Well, in some cases (earthquake coverare, for instance) even getting it statistically completely right would make the system nonworkable. You may know exactly how likely that earthquake is and how much damage it can do, and yet you can't offer insurance since if it happens you'll be out of business, period.
It's not front- or backwards; it goes both ways. The primary insurer and the reinsurer has different reasons to participate. It really is just different viewpoints on the same thing.
Oh, and BTW, I was not implying that those insurance companies does not know about property insurance, but only that they would not find it worthwhile to accumulate deep, local expertise for the sake of just a few customers.
Others have stated this already, but just to clarify: all insurance companies reinsure their policies, and it goes especially for areas that tend to be all-or-nothing.
Take a southern California or Tokyo-region real estate insurance company - they're in the same kind of boat. One big earthquake and they are up a very narrow creek with nary a paddle in sight. So what they do is insure their claims in turn in other companies; preferably companies that have little or no other exposure to the same risks. And of course, thiscompany would be a reinsurer for other comapnies as well.
For the risk-taking company, it is a way to dilute risk; rather than, as you say, have either a huge windfall or a total disaster every year, you try to arrange for a reasonable profit every year, rather than just on average.
For the reinsurer, this is another way to dilute risk, and get in on an area in which you have no expertise of your own; from this perspective, the spread between what the company pays you and what they take in from the original insurees is the payment they get for being the expert in the area so you don't have to. A northern European insurance company does not have much in-house expertise on north American earthquakes or their precise effect on real estate holdings, and they would not attract enough business to make it worthwhile, but by reinsuring a California company they get into that business, while relying on that company to do a far better risk assessment than they could do themselves.
The problems occur, of course, if enough things (like natural disasters) happen in a short enough time frame; that can bring _every_ insurance company into trouble, even companies that at first glance have nothing to do with it. You may see your car insurance rise 20% because of flooding in south China, a hurricane off the coast of Florida and a medium-scale earthquake in Hokkaido in the same year.
Two years ago, I was in the final stages of writing my thesis. Also, I moved from one apartment to another. I was sort of slow in actually hooking up the TV once I had moved (and the blind, unreasoning panic of an approaching deadline did of course have some to do with it). After three months without actually having the TV hooked up, I realized I didn't need it at all; the rare tv-show I still wanted to see was available just fine via a download.
So, I sold the TV. A year later, I moved to Japan (where I am now), and got a TV as part of my furnished apartment. Biggest waste of space I have ever had. I have become utterly uncaring about tv to begin with, and all channels I get here are in Japanese. Not having it turned on is a release. I keep the thing in a corner of the wardrobe so I can hook it back in when I leave the apartment.
Do I see any tv-series? You bet. Those who are really worth seeing are even better when downloaded - how about seeing "24" off and on whenever you have the time over a long weekend and really be able to follow the intricacies of the plot? How about really following a story arc without interruption?
Which, of course, would only be binding in those jurisdictions where such a condition would actually be legal and enforceable. In Sweden, for example, any DRM used specifically for the purpose of hindering fair-use provisions (such as copying, media transfer and so on) are explicitly allowed to be circumvented.
PlayFair is perfectly legal in most jurisdictions. What we have is a large corporation throwing their legal and financial weight around to stop something that is not wrong in any way.
There's plenty of hardware out there that still has issues with 2.6 (using IDE HD:s over firewire, to take one example). And for some software, moving to 2.6 is painful - more pain that it is worth in some cases. If you have a machine that does whatever it does perfectly well under 2.4.x, it makes sense to simply upgrade the 2.4 kernel as needed rather than spending the extra time and effort needed to reliably move to 2.6.
You don't put faith in companies. That is utterly stupid. Companies (as opposed to the people working in them) do not have morals or ethics. Their goal is shareholder satisfaction - that is, in fact, their legal duty. If that means dumping crap on a former partner, skirting just this side of legality when breaking the intent of a contract or whatever, then so be it.
When you deal with companies, you want a written deal with them. It doesn't matter if the company is Google or Microsoft - you want terms-of service, sales contracts and so on. In writing. Legally binding. Relying on anything less is foolish. Don't forget that SCO was firmly in the Linux camp a few years ago. Relying on their good faith has turned out to be somewhat misplaced, won't you think?
