Normal economic incentives and controls simply don't apply in the insurance business, the people running the show don't really care if you live or die, and providing health care is, at best, a secondary objective.
Although this problem applies much more if there's an incentive to the insurers not to pay stuff back. With the privatized US system, there's the obvious profit incentive. Bonuses for leaving patients high and dry. With a public system, you can legislate to avoid this and prevent there being a profit motive. A bit of inefficiency may ensure, but you can at least rely on most people's natural sense of goodwill to others to run the system fairly, and it's eleventy-million times better than the clear-cut anti-patient culture that a for-profit insurance scheme causes.
IOW, insurance per se isn't unworkable, but privatized insurance often is, especially with healthcare.
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
Sorry, but I just don't get this argument. Please explain further.
Now, you could use it for the sewerage system. Allow full access for all sewerage companies to homes, and you can have 12 sewer pipes running to every house. Nice free market.
However, this makes no sense, because: - It's not gonna happen because it's too fucking expensive to build the pipes. - People don't want the HASSLE of changing their sewerage provider every week. - It's a complete waste of space and resources when you can just have 1 freaking pipe!
This is an infrastructure where there being ONE pipe makes sense. The same goes for internet/telephony connections. You want to see 12 separate lines going to people's houses? It aint gonna happen! Are you that naive? What WILL happen is what happens now, roughly. A handful of big companies will have near-monopolies, and might even eventually merge, causing a 100% monopoly. And that's even if ALL regulation is removed.
It's more likely that only 1 line will be going to each house, it makes VASTLY more sense to regulate that line than tell 10 other companies to rebuild the same goddamn infrastructe 10 times! Can't you SEE that?!
TechCrunch wasn't much fun in the very early days. We were mostly talking to ourselves because readers were scarce. But as the site grew and more readers came along, things got exciting. The discussion in the comments to each blog post was as or more compelling than the actual news we were reporting.
It looks like Michael Arrington got confused. He's written his MS assignment about Slashdot instead of his site!
Here's my question. You say that niche stations will be forced to die. Why don't they relocate offshort to a country with less retarded legislation, like, say.... ANY other country? OK, some owners may really love living in the US (although God knows why, nowadays), but they could have their server offshore, and SSH to it. Illegal but the feds are unlikely to find out. Or, just rely on those who ARE willing to physically leave the country, or indeed those who were never broadcating from the US in the first place.
The point is, isn't it a bit over the top to say that all these stations will 'die'? Some will, but you're OK as long as you're in the US. All that will happen is that the US government had just shot dead another golden goose. They're running out of em, but other countries still have many nice healthy geese.
there is apparently a $500 per channel minimum, in case your station is too small to generate enough revenue.
I'm confused. All the stuff I listen to from ShoutCast have no ads at all. Some don't even have a website. How exactly do they generate revenue? It seems like it's a few people donating the time and equipment for the station out of goodwill.
And what I'm doing is making my strong argument that that judgement is just plain wrong. So, don't lecture me on why we have taxes, because that I understand full well. I'm acknowledging that some taxes are a good idea, but this aint one of them. And TV news would not be 'owned' by Rupert Murdoch without the licence fee. The BBC could be made subscription-only, whilst maintaining its requirement not to show ads. That seems like a perfectly workable solution to me. They might lose a bit of money from people who really don't watch the BBC and really can survive without it, which they shouldn't have had in the first place, but I'm very sure they'd survive just fine, especially if that subscription could be taken up by foreigners too.
you might like to know that desktop Linux's share is comparable to or even exceeding Apple's share [linuxinsider.com] and as also reported desktop Linux's share will reach 7.5 percent by 2008
That article was written in 2004, and it sounds like utter bullshit. Wikipedia's page on OSes says that Linux's share is somewhere around 0.5 - 1%.
Gotta love the fact that Slashdotters (in general) are ALL for small government and the private whenever possible (eg. in things other than natural monopolies)..... except when it comes to TV. How about being consistent? If you support the licence fee, you should support all kinds of public services. For example, why don't we have a state chocolate maker? It would provide a good counterbalance to private ones.
Agnostics are basically just unsure, open to the idea that a god exists, but equally open to the idea that no god exists.
