A car is a car (except when one is mandated via regulation to have a full set of air bags and not throw the engine block trough the passenger seats in a crash and the other car... is not).
Government regulations setup the baseline of quality control expectations, so that the customers don't have to check every line of fine print and might actually have some confidence in the safety of their choice.
That is actually a misstatement - most people in the USA have no idea what a single payer system is or how it works and only a vanishing minority actually oppose it. The only people that really oppose single payer are the healthcare companies that make a killing from the current system, because they know that a government run single payer system could obsolete their whole business model and do their job better for fraction of the cost. Just like it is done in the civilized world.
Even the current polling in the US say that around 50% of people support the current plan, but when actually asked in detail, a large part of those that do *not* support the current health care plan, oppose it because it does not go far enough. Only 20% of people in the US actually oppose of a single payer government run healthcare system called Medicare. If everyone would get an option to automatically enroll into Medicare or even buy into it, absolute majority of US citizens would be for it.
But that will not happen, because it would hurt the profits of the insurance companies.
I have semi-weekly massage therapy and weekly gym membership/class fully covered by the very basic health care plan in a small and poor EU country. The reason for it is that all the basic care is covered by the government automatically, so the health insurance companies need to think on their feet to get any business.
Yeah, right. And a Jawbone that is retailing for 50$ or so does not have all of that? I mean, really - a Bluetooth headset has more components and more power hungry requirements than the hearing aids and they still are 50$ with 6+ hours of talk time.
How to convert a Jawbone to a hearing aid? Simple: add a equalizer, switch primary mic input with ambient noise reduction mic input, make it always on, turn off Bluetooth.
With the info floating around during this whole US health care debate, I would agree to the above point:
If you try to do anything medical or get any medical device in the USA you would be charged 10-50 times more than it actually costs. The prices are grossly inflated and then the big insurance companies negotiate them down by 90% or so. This is mostly in make sure that you don't go and get healthcare on your own. It also serves as a good way to keep some new insurance company from springing up - if you are not big enough, you can't negotiate such a discount, so you can't be profitable.
The insurance companies are all in a cartel. It would be illegal for any other business, but health insurance companies have a special exception.
There is no free market in health insurance in the USA and there has never been one, so there is no competition. Thus all the prices and profit margins are simply decided at the cartel meeting without any regard to real cost or social benefit.
My advice - go to a country with a real healthcare somewhere in EU or Canada or Asia and get some hearing aids there. It will come out cheaper even with a plane ticket.
Yeah, a pilot would not be able to safely turn a 747-sized airplane without a fly-by-wire. Yeah, one could try to construct a direct feed hydraulic link, but it would be much heavier and more complex than fly-by-wire and subject to all kinds of problems of its own.
If a driver dials 911 on his cell phone before even trying to put the car in Neutral, then yeah - it is a driver error.
(The last case on the news - a driver called 911 on his cell phone because his car was accelerating out of control. When prompted by the operator if he had tried putting the car in Neutral, he said no and even refused to do so when ordered to do it by the operator.)
The only two TV channels in the US with any liberal leaning are MSNBC and The Comedy Central. Fox is on the far right in their 'news' hours and extreme far right in their opinion hours. The other networks are pretty much balanced, but annoyingly trusting to both sides - i.e. no fact checking.
Apple dock is a pretty lousy concept - it takes much more vertical screen space than even two full Gnome panels (that do much more than a dock). And vertical screen space is a very precious commodity.
The Two Gnome panels is a much neater concept - if you want to start an application, you look up, if you want to switch to an application that you already launched, you look down. Very simple to remember and very logical.
Could it be because the traditional way that the other codecs are designed are actually patented? Yes, you can patent the concept of having audio and video that needs to be played at the same time to be embedded into the same carrier packet. Avoiding such patent makes software worse functionally, but it is still needed to keep it patent-free.
Blame the USA patent system for most of the deficiencies of OGG.
