Haha, I had the same experience, where was this infamous blue dong? I immediately grasped and accepted the concept that Dr. Manhattan did not care about clothes, but I didn't even know there was "full frontal" (CG at that) until after the movie, when people were walking out all "Baah! penis! I hate penis!".
It was well done, fit the character so well it didn't distract me from the scene/story/characters. The rest of the move though - woah - not a kid's movie. Neither was the Dark Knight though. I thought this movie was waaaaay better than the Dark Knight. I'd even go as far as saying best comic movie yet.
Don't worry, in the quest to get larger audiences into PG-13, the ratings system will get so skewed that R will become "ultraviolence" and pr0n, and pg-13 will be the regular old killing, torture, and skinemax.
For me, it is much more about having more accessible information about the site / software.
The food / vegan diet comparison is a good one as I see this as similar to the "organic, RBGH free, antibiotic free, paraben free" etc labels that some companies choose to display. I do think it will appeal to more people than "software vegans" though simply because interest in knowing about the underlying technology and principles of companies and products is growing.
I'm not sure I would give up a web app or service if there were no alternatives but if there are similar competing services or apps I'll choose the "free" version. If no alternative is available, I can notify the company about it, voice my opinion, and at least have more awareness.
It's a nice step in software transparency and a way for companies and sites that support FOSS standards to market another "badge" that informs of said support.
It's a tribes mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
Tribes is easily my favorite game of all time. I'm very sad that I have not figured out how to play it in 64bit Ubuntu. This is why I'm very excited for this mod, I can get my Tribes on in linux with a modern engine! (I'd still take the 'old' game any time if I could get it to work) It's still IMO the only shooter that really rewarded finesse. (I never played Starseige:Tribes, so T1 players can just eat blue disc).[VGTG]
This is where I feel Edubuntu is missing the boat - they need to work on totally brainless setup. Many schools IT departments are not as technically savy as they could be, and teachers who like the idea of FOSS are not generally savy enough to set up a computer lab (or even a small network in their class).
When Edubuntu switched from one Live CD and an easy to set up LTSP / Client discs to a two part install they lost a lot of ease. What is needed is a live CD that can be used as a thin client boot AND has a local DansGuardian / Squid / iptables set up to filter bad internet stuff.
Make a SAFE Live CD, and get back to making LTSP easy for most cases. Mom easy. Teacher easy.
Remember that crazy substitute teacher pop-up porn case? Would have been much less of a problem if she was using a live CD with firefox. Probably could not have happened if the hypothetical live CD had Adblock and some internet content filtering automatically set up.
Also, Open Source just won't be able to keep up with the billions of dollars spent on this industry.
Remember, having the source be open does not mean lack of internal development, or a different profit model. Libre, not gratis. Having open source does mean (from the company perspective) free labor from passionate workers, bug hunting, extended support, and game longevity. OSS games have much longer lives than closed, as they can be ported and extended by interested parties.
While I can't comment on how companies take online petitions, I do think that many of the big players have been keeping an eye on Linux as a platform to develop for. As others have said - wider audience = more chance for sales.
I think that there is another shift that is happening, and has already happened for Mac users - the idea of supporting ideals with purchases. Apple has sold the idea of - pay for our quality, get a quality of life improvement. While I don't support that idea specifically (I like Apple's design, but don't support the company) I think that the trends of "Green" and "Healthy" and "Not Evil" are starting to move into the computer realm.
I don't think it's enough that games work in WINE, it's a company statement -- "We support your choice, we are cross platform". It's a win / win, and I support (with money) companies that take steps to have their software and hardware cross platform compatible. Most recently I started playing Savage 2 which was released for free; after playing a few days, I purchased the Prime account to give them some support.>br> I, like others, have started to support my ideals with my money. I realized a few years ago that you have to "vote" with money, and now a year ago I realized that my support of companies that have green practices, of organic and local farms, of companies that make clear public statements in favor of human rights made me a hypocrite if I did not support the companies that encouraged cross platform choice. I use linux as my sole OS now, buy RoHS complient electronics, and vote for technology that supports my ideals.
