That must have been a long time ago. Under HIPAA the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), so long as you have health insurance, another health insurer is mandated to take you, pre-existing conditions or not! see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPPA
The reason the Canadian docs moved here is because in a free market economy, people are free to make as much as they can, not what the government is willing to let them make.
That's also why people all over the world with serious problems come here and pay good money for their health care (if they can afford it).
Does our system have problems? Sure! Is this the answer? NO WAY!
And what about those who are opposed to health care? Are there religious exemptions? I know several people who won't see a "real" doctor (some are Amish, some are 'naturist' freaks), but will go see the local "natural healer". Are these people to be left out, or forced to pay for something they will never use and are opposed to?
I also believe that many who have posted here underestimate the cost of health insurance. For my family, it would cost us around $700 a month for health insurance. That's more than some of you pay thru your employer because your employer has the power of buying in bulk, which you do not have. My last employer to offer insurance had a policy costing a little over $500 a month.
How is a low-paid worker going to afford health insurance if he's over the poverty line? If you make $30k, and have to pay $8400 a year in insurance costs, you will soon be homeless and on the dole!
While the photos are taken in different lighting and from a slightly different angle, I still believe they are representative of what happened.
When doing a face-lift, the doctor simply pulls the skin tighter, which, if pulled too tight, will give you a surprised look.
She actually should be thankful, since in another 10 years, when her skin stretches, she'll still look like she just had a face-lift!
Yes, the doc botched the job, and she didn't really need it to begin with, both points stated previously.
A problem we have these days is that cosmetic surgery has gotten so cheap everyone wants it to look "perfect". I'm reminded of the 18 yr old flat-chested gal on the news who got breast implants. The Dr. gave her the overly big size she requested, then she sued because they were too big and uncomfortable!
Rule # one: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Rule # two: If it ain't broke and you fixed it anyway, don't complain about the results.
All said and done, I agree with her right to post her grievance, but it was a consequence of her own lust for perfection. If I'm on the free speech jury, she has the right to post her greivance. If I'm on the malpractice jury, I'd vote to give her $10. That way both she and the doctor would know that they were idiots.
Dell has lost a company I consultant to as a customer because of their bad customer service.
Recently, they purchased 4 new desktops to replace old systems. 3 were perfect: We transfered over profiles and software, updated XP w/ all the 59 latest upgrades (why can't a machine come fully patched!) and put them into production.
The fourth was a nightmare. Profiles would not transfer. No prob! Archive the files onto the server and put them on the new machine. Then it wouldn't allow printers to be installed. I checked permissions, Group Policy, and everything else I could think of. Googled for a solution, checked various tech help sites, and finally called Dell.
After 1 1/2 hours of their tech taking remote control and doing everything I did, same results. Any printer driver you wanted to install got 95% done and quit. He promised to have his supervisor call me. He did, at 7:30 at night, asking me if I'm in front of the machine! (I'm sure it was early morning in India). When I told him no and explained that the money the company was spending on my services had already cost 2x the machine's cost, and asked for a replacement, he told me HIS supervisor would have to call me on that. At 9:00 pm while giving the baby a bath, my cell rings. I can't get there in time, and he leaves a message - with no callback number.
After several hours of phone calls thru the next week, the best we got was "Well, why don't you reload the Operating System?" At this point the boss blew his stack, told them they had already spent $1200 in consultant's fees trying to fix their $350 desktop, and that he would never consider buying another machine from them. That finally got their attention, and a replacement arrived in 3 days.
That company will soon be buying 3 or 4 servers and several new desktops, all from HP, Not a lot, but Dell could have had the business if they would just stand behind their equipment! When a competent tech can't get a printer to install on one particular machine when it did on all the identical ones, the company should just say, "We're sorry, a new one is on the way, please return the defective unit in the same box."
Quality and features are exactly the things that OO.o has been unable to compete on. That's why they developed OpenDoc (based on what was already the OO.o format, so it's not like there was much work there) so that they could compete simply based on "We have an *open* format" and nothing else. Office12 makes OO.o look like utter trash.
I beg to differ. While OOo may not be "cutting edge" on all features, it is mature and stable, more so than many office suites of just a few years ago.
And that's the problem the MS has. Too many people, even in a corporate enviroment, don't need all the features that MS Office has to offer, but are forced into it only because the company use MS formated docs.
