Late last year, I had some "required pre-op bloodwork" done in preparation for minor neck surgery. I drove to the hospital, signed some papers, and was ushered to a back room where a nurse drew two vials of blood, then sent me on my way. My car was still warm when I got back in it.
I was billed $1,200 for the hospital visit. My insurance, which I send about $7k in premiums each year, found a dozen "reasons" to deny payment on the subsequent claim. I'm still fighting.
Now, I don't blame the providers for trying to milk insurance for everything they're worth, and for amortizing costs across $30 aspirin and $20 toothbrushes. I also don't blame insurance companies for avoiding payment - they have a bottom line, too. I blame costs. When a blood draw costs as much as a CAT scan, we shouldn't be focused on access to insurance; we should be lowering the cost of the blood draw. Our system lacks efficiency, transparency, and common sense.
It just takes one motivated enough to write a parser for javascript for common munging techniques.
See, that's the thing... I'm not a spammer (really), but if I were, I wouldn't think the average person taking advantage of munging techniques would be remotely worth the effort.
Spam preys on the 1/10,000th of the population that gets excited about lost millions, internet lotteries, cheap pharmaceuticals, or security warnings that appear to be from their banks. People who take the time to obscure their primary e-mail addresses tend to be keen enough to not fall for these things...
For every $X you spend, you get a login (printed on your bill) that lasts for Y minutes. Done. You want more time? Buy another coffee. For those that just want more time and no drinks/food, sell them miuntes.
Caribou Coffee shops do something along those lines: everyone gets an hour free, but if you spend more than a few bucks, you'll get a one-time code that's gives you access all day long.
Why should I care whether it's a WM6 problem or a t-mob problem?
Because the article is more about what's wrong with the OS than the phone itself: "As it turns out, that [WM6] decision is just as much an impediment to the Shadow's greatness as AT&T exclusivity is to the iPhone."
The article is an OS review; why shouldn't the parent comment on WM6?
You forgot to list any iChat-like applications. I'd be surprised if Apple's contracts with the carriers didn't have any provisions intended to protect ths carriers' SMS income.
I don't thing they're too worried about that.
I installed a third-party MSN Messenger clone last year on my Pocket PC smartphone. A month later, I got big bill from AT&T (well, Cingular at the time) that assessed each IM message I'd sent and received a $0.10 fee. I called to complain that the messages weren't SMS - and that I had an unlimited data plan - but was told that all IMs were considered text messages. So evidently, the carriers bill data traffic by port.
Aluminum will fail and snap also, but people are more comfortable with it stretching first because that's what they are used to seeing. It doesn't make it better, just different.
Tell me about it. I design graphite lacrosse and hockey sticks for Harrow Sports. Despite the fact that our sticks have a better "ultimate strength" (average shear force per unit length required to break a stick) than our aluminum and titanium alloy competitors, graphite still has a bit of stigma in the sports marketplace.
Two reasons: First, when graphite sticks do break, they splinter, and sometimes spectacularly. An aluminum stick will often bend out of shape, looking "fine" even as it's permanently weakened. Second, our sticks are tapered in the middle to create a set flex point. People often see the taper and wrongly associate it with a point of weakness (it would be in a non-forged metal stick). We tweak the layout in the taper to be both more flexible and denser at the same time. As you pointed out, the material is anisotropic.
Interestingly enough, the 787 project has made the Japanese graphite we use harder to find and more expensive.
but can be done simpler with broader browser compatibility and faster page-load times (less bytes on the wire)
I'll agree with you on the first point, but for simple interface stuff, I've actually produced many Flash solutions that required a less bytes than the canned "multibrowserconfigurableexpandingmenus.js" stuff people use.
Up the f, increase the depth of field, everyone is in focus
That is, until diffraction effects start to kick in. Had to learn that one the hard way: shooting product shots at a maximum f/29 until discovering mysteriously sharper images at f/12. Now, I'll admit I don't know how much of that truly is diffraction (as opposed to a cheaper lens), but do I know it's something to consider.