Sorry, but the term 'unsure' is bollocks, really. We're sure in what we believe; that there is no way to know whether God exists, certainly at the current time, and that religion is therefore a complete waste of time and resources. An unsure person would be unlikely to call themselves an agnostic. Agnostics have considered the issue, and gone to the trouble of finding the term that most accurately describes them.
Yes. They're both theories, but people might call it a 'law' when it's convenient to do so; eg. the 'law' of evolution when using it as a working model whilst evolving an artificial intelligence.
Yup. I make the argument in a slightly different way, to avoid this problem.
We are to the universe what a particle is to the Earth. We're utterly, almost inconceivably, microscopically, miniscule. Why would God make us, the supposedly-very-important beings created in His image, so ridiculously tiny?
It sounds like nonsense to me. And religious people may argue that you just can't understand it, but He has some greater reason for doing it. Well, you're damn right I can't understand it, and that's a pretty good reason to reject religion thoroughly. If He wanted my puny mind to believe in him, he should've given my puny mind SOMEthing it could relate to, rather than relying on 100% blind faith.
Would Miguel's team not have been able to code this under a closed license? Was there significant public involvement that was critical to the project?
No, and no. What's your point? GP said it showed what OS was capable of, not what closed-source wasn't.
Re:UK not part of World
on
ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 2, Funny
not the English (who are just a small insignificant part of the UK, they can't even rule themselves because of the number of german monarches and welsh or scottish PM's we've had, pathetic people!;)
There, fixed it for you.
Re:You still have service fees?
on
ATM Turns 40
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· Score: 1
I haven't seen one that charges fees for years.
Try going to any motorway service station, or any ATM inside a convenience (corner) shop.
And I agree with you, service fees on ATMs are disgusting. Banks make many billions/year, and their greed knows no bounds.
Slashdot Mirror
It's legal in the US political system, why would international relations be any different?
Normal economic incentives and controls simply don't apply in the insurance business, the people running the show don't really care if you live or die, and providing health care is, at best, a secondary objective.
Although this problem applies much more if there's an incentive to the insurers not to pay stuff back. With the privatized US system, there's the obvious profit incentive. Bonuses for leaving patients high and dry. With a public system, you can legislate to avoid this and prevent there being a profit motive. A bit of inefficiency may ensure, but you can at least rely on most people's natural sense of goodwill to others to run the system fairly, and it's eleventy-million times better than the clear-cut anti-patient culture that a for-profit insurance scheme causes.
IOW, insurance per se isn't unworkable, but privatized insurance often is, especially with healthcare.
I'd rather see them going offshore, surviving whilst the RIAA still dies anyway.
Sorry for being slow, but what exactly DID happen to the Intel Opinion Centre?
Sure, some techies will say that it is extremely expensive to enter the "last mile" market to provide services, but this is untrue -- if there is a profit to be made, companies will enter the market. In many towns, the last mile providers are given freedom from competition, and without competition, of course there is corruption.
Sorry, but I just don't get this argument. Please explain further.
Now, you could use it for the sewerage system. Allow full access for all sewerage companies to homes, and you can have 12 sewer pipes running to every house. Nice free market.
However, this makes no sense, because:
- It's not gonna happen because it's too fucking expensive to build the pipes.
- People don't want the HASSLE of changing their sewerage provider every week.
- It's a complete waste of space and resources when you can just have 1 freaking pipe!
This is an infrastructure where there being ONE pipe makes sense. The same goes for internet/telephony connections. You want to see 12 separate lines going to people's houses? It aint gonna happen! Are you that naive? What WILL happen is what happens now, roughly. A handful of big companies will have near-monopolies, and might even eventually merge, causing a 100% monopoly. And that's even if ALL regulation is removed.
It's more likely that only 1 line will be going to each house, it makes VASTLY more sense to regulate that line than tell 10 other companies to rebuild the same goddamn infrastructe 10 times! Can't you SEE that?!
TechCrunch wasn't much fun in the very early days. We were mostly talking to ourselves because readers were scarce. But as the site grew and more readers came along, things got exciting. The discussion in the comments to each blog post was as or more compelling than the actual news we were reporting.
It looks like Michael Arrington got confused. He's written his MS assignment about Slashdot instead of his site!
Here's my question. You say that niche stations will be forced to die. Why don't they relocate offshort to a country with less retarded legislation, like, say.... ANY other country? OK, some owners may really love living in the US (although God knows why, nowadays), but they could have their server offshore, and SSH to it. Illegal but the feds are unlikely to find out. Or, just rely on those who ARE willing to physically leave the country, or indeed those who were never broadcating from the US in the first place.