All this rant is really just to say that the trend is here, and companies should make an effort to make their current platform OS independent, or make their next engine or platform OS independent.
If you want to see game companies developing natively for *nix, get more people using it. The developers will follow, seriously.
Hasn't that been the chicken and egg / catch 22 problem since the year of linux? It's a terrible stance for developers to take. Think about it (here it comes) - how would that work with religion? Convert for support? Get more followers, then we'll pay attention? Change other's minds, and we like you, nuts to you if you don't. I guess it works that way already, and it's caused a mess. Why not take a stance of: we're accepting of your choice. Inclusive vs exclusive.
Yes, it's the perfect system, the GOP can continue to call the Democratic party "tax and spend liberals" and say "look! they raised taxes! blarg!" every time a democrat is in office.
1) Republican in power - start hot or cold war, spend like crazy, lower taxes, run up national debt, cut domestic spending like education and non-war-science
2) Continue until economy is run into ground and people are tired of war
3) Democrat in power - try to fix mess left from prior administration, reduce national debt, re-enable domestic spending like education and non-war-science, raise taxes to pay for it all as the national debt is always at a new high.
4) GOP starts campaign again saying "look, they raised taxes, cut "defense" spending, increased spending
5) Repeat cycle
It's the perfect scam! They do what they want, regardless of cost and consequence, and then blame the other party for the inevitable actions that have to be taken to correct the costs! Brilliant!
Personally, I am voting for Obama not only because I think his tax and health care plans are better, but because he has the support of the science community. If Nobel prize winners support him, if Warren Buffet supports him, then he must be good for science, and good for education and technology and good for the economy. At least better than McCain, anyway.
I thought that the control system for MP3:C was very nice, and with some refinement I think that the Wii controls could really make for some great twitch shooters!
I think playing fast shooters like Nexuiz or Q3 or UT or such would be a blast with that control scheme. I found it very fast to target things, if they sped up the spin / turn around capability when you point off screen, I think it would be the first scheme to contend with the mouse.
Actually, I think Nexuiz would be a great game to port, Wii needs a few twitch games (and better online representation).
If you buy a Vista laptop (or XP if you can still find one) with the intention of NEVER using Windows at all, don't agree to the EULA when you first boot it up, decline everything, and at least attempt to get a refund. Even if you don't have the patience to see it all the way through to getting a refund for the unused OS license (read the EULA, most suggest that refunds are available from the manufacturer) you will show the company that they might want to make a bigger effort to truly offer alternatives to OS bundles. Save them money in supporting the refund case, save money on sending the refund, offer a "lower" price to the consumer (while still saving money).
Companies only know how you are using their products when you tell them, and they _really_ know when they give you money back for products you don't want, but had no choice about getting.
Old news for some, new for others. I have been reading posts of people getting $200 refunds after fighting for the refund listed in the Vista EULA. Too bad they had to really fight for it (many levels of support, escalation, runaround, bullshit, etc), but it makes that inexpensive $500 laptop reeeally inexpensive.
...there was a useful way to list and search 100% working systems / components. More the former than the latter for laypeople.
The information is already out there, in forums or linux hardware databases, but it still takes hours to sort through. Most people do not have the patience for that. It needs to be as easy as entering "HP foo42bbq" model number and get a green, yellow, or red light. "Yes, totally works, buy it", "All but power management" (or ONE non working, non critical component, two is too many), or "NO - don't buy, not ready yet". Actually, maybe get rid of the yellow, no sense listing half assed systems, maybe require user registration to see partially working systems, so people can fix, tinker, whatever.