If MS were forced to support Open Doc, many companies would utilize it for a majority of the personell, who don't need or use the advanced features, and use MS Office in those areas that require the advanced features.
I know someone will comment "No, they won't, no company wants to support multiple Office Suites", but many companies support multiple programs of duplicate functionality for those same reasons, or because the legacy program is needed because the vendor, (maybe even now defunct) had locked them into propriatary formats that nothing else supports.
180Solutions was complaining that "ZoneAlarm was advising that our 180search Assistant "is trying to monitor your mouse movements and keyboard strokes" well let's see after reading the above... that description looks right to me.
This is worse than spyware. This could be used to transmit your account codes and PINs, passwords, etc.
Several national governments are now mandating Open formats for thier documents, spreadsheets, etc. The more they are adopted, the more Bill and Company will have to compete on quality, features and price, not "Only we are 100% compatible with our proprietary format".
Now, if we can only convince the the Feds, or at least several more states, to make OD format the standard, we can make real progress. After all, most of Bill's bucks come from the US, and if we don't get the changes made here, we have so much less impact.
Let me get this straight: A company donates a damaged building that may cost millions to repair to be the headquarters of the most corrupt police department in the US, and then renigs when told that the city has plans to gut their DSL monopoly with free Wi-Fi?
Is that the story?
Seem to me that everyone wins.
The city isn't stuck pay to rehab a wrecked building, the cops, lacking a HQ, wouldn't be as efficient at coluding to be corrupt, a monopoly gets shafted, then outs themselves as greedy bastards, and the citizens get free WiFi!
While I agree that Firefox will reach your percentage goals, and maybe even quicker than your estimation, there are new factors in place that were not there in the first browser war.
For one, money. Money (and the power of owning the OS) were on the side of MS. That made it easier for IE to rise so quickly. Indeed, if IE wasn't such a Crappy Broken Browser, (TM), there would be no push to switch.
Anothet change is the Internet itself. In the early days, the web was more info and entertainment, less business. This has it's good and it's bad points, and both helps and hurts the Critical Mass point.
For one, web pages are easy to change, but web apps are much more costly to change. You can't mess with your complicated I-net sales app just to please a few percent if it could mess up your sales to everyone else. So you have to factor in the cost of much more testing than to just change the way a page displays. On the other hand, you have to factor in how many people use Firefox, Safari, etc, and not IE. If you're selling, you don't want to miss out on that revenue.
My guess is, as soon as one major online seller makes the move, others will follow so as not to lose the revenue to the competion.
Will Google be able to pay all those million? Get a grip! They've been paying millions for all those open-source programmers that are working on Open Office and other programs.
They want to hurt Micro$oft, and paying a couple of hundred million to make Firefox hit critical mass is just small change to a company with a few billion to spread around.
When Firefox DOES hit critical mass, which means that web developers HAVE to create web apps that render/function correctly in Firefox, people will have less reason to stick with IE, adding more impetous to the Firefox migration, and weakening the MS lock-in on the web.
I guess the big-bang is probably still the standard model. But every standard model I ever studied was proven to be inconsistent with observations...
Which is why it has been largely abandoned by the scientific community. Remember the cover of Time some years back that stated that?
I find it interesting that the Big Bang-ers think that Creationist's ideas depend upon flat out faith, while theirs dont!
BB-er - "How did the Universe start?"
Creationist - "In the begining, God Created.."
BB-er - "Aha! And just where did God come from?"
Creationist - "He was always there."
BB-er - "Poppycock! You have nothing but faith to go on!"
Creationist - "How do you think the Universe started?"
BB-er - "Well all the Universe's mass was compresses into this singularity..."
Creationist - "And Just where did this mass come from?"
BB-er - "It was always there..."
Question: Does it take more faith to believe that an all powerfull, self-existing God created the Universe, or that the Universe created itself from nothing?
...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Obviously, you don't understand the SCOTUS' way of thinking. You see, in the "prenumbra of rights" (i.e., that part of the Constitution that says they can make up whatever they want and call it the law of the land), it's clearly implied, that private property CAN be taken for PRIVATE use!
That's why they ruled that way!
You also GREATLY misunderstand the Congress, if you believe that they have the gonads to impeach a S.C. Justice!