Yes. If he'd had a heart attack, stroke, etc., then no. But he'd had a seizure earlier that day... and it's illegal for someone who's had a seizure (within a certain period) to drive. Even if his earlier seizure was his first ever, he shouldn't have tried driving.
I find IETab very useful for a quick check on how a website I'm working on renders in IE.
Here Here. For developers whose sites are visited primarily by IE users (like mine), it'd be foolish to reject the IE view. IE Tab is especially handy because it preserves session state while showing an IE rendering.
LESS, since you can't upload and share your own videos. It will NEVER get even HALF the userbase of YouTube
And has satellite/broadcast/cable TV lost subscriber base because they don't let you broadcast your own content? Nope...because they have exclusive content that people want, and can't get anywhere else.
If anything, that's the model to compare Joost to; and it wins over conventional TV because it allows high-def, 100% on-demand content, with minimal delay between request and viewing. People go to YouTube for 20 second chuckles. People watch TV because they want their games, cooking shows, and full-length (and cheesy) movies.
I work with AJAX. So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.
Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about. But trust me.... You don't. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about.
This is how bad info gets passed around. If you dont know about the topic....Dont make yourself sound like you do.
cd roms and dvd roms cant be trusted to do that - their reader heads are too fragile and can go out of balance with the slightest impact... they are highly unsophisticatedly mechanical
Dual, spring-loaded magnetic heads, loading/ejecting mechanics, actuators to move the cover out of the way and drop the heads in... if anything, the floppy drive was more complex and fragile than your average optical disc drive.
Not to mention the magnetic vulnerability of floppy disks.
Bingo. The webmaster has become multiple people in your average organization, so the single "webmaster" title doesn't apply well.
During the late 90's net boom, a single person would be sent any content an organization wanted online, do the design and markup, upload files to a 3rd-party host (since many small businesses often didn't want the cost of in-house hosting), and deliver invoices to the CEO.
Nowadays, you've got sysadmins and DBAs who maintain the web and database servers, marketing people who decide on web direction, graphic designers who piece together layouts, and web developers who do the remainder of the coding... and everyone falls under a CIO or CTO.
Problem #2 is that a virus that spreads to exploitable PCs for the purpose of cleaning them up will cause just as much strain on the network as any other virus, and is just as problematic for IT departments and network administrators.
The difference is outgoing propagation traffic.
A malicious virus will (at some point) propagate from an infected machine. Lots o' traffic. Further, since it doesn't patch the hole it arrived through, the PC could be infected by other nasties that use the same vulnerability. More traffic. And then later, s'more.
A "good" virus will patch a vulnerable machine, send out a few copies of itself to keep the healing spreading, and vanish. Minimal traffic. And it stops once the supply of vulnerable machines is exhausted.
If you replace a million sensors with one sensor, for the same sort of exposure you'll need a million times the time.
Bingo. And to "compensate", you'd have to tweak up the CCD sensitivity to the point of unacceptable noise. I'd also suspect that the power requirements for mechanically moving mirrors would be prohibitive.
Grainy pics, blurry action shots, and a five minute battery life? heh..
I think a bank requires a little more awareness on the part of the staff than most offices.
That's an understatement. My wife's bank doesn't even have wastebaskets at teller stations, for fear that an account number could end up in the dumpster out back. All paper is either quickly shredded or couriered daily to a processing center. Loose sheets - even a sticky note - are verboten.
Each teller has a binder on hand that contains security procedures specific to the teller. When one teller accidentally grabbed another's binder a few month ago, the whole branch had to do a security update, which included a two-hour procedure to change the vault codes.
What GP was talking about is, eg. I-70 and I-25 don't intersect anywhere but at the mousetrap. Likewise I-76 and I-25 only intersect at that one point.