From my experience (and I have played Rolemaster for a good long time), you tend to end up in discussions of which rule/table is the relevant one far too often. Is action X actually Stalking or Hiding? The problem is that by trying to cover _everything_, and in a rather detailed way, it fails badly whenever you end up with a situation that isn't actually covered. D&D is fuzzy enough that a reasonable interpretation can be found quickly, and it won't break interpretation of other, similar situations.
Also, the very detailedness of the rules hampers the DM:s ability to fudge things, or to simply decree the result of a given situation. The more rules-oriented players will inevitably object that "but the rules say...".
Rolemaster!? If any system is a pile of rules and tables piled upon rules and tables that is it. It is freaking impossible to actually roleplay in that system; you are too busy finding the right table to tell you which table you should roll on (and which, inevitably, will require to do a few supplemental rolls on yet more tables).
*calming down*
Seriously, isn't Rolemaster a little heavy on the use of tables rather than DM adjudicating?
The article is not posted on a news site, but on the writers own place. Furthermore, his name and the nature of the errors pretty strongly suggests that English is not his native language. I would suggest you untwist your linguistic panties a little and relax?
Disclaimer: I am not an asistant, though I do know people who are.
Assisting a deaf anyone: by and large deaf people do not need assistants. Active assistance would usually only come into play when you have serious physical difficulties in your daily life.
Nurenberg: interesting question (with the disclaimer above, and instead assuming Hitler to be, for instance, paraplegic). I do not know, but I assume that no, an assistant would not be responsible in a trial. No more than a nurse or physician, for instance, no matter how disreputable their charge may be. But yes, there would certainly be questions on where an assistants responsibility would be (especially considering their own life if refusing) in extreme situations such as that.
So you are saying you will discriminate people with the "wrong" accent? And besides, you _know_ you are talking over a TTY - most likely you really are talking to a disable person; how do you decide their "impropriety" of English in that case?
Then that is their loss. It's not like they know anything about that disabled person in the first place. Larry Flynt is disabled, just to remind you, right?
Um, yes. By law, and by the very job specification they had when applying, they do have to do this. It's not like it's a huge surprise, right: "Oh mai gahd! A human wants to talk about sex! With a member of the opposite gender!!"
Assistants to disabled people have dealt with this for a long time; there is even accepted codes of conduct for various situations (basically, assistants should have a similar moral outlook as their bosses, or they will likely not be able to work together over time).
Actually, conditioning works _really_ well on humans. It is all in the details, of course, but there really is no reason this would not work just fine to slow people down before the stoplight.
What I really react to is the "it is my right to speed"-type comments. No. It isn't. That is sort of why they made that regulation a law. As one who has lost a friend, I can tell you that you do _not_ have a right to ignore traffic laws. You have a right to protest them. You have a right to lobby (with your eloquence and your money) to change them. You do _not_, by any measure, have a right to ignore them.
Because you're developing Linux apps, not OSX apps, and that is easier to do using Linux directly than try to do it via OSX?
Because you like the hardware, but want to distance yourself from a user community seen by many as insular, conformant and intolerant?
Because you are working on UI issues (either as a hobby or professionally) and it is easier to experiment with new and alternative UI designs on an OS that does not have a deeply ingrained standard UI already?
There can be any number of reasons. Don't disparage people for making choices different from yours (see my third example above).
Such a machine may well fall into your lap from somewhere - a friend always uppgrading to the latest wanting to sell off some stuff; getting an opportunity to buy it used, cheaply (from a failed business, for instance); or wanting a G5 for some reason, but not OSX.
And don't forget the possibility of people that leave Linux to go for OSX, then, after a while, decide Linux was a better fit for their work after all.
Red Hat and other distros ship non-free software. Java SDK, xv, OpenMotif, opera, macromedia flash, acrobat reader, etc. aren't libre.
Actually, Fedora doesn't come with any of that software (and to my knowledge, without any non-free software at all). A point in favour of the distro in my opinion, especially considering that you can easily grab it yourself with apt later on.
As anyone who has had a brush with the world of hi-fi knows, if the material or process just sounds exotic enough and is expensive enough, it will sell very well no matter what the actual benefits may be.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, in some cases (earthquake coverare, for instance) even getting it statistically completely right would make the system nonworkable. You may know exactly how likely that earthquake is and how much damage it can do, and yet you can't offer insurance since if it happens you'll be out of business, period.
It's not front- or backwards; it goes both ways. The primary insurer and the reinsurer has different reasons to participate. It really is just different viewpoints on the same thing.