The point is, isn't it a bit over the top to say that all these stations will 'die'? Some will, but you're OK as long as you're in the US. All that will happen is that the US government had just shot dead another golden goose. They're running out of em, but other countries still have many nice healthy geese.
there is apparently a $500 per channel minimum, in case your station is too small to generate enough revenue.
I'm confused. All the stuff I listen to from ShoutCast have no ads at all. Some don't even have a website. How exactly do they generate revenue? It seems like it's a few people donating the time and equipment for the station out of goodwill.
OVER-bribed politicians?
Does that mean that it's ok to bribe them to an extent?
You forgot a rather... obvious one, I believe. Try thinking about the opposite gender. They you could remove the silly brain access hole.
And what I'm doing is making my strong argument that that judgement is just plain wrong. So, don't lecture me on why we have taxes, because that I understand full well. I'm acknowledging that some taxes are a good idea, but this aint one of them. And TV news would not be 'owned' by Rupert Murdoch without the licence fee. The BBC could be made subscription-only, whilst maintaining its requirement not to show ads. That seems like a perfectly workable solution to me. They might lose a bit of money from people who really don't watch the BBC and really can survive without it, which they shouldn't have had in the first place, but I'm very sure they'd survive just fine, especially if that subscription could be taken up by foreigners too.
And you are aware that this is fucking irrelevant if you never watch the BBC, right?
you might like to know that desktop Linux's share is comparable to or even exceeding Apple's share [linuxinsider.com] and as also reported desktop Linux's share will reach 7.5 percent by 2008
That article was written in 2004, and it sounds like utter bullshit. Wikipedia's page on OSes says that Linux's share is somewhere around 0.5 - 1%.
Gotta love the fact that Slashdotters (in general) are ALL for small government and the private whenever possible (eg. in things other than natural monopolies)..... except when it comes to TV. How about being consistent? If you support the licence fee, you should support all kinds of public services. For example, why don't we have a state chocolate maker? It would provide a good counterbalance to private ones.
If an agnostic saw the atheist losing the bet, they too would know that god existed. So what is your point exactly?
Agnostics are basically just unsure, open to the idea that a god exists, but equally open to the idea that no god exists.
Sorry, but the term 'unsure' is bollocks, really. We're sure in what we believe; that there is no way to know whether God exists, certainly at the current time, and that religion is therefore a complete waste of time and resources. An unsure person would be unlikely to call themselves an agnostic. Agnostics have considered the issue, and gone to the trouble of finding the term that most accurately describes them.
Yes. They're both theories, but people might call it a 'law' when it's convenient to do so; eg. the 'law' of evolution when using it as a working model whilst evolving an artificial intelligence.
Yup. I make the argument in a slightly different way, to avoid this problem.
We are to the universe what a particle is to the Earth. We're utterly, almost inconceivably, microscopically, miniscule. Why would God make us, the supposedly-very-important beings created in His image, so ridiculously tiny?
It sounds like nonsense to me. And religious people may argue that you just can't understand it, but He has some greater reason for doing it. Well, you're damn right I can't understand it, and that's a pretty good reason to reject religion thoroughly. If He wanted my puny mind to believe in him, he should've given my puny mind SOMEthing it could relate to, rather than relying on 100% blind faith.
Yep, virtually nobody's heard of that online petition thing.
I know. I was over there the other week and some Parisians were under the bizarre impression that the US health system was worse then theirs. Weird.
No, they believe it. Agnostics (I am one) think it's the most likely explanation.
This is why people say atheists are illogical.
That guy's quite interesting, but I just wish he'd stop shouting all the time. Does he think that gets his point across more effectively?
Would Miguel's team not have been able to code this under a closed license? Was there significant public involvement that was critical to the project?
No, and no. What's your point? GP said it showed what OS was capable of, not what closed-source wasn't.
not the English (who are just a small insignificant part of the UK, they can't even rule themselves because of the number of german monarches and welsh or scottish PM's we've had, pathetic people! ;)
There, fixed it for you.
I haven't seen one that charges fees for years.
Try going to any motorway service station, or any ATM inside a convenience (corner) shop.
And I agree with you, service fees on ATMs are disgusting. Banks make many billions/year, and their greed knows no bounds.