He tried to spin this as "removing the under-insured" but no... People had plans they liked.
This is the problem right here. Obama's statement was based on the assumption that people don't like shitty plans. That's a false assumption.
Impy here had a shitty health plan from Blue Cross. We know this because the plan is no longer being offered due to the passage of the ACA. The ACA outlawed predatory plans that offered no meaningful coverage, or suffered from other shortcomings which made them unsuitable for ensuring plan members' wellbeing.
Of course, Impy still liked this plan. Whether this is because Impy enjoyed paying less for healthcare knowing that he could rely on the rest of society to pick up his tab for uncovered visits to the emergency room, or because Impy was simply ignorant of this plan's shortcomings, we don't know. But Impy liked his shitty health plan.
Now, Impy can't keep his shitty health plan. Impy can't even find another health plan that he likes, because all the other shitty plans are also gone. Now Impy has to get real health insurance, which has real costs. Obama's mistake was assuming that people actually want health insurance that works. Really, what people want is health services that they don't have to pay for. Obamacare does seek to close that loophole, and that's why so many people are up in arms. That loophole is what they want, and Obama is the antichrist for trying to get rid of it.
Having worked for a government contractor, I can only say that I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a group of enthusiasts could do a much better job than a bunch of contracted government programmers. I often find contracted government work to be a complete mess of requirements, poorly specified and often demanding the use of as many buzzwords as the government can come up with.
Hadoop running across a set of VMs, all hosted on the same Windows laptop, just to be able to call something a "cloud". I wish I were joking.
Sure enough. That explains why they've opted to spend billions of dollars on patent licenses instead of making "a few improvements to an open source piece of Windows software".
You're right. Maybe the idea of saving billions of dollars every year didn't occur to them. Maybe you've got more insight into this than anyone at Google.
Or maybe you didn't realize that a single person running a piece of software on a single platform isn't exactly a thorough QA process.
First of all, what mythical Windows Ext2 filesystem driver are we talking about here? Last I checked, there wasn't one.
Are you talking about Ext2Fsd? The same one that lists Windows BSODs as a feature? Read the comments on sourceforge and then tell me this is something that Google would want to distribute.
Ah, funny you should mention the FitPC. I was looking to build an HTPC and almost bought one, and then I almost bought an xi3 X3RO, but ended up getting an (AMD-based) HP laptop instead. I guess I'm just not as much of an OSS guy as you (although I still have my Slackware 3.4 CD from cheap*bytes!), and I just wanted something that would work with minimal hassle and ideally let me play Civ 5 in my living room without overheating the cabinet that it's wedged into.
I miss the days when video cards made sense. When I got those Voodoo2 cards, I knew what I was getting, and I knew how they compared against the competition. For fuck's sake, I was like 16 years old at the time. Today, I have a degree in electrical engineering. I work as a software developer. There's new cards coming out every week or two, with cryptic model names and obscure feature sets and unfamiliar interconnects and insane power requirements. I have a not-that-new AMD desktop that I'm thinking about throwing a new video card in, but I doubt I ever will. I have no idea if an HD 324987345 meets my needs, or if a HD 324987344 would be sufficient. I don't know if I'll need a second PSU to feed a new card without crashing everything else. I don't know if Shader Model 3.1415 is measurably superior to Shaver Mach 5. I don't know if my PCI bus is sufficiently "express" for anything.
And now I feel old as shit. I hope the 16 year olds of today find this stuff as intuitive as I did half a lifetime ago. I sure as shit don't.
The Matrox Mystique kicked ass. If my memory isn't failing me, they were at the very forefront of 3D acceleration. The "enhanced" copy of Mechwarrior 2 bundled with the Mystique was unimaginably prettier than the "stock" release. Of course, the 3dfx "enhanced" copy was better still, but I believe that came along later.
Corollary: Damn it's nice to have third party 3D graphics frameworks nowadays.
I have a 3dfx Voodoo2... and another Voodoo2, for SLI gaming in the 90s! w00t!
I remember beta testing Everquest and feeling very smug about my hardware:)
Damn my life was depressing back then. Advice to hardcore PC gamers: spend less time grinding/leveling on your computer and more time grinding/leveling in real life.
Yes, "Football", not "Foot making contact with ball". Good luck playing if you have no feet.
If you want to be pedantic, feet hardly ever contact the ball in Association Football as well, because players usually wear shoes that cover the entirety of their feet.
Along a similar tangent, I guess rugby doesn't use a ball either?
Indians didn't really start immigrating to the United States in significant numbers until about 50 years ago. Citation.
I don't know why someone would suggest that a group that only arrived here so recently could be the only "true Americans". This whole thread is idiotic.
My understanding is that cows are fed corn-based feed because it's cheap and it fattens them up very effectively.
But cows can't eat corn, so they get ulcers, which end up killing them.
But cows that die of ulcers are worth less than slaughtered cows, so we feed them theraputic doses of antibiotics to keep them alive.