US will veto anything that tries to punish Israel on the world stage, so no - Israel has no accountability. Most countries would have been taken over by NATO Peace keeper forces decades ago for all the crap that Israel does.
Well, then there is an easy solution to the Iran problem - provide them all the help to set up new Thorium-based reactors that can not produce weapons, in exchange for shutting down their current program. Win-Win.
The current US nuclear companies make more money from refining Uranium than from generating electricity, so they are not interested in such newfangled designs that cut into their profit margins.
Well, just load it up with some waste from the current reactors. Poison it with U-238 so that it is too noisy to use in any nuclear weapon and off you go, it is self-sustainable from that point and does not need any more Uranium.
And Uranium cann't even work a liquid fluoride reactor just like a Prius would have a horrible mileage on kerosine, so what's your point?
Why use a superior fuel in an inferior engine that was not intended for it by design? If you really want apples-to-apples comparison, then you need to compare best Uranium reactor designs to best Thorium reactor designs.
It will cool down and stop reacting as soon as it starts leaking, because of the lack of neutron bombardment. And such a failure is easy to detect even visually.
Yep, all our developers just delete the 'standard workstation', install Ubuntu for actual work and then install a stripped down Windows version in VirtualBox for all those pesky Windows-only reporting tools and IE-only corporate websites. The local IT staff is pleased - they don't have to support us beyond the domain password reset once every 3 months that we have them ask to do, because noone of us has a machine in the actual domain.
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A car is a car (except when one is mandated via regulation to have a full set of air bags and not throw the engine block trough the passenger seats in a crash and the other car ... is not).
Government regulations setup the baseline of quality control expectations, so that the customers don't have to check every line of fine print and might actually have some confidence in the safety of their choice.
That is actually a misstatement - most people in the USA have no idea what a single payer system is or how it works and only a vanishing minority actually oppose it. The only people that really oppose single payer are the healthcare companies that make a killing from the current system, because they know that a government run single payer system could obsolete their whole business model and do their job better for fraction of the cost. Just like it is done in the civilized world.
Even the current polling in the US say that around 50% of people support the current plan, but when actually asked in detail, a large part of those that do *not* support the current health care plan, oppose it because it does not go far enough. Only 20% of people in the US actually oppose of a single payer government run healthcare system called Medicare. If everyone would get an option to automatically enroll into Medicare or even buy into it, absolute majority of US citizens would be for it.
But that will not happen, because it would hurt the profits of the insurance companies.
I have semi-weekly massage therapy and weekly gym membership/class fully covered by the very basic health care plan in a small and poor EU country. The reason for it is that all the basic care is covered by the government automatically, so the health insurance companies need to think on their feet to get any business.
Yeah, right. And a Jawbone that is retailing for 50$ or so does not have all of that? I mean, really - a Bluetooth headset has more components and more power hungry requirements than the hearing aids and they still are 50$ with 6+ hours of talk time.
How to convert a Jawbone to a hearing aid? Simple: add a equalizer, switch primary mic input with ambient noise reduction mic input, make it always on, turn off Bluetooth.
> It does make a good talking point for the GOP, but most of them don't mean it.
AND they started opposing it as soon as Obama said that it could be a good idea.
That's what you get for having a lousy socialist government run healthcare plan!
With the info floating around during this whole US health care debate, I would agree to the above point:
If you try to do anything medical or get any medical device in the USA you would be charged 10-50 times more than it actually costs. The prices are grossly inflated and then the big insurance companies negotiate them down by 90% or so. This is mostly in make sure that you don't go and get healthcare on your own. It also serves as a good way to keep some new insurance company from springing up - if you are not big enough, you can't negotiate such a discount, so you can't be profitable.
The insurance companies are all in a cartel. It would be illegal for any other business, but health insurance companies have a special exception.
There is no free market in health insurance in the USA and there has never been one, so there is no competition. Thus all the prices and profit margins are simply decided at the cartel meeting without any regard to real cost or social benefit.