It seems like it would be trivial to scan a database for recurring addresses -- sure, there might be four people in a two-bedroom apartment collecting unemployment. But fifty? A hundred? Send an investigator out to talk to anyone living at an address with more than (e.g.) six registered names. If nothing else, he can interview all six of the people and see if there's a systemic problem keeping them from getting work in an area.
First, most would be smart enough to use multiple addresses. Most of the people who live in "the hood" I used to don't live at any address, they "be stayin" at an address. They will often have a dozen addresses that they can give, and therefore get mail at.
Secondly, you're misinformed about how the govt. benifits systems work. If I get Loser X to get off of unemployment, welfare, etc, I don't have the caseload needed, and risk unemployment myself!
Case in point: A friend has an older child (22) with an orphan disease. He had to get him on Medicade, since he was quickly maxing out his yearly family insurance policy (1.5 million/year).
Even though he lives at home, since he's "disabled" they insist on giving him food stamps and a $1500/ month check. Even when informed that he will always be provided for, they give it.
Here's where it gets worse: He can only have $3000 max in assest! He can't use that money to buy a house, car or anything tangible that has "value"! They told him to "Go out and buy a stereo with it"! If he save the money, they'll cut off all his benefits! That includes the insurance!
Wouldn't it be fairly easy to catch these people "red handed" picking up their checks or depositing the checks in their account?
Obviously you have never lived in "the hood".
All you have to do is get the checks sent to "where I be stayin' now" (a friend, relative or the ho you do when you can't pick up another girl), then cash them at the local check cashing joint.
Sure, they charge you 2% to cash it, and your ho may want some of it to pay for your kids food, but what the heck, you're still makin' good cash, and that gives you more time to deal those drugs!
Slashdot Mirror
A definition of "Software Assurance": Mirco$oft's assured we'll keep using their crap until we get a brain.
Don't just counter-sue if you've been wrongly accused, counter-sue if you've been rightfully accused!
Hiring an unlicensed investigator is illegal, and the RIAA should be made to follow the law, esp. if they are suing you for NOT doing so!
That may make them think twice, and this may be one case where sue-happy shark lawyers may help to control an out-of-control organization.
That must have been a long time ago. Under HIPAA the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), so long as you have health insurance, another health insurer is mandated to take you, pre-existing conditions or not! see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPPA The reason the Canadian docs moved here is because in a free market economy, people are free to make as much as they can, not what the government is willing to let them make. That's also why people all over the world with serious problems come here and pay good money for their health care (if they can afford it). Does our system have problems? Sure! Is this the answer? NO WAY!
And what about those who are opposed to health care? Are there religious exemptions? I know several people who won't see a "real" doctor (some are Amish, some are 'naturist' freaks), but will go see the local "natural healer". Are these people to be left out, or forced to pay for something they will never use and are opposed to?
I also believe that many who have posted here underestimate the cost of health insurance. For my family, it would cost us around $700 a month for health insurance. That's more than some of you pay thru your employer because your employer has the power of buying in bulk, which you do not have. My last employer to offer insurance had a policy costing a little over $500 a month.
How is a low-paid worker going to afford health insurance if he's over the poverty line? If you make $30k, and have to pay $8400 a year in insurance costs, you will soon be homeless and on the dole!
When doing a face-lift, the doctor simply pulls the skin tighter, which, if pulled too tight, will give you a surprised look.
She actually should be thankful, since in another 10 years, when her skin stretches, she'll still look like she just had a face-lift!
Yes, the doc botched the job, and she didn't really need it to begin with, both points stated previously.
A problem we have these days is that cosmetic surgery has gotten so cheap everyone wants it to look "perfect". I'm reminded of the 18 yr old flat-chested gal on the news who got breast implants. The Dr. gave her the overly big size she requested, then she sued because they were too big and uncomfortable!
Rule # one: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Rule # two: If it ain't broke and you fixed it anyway, don't complain about the results.
All said and done, I agree with her right to post her grievance, but it was a consequence of her own lust for perfection. If I'm on the free speech jury, she has the right to post her greivance. If I'm on the malpractice jury, I'd vote to give her $10. That way both she and the doctor would know that they were idiots.