Unfortunately, the "benefits" of corn-based feed are not "little". They're huge. That's why grass-fed beef is considerably more expensive than "normal" beef. Economically, there's no way you can expect factory-farmers to refrain from using corn-based feed. If you want things to change, the only way to accomplish that is to outright ban the use of antibiotics in cows. Of course, that won't happen. Too many huge entrenched interests. Do you think the corn lobby would stand for any regulation that would eliminate a very, very large portion of the corn market?
WOLF-PAC (despite the ridiculous name) is a great organization, and possibly the best chance we have at fixing our government.
I highly recommend everyone at least reads up about them.
Getting involved with WOLF-PAC is easy, free, and lets you get involved with your representatives at a local level. At the very least, it's a great way to get personally involved in politics. It's fine to bullshit about politics online. It's good to go out and vote. But it's great to actually get involved.
Support WOLF-PAC and help reclaim our government. Please.
No, they don't. Property taxes only go to fund the school in the district those property taxes come from. So rich neighborhoods, with high property tax revenues (because of the high house values there) keep all their money and pour it into their own schools, while poor neighborhoods in a poor district in the same county have to make-do with much lower funding since the property values in the ghetto are very low and consequently property tax revenues per capita are much lower.
Right, you'd think that, because it makes sense. But you'd be wrong. While some wealthier areas do in fact spend more per pupil, you'll see that Newark spends 28% more per pupil than the average. In case you haven't been there, Newark isn't exactly a "rich neighborhood". If you look at that map, you'll notice that some of the highest per-pupil spending happens in the urban areas (where, as you might imagine, outcomes are below average).
The fact of the matter is that our worst-performing, poorest districts are the ones that have some of the highest spending per pupil. The federal and state funding that these shithole districts get does in fact rival and in many cases dwarf the per-pupil funding that property taxes generate. This only further shows that while you can simply throw money at the problem, that approach is not guaranteed to produce desirable results.
Slashdot Mirror
He tried to spin this as "removing the under-insured" but no... People had plans they liked.
This is the problem right here. Obama's statement was based on the assumption that people don't like shitty plans. That's a false assumption.
Impy here had a shitty health plan from Blue Cross. We know this because the plan is no longer being offered due to the passage of the ACA. The ACA outlawed predatory plans that offered no meaningful coverage, or suffered from other shortcomings which made them unsuitable for ensuring plan members' wellbeing.
Of course, Impy still liked this plan. Whether this is because Impy enjoyed paying less for healthcare knowing that he could rely on the rest of society to pick up his tab for uncovered visits to the emergency room, or because Impy was simply ignorant of this plan's shortcomings, we don't know. But Impy liked his shitty health plan.
Now, Impy can't keep his shitty health plan. Impy can't even find another health plan that he likes, because all the other shitty plans are also gone. Now Impy has to get real health insurance, which has real costs. Obama's mistake was assuming that people actually want health insurance that works. Really, what people want is health services that they don't have to pay for. Obamacare does seek to close that loophole, and that's why so many people are up in arms. That loophole is what they want, and Obama is the antichrist for trying to get rid of it.
Having worked for a government contractor, I can only say that I wouldn't be entirely surprised if a group of enthusiasts could do a much better job than a bunch of contracted government programmers. I often find contracted government work to be a complete mess of requirements, poorly specified and often demanding the use of as many buzzwords as the government can come up with.
Hadoop running across a set of VMs, all hosted on the same Windows laptop, just to be able to call something a "cloud". I wish I were joking.
GizMag is retarded.
The 1911 is semi-automatic.
Automatic pistols are idiotic.
Ran over something? Like a concrete barrier and a tree?
Most people would call that a crash.
I would have thought that with the rise of online shopping, boxes would be in greater demand now than ever, what with all the shipping and stuff.
Sugar used to be cheap. It hasn't been for quite some time. Why?
Because we insist on holding a grudge against the Cuban people.
Sure enough. That explains why they've opted to spend billions of dollars on patent licenses instead of making "a few improvements to an open source piece of Windows software".
You're right. Maybe the idea of saving billions of dollars every year didn't occur to them. Maybe you've got more insight into this than anyone at Google.
Or maybe you didn't realize that a single person running a piece of software on a single platform isn't exactly a thorough QA process.
I clicked your link.
It brought me to the top of this very page.
I don't get it.
If by "YEARS" you mean more than one, but less than two, then sure.
Contract award was December of 2011.
Because Microsoft.
Seriously. They built their company on thwarting interoperability. Do you think Google can succeed where everyone else has failed?
(it's not a dangerous bit of software)
First of all, what mythical Windows Ext2 filesystem driver are we talking about here? Last I checked, there wasn't one.
Are you talking about Ext2Fsd? The same one that lists Windows BSODs as a feature? Read the comments on sourceforge and then tell me this is something that Google would want to distribute.
