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User: Shados

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Comments · 3,645

  1. Re:Not just startups on White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups · · Score: 1

    I could be wrong (I haven't been in the US very long), but I was under the impression that before the ACA, that was on a state by state basis. I beleive Mass took care of it, but not all states did.

  2. Re:Not just startups on White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups · · Score: 1

    Especially in a field where job hopping is common (and almost always work in your favor, if you do it responsibly), the pre-existing condition thing really terrifies me. I'm a Canadian citizen and I can move back whenever, but if I didn't have that escape route, and had to stick to a job for insurance reason, I dunno what I'd do.

    God forbid your employer realizes that and start abusing it.

  3. Re:More questions on XKCD Author's Unpublished Book Has Already Become a Best-Seller · · Score: 2

    If programmers ran Congress the country would go under as no one would ever agree on minute details on a bill. You thought the current 2 parties never agreeing was bad. Now imagine every individuals never agreeing with each other...

  4. Re:A 25% increase is ridiculous on Amazon Hikes Prime Membership Fee · · Score: 1

    The service is also a LOT more useful than it was when they set the price (back then there wasn't nearly as much stuff you could use Prime on, and you didn't get the ebooks and streaming stuff, though that's less important to me)

    At 100/year its still a steal if you order a lot (I've ordered furniture from amazon using Prime... 2 day free shipping on a desk? Sectional couch? TV?

    You got it!

    I always joke about buying a safe on amazon and getting it shipped with Prime...

    I wonder how many years of Prime membership it would take to cover shipping one of these:
    http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Dot...

  5. Re:Poor Record on Health on White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups · · Score: 1

    I didn't mean elementary or middle/highschools =P. Though even some highschools will sometimes have doctor hours a few times a month to help kids that can't easily get access to a clinic.

    And condoms are just one kind of contraception. And while its the one that should be used (STD and all), if its the only one easily available (or basic pills) you're going to have a teen pregnancy problem on your hands, especially when coupled with poor sex ed. Too easy to mess up.

  6. Re:Poor Record on Health on White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups · · Score: 1

    Yeah there's that too. Since people were too busy trying to make sure a system like this was never implemented, they didn't get to put in the work to make sure it was implemented correctly.

  7. Re:Poor Record on Health on White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups · · Score: 2

    Availability is a loaded word in this case. Go buy condoms as a 14 years old in an area where religious people want to burn people who use contraceptive on a stake....good luck (of course IMO they shouldn't need it at that age but the reality is different). You may also be in an area where your doctor will try to convince you not to get contraception. They'll prescribe it if you INSIST....

    Compare that to an area where schools have someone on staff who can prescribe pills, or doctors will insist you consider it...

    You end up with 2 totally different world. They're available in both cases, its just a different definition of available.

  8. Re:Poor Record on Health on White House: Get ACA Insurance Coverage, Launch Start-Ups · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It is the same problem as in poor parts of Africa too. People don't WANT to be helped.

    If you look in the areas that are against that kind of healthcare, its often poor people in the south, and the ones that are for it are frequently upper middle class in rich cities.

    I'm in Boston. Pretty much everyone is for universal healthcare. No one (in my circles) would benefit from it. We all have pretty much perfect company funded healthcare with little to no deductibles, often with premiums paid by our employer, which let us go to one of the best hospital in the world (MGH) for pretty much no money. If they were to get the money from it from taxes, the same people would be disproportionately affected by them (already in upper tax brackets, at the bottom end of the groups affected by AMT....it hurts)

    Yet these same people who would get NO BENEFIT from it, and would lose a lot of money in the process, are in favor of it. And those who'd get the free lunch are against.

    Now, don't get me wrong. In its current implementation they have a point sometimes: poor people who aren't poor enough to get subsidies and now have to pay premiums are getting hit hard by them, especially if they see themselves invincible and haven't seen an hospital bill in their life. But that wouldn't be an issue if it was fully funded healthcare, not just the bastardized in between that we currently have.

  9. Re:Why not build the Chrome UI as a web page? on Google To Replace GTK+ With Its Own Aura In Chrome · · Score: 1
  10. Re:Apropos Quote on 'Google Buses' Are Bad For Cities, Says New York MTA Official · · Score: 1

    I like that quote. I live in a gentrified area of Somerville right by Boston. With my "dinky little" million dollar condo, I'm pretty much the poorest person living in the development.

    While most people here have cars, pretty much nobody uses them to go to work (they do for groceries and to bring their pet to the vet or to go buy furniture...that's it).

    Its all about the subway.