My advice - go to a country with a real healthcare somewhere in EU or Canada or Asia and get some hearing aids there. It will come out cheaper even with a plane ticket.
Putting in Neutral does stop the car, the paniced people with automatic transmission just forget that they had such mode.
Yeah, a pilot would not be able to safely turn a 747-sized airplane without a fly-by-wire. Yeah, one could try to construct a direct feed hydraulic link, but it would be much heavier and more complex than fly-by-wire and subject to all kinds of problems of its own.
If a driver dials 911 on his cell phone before even trying to put the car in Neutral, then yeah - it is a driver error.
(The last case on the news - a driver called 911 on his cell phone because his car was accelerating out of control. When prompted by the operator if he had tried putting the car in Neutral, he said no and even refused to do so when ordered to do it by the operator.)
Well, the USA was loosing 200k-300k jobs per month when Obama took office and in just over a year he reduced it tenfold. He is no Jesus you know.
The only two TV channels in the US with any liberal leaning are MSNBC and The Comedy Central. Fox is on the far right in their 'news' hours and extreme far right in their opinion hours. The other networks are pretty much balanced, but annoyingly trusting to both sides - i.e. no fact checking.
That's the outside perspective, btw.
Apple dock is a pretty lousy concept - it takes much more vertical screen space than even two full Gnome panels (that do much more than a dock). And vertical screen space is a very precious commodity.
The Two Gnome panels is a much neater concept - if you want to start an application, you look up, if you want to switch to an application that you already launched, you look down. Very simple to remember and very logical.
Try using it. It is much better if your UI elements fade into the background while you are trying to concentrate on your actual work.
Bikeshedding. Google it.
Ubuntu brown was earthy and calm. A very good, neutral color that still allowed it to stand out from the grey OSes.
The new look maintains that visual identity while adding a bit more light and life to it.
Nothing more, nothing less. And that is exactly what such a refresh need to do.
Could it be because the traditional way that the other codecs are designed are actually patented? Yes, you can patent the concept of having audio and video that needs to be played at the same time to be embedded into the same carrier packet. Avoiding such patent makes software worse functionally, but it is still needed to keep it patent-free.
Blame the USA patent system for most of the deficiencies of OGG.
That might be true for US cellphones, but for the rest of the world the delays are a few milliseconds within any country.
Be glad that that phone was not 'shagged by a rare parrot' ;)
US will veto anything that tries to punish Israel on the world stage, so no - Israel has no accountability. Most countries would have been taken over by NATO Peace keeper forces decades ago for all the crap that Israel does.
Well, then there is an easy solution to the Iran problem - provide them all the help to set up new Thorium-based reactors that can not produce weapons, in exchange for shutting down their current program. Win-Win.
The current US nuclear companies make more money from refining Uranium than from generating electricity, so they are not interested in such newfangled designs that cut into their profit margins.
Well, just load it up with some waste from the current reactors. Poison it with U-238 so that it is too noisy to use in any nuclear weapon and off you go, it is self-sustainable from that point and does not need any more Uranium.
And Uranium cann't even work a liquid fluoride reactor just like a Prius would have a horrible mileage on kerosine, so what's your point?
Why use a superior fuel in an inferior engine that was not intended for it by design? If you really want apples-to-apples comparison, then you need to compare best Uranium reactor designs to best Thorium reactor designs.
It will cool down and stop reacting as soon as it starts leaking, because of the lack of neutron bombardment. And such a failure is easy to detect even visually.
Yep, all our developers just delete the 'standard workstation', install Ubuntu for actual work and then install a stripped down Windows version in VirtualBox for all those pesky Windows-only reporting tools and IE-only corporate websites. The local IT staff is pleased - they don't have to support us beyond the domain password reset once every 3 months that we have them ask to do, because noone of us has a machine in the actual domain.