Ah, funny you should mention the FitPC. I was looking to build an HTPC and almost bought one, and then I almost bought an xi3 X3RO, but ended up getting an (AMD-based) HP laptop instead. I guess I'm just not as much of an OSS guy as you (although I still have my Slackware 3.4 CD from cheap*bytes!), and I just wanted something that would work with minimal hassle and ideally let me play Civ 5 in my living room without overheating the cabinet that it's wedged into.
I miss the days when video cards made sense. When I got those Voodoo2 cards, I knew what I was getting, and I knew how they compared against the competition. For fuck's sake, I was like 16 years old at the time. Today, I have a degree in electrical engineering. I work as a software developer. There's new cards coming out every week or two, with cryptic model names and obscure feature sets and unfamiliar interconnects and insane power requirements. I have a not-that-new AMD desktop that I'm thinking about throwing a new video card in, but I doubt I ever will. I have no idea if an HD 324987345 meets my needs, or if a HD 324987344 would be sufficient. I don't know if I'll need a second PSU to feed a new card without crashing everything else. I don't know if Shader Model 3.1415 is measurably superior to Shaver Mach 5. I don't know if my PCI bus is sufficiently "express" for anything.
And now I feel old as shit. I hope the 16 year olds of today find this stuff as intuitive as I did half a lifetime ago. I sure as shit don't.
Hey, it could be your workplace next.
If only.
If by IP-connected TV you mean a cheap laptop and an HDMI cable, then...
Oh, and it plays games too. Civ 5 in the living room FTW.
Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.
The Matrox Mystique was a great, cost-efficient gaming card.
Now get off my lawn.
The Matrox Mystique kicked ass. If my memory isn't failing me, they were at the very forefront of 3D acceleration. The "enhanced" copy of Mechwarrior 2 bundled with the Mystique was unimaginably prettier than the "stock" release. Of course, the 3dfx "enhanced" copy was better still, but I believe that came along later.
Corollary: Damn it's nice to have third party 3D graphics frameworks nowadays.
I have a 3dfx Voodoo2... and another Voodoo2, for SLI gaming in the 90s! w00t!
:)
I remember beta testing Everquest and feeling very smug about my hardware
Damn my life was depressing back then. Advice to hardcore PC gamers: spend less time grinding/leveling on your computer and more time grinding/leveling in real life.
Yes, "Football", not "Foot making contact with ball". Good luck playing if you have no feet.
If you want to be pedantic, feet hardly ever contact the ball in Association Football as well, because players usually wear shoes that cover the entirety of their feet.
Along a similar tangent, I guess rugby doesn't use a ball either?
Indians didn't really start immigrating to the United States in significant numbers until about 50 years ago. Citation.
I don't know why someone would suggest that a group that only arrived here so recently could be the only "true Americans". This whole thread is idiotic.
My understanding is that cows are fed corn-based feed because it's cheap and it fattens them up very effectively.
But cows can't eat corn, so they get ulcers, which end up killing them.
But cows that die of ulcers are worth less than slaughtered cows, so we feed them theraputic doses of antibiotics to keep them alive.
Unfortunately, the "benefits" of corn-based feed are not "little". They're huge. That's why grass-fed beef is considerably more expensive than "normal" beef. Economically, there's no way you can expect factory-farmers to refrain from using corn-based feed. If you want things to change, the only way to accomplish that is to outright ban the use of antibiotics in cows. Of course, that won't happen. Too many huge entrenched interests. Do you think the corn lobby would stand for any regulation that would eliminate a very, very large portion of the corn market?
Awesome link. Mod parent up.
Mod parent up.
WOLF-PAC (despite the ridiculous name) is a great organization, and possibly the best chance we have at fixing our government.
I highly recommend everyone at least reads up about them.
Getting involved with WOLF-PAC is easy, free, and lets you get involved with your representatives at a local level. At the very least, it's a great way to get personally involved in politics. It's fine to bullshit about politics online. It's good to go out and vote. But it's great to actually get involved.
Support WOLF-PAC and help reclaim our government. Please.
That's a good idea.
:)
Which is, of course, why it won't happen
No, they don't. Property taxes only go to fund the school in the district those property taxes come from. So rich neighborhoods, with high property tax revenues (because of the high house values there) keep all their money and pour it into their own schools, while poor neighborhoods in a poor district in the same county have to make-do with much lower funding since the property values in the ghetto are very low and consequently property tax revenues per capita are much lower.
Right, you'd think that, because it makes sense. But you'd be wrong. While some wealthier areas do in fact spend more per pupil, you'll see that Newark spends 28% more per pupil than the average. In case you haven't been there, Newark isn't exactly a "rich neighborhood". If you look at that map, you'll notice that some of the highest per-pupil spending happens in the urban areas (where, as you might imagine, outcomes are below average).
The fact of the matter is that our worst-performing, poorest districts are the ones that have some of the highest spending per pupil. The federal and state funding that these shithole districts get does in fact rival and in many cases dwarf the per-pupil funding that property taxes generate. This only further shows that while you can simply throw money at the problem, that approach is not guaranteed to produce desirable results.