The format of any compatibility matrices I have seen suck. Not friendly at all. The public does not have patience for much more than entering one search term. Model number, sku, whatever. We could see a major boom just by making a 'yea' or 'nay' list based on the Sunday fliers for the popular brick and mortar electronic superstores.
So true, tepples, compatibility is the problem. Make it easy to find the models that vendors (knowingly or unknowingly) put together that are compatible.
IE 7 still does not support gamma or color correction. For most people that may not be an issue. What is an issue is still having to support IE6, which may be a separate issue, but it is still a browser with 30% market and PNG is not in mainstream use because of it. If IE7 was included with a service pack update, maybe I could stop supporting it. As it stands now, it looks like I'll still be supporting it (and not using PNG as much as I should) until the next MS OS.
All in all, I am saying that next gen is all well and good, but implement the specs that stand first.
Even the buttons in the reply box of Slashdot would look proper with PNG. Suprise! Those "buttons" are not round! I sure have worked my self up over this again. Grubmle grumble, mumble and bumble. IE be damned with the standards they bungle.
Seriously. I want full Portable Network Graphic support. Yes, Internet Explorer, I am talking to you. Sure, we finally started to get reasonable support for it in 2006. 10 years after the W3C recommended spec. Still not full spec, still not good enough.
Being able to use PNG grapics could have saved me hundreds of hours (more?) over the past 10 or so years I have been playing with web design and development. I don't know why I have heard so little complaining about it all these years. Always just a "Ho hum, yah that would be nice, why dont you just...". BAH! Does anyone else understand how much time is spent fiddling with lame GIF transparency, or creating zillions of images with different background colors so you can make it look like your fancy rounded corners can swap site palates or whatever? Or how about the workarounds for having the logo look good with your nice elastic page with the cool background, looking like it can be totally independent of the background. Well with PNG, IT COULD BE. Or how about the millions of product thumbnails you have to support? Wish they could be PNG, we could then do that redesign and not have to touch all those legacy images.
Of all the things I hate about IE, I hate this the most. Probably because I have been excited about the capabilities of PNG ever since I was told GIF was proprietary and technically I couldn't use it without a license. All this time has gone by, and millions and millions of moneys and hours have been spent finding solutions that, while ingenious, are still not what they could be. By not supporting an image format that has been recommended since 1996.
Fancy new stuff with AJAX? Cool. Good. SVG? Kick ass, I'm fanatic about that format too. You could say it is the new PNG. But give me PNG. Please. Everything cool can be cooler with PNG.
Brother has pretty good linux support, their models are not quite as fancy as HP, but they release drivers for LPR and CUPS and the CUPS have source available.
I just downloaded it. I paid nothing. I want to listen to the album first, and then see how much it is worth to me (hey, I listen to albums for free in the record store before I buy, I listen to all music before I buy). But even if I really like the album, I still will not pay much for it. Why? Quality. Where is the high quality FLAC? What about even a high quality mp3? The disc box is really nice with CD and quality vinyl(see the details http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/MoreInfo2.htm), but I am not going to pay ~$84 for it. Won't do it.
160kbps? Seriously? That sucks. It especially sucks if you are mixing mp3s. Phish sells FLAC albums. Primus sells FLAC albums. It doesn't take a much more effort to provide a few more options for consumers that understand and want to purchase quality formats of albums.
I love that artists are starting to see the reality of the interweb music market. But I like the approach of Saul Williams better than Radiohead.
I think the only way to get insurance if you are self-employed (and blacklisted) is to start a company, purchase insurance for the company, and hire yourself. More books, more cost.:-/
I agree. The health care system is totally broken. My family is blacklisted from buying insurance privately. Both my parents had cancer, and so had their parents. No one in my immediate family can purchase health care , as no company will accept the risk. The only way any of us have any health insurance is through employers, as no employees can be denied under a company plan.
