" as health care reform may pose to incubment Democrats, Republicans shot themselves in the foot by using the filibuster an unprecedented number of times, even on legislation that THEY introduced. Democrats would be foolish not to use this to their advantage.
And sadly, Democrats WILL be that foolish. The DNC has never properly taken advantage of the Republicans' hypocracy. They should have been pointing out up and down all the dirty tricks that the GOP used to pass the prescription drug benefit several years ago, a bill that added a trillion dollars to the deficit over several years with no offsets to pay for it, and they should have pointed it out every time the GOP whined about the arm-twisting in this bill or the overall cost. But Dems are too polite for that, and that politeness will get them killed at the polls in November.
1) What is in it to stop the premiums going up as the money from subsidies comes in? In other words, will the basic laws of supply and demand in a free market not still apply? This bill does not seem to limit the dynamics of the free market.
Just to throw in behind what the other commenters are saying, the bill also sets up a national "marketplace" for health insurance providers, which theoretically allows people to purchase insurance from a wider range of providers and might break up some of the local oligarchies. Combine that with the fact that you can't be excluded for pre-existing conditions anymore, allowing you to move to different providers without being denied for previous care, and you might see a situation where prices stabilize due to an increase in competition. Granted, I'm not immediately holding my breath that it'll work out as planned.
It was just an example, though I would argue that memorizing your multiplication tables is a lot like memorizing your verb tenses - it's something that enables understanding of other math when you can pull that stuff out quickly instead of having to rely on a calculator for everything.
1. Buy insurance across state lines.
...canada sells the same meds for much less and they don't have such a stringent approval process?
The current plans include a national marketplace for selling insurance across state lines, so you're getting that. The Republicans reject this because they simply want the system opened and free, but many liberals are leery of this idea after seeing what good it did to the credit card industry. Simply opening everything up would allow health care companies to move to the state that affords them the least possible regulation and consumer protection and sell to the country from there.
2. Limit lawsuit payouts.
A handful of states have already done this, to the effect of not bringing consumer prices down by any appreciable amount. The bill as it was being worked on a few months ago included pilot programs to reduce the number of lawsuits as a whole by providing for more doctor openness and mediation to prevent the cases from going to court in the first place.
3. Reduce the FDA requirements.
I'd imagine that Canada also has more stringent price controls, and the government won't pay for drugs for which the price outweighs the effectiveness. Conservatives have consistently opposed negotiating for prices on drugs, however.
4. Promote Savings Health Accounts.
We already give a tax deduction on medical fees, and if you already have health insurance, then it's very likely that you already have access to an HSA for smaller amount. There's nothing to stop you from using your HSA and shopping around at doctors right now.
5. This topic wasn't designed to discuss immigration, but guess what, that's a major cost in health care.
Citation needed. Many illegals avoid health care for fear that being under anyone's control for a while would give away their illegal status, as they do with other social services. I doubt you're going to see a lot of illegal immigrants will access to Medicare, unless they "prove" that they're natural citizens by providing a stolen social security number or the like, in which case your fixes won't make much difference anyway. I can only imagine that the place illegals might be adding more cost to the system is in emergency room care, and I'm not sure how many doctors will jive with your idea to stop and demand identification from a severely injured person.
Exercise: Call 3 local providers and tell them that you have some common malady and tell them that you have Blue Cross insurance, ask them what it will cost you, and what they will bill BC. The next day, call them all back, same malady and tell them you're paying out of pocket. If day 2 isn't a third of day 1 I will eat my shoe.
That actually happens quite a bit, considering that BCBS is a big enough provider that they can negotiate and demand discounts for services. From the anecdotes I've heard, smaller providers, general practitioners and the like, are more likely to give you the discount for paying cash, while larger providers, hospital work, are more likely to provide a discount to the healthcare provider.
While the conventional propaga^H^H^Hwisdom calls this bill hugely expensive, the CBO is stating that the bill will be mostly deficit neutral after ten years.
Hey, I may be a karma bum, but at least I'm not a SOCIALIST.
I can't believe that actually worked! :)
:V
New to Slashdot, are you?
I do not have anything of actual use to say about this bill, other than common talking points, unsourced blather about what this bill will accomplish, and vague appeals to antiauthoritarianism. But please mod me +5 Insightful like you're doing with everyone else, just to be fair.
The grandparent asked which liberal sources would report on this. The answer is, several of them, including the HuffPo, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Glenn Greenwald, etc. Yes, they're pissed because he said one thing and is doing the opposite, because he's not acting in a more progressive/liberal manner. Same difference. I don't understand where the "full of it" part comes into play.
Watch a little Rachel Maddow, read a little of the HuffPo, you'll be surprised just how many times liberal sources DO report on stuff like this. The liberal blogosphere is kinda pissed that Obama isn't the far-left bleeding-hear socialist that conservatives make him out to be, and they call him out on it quite a bit.
That's actually really neat. Thanks for the reply.