Ah, gotcha. My bad, GP. Is it really a written rule, by the way? It makes a sense, but it's also intuitive enough that I'd hate to think our gov't folk wasted brainpower making it a rule. Not that I'd be surprised...;)
And if you're in Colorado I'm sure you've noticed the variable message signs up over the highways, for everything from traffic/weather warnings to Amber alerts.
I yam. The difference is that the "Tune to..." messages are prerecorded, and pumped out at a painfully low wattage. The Autobahn's signals are dynamic. The Skyline signs you mentioned, on the other hand, are awesome... definitely a leg-up.
There is only one allowed intersection between any two Interstates.
There are many, many examples that contradict this. I-76, I-270, and I-25 all intersect at one point north of Denver. The three have been "separated" a bit in the last couple years, but for the better part of a century, each exit gave you two to three options.
Exits are numbered with the current mile marker value...but as far as I know, everything is mile marked now.
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts...
And besides, the Autobahn has a few extra features/laws that we don't find in our interstate highways:
1) Emergency phones every 1-2 kilometers. Everywhere. And, reflectors on 100-meter markers that direct you to the nearest emergency phone. Granted, it predates cell phones, but it's still a nice thing to have.
2) Traffic radio subbands that inform drivers of looming traffic jams.
3) Laws prohibiting passing on the right-hand side of another car, or driving a truck in the left lane. This prevents dangerous weaving and those scary moments when you suddenly realize the truck in front of you is traveling at 1/3 your speed.
4) Concrete roadways. Virtually every mile of Autobahn is thick concrete. No asphalt, no potholes, washes, biannual resurfacing, grading, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally agree.
Late last year, I had some "required pre-op bloodwork" done in preparation for minor neck surgery. I drove to the hospital, signed some papers, and was ushered to a back room where a nurse drew two vials of blood, then sent me on my way. My car was still warm when I got back in it.
I was billed $1,200 for the hospital visit. My insurance, which I send about $7k in premiums each year, found a dozen "reasons" to deny payment on the subsequent claim. I'm still fighting.
Now, I don't blame the providers for trying to milk insurance for everything they're worth, and for amortizing costs across $30 aspirin and $20 toothbrushes. I also don't blame insurance companies for avoiding payment - they have a bottom line, too. I blame costs. When a blood draw costs as much as a CAT scan, we shouldn't be focused on access to insurance; we should be lowering the cost of the blood draw. Our system lacks efficiency, transparency, and common sense.
It just takes one motivated enough to write a parser for javascript for common munging techniques.
See, that's the thing... I'm not a spammer (really), but if I were, I wouldn't think the average person taking advantage of munging techniques would be remotely worth the effort.
Spam preys on the 1/10,000th of the population that gets excited about lost millions, internet lotteries, cheap pharmaceuticals, or security warnings that appear to be from their banks. People who take the time to obscure their primary e-mail addresses tend to be keen enough to not fall for these things...
you'll get a one-time code that gives you - sorry :)
For every $X you spend, you get a login (printed on your bill) that lasts for Y minutes. Done. You want more time? Buy another coffee. For those that just want more time and no drinks/food, sell them miuntes.
Caribou Coffee shops do something along those lines: everyone gets an hour free, but if you spend more than a few bucks, you'll get a one-time code that's gives you access all day long.
It's had regex find/replace by default for years...
The funny thing is that MS Word has had regex for years, as well... though like everything Microsoft, they've wandered a bit from standards.
Is it wrong to walk into a gym where you dont have a membership and start exercising just because they dont bother to check ID's at the door? Yes
Good analogy, but in this case, HF isn't walking into a gym; rather, they're simply pointing to a door where IDs aren't checked.
It may be criminal to use the gym without an ID, but telling someone that they can isn't.
Why should I care whether it's a WM6 problem or a t-mob problem?
Because the article is more about what's wrong with the OS than the phone itself: "As it turns out, that [WM6] decision is just as much an impediment to the Shadow's greatness as AT&T exclusivity is to the iPhone."
The article is an OS review; why shouldn't the parent comment on WM6?
