Whether they should make more or less isn't quite the issue at hand.
The real problem is that there's essentially no sane way to understand health care costs.
You say doctors work 12-hour days? Well, what if Medicare says some are billing for 26-hour days, and a hospital maybe says they're only spending 6 hours in surgery (that's a wild guess)? So, what's their hourly wage? How much of it goes to medicine, and how much of it is administrative busy-work? Can it be made more efficient? How?
If we haven't really got a clue how much doctors are being paid for the work they're actually doing (versus, say, the base costs needed to run their practices, hospitals, etc), then how in the hell can someone come up with a rational argument about whether or not they need to be paid more or less? And the same point applies to virtually every aspect of health care. Drugs, medical procedures, hospital costs versus billing, lab costs, technology costs, nursing staff, admin workers... you name it, and there's virtually no well-understood relationship between what it costs and how patients pay for it.
That's the real problem. Not how much doctors are paid, but the fact that health care is basically a big fucked up black box which nobody really understands how it works or how to make any part of it better.
Can we send these Senators, the NSA/CIA/DHS/DOD/DOiJ fascists, and anybody who opposed Justin Amash's NSA-limiting amendment... to Russia and get Snowden back?
What kind of idiot would agree to a deal like that? It'd be like trading a blurry Polaroid of a garden gnome for an original Picasso.
So when the thefts and such start occurring, you have zero recourse and absolutely no hope of resolution.
I've been missing a lot of sleep lately, and maybe this should be obvious, but if valet parking works in Rochester like it does in most of the rest of the world, the driver hands his or her keys to some guy in a fancy vest, gets a piece of paper, the guy in the fancy vest drives away with the car, and the no-longer-a-driver wanders off to do something. At some point in the future, the process reverses and the driver gets his or her keys and car back.
Sound about right?
So, I guess my question is how, exactly, does the involvement of the TSA somehow significantly increase the theft risk? Wouldn't it be reasonable to believe that having a bunch of wannabe-law-enforcement people standing around the parking lot might possibly discourage the theft of personal items by parking valets? Don't thieves generally prefer to work when there's a few other people around as possible watching what they're doing?
I mean, I could believe that the theft rate might increase if the TSA folks were doing the searches themselves (the more people with access to your stuff, the more likely your stuff walks away), but if it's the exact same people who already have unfettered access to everything in your car, I just don't see a theft issue.
Now, the part about people not trained to look for threats being the ones searching your vehicle is definitely a problem. But theft? I don't see it.
Do you really think that Google is going to be fetching your phone backups, hoping for a wireless password, then driving to your house and connecting to your wifi so that they can... sniff your traffic? Impersonate you on the internet?
Whether or not someone thinks they want to, the question I have is that if you're running a Google O/S, with a good chunk of your stuff available using Google software via Google products, why in the world would Google ever need your wifi password to access your wifi network?
If Google wants to fuck over an Android user (and I'd bet that even Kindle users aren't 100% immune), they almost certainly can. It might be via internally-identified Chrome exploits or something, but I have no doubt they could come up with something.
He'd rather get zero dollars from them than $5000, because he deems the deal to be "unfair". Um, OK. I'd take the "free" $5000, myself.
If it's a free $5000, sure, it's a no-brainer. The problem comes when your "free" $5000 displaces $15000 (I'm making that number up, obviously) that you might have earned from another more lucrative streaming operation if Spotify hadn't stomped all over the market.
If it comea down to a choice between $5000 and $0, well, that's a bit harder to call...
I just came back from a trip to the Boundary Waters up in Minneosta and let me tell you, if you are one of the unfortunate 20%, be prepared with 40% DEET spray, a head net, and long-sleeve shirts and pants. Otherwise you're miserable up there.
I grew up in northern Ontario. I'm not sure we have any of the 20% left in the gene pool anymore. About the only good thing I can say about the mosquitos are that they don't carry the diseases they have in the tropics.
How many people actually make calls nowadays anyway?
For personal use, I'd wager not too many.
I'm texting and/or using data most of the time when I've got my phone out.
I don't have a landline, and my personal cell gets maybe 10-15 minutes per month of calls.
My work phone, on the other hand, probably racks up a few hours a month. I telecommute a couple days a week, and while I use data for most communications I still have conference calls and other discussions. Eventually that stuff might go to VoIP or something, but we're not there yet.