Recently, they purchased 4 new desktops to replace old systems. 3 were perfect: We transfered over profiles and software, updated XP w/ all the 59 latest upgrades (why can't a machine come fully patched!) and put them into production.
The fourth was a nightmare. Profiles would not transfer. No prob! Archive the files onto the server and put them on the new machine. Then it wouldn't allow printers to be installed. I checked permissions, Group Policy, and everything else I could think of. Googled for a solution, checked various tech help sites, and finally called Dell.
After 1 1/2 hours of their tech taking remote control and doing everything I did, same results. Any printer driver you wanted to install got 95% done and quit. He promised to have his supervisor call me. He did, at 7:30 at night, asking me if I'm in front of the machine! (I'm sure it was early morning in India). When I told him no and explained that the money the company was spending on my services had already cost 2x the machine's cost, and asked for a replacement, he told me HIS supervisor would have to call me on that. At 9:00 pm while giving the baby a bath, my cell rings. I can't get there in time, and he leaves a message - with no callback number.
After several hours of phone calls thru the next week, the best we got was "Well, why don't you reload the Operating System?" At this point the boss blew his stack, told them they had already spent $1200 in consultant's fees trying to fix their $350 desktop, and that he would never consider buying another machine from them. That finally got their attention, and a replacement arrived in 3 days.
That company will soon be buying 3 or 4 servers and several new desktops, all from HP, Not a lot, but Dell could have had the business if they would just stand behind their equipment! When a competent tech can't get a printer to install on one particular machine when it did on all the identical ones, the company should just say, "We're sorry, a new one is on the way, please return the defective unit in the same box."
I beg to differ. While OOo may not be "cutting edge" on all features, it is mature and stable, more so than many office suites of just a few years ago.
And that's the problem the MS has. Too many people, even in a corporate enviroment, don't need all the features that MS Office has to offer, but are forced into it only because the company use MS formated docs.
If MS were forced to support Open Doc, many companies would utilize it for a majority of the personell, who don't need or use the advanced features, and use MS Office in those areas that require the advanced features.
I know someone will comment "No, they won't, no company wants to support multiple Office Suites", but many companies support multiple programs of duplicate functionality for those same reasons, or because the legacy program is needed because the vendor, (maybe even now defunct) had locked them into propriatary formats that nothing else supports.
180Solutions was complaining that "ZoneAlarm was advising that our 180search Assistant "is trying to monitor your mouse movements and keyboard strokes" well let's see after reading the above ... that description looks right to me.
This is worse than spyware. This could be used to transmit your account codes and PINs, passwords, etc.
Sounds like stealware(TM) to me!
This is just another crack in the MSOffice dike.
Several national governments are now mandating Open formats for thier documents, spreadsheets, etc. The more they are adopted, the more Bill and Company will have to compete on quality, features and price, not "Only we are 100% compatible with our proprietary format".
Now, if we can only convince the the Feds, or at least several more states, to make OD format the standard, we can make real progress. After all, most of Bill's bucks come from the US, and if we don't get the changes made here, we have so much less impact.
My 2 cents.
Let me get this straight: A company donates a damaged building that may cost millions to repair to be the headquarters of the most corrupt police department in the US, and then renigs when told that the city has plans to gut their DSL monopoly with free Wi-Fi?
Is that the story?
Seem to me that everyone wins.
The city isn't stuck pay to rehab a wrecked building, the cops, lacking a HQ, wouldn't be as efficient at coluding to be corrupt, a monopoly gets shafted, then outs themselves as greedy bastards, and the citizens get free WiFi!
What's the downside here?
If you have any code review mechanism in effect. That could get you fired right off the bat.
While I agree that Firefox will reach your percentage goals, and maybe even quicker than your estimation, there are new factors in place that were not there in the first browser war.
For one, money. Money (and the power of owning the OS) were on the side of MS. That made it easier for IE to rise so quickly. Indeed, if IE wasn't such a Crappy Broken Browser, (TM), there would be no push to switch.
Anothet change is the Internet itself. In the early days, the web was more info and entertainment, less business. This has it's good and it's bad points, and both helps and hurts the Critical Mass point.