You forgot to list any iChat-like applications. I'd be surprised if Apple's contracts with the carriers didn't have any provisions intended to protect ths carriers' SMS income.
I don't thing they're too worried about that.
I installed a third-party MSN Messenger clone last year on my Pocket PC smartphone. A month later, I got big bill from AT&T (well, Cingular at the time) that assessed each IM message I'd sent and received a $0.10 fee. I called to complain that the messages weren't SMS - and that I had an unlimited data plan - but was told that all IMs were considered text messages. So evidently, the carriers bill data traffic by port.
Aluminum will fail and snap also, but people are more comfortable with it stretching first because that's what they are used to seeing. It doesn't make it better, just different.
Tell me about it. I design graphite lacrosse and hockey sticks for Harrow Sports. Despite the fact that our sticks have a better "ultimate strength" (average shear force per unit length required to break a stick) than our aluminum and titanium alloy competitors, graphite still has a bit of stigma in the sports marketplace.
Two reasons: First, when graphite sticks do break, they splinter, and sometimes spectacularly. An aluminum stick will often bend out of shape, looking "fine" even as it's permanently weakened. Second, our sticks are tapered in the middle to create a set flex point. People often see the taper and wrongly associate it with a point of weakness (it would be in a non-forged metal stick). We tweak the layout in the taper to be both more flexible and denser at the same time. As you pointed out, the material is anisotropic.
Interestingly enough, the 787 project has made the Japanese graphite we use harder to find and more expensive.
but can be done simpler with broader browser compatibility and faster page-load times (less bytes on the wire)
I'll agree with you on the first point, but for simple interface stuff, I've actually produced many Flash solutions that required a less bytes than the canned "multibrowserconfigurableexpandingmenus.js" stuff people use.
Thanks... I needed a good laugh today!
Up the f, increase the depth of field, everyone is in focus
That is, until diffraction effects start to kick in. Had to learn that one the hard way: shooting product shots at a maximum f/29 until discovering mysteriously sharper images at f/12. Now, I'll admit I don't know how much of that truly is diffraction (as opposed to a cheaper lens), but do I know it's something to consider.
You going to blame him for that?
Yes. If he'd had a heart attack, stroke, etc., then no. But he'd had a seizure earlier that day... and it's illegal for someone who's had a seizure (within a certain period) to drive. Even if his earlier seizure was his first ever, he shouldn't have tried driving.
I find IETab very useful for a quick check on how a website I'm working on renders in IE.
Here Here. For developers whose sites are visited primarily by IE users (like mine), it'd be foolish to reject the IE view. IE Tab is especially handy because it preserves session state while showing an IE rendering.
LESS, since you can't upload and share your own videos. It will NEVER get even HALF the userbase of YouTube
And has satellite/broadcast/cable TV lost subscriber base because they don't let you broadcast your own content? Nope...because they have exclusive content that people want, and can't get anywhere else.
If anything, that's the model to compare Joost to; and it wins over conventional TV because it allows high-def, 100% on-demand content, with minimal delay between request and viewing. People go to YouTube for 20 second chuckles. People watch TV because they want their games, cooking shows, and full-length (and cheesy) movies.
Yeah, I know it wasn't a true /. cliche... go easy.
I work with AJAX. So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.
Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
But trust me.... You don't. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about.
This is how bad info gets passed around. If you dont know about the topic....Dont make yourself sound like you do.
Cuz some Slashdotters believe anything they hear.
cd roms and dvd roms cant be trusted to do that - their reader heads are too fragile and can go out of balance with the slightest impact ... they are highly unsophisticatedly mechanical
Dual, spring-loaded magnetic heads, loading/ejecting mechanics, actuators to move the cover out of the way and drop the heads in... if anything, the floppy drive was more complex and fragile than your average optical disc drive.
Not to mention the magnetic vulnerability of floppy disks.
In fact, the following are all different tasks
Bingo. The webmaster has become multiple people in your average organization, so the single "webmaster" title doesn't apply well.