When my father was laid off...no insurance for anyone but my sister, who could purchase it from school. I broke my shoulder, and I am still paying for it (I was at a retail job, no health care plan offered, now I am salaried again and have health care through my employer). Thank goodness he found a job (a menial one at that) and was at the company long enough to get on their plan before my mom was found to have cancer, otherwise that would have broken our family. There would be no way we could have footed that bill.
So, in my experience, if you have a history of needing health care --/you/ can not get it. Your employer can get it for you, but you can't. I hate insurance companies. (I used to work in a large insurance company, and have had great coverage -- and have also not been able to get coverage.) Many people in the USA trash the idea of a state health care system, but they have not had the displeasure of not being/able/to be insured.
Polyphasic sleep is great, but/very/ difficult to maintain. It is most effective when a sleep schedule is followed very routinely, and that is more difficult than you would think. I was an insomniac, and to stave off crazyness started a polyphasic sleep routine. I already had a pretty short "time to REM" cycle, dreaming vividly during cat naps, so that was easy for me. Keeping the schedule was really hard though, especially if you have a real life. Its OK if you are holed up working on your master plan, or are a recluce or whatever, but forget it if you want relationships, spontaneity, or a nightlife.
I still function pretty well on little to no sleep a few days a week, without much "catch up" time, but found random catnaps to be almost as good as a polyphasic sleep schedule. Especially at work, when I get stumped, go out to my car, take a 20 min nap, solve the problem while I sleep!
Slashdot Mirror
Where is that? I saw it as a feature of GNOME 2.26, but there was scant info about it. Got the scoop on Empathy video?
Haha, I had the same experience, where was this infamous blue dong? I immediately grasped and accepted the concept that Dr. Manhattan did not care about clothes, but I didn't even know there was "full frontal" (CG at that) until after the movie, when people were walking out all "Baah! penis! I hate penis!".
It was well done, fit the character so well it didn't distract me from the scene/story/characters. The rest of the move though - woah - not a kid's movie. Neither was the Dark Knight though. I thought this movie was waaaaay better than the Dark Knight. I'd even go as far as saying best comic movie yet.
Don't worry, in the quest to get larger audiences into PG-13, the ratings system will get so skewed that R will become "ultraviolence" and pr0n, and pg-13 will be the regular old killing, torture, and skinemax.
For me, it is much more about having more accessible information about the site / software.
The food / vegan diet comparison is a good one as I see this as similar to the "organic, RBGH free, antibiotic free, paraben free" etc labels that some companies choose to display. I do think it will appeal to more people than "software vegans" though simply because interest in knowing about the underlying technology and principles of companies and products is growing.
I'm not sure I would give up a web app or service if there were no alternatives but if there are similar competing services or apps I'll choose the "free" version. If no alternative is available, I can notify the company about it, voice my opinion, and at least have more awareness.
It's a nice step in software transparency and a way for companies and sites that support FOSS standards to market another "badge" that informs of said support.
This might be the time to mention Tribal Wars.
It's a tribes mod for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.
Tribes is easily my favorite game of all time. I'm very sad that I have not figured out how to play it in 64bit Ubuntu. This is why I'm very excited for this mod, I can get my Tribes on in linux with a modern engine! (I'd still take the 'old' game any time if I could get it to work)
It's still IMO the only shooter that really rewarded finesse. (I never played Starseige:Tribes, so T1 players can just eat blue disc).[VGTG]
Just because you haven't found Him doesn't mean He doesn't exist, I can't find most of the constellations in the night sky but apparently they exist.
Same logic applies to:
You should also include
Evolution
No, I should not.
Please see:
Evolution as theory and fact - Key misunderstanding in most evolutionary debate
and
Information about Evolution in general
Just because you haven't found Him doesn't mean He doesn't exist, I can't find most of the constellations in the night sky but apparently they exist.
Same logic applies to:
This is where I feel Edubuntu is missing the boat - they need to work on totally brainless setup. Many schools IT departments are not as technically savy as they could be, and teachers who like the idea of FOSS are not generally savy enough to set up a computer lab (or even a small network in their class).