And yes, I use a headset most of the time. My work cell is, ironically, a bit too small to hold comfortably for the length of a call.
That meme pretty much bit the dust with the advent of decent bluetooth (or even wired) headsets, or integrated vehicle sets.
If a device is too big to hold comfortably to the ear, you're pretty much an idiot (or, to be redundant, a hipster) to stand there holding it that way if there's a better solution.
At this point, the only significant difference between "tablet" and "phone" should come down to pocketability and how well you can hold it.
I've always said, since the NSA is reading all of my e-mail anyway, the least they could do is filter out all the spam for me...
Won't happen. We all know that buried in the avalanche of spam are NSA/CIA control messages being broadcast to their agents embedded among the patriot militia population.
To the norms, it may look like yet another penis enlargement discount herbal supplement (at wholesale prices!), but to the government storm troopers, it's a new mission parameter.
if he had just gone to AT&T or acted responsibly in the disclosure, rather than trolling, he would most likely have never been charged.
I tend to agree with most of what you wrote, except that.
It's been shown time and time again that when it comes to reporting security issues, large corporations like AT&T have a very strong "shoot the messenger" tendency. Unless you can do it anonymously, reporting a disclosure to them is almost certain to get you charged.
One might make the point that a phone which is waterproof to 1 meter for 30 minutes has reasonably tight seals and well-fitting exterior surfaces, but that it probably could not handle e.g. being dropped into a shallow puddle
I'd like to think that waterproofing levels would apply up to the maximum designed impact levels, though. That is, if someone says their phone can handle a 2m drop onto concrete, then it should be able to handle a 2m drop into 20cm of water if it's rated for 1m of submersion.
One meter? So that's just enough to stand in water up to your head
It's enough to survive a dunk in the toilet (and subsequent washing in the sink) or a drop into a puddle. In other words, it'd cover 95% of water damage a typical phone might be subjected to.
Re:Got that finger pointed the wrong way...
on
Beware the Internet
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· Score: 4, Funny
Otherwise, you're trying to figure out how to make the real world more like the Internet (minus goatse, natch).
I was under the impression that it's the TSA's mandate to make the real world more like goatse, but otherwise I agree with your point.
Once things become reasonable the unions seem unwilling to drop their adversarial position.
Exactly. I'm in a union, and this is one of the biggest annoyances. Every round of contract negotiation is the "toughest yet", every law passed which might possibly affect the union is going for their throats, etc.
Problem is, if every situation is treated as a major crisis, union members start to tune it out and it becomes nearly impossible to mobilize them when you actually do have a serious labour issue.
However, the idea was rejected, because even the US government wasn't willing to go that far.
I thought it was because the Kardashians' already record and archive everything they do on the off-chance that it could be turned into money at some point.
I also understand the CIA has drawn up plans to destroy this "archive of mass destruction"...
Seriously, just look at Tom Cruise and his claims that anti-depressants don't work.
Well, now, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to blame the CoS for Hollywood celebrities being nuts. Hollywood celebrities were nuts before Scientology, and they'll be nuts long after Scientology is just a memory of a bad trip.
Why would ad removal on the search engine be even slightly useful as a marketing hook?
Or, to rephrase the question, why would a school which gives a crap about kids seeing ads not already be running ad blocking software everywhere possible? It shouldn't be more complicated than a check mark in their existing porn/malware/Facebook filters...
What is the point of automatically removing child porn so it's not searchable.
Well, if it works to prevent people from seeing it unintentionally then it means the Google search engine provides more relevant search results. So that's a major improvement in Google's search engine.
If it's automatically identified removed, then presumably Google would be able to purge ephemeral copies from their caches and whatnot, which is probably nice from a liability perspective.
It might help to reduce casual interest in the subject if it's not easily searchable.
It doubt it would prevent anyone actively trying to find it, and it certainly won't stop the kinds of people who would go to the length of producing it; at least, I can't imagine that fame through improved search engine results is a significant part of their motivation.
The question is what is the impact on the people who might make a transition from casual interest (if they could view it by searching) to actual production? If it helps prevents that, it's a win. On the other hand, if these people deal with frustrated urges by just going ahead and making their own, we'd have to call it a major failure.
Ideally, someone has actually done the research and determined that yes, blocking casual searches for child porn should amount to a net benefit.