  11. Re:Raising their own rents? on Google Chairman on WhatsApp: $19 Bn For 50 People? Good For Them! · · Score: 1

    Competition between the techies will do it, regardless of landlords (well, I guess the landlord has to agree in the end, but...).

    Reality of the world is: most places suck to live in. Most people rather not hear a dog bark all night or have people drink screaming on top of their head. And if you can help it, most people rather have conveniences near by.

    That leaves a very small subset of places where people would prefer to live if they can help it. That subset generally is smaller than the amount of middle upper class people in any given metro area. So they compete against each other for them. The landlords just make popcorn and enjoy the show.

    Its more pronounced with real estate, where you can actually see actual bidding wars, and then its definitely between the buyers...but real estate value going up affects rent pretty directly.

    The solution to that isn't very hard honestly. Make more places that people would agree to live in. There's kind of a plateau: if your neighbors aren't too noisy, you don't hear stomping over your head, your place is clean, and there's a grocery store near by, its enough for a lot of that crowd. Not everyone wants a mansion even if they can afford it.

    Actually enforce city noise ordinance, build houses in brick, not in stupid cedar that falls apart about 5 years, have actual noise insulation....all of that isn't very expensive or hard to do when compared to the price of the land. Then you have a LOT of places high salaried people are happy to live in, and it delutes the market.

    The difference in cost between building a place with paper thin walls, wood finishes, and a 20 gallon water heater, vs one in brick with premium insulation and a tankless is 50-100k, not 1-2 million. Look no further than Boston to see where all that goes wrong...

    Net result: everyone with money cluster around the 10-15 buildings with acceptable condition, then anything built to basic standard is advertise as "luxury living", and you end up with prices skyrocketing.

  12. Re:Rich people on Facebook To Pay City $200K-a-Year For a Neighborhood Cop · · Score: 2

    To be fair, that culture comes from both sides. When your neighbor is blasting their music at 2 in the morning or have an idiot dog barking all evening and you try and get the city laws enforced, half of the time you're told to deal with it, mind your own business, and if you don't like it, get the fuck out.

    It doesn't take too many times of crap like that happening before anyone with a bit more money than average takes the hint and does just that. Which means after a while, all the rich people just isolate themselves from the rest. And since there's only so many places where they can "get the fuck out", you end up with gentrification.

    So really, everyone's responsible.

  13. Re:Good space for MS to get in. on OpenShift Now Supports Windows; GoDaddy Joins OpenStack · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I tried Azure recently, and its pretty damn nice. Amusingly, I was looking for an environment for a node.js project, and the git integration for node.js deployment is just beautiful.

    I did not expect that.

  14. Re:Left out a key piece of the original headline on F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013 · · Score: 2

    While that's obviously a problem, it isn't what the article is about, and is not at all what i was replying to.

  15. Re:Metabolism of a god on Low-Protein Diet May Extend Lifespan · · Score: 1

    So you're basically like every average 20something year old ever.

    When I was 25, I ate like a pig, bring in the bacon and tower cake and chocolate mousse all over, barely exercised (I'm a stereotypical nerd, though I do walk a lot as I hate driving), and honestly wasn't careful at all. All I did was go wall climbing at the local gym once every week or two. I was quite fit, had perfect weight, and never got sick.

    Fast forward 6 years, I eat less and better, I exercise more, I'm way more careful, yet I'm fat, get sick every 3 months, and am out of breath going up the stairs (and I made sure I didn't get diabetes or anything like that). I'm in the process of fixing it and I'll be fine before long...

    At 25, you're basically invincible. If you're lucky, at 30-35 you'll still be invincible (I wasn't lucky). It doesn't stay that way lucky or not.

  16. Re:Left out a key piece of the original headline on F-Secure: Android Accounted For 97% of All Mobile Malware In 2013 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The ability is off by default, you have to go pretty deep in the options to turn it on, when you do turn it on, you get all sorts of warning telling you to watch out. And if you do turn it on and do something stupid, you may get malware

    That's leagues better than not having the option at all (or to have to use what basically amount to root exploits to enable it), as well as better than having the option on by default for everyone.

    There's some collateral damage (the cheap bozos who wants to save 5 bucks and get owned in the process), but its worth it.

  17. Re:Google: How about test code? on Google Won't Enable Chrome Video Acceleration Because of Linux GPU Bugs · · Score: 1

    Pretty much every successful video game developers do just that... The bugs get fixed...sometimes....someday....maybe....if the stars are aligned...

    Realistically, coding against video drivers (regardless of platforms) feel like web development, where you have to fight over countless (well documented ) bugs on each implementation until you're blue in the face, and if you're lucky, 5 years down the road, it will get fixed.