When Edubuntu switched from one Live CD and an easy to set up LTSP / Client discs to a two part install they lost a lot of ease. What is needed is a live CD that can be used as a thin client boot AND has a local DansGuardian / Squid / iptables set up to filter bad internet stuff.
Make a SAFE Live CD, and get back to making LTSP easy for most cases. Mom easy. Teacher easy.
Remember that crazy substitute teacher pop-up porn case? Would have been much less of a problem if she was using a live CD with firefox. Probably could not have happened if the hypothetical live CD had Adblock and some internet content filtering automatically set up.
Also, Open Source just won't be able to keep up with the billions of dollars spent on this industry.
Remember, having the source be open does not mean lack of internal development, or a different profit model. Libre, not gratis. Having open source does mean (from the company perspective) free labor from passionate workers, bug hunting, extended support, and game longevity. OSS games have much longer lives than closed, as they can be ported and extended by interested parties.
I think that there is another shift that is happening, and has already happened for Mac users - the idea of supporting ideals with purchases. Apple has sold the idea of - pay for our quality, get a quality of life improvement. While I don't support that idea specifically (I like Apple's design, but don't support the company) I think that the trends of "Green" and "Healthy" and "Not Evil" are starting to move into the computer realm.
I don't think it's enough that games work in WINE, it's a company statement -- "We support your choice, we are cross platform". It's a win / win, and I support (with money) companies that take steps to have their software and hardware cross platform compatible. Most recently I started playing Savage 2 which was released for free; after playing a few days, I purchased the Prime account to give them some support.>br>
I, like others, have started to support my ideals with my money. I realized a few years ago that you have to "vote" with money, and now a year ago I realized that my support of companies that have green practices, of organic and local farms, of companies that make clear public statements in favor of human rights made me a hypocrite if I did not support the companies that encouraged cross platform choice. I use linux as my sole OS now, buy RoHS complient electronics, and vote for technology that supports my ideals.
All this rant is really just to say that the trend is here, and companies should make an effort to make their current platform OS independent, or make their next engine or platform OS independent.
If you want to see game companies developing natively for *nix, get more people using it. The developers will follow, seriously.
Hasn't that been the chicken and egg / catch 22 problem since the year of linux? It's a terrible stance for developers to take. Think about it (here it comes) - how would that work with religion? Convert for support? Get more followers, then we'll pay attention? Change other's minds, and we like you, nuts to you if you don't. I guess it works that way already, and it's caused a mess. Why not take a stance of: we're accepting of your choice. Inclusive vs exclusive.
1) Republican in power - start hot or cold war, spend like crazy, lower taxes, run up national debt, cut domestic spending like education and non-war-science
2) Continue until economy is run into ground and people are tired of war
3) Democrat in power - try to fix mess left from prior administration, reduce national debt, re-enable domestic spending like education and non-war-science, raise taxes to pay for it all as the national debt is always at a new high.
4) GOP starts campaign again saying "look, they raised taxes, cut "defense" spending, increased spending
5) Repeat cycle
It's the perfect scam! They do what they want, regardless of cost and consequence, and then blame the other party for the inevitable actions that have to be taken to correct the costs! Brilliant!
I'm an independent, and I disagree with our (bi)partisan system, but historically the average income has been higher over the last 60 years with a Democratic president. Read this article before voting "I have to vote Republican because of the economy." Very informative article by Alan S. Blinder, former vice chair to the Federal Reserve.
Personally, I am voting for Obama not only because I think his tax and health care plans are better, but because he has the support of the science community. If Nobel prize winners support him, if Warren Buffet supports him, then he must be good for science, and good for education and technology and good for the economy. At least better than McCain, anyway.
I thought that the control system for MP3:C was very nice, and with some refinement I think that the Wii controls could really make for some great twitch shooters!