In practice it wouldn't surprise me if it's a move to reduce the threat from Attorney General's who see child porn in Google's search results as an easy PR and courtroom win.
"Force" is maybe a strong word. It was one of the two options given, presented as if it might be undesirable, and it doesn't look like he wasted much time thinking about it.
Such a better solution (which would be: work more with the Debian Multimedia team, and make his repository not needed anymore, with everything directly available in Debian) have been attempted multiple times. Though he didn't seem to care doing that.
Actually, from my read of the situation, a better solution doesn't involve him at all. That's usually the case where you have intractable personalities associated with a problem.
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Get several cats. Vocal ones, like Siamese, work best.
Feed them once a day, in the morning.
In about six months, you'll be getting up at 5am to feed them.
Dogs can be effective as well, depending on the breed and age. A young lab or border collie is good. An older hound, not so much.
Whether they should make more or less isn't quite the issue at hand.
The real problem is that there's essentially no sane way to understand health care costs.
You say doctors work 12-hour days? Well, what if Medicare says some are billing for 26-hour days, and a hospital maybe says they're only spending 6 hours in surgery (that's a wild guess)? So, what's their hourly wage? How much of it goes to medicine, and how much of it is administrative busy-work? Can it be made more efficient? How?
If we haven't really got a clue how much doctors are being paid for the work they're actually doing (versus, say, the base costs needed to run their practices, hospitals, etc), then how in the hell can someone come up with a rational argument about whether or not they need to be paid more or less? And the same point applies to virtually every aspect of health care. Drugs, medical procedures, hospital costs versus billing, lab costs, technology costs, nursing staff, admin workers... you name it, and there's virtually no well-understood relationship between what it costs and how patients pay for it.
That's the real problem. Not how much doctors are paid, but the fact that health care is basically a big fucked up black box which nobody really understands how it works or how to make any part of it better.
What kind of idiot would agree to a deal like that? It'd be like trading a blurry Polaroid of a garden gnome for an original Picasso.
I've been missing a lot of sleep lately, and maybe this should be obvious, but if valet parking works in Rochester like it does in most of the rest of the world, the driver hands his or her keys to some guy in a fancy vest, gets a piece of paper, the guy in the fancy vest drives away with the car, and the no-longer-a-driver wanders off to do something. At some point in the future, the process reverses and the driver gets his or her keys and car back.
Sound about right?
So, I guess my question is how, exactly, does the involvement of the TSA somehow significantly increase the theft risk? Wouldn't it be reasonable to believe that having a bunch of wannabe-law-enforcement people standing around the parking lot might possibly discourage the theft of personal items by parking valets? Don't thieves generally prefer to work when there's a few other people around as possible watching what they're doing?
I mean, I could believe that the theft rate might increase if the TSA folks were doing the searches themselves (the more people with access to your stuff, the more likely your stuff walks away), but if it's the exact same people who already have unfettered access to everything in your car, I just don't see a theft issue.
Now, the part about people not trained to look for threats being the ones searching your vehicle is definitely a problem. But theft? I don't see it.
Whether or not someone thinks they want to, the question I have is that if you're running a Google O/S, with a good chunk of your stuff available using Google software via Google products, why in the world would Google ever need your wifi password to access your wifi network?
If Google wants to fuck over an Android user (and I'd bet that even Kindle users aren't 100% immune), they almost certainly can. It might be via internally-identified Chrome exploits or something, but I have no doubt they could come up with something.
Well, except for the part about admitting it. And maybe being somewhat close to reality. And not bribing politicians to believe my number. And...
If it's a free $5000, sure, it's a no-brainer. The problem comes when your "free" $5000 displaces $15000 (I'm making that number up, obviously) that you might have earned from another more lucrative streaming operation if Spotify hadn't stomped all over the market.
If it comea down to a choice between $5000 and $0, well, that's a bit harder to call...
I grew up in northern Ontario. I'm not sure we have any of the 20% left in the gene pool anymore. About the only good thing I can say about the mosquitos are that they don't carry the diseases they have in the tropics.
It's been done.
They do work pretty well, covering approx a 1/2 acre area without too much trouble.
For personal use, I'd wager not too many.
I don't have a landline, and my personal cell gets maybe 10-15 minutes per month of calls.