During the late 90's net boom, a single person would be sent any content an organization wanted online, do the design and markup, upload files to a 3rd-party host (since many small businesses often didn't want the cost of in-house hosting), and deliver invoices to the CEO.
Nowadays, you've got sysadmins and DBAs who maintain the web and database servers, marketing people who decide on web direction, graphic designers who piece together layouts, and web developers who do the remainder of the coding... and everyone falls under a CIO or CTO.
Problem #2 is that a virus that spreads to exploitable PCs for the purpose of cleaning them up will cause just as much strain on the network as any other virus, and is just as problematic for IT departments and network administrators.
The difference is outgoing propagation traffic.
A malicious virus will (at some point) propagate from an infected machine. Lots o' traffic. Further, since it doesn't patch the hole it arrived through, the PC could be infected by other nasties that use the same vulnerability. More traffic. And then later, s'more.
A "good" virus will patch a vulnerable machine, send out a few copies of itself to keep the healing spreading, and vanish. Minimal traffic. And it stops once the supply of vulnerable machines is exhausted.
If you replace a million sensors with one sensor, for the same sort of exposure you'll need a million times the time.
Bingo. And to "compensate", you'd have to tweak up the CCD sensitivity to the point of unacceptable noise. I'd also suspect that the power requirements for mechanically moving mirrors would be prohibitive.
Grainy pics, blurry action shots, and a five minute battery life? heh..
I work for the IT department in a bank and I can not tell you how many of our CSRs or tellers have their user name and passwords on a post it note.
:)
The way she puts it, her particular branch seems more paranoid than the company does, at least about the trashcan thing
I think a bank requires a little more awareness on the part of the staff than most offices.
That's an understatement. My wife's bank doesn't even have wastebaskets at teller stations, for fear that an account number could end up in the dumpster out back. All paper is either quickly shredded or couriered daily to a processing center. Loose sheets - even a sticky note - are verboten.
Each teller has a binder on hand that contains security procedures specific to the teller. When one teller accidentally grabbed another's binder a few month ago, the whole branch had to do a security update, which included a two-hour procedure to change the vault codes.
What GP was talking about is, eg. I-70 and I-25 don't intersect anywhere but at the mousetrap. Likewise I-76 and I-25 only intersect at that one point.
;)
Ah, gotcha. My bad, GP. Is it really a written rule, by the way? It makes a sense, but it's also intuitive enough that I'd hate to think our gov't folk wasted brainpower making it a rule. Not that I'd be surprised...
And if you're in Colorado I'm sure you've noticed the variable message signs up over the highways, for everything from traffic/weather warnings to Amber alerts.
I yam. The difference is that the "Tune to..." messages are prerecorded, and pumped out at a painfully low wattage. The Autobahn's signals are dynamic. The Skyline signs you mentioned, on the other hand, are awesome... definitely a leg-up.
There is only one allowed intersection between any two Interstates.
There are many, many examples that contradict this. I-76, I-270, and I-25 all intersect at one point north of Denver. The three have been "separated" a bit in the last couple years, but for the better part of a century, each exit gave you two to three options.
Exits are numbered with the current mile marker value...but as far as I know, everything is mile marked now.
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts...
And besides, the Autobahn has a few extra features/laws that we don't find in our interstate highways:
1) Emergency phones every 1-2 kilometers. Everywhere. And, reflectors on 100-meter markers that direct you to the nearest emergency phone. Granted, it predates cell phones, but it's still a nice thing to have.
2) Traffic radio subbands that inform drivers of looming traffic jams.
3) Laws prohibiting passing on the right-hand side of another car, or driving a truck in the left lane. This prevents dangerous weaving and those scary moments when you suddenly realize the truck in front of you is traveling at 1/3 your speed.
4) Concrete roadways. Virtually every mile of Autobahn is thick concrete. No asphalt, no potholes, washes, biannual resurfacing, grading, etc.