For one, web pages are easy to change, but web apps are much more costly to change. You can't mess with your complicated I-net sales app just to please a few percent if it could mess up your sales to everyone else. So you have to factor in the cost of much more testing than to just change the way a page displays. On the other hand, you have to factor in how many people use Firefox, Safari, etc, and not IE. If you're selling, you don't want to miss out on that revenue.
My guess is, as soon as one major online seller makes the move, others will follow so as not to lose the revenue to the competion.
Will Google be able to pay all those million? Get a grip! They've been paying millions for all those open-source programmers that are working on Open Office and other programs.
They want to hurt Micro$oft, and paying a couple of hundred million to make Firefox hit critical mass is just small change to a company with a few billion to spread around.
When Firefox DOES hit critical mass, which means that web developers HAVE to create web apps that render/function correctly in Firefox, people will have less reason to stick with IE, adding more impetous to the Firefox migration, and weakening the MS lock-in on the web.
Which is why it has been largely abandoned by the scientific community. Remember the cover of Time some years back that stated that?
I find it interesting that the Big Bang-ers think that Creationist's ideas depend upon flat out faith, while theirs dont!
BB-er - "How did the Universe start?"
Creationist - "In the begining, God Created.."
BB-er - "Aha! And just where did God come from?"
Creationist - "He was always there."
BB-er - "Poppycock! You have nothing but faith to go on!"
Creationist - "How do you think the Universe started?"
BB-er - "Well all the Universe's mass was compresses into this singularity..."
Creationist - "And Just where did this mass come from?"
BB-er - "It was always there..."
Question: Does it take more faith to believe that an all powerfull, self-existing God created the Universe, or that the Universe created itself from nothing?
And what about it? Ever since it was discovered, it has remained the duck-billed platypus! It hasn't changed.
If evolution is true, where is the human who walks out of the jungle saying, "My parents are apes, but I'm not, and I want to join the human race?"
Since recorded history, man has seen no species-changing evolution.
Of course not, were smarter than that!
(Me ducks)
Has a 5 year old copy of "Maximum Linux Security" from Sam's Publishing.
It's really only slightly dated, and I have no idea if an updated version is available, but it's a good start.
I prefer SuSE, hands down over RH.
However, if I were looking for a WinDoze replacement, I think you should look at Xandros for the desktop.
As if it's not hard enough to kill the stinking things already, now we have to contend with them running away on motorized carts!
How long before some smart roach drops a Hemi in one of these things and REALLY outruns us?
Just a simple wire transfer.
Of course, both sides set it up in advance so the banks know what's comming and going, but it's no different than other wire transfers.
Obviously, you don't understand the SCOTUS' way of thinking. You see, in the "prenumbra of rights" (i.e., that part of the Constitution that says they can make up whatever they want and call it the law of the land), it's clearly implied, that private property CAN be taken for PRIVATE use!
That's why they ruled that way!
You also GREATLY misunderstand the Congress, if you believe that they have the gonads to impeach a S.C. Justice!
First, most would be smart enough to use multiple addresses. Most of the people who live in "the hood" I used to don't live at any address, they "be stayin" at an address. They will often have a dozen addresses that they can give, and therefore get mail at.
Secondly, you're misinformed about how the govt. benifits systems work. If I get Loser X to get off of unemployment, welfare, etc, I don't have the caseload needed, and risk unemployment myself!
Case in point: A friend has an older child (22) with an orphan disease. He had to get him on Medicade, since he was quickly maxing out his yearly family insurance policy (1.5 million /year).
Even though he lives at home, since he's "disabled" they insist on giving him food stamps and a $1500/ month check. Even when informed that he will always be provided for, they give it.
Here's where it gets worse: He can only have $3000 max in assest! He can't use that money to buy a house, car or anything tangible that has "value"! They told him to "Go out and buy a stereo with it"! If he save the money, they'll cut off all his benefits! That includes the insurance!
Obviously you have never lived in "the hood".
All you have to do is get the checks sent to "where I be stayin' now" (a friend, relative or the ho you do when you can't pick up another girl), then cash them at the local check cashing joint.
Sure, they charge you 2% to cash it, and your ho may want some of it to pay for your kids food, but what the heck, you're still makin' good cash, and that gives you more time to deal those drugs!
An organization I'm familiar with has a motto: "The First is a Promise, the Second is the Guarentee"
Or, take a .600 Nito Express and drop him in his tracks!