My work phone, on the other hand, probably racks up a few hours a month. I telecommute a couple days a week, and while I use data for most communications I still have conference calls and other discussions. Eventually that stuff might go to VoIP or something, but we're not there yet.
And yes, I use a headset most of the time. My work cell is, ironically, a bit too small to hold comfortably for the length of a call.
True, unless he convinces them to pull an Elop.
That meme pretty much bit the dust with the advent of decent bluetooth (or even wired) headsets, or integrated vehicle sets.
If a device is too big to hold comfortably to the ear, you're pretty much an idiot (or, to be redundant, a hipster) to stand there holding it that way if there's a better solution.
At this point, the only significant difference between "tablet" and "phone" should come down to pocketability and how well you can hold it.
Won't happen. We all know that buried in the avalanche of spam are NSA/CIA control messages being broadcast to their agents embedded among the patriot militia population.
To the norms, it may look like yet another penis enlargement discount herbal supplement (at wholesale prices!), but to the government storm troopers, it's a new mission parameter.
I tend to agree with most of what you wrote, except that.
It's been shown time and time again that when it comes to reporting security issues, large corporations like AT&T have a very strong "shoot the messenger" tendency. Unless you can do it anonymously, reporting a disclosure to them is almost certain to get you charged.
I'd like to think that waterproofing levels would apply up to the maximum designed impact levels, though. That is, if someone says their phone can handle a 2m drop onto concrete, then it should be able to handle a 2m drop into 20cm of water if it's rated for 1m of submersion.
It's enough to survive a dunk in the toilet (and subsequent washing in the sink) or a drop into a puddle. In other words, it'd cover 95% of water damage a typical phone might be subjected to.
I was under the impression that it's the TSA's mandate to make the real world more like goatse, but otherwise I agree with your point.
Exactly. I'm in a union, and this is one of the biggest annoyances. Every round of contract negotiation is the "toughest yet", every law passed which might possibly affect the union is going for their throats, etc.
Problem is, if every situation is treated as a major crisis, union members start to tune it out and it becomes nearly impossible to mobilize them when you actually do have a serious labour issue.
I thought it was because the Kardashians' already record and archive everything they do on the off-chance that it could be turned into money at some point.
I also understand the CIA has drawn up plans to destroy this "archive of mass destruction"...
Well, now, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to blame the CoS for Hollywood celebrities being nuts. Hollywood celebrities were nuts before Scientology, and they'll be nuts long after Scientology is just a memory of a bad trip.
Why would ad removal on the search engine be even slightly useful as a marketing hook?
Or, to rephrase the question, why would a school which gives a crap about kids seeing ads not already be running ad blocking software everywhere possible? It shouldn't be more complicated than a check mark in their existing porn/malware/Facebook filters...
Well, if it works to prevent people from seeing it unintentionally then it means the Google search engine provides more relevant search results. So that's a major improvement in Google's search engine.
If it's automatically identified removed, then presumably Google would be able to purge ephemeral copies from their caches and whatnot, which is probably nice from a liability perspective.
It might help to reduce casual interest in the subject if it's not easily searchable.
It doubt it would prevent anyone actively trying to find it, and it certainly won't stop the kinds of people who would go to the length of producing it; at least, I can't imagine that fame through improved search engine results is a significant part of their motivation.
The question is what is the impact on the people who might make a transition from casual interest (if they could view it by searching) to actual production? If it helps prevents that, it's a win. On the other hand, if these people deal with frustrated urges by just going ahead and making their own, we'd have to call it a major failure.
Ideally, someone has actually done the research and determined that yes, blocking casual searches for child porn should amount to a net benefit.
In practice it wouldn't surprise me if it's a move to reduce the threat from Attorney General's who see child porn in Google's search results as an easy PR and courtroom win.
Durable, waterproof tablets will. Clipboards and paper are still a shedload more failure-tolerant than electronics.
Still, it's getting close and some of the cases available are pretty tough.
"Force" is maybe a strong word. It was one of the two options given, presented as if it might be undesirable, and it doesn't look like he wasted much time thinking about it.
Actually, from my read of the situation, a better solution doesn't involve him at all. That's usually the case where you have intractable personalities associated with a problem.
Because I suspect their test is basically the same thing as a coin flip, except both sides of the coin are blacked out.