Oh, and BTW, I was not implying that those insurance companies does not know about property insurance, but only that they would not find it worthwhile to accumulate deep, local expertise for the sake of just a few customers.
Others have stated this already, but just to clarify: all insurance companies reinsure their policies, and it goes especially for areas that tend to be all-or-nothing.
Take a southern California or Tokyo-region real estate insurance company - they're in the same kind of boat. One big earthquake and they are up a very narrow creek with nary a paddle in sight. So what they do is insure their claims in turn in other companies; preferably companies that have little or no other exposure to the same risks. And of course, thiscompany would be a reinsurer for other comapnies as well.
For the risk-taking company, it is a way to dilute risk; rather than, as you say, have either a huge windfall or a total disaster every year, you try to arrange for a reasonable profit every year, rather than just on average.
For the reinsurer, this is another way to dilute risk, and get in on an area in which you have no expertise of your own; from this perspective, the spread between what the company pays you and what they take in from the original insurees is the payment they get for being the expert in the area so you don't have to. A northern European insurance company does not have much in-house expertise on north American earthquakes or their precise effect on real estate holdings, and they would not attract enough business to make it worthwhile, but by reinsuring a California company they get into that business, while relying on that company to do a far better risk assessment than they could do themselves.
The problems occur, of course, if enough things (like natural disasters) happen in a short enough time frame; that can bring _every_ insurance company into trouble, even companies that at first glance have nothing to do with it. You may see your car insurance rise 20% because of flooding in south China, a hurricane off the coast of Florida and a medium-scale earthquake in Hokkaido in the same year.
And not only "could", but "have".
Two years ago, I was in the final stages of writing my thesis. Also, I moved from one apartment to another. I was sort of slow in actually hooking up the TV once I had moved (and the blind, unreasoning panic of an approaching deadline did of course have some to do with it). After three months without actually having the TV hooked up, I realized I didn't need it at all; the rare tv-show I still wanted to see was available just fine via a download.
So, I sold the TV. A year later, I moved to Japan (where I am now), and got a TV as part of my furnished apartment. Biggest waste of space I have ever had. I have become utterly uncaring about tv to begin with, and all channels I get here are in Japanese. Not having it turned on is a release. I keep the thing in a corner of the wardrobe so I can hook it back in when I leave the apartment.
Do I see any tv-series? You bet. Those who are really worth seeing are even better when downloaded - how about seeing "24" off and on whenever you have the time over a long weekend and really be able to follow the intricacies of the plot? How about really following a story arc without interruption?
Which, of course, would only be binding in those jurisdictions where such a condition would actually be legal and enforceable. In Sweden, for example, any DRM used specifically for the purpose of hindering fair-use provisions (such as copying, media transfer and so on) are explicitly allowed to be circumvented.
PlayFair is perfectly legal in most jurisdictions. What we have is a large corporation throwing their legal and financial weight around to stop something that is not wrong in any way.
There's plenty of hardware out there that still has issues with 2.6 (using IDE HD:s over firewire, to take one example). And for some software, moving to 2.6 is painful - more pain that it is worth in some cases. If you have a machine that does whatever it does perfectly well under 2.4.x, it makes sense to simply upgrade the 2.4 kernel as needed rather than spending the extra time and effort needed to reliably move to 2.6.
You don't put faith in companies. That is utterly stupid. Companies (as opposed to the people working in them) do not have morals or ethics. Their goal is shareholder satisfaction - that is, in fact, their legal duty. If that means dumping crap on a former partner, skirting just this side of legality when breaking the intent of a contract or whatever, then so be it.
When you deal with companies, you want a written deal with them. It doesn't matter if the company is Google or Microsoft - you want terms-of service, sales contracts and so on. In writing. Legally binding. Relying on anything less is foolish. Don't forget that SCO was firmly in the Linux camp a few years ago. Relying on their good faith has turned out to be somewhat misplaced, won't you think?
From my experience (and I have played Rolemaster for a good long time), you tend to end up in discussions of which rule/table is the relevant one far too often. Is action X actually Stalking or Hiding? The problem is that by trying to cover _everything_, and in a rather detailed way, it fails badly whenever you end up with a situation that isn't actually covered. D&D is fuzzy enough that a reasonable interpretation can be found quickly, and it won't break interpretation of other, similar situations.
...".