I think playing fast shooters like Nexuiz or Q3 or UT or such would be a blast with that control scheme. I found it very fast to target things, if they sped up the spin / turn around capability when you point off screen, I think it would be the first scheme to contend with the mouse.
Actually, I think Nexuiz would be a great game to port, Wii needs a few twitch games (and better online representation).
If you buy a Vista laptop (or XP if you can still find one) with the intention of NEVER using Windows at all, don't agree to the EULA when you first boot it up, decline everything, and at least attempt to get a refund. Even if you don't have the patience to see it all the way through to getting a refund for the unused OS license (read the EULA, most suggest that refunds are available from the manufacturer) you will show the company that they might want to make a bigger effort to truly offer alternatives to OS bundles. Save them money in supporting the refund case, save money on sending the refund, offer a "lower" price to the consumer (while still saving money).
Companies only know how you are using their products when you tell them, and they _really_ know when they give you money back for products you don't want, but had no choice about getting.
Old news for some, new for others. I have been reading posts of people getting $200 refunds after fighting for the refund listed in the Vista EULA. Too bad they had to really fight for it (many levels of support, escalation, runaround, bullshit, etc), but it makes that inexpensive $500 laptop reeeally inexpensive.
...there was a useful way to list and search 100% working systems / components. More the former than the latter for laypeople.
The information is already out there, in forums or linux hardware databases, but it still takes hours to sort through. Most people do not have the patience for that. It needs to be as easy as entering "HP foo42bbq" model number and get a green, yellow, or red light. "Yes, totally works, buy it", "All but power management" (or ONE non working, non critical component, two is too many), or "NO - don't buy, not ready yet". Actually, maybe get rid of the yellow, no sense listing half assed systems, maybe require user registration to see partially working systems, so people can fix, tinker, whatever.
The format of any compatibility matrices I have seen suck. Not friendly at all. The public does not have patience for much more than entering one search term. Model number, sku, whatever. We could see a major boom just by making a 'yea' or 'nay' list based on the Sunday fliers for the popular brick and mortar electronic superstores.
So true, tepples, compatibility is the problem. Make it easy to find the models that vendors (knowingly or unknowingly) put together that are compatible.
IE 7 still does not support gamma or color correction. For most people that may not be an issue. What is an issue is still having to support IE6, which may be a separate issue, but it is still a browser with 30% market and PNG is not in mainstream use because of it. If IE7 was included with a service pack update, maybe I could stop supporting it. As it stands now, it looks like I'll still be supporting it (and not using PNG as much as I should) until the next MS OS.
All in all, I am saying that next gen is all well and good, but implement the specs that stand first.
Even the buttons in the reply box of Slashdot would look proper with PNG. Suprise! Those "buttons" are not round! I sure have worked my self up over this again. Grubmle grumble, mumble and bumble. IE be damned with the standards they bungle.
Seriously. I want full Portable Network Graphic support. Yes, Internet Explorer, I am talking to you. Sure, we finally started to get reasonable support for it in 2006. 10 years after the W3C recommended spec. Still not full spec, still not good enough.
Being able to use PNG grapics could have saved me hundreds of hours (more?) over the past 10 or so years I have been playing with web design and development. I don't know why I have heard so little complaining about it all these years. Always just a "Ho hum, yah that would be nice, why dont you just...". BAH! Does anyone else understand how much time is spent fiddling with lame GIF transparency, or creating zillions of images with different background colors so you can make it look like your fancy rounded corners can swap site palates or whatever? Or how about the workarounds for having the logo look good with your nice elastic page with the cool background, looking like it can be totally independent of the background. Well with PNG, IT COULD BE. Or how about the millions of product thumbnails you have to support? Wish they could be PNG, we could then do that redesign and not have to touch all those legacy images.