  18. Re:Flu Shots are Ruining Vaccinations on Pro-Vaccination Efforts May Be Scaring Wary Parents From Shots · · Score: 1

    Free birth control that doesn't put all the responsibility on the woman? That actually sounds pretty good.

    Wait, what side are you on anyway?

  19. Re:Flu Shots are Ruining Vaccinations on Pro-Vaccination Efforts May Be Scaring Wary Parents From Shots · · Score: 1

    Yes, but we're not talking about everything and anything here. We're talking about the common flu that happens every year, in which case the health of the individual absolutely DOES matter.

  20. Re:Flu Shots are Ruining Vaccinations on Pro-Vaccination Efforts May Be Scaring Wary Parents From Shots · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Generally flu shots aren't for you. They're for the people you hang out with.

    I'm a healthy early 30something guy. I can get the flu, I've had the flu, I made it out just fine. I also only hang out with people in the similar demographic, I'm psychologically allergic to kids so I'll never be seen around one, my friends overall don't have kids, my grandparents are in another country. There's a small chance I may get the flu and before I notice, I transmit it to someone at the restaurant, but realistically, it won't happen.

    Now, if you're the parent of 3 toddlers, have your 80-90 years old grandparents coming every other day to help out, 2 of your toddlers go to daycare all the time... you could seriously get someone killed if you get the flu and spread it around. Thats why you want the shot. If its not the case? Sure, skip. The flu won't kill you.

  21. Re:Not a 4 line solution - I call BS on Wolfram Language Demo Impresses · · Score: 1

    They're just stretching the definition of language. They of course meant a language + core library. And in a world of C++ and Boost, Ruby and Rail, C# and .NET, Javascript and Node, it is a perfectly valid comparison. The terminology was just wrong.

    And yes, if you give me a nice domain specific language made to handle common operations when creating a new operating system, and it has KernelManager object with a LoadKernel method where I can just do KernelManager.LoadKernel("Linux vABC").Run() and it spawns a virtual machine in a data center with the appropriate kernel and boot it up, Its going to be cool. Just like this is cool.

  22. Re:Don't Comply on Quebec Language Police Target Store Owner's Facebook Page · · Score: 1

    The problem with that (and its seen too often in the US, and many other countries), is that if not complying with the law is a frequent option, reasons to get rid of bad laws become much fewer. So you end up in a world where there's a ton of irrelevant laws, and no one really knows which ones are important, which ones aren't, the reason behind them, and even lawyers have to shuffle through a billion laws. People can be arrested for anything and everything, etc.

    Even worse, each and every individual then use their own personal moral to decide, and without good background information, that will be wrong more often than not.

    Common sense is not a common thing. Laws need to be maintained, reviewed, and updated. If you just ignore the ones you don't like, that will not happen.

  23. Re:Chers slashdotters... on Quebec Language Police Target Store Owner's Facebook Page · · Score: 1

    Nobody goes to jail but a LOT of fines get paid. And I personally never worked at a company with a union, and the issues were ever present. A lot of companies will avoid the area altogether over this.

    The only reason you have booms (like in the gaming industry) is because of the massive tax breaks. And even with all that, companies are always a hair from running away... its a total joke.

  24. Re:Chers slashdotters... on Quebec Language Police Target Store Owner's Facebook Page · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Its important to a small zealot minority. I'm also french Canadian and have lived there most of my life. There's a couple of people who are impossibly vocal about it. The rest don't care or even dread it. They do a heck of a lot more than give slaps on the wrists, with daily fines and penalties, forcing companies to have "councils" that oversee usage of the language, etc.

    The only reason stuff like Best Buy is still Best Buy, is because you can negotiate. I worked for a very large international company that opened an office in Montreal. They couldn't realistically comply with all the laws, so they were making deals: one of the deal was to have everyone, including english-only speakers, have only access to french computers/operating systems/keyboards and not be allowed to change them.

    Yeah, that was a pain.

    I worked for another that was almost exclusively english speakers. We were still forced to translate all our reports in french, including the one offs that were only read by a single specific executive who didn't even know french.

    In the end, it hurts competitiveness on a global level. There's a reason salaries are so much lower in Montreal than in other large Canadian cities. The cost of doing business is just insane. So I left.

  25. Re:Got a hammer? Well everything looks like a nail on Does Relying On an IDE Make You a Bad Programmer? · · Score: 1

    That makes no sense.

    You're basically saying:

    Toolbox: application and UI programming
    Screwdriver: optimization and network programming...

    An IDE is just a bunch of tools grouped together., including a text editor.