Also, the very detailedness of the rules hampers the DM:s ability to fudge things, or to simply decree the result of a given situation. The more rules-oriented players will inevitably object that "but the rules say
Rolemaster!? If any system is a pile of rules and tables piled upon rules and tables that is it. It is freaking impossible to actually roleplay in that system; you are too busy finding the right table to tell you which table you should roll on (and which, inevitably, will require to do a few supplemental rolls on yet more tables).
*calming down*
Seriously, isn't Rolemaster a little heavy on the use of tables rather than DM adjudicating?
The article is not posted on a news site, but on the writers own place. Furthermore, his name and the nature of the errors pretty strongly suggests that English is not his native language. I would suggest you untwist your linguistic panties a little and relax?
So you never ever react to any kind of impersonal communication, such as email (or messages on slashdot)? Your loss.
Disclaimer: I am not an asistant, though I do know people who are.
Assisting a deaf anyone: by and large deaf people do not need assistants. Active assistance would usually only come into play when you have serious physical difficulties in your daily life.
Nurenberg: interesting question (with the disclaimer above, and instead assuming Hitler to be, for instance, paraplegic). I do not know, but I assume that no, an assistant would not be responsible in a trial. No more than a nurse or physician, for instance, no matter how disreputable their charge may be. But yes, there would certainly be questions on where an assistants responsibility would be (especially considering their own life if refusing) in extreme situations such as that.
So you are saying you will discriminate people with the "wrong" accent? And besides, you _know_ you are talking over a TTY - most likely you really are talking to a disable person; how do you decide their "impropriety" of English in that case?
Then that is their loss. It's not like they know anything about that disabled person in the first place. Larry Flynt is disabled, just to remind you, right?
Um, yes. By law, and by the very job specification they had when applying, they do have to do this. It's not like it's a huge surprise, right: "Oh mai gahd! A human wants to talk about sex! With a member of the opposite gender!!"
Assistants to disabled people have dealt with this for a long time; there is even accepted codes of conduct for various situations (basically, assistants should have a similar moral outlook as their bosses, or they will likely not be able to work together over time).
How is this different from the same scammers calling people with the same pitch?
:)
I would be a lot more worried about the idea of an outside party filtering my incoming calls without any control from me.
More specifically, it is hard to have fun with phone salesmen or religious door-knockers once they learn to avoid you.
Um, if people with no restraint kill speeders (ending up in prinson), then I, as a moderate, boring driver will have nothing negative to say about it.
Actually, conditioning works _really_ well on humans. It is all in the details, of course, but there really is no reason this would not work just fine to slow people down before the stoplight.
What I really react to is the "it is my right to speed"-type comments. No. It isn't. That is sort of why they made that regulation a law. As one who has lost a friend, I can tell you that you do _not_ have a right to ignore traffic laws. You have a right to protest them. You have a right to lobby (with your eloquence and your money) to change them. You do _not_, by any measure, have a right to ignore them.
Of course, the fact that the entire country is one flat concourse for north-atlantic sea winds could have something to do with that percentage. :)
Sorry; didn't mean you personally. More of a defensive statement towards any possible forthcoming reactions to that line.
A Mac is like a cross between a BMW and a V6 Accord.
Built for insecure, middle-aged men desperate to recapture some sliver of youth and cool?
Um, because you prefer Linux over OSX?
Because you're developing Linux apps, not OSX apps, and that is easier to do using Linux directly than try to do it via OSX?
Because you like the hardware, but want to distance yourself from a user community seen by many as insular, conformant and intolerant?
Because you are working on UI issues (either as a hobby or professionally) and it is easier to experiment with new and alternative UI designs on an OS that does not have a deeply ingrained standard UI already?
There can be any number of reasons. Don't disparage people for making choices different from yours (see my third example above).
Such a machine may well fall into your lap from somewhere - a friend always uppgrading to the latest wanting to sell off some stuff; getting an opportunity to buy it used, cheaply (from a failed business, for instance); or wanting a G5 for some reason, but not OSX.
And don't forget the possibility of people that leave Linux to go for OSX, then, after a while, decide Linux was a better fit for their work after all.
Red Hat and other distros ship non-free software. Java SDK, xv, OpenMotif, opera, macromedia flash, acrobat reader, etc. aren't libre.
Actually, Fedora doesn't come with any of that software (and to my knowledge, without any non-free software at all). A point in favour of the distro in my opinion, especially considering that you can easily grab it yourself with apt later on.
As anyone who has had a brush with the world of hi-fi knows, if the material or process just sounds exotic enough and is expensive enough, it will sell very well no matter what the actual benefits may be.