Of all the things I hate about IE, I hate this the most. Probably because I have been excited about the capabilities of PNG ever since I was told GIF was proprietary and technically I couldn't use it without a license. All this time has gone by, and millions and millions of moneys and hours have been spent finding solutions that, while ingenious, are still not what they could be. By not supporting an image format that has been recommended since 1996.
Fancy new stuff with AJAX? Cool. Good. SVG? Kick ass, I'm fanatic about that format too. You could say it is the new PNG. But give me PNG. Please. Everything cool can be cooler with PNG.
Brother has pretty good linux support, their models are not quite as fancy as HP, but they release drivers for LPR and CUPS and the CUPS have source available.
I think I read about that here a year or so ago.
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/index.html
There is an Ubuntu Brainstorm idea addressing this very thing, asking for Canonical to hire / fund an X.org developer (and a Gnome developer).
They have money, vote and support.Read all about it here.
Love or hate Ubuntu, they are quite a boon to Linux.
I had to look up SARBOX. Intersting stuff. Quite a disputed Wikipedia page also.
"Come back to me, Jane," he wrote. "I love you."
Speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_Diplomacy
Big sticks are fine, until they start swinging. When all you have is a hammer...
I just downloaded it. I paid nothing. I want to listen to the album first, and then see how much it is worth to me (hey, I listen to albums for free in the record store before I buy, I listen to all music before I buy). But even if I really like the album, I still will not pay much for it. Why? Quality. Where is the high quality FLAC? What about even a high quality mp3? The disc box is really nice with CD and quality vinyl(see the details http://www.inrainbows.com/Store/MoreInfo2.htm), but I am not going to pay ~$84 for it. Won't do it.
Contrast this to Saul Williams new album, which I am starting to really like. Great simple UI for the download http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/download
160kbps? Seriously? That sucks. It especially sucks if you are mixing mp3s. Phish sells FLAC albums. Primus sells FLAC albums. It doesn't take a much more effort to provide a few more options for consumers that understand and want to purchase quality formats of albums.
I love that artists are starting to see the reality of the interweb music market. But I like the approach of Saul Williams better than Radiohead.
I think the only way to get insurance if you are self-employed (and blacklisted) is to start a company, purchase insurance for the company, and hire yourself. More books, more cost. :-/
I agree. The health care system is totally broken. My family is blacklisted from buying insurance privately. Both my parents had cancer, and so had their parents. No one in my immediate family can purchase health care , as no company will accept the risk. The only way any of us have any health insurance is through employers, as no employees can be denied under a company plan.
/you/ can not get it. Your employer can get it for you, but you can't. I hate insurance companies. (I used to work in a large insurance company, and have had great coverage -- and have also not been able to get coverage.) Many people in the USA trash the idea of a state health care system, but they have not had the displeasure of not being /able /to be insured.
When my father was laid off...no insurance for anyone but my sister, who could purchase it from school. I broke my shoulder, and I am still paying for it (I was at a retail job, no health care plan offered, now I am salaried again and have health care through my employer). Thank goodness he found a job (a menial one at that) and was at the company long enough to get on their plan before my mom was found to have cancer, otherwise that would have broken our family. There would be no way we could have footed that bill.
So, in my experience, if you have a history of needing health care --
Polyphasic sleep is great, but /very/ difficult to maintain. It is most effective when a sleep schedule is followed very routinely, and that is more difficult than you would think. I was an insomniac, and to stave off crazyness started a polyphasic sleep routine. I already had a pretty short "time to REM" cycle, dreaming vividly during cat naps, so that was easy for me. Keeping the schedule was really hard though, especially if you have a real life. Its OK if you are holed up working on your master plan, or are a recluce or whatever, but forget it if you want relationships, spontaneity, or a nightlife.
I still function pretty well on little to no sleep a few days a week, without much "catch up" time, but found random catnaps to be almost as good as a polyphasic sleep schedule. Especially at work, when I get stumped, go out to my car, take a 20 min nap, solve the problem while I sleep!