A lot of companies and businesses have programmers that do not fall under the 'tech company' category. Insurance companies, colleges, railroad companies, large store chains (eg: Walmart and Target), RV companies, and many other industries all have in-house programmers. All of these businesses and industries are scattered across the country. Unless you absolutely must work in a tech company in silicone valley, you should not limit your options. My first career oriented job was at a relatively small health insurance. A very large part of their software was developed in-house. They had some developers that were only in their twenties, but the majority of them were at least 40, if not in their 50s or early 60s and preparing to retire. Why? These companies see the software as just an in-house solution to a problem and not a product in itself. They do not need someone that can write in whatever the fashionable language of the day is. They need someone that has the skill and efficiency to maintain a system that was probably written some time ago in a language that fit their needs. A 20 year old that only knows C# is not going to be of any use to them when they need someone that can quickly adapt their in-house solution that was written in C or Fortran to fit new health insurance laws.
Some places higher young programmers because they are cheaper.... but some places purposely higher older, experience people. Consider all options, not just tech companies in Silicone Valley.
Discrete Math: Yes. I do not think I actually took a course labeled 'discrete math', but I know many of my CS classes used it.
Algebra & Calculus: It depends on what you plan on doing. Some careers related to CS may require it. However, most software development positions for businesses only require basic algebra when writing code.
Technical writing: No. In my experience, you just use common sense. You write for your intended audience and include information that is relevant. Upper management does not want to know what algorithms you use to complete something. Documentation created for other developers to maintain your code in the future does not need fluff or information that only applies to the initial implementation of the project (eg: budget and deadlines).
Other courses: Not necessary to CS. They are intended to give you a more well-rounded education and make you pay for more credit hours. Unless your career is closely related to one of these fields, they will be useless. If you were actually trying to get a B.S. degree, then take them. If you are just trying to learn the CS realted things you would get from the degree, don't bother with things like psych and business. They are of no use to most people.
Why shouldn't the Senate be connected to the states? The House of Representatives is. Unless you are planning on getting rid of states completely (and all of the state-level laws, regulations, taxes, public representation, correctional facilities, etc.), you have to ensure Congress consists state representatives. Our entire country is built on the concept of different levels of government with different levels of authority. By removing state representation, you are essentially talking about a fundamental recreation of our government.
You say that it is insane that New York gets the same number of senators as North Dakota. Why is that insane? We have the House of Representatives to ensure that people are represented in terms of population. We have the senate to ensure the needs of the less populated states are not simply ignored. Because the Senate and House represent the population in different ways, different needs can be addressed, which forces compromise. The conflict between the Senate and House also will delay bills and limit heat-of-the-moment and knee-jerk bills from being passed to quickly... this does not always happen, but it does to an extent.
You want an automated system to create districts that ignore states. Well, even if you ignore the concept that our entire federal legislative system is built on the idea of state representation and such a change would mean a recreation of our country's government, how would you create such a system that was fair to all? It would obviously have to be dynamic to change as the population changes. But a change in the algorithm to create the states could have just as much of an affect as intentional gerrymandering. In many cases, large cities have very different needs than the rest of the state. If an automated system made a put a large city in a single district, then you have 1 district that will view things a certain way. If the automated system split the city into quadrants and included a little bit of area around the city, then you will have 4 districts that represent the city that will also override the needs of the areas surrounding the city. What type of automated algorithm can be created that is fair to all? Gerrymandering is typically done by parties. An automated system could potentially be far worse, IMO
I don't know much about tax laws and financial laws other than they can often be complex and confusing. I suspect the complexity grows substantially with non-profit organizations (such the Linux Foundation, in which Torvalds is a key person). Perhaps by accepting tips for what is essentially his job, he is opening up a can of worms that he doesn't want to touch.
According to the article the UAS is completely autonomous. This means the sub can simply 'listen' to what the drone broadcasts without giving away its location. The drone may indicate a sub is within listening range, but it does not give away its location.
Perhaps the grades are lower because the notes are not as helpful.
When I was in college, I always found that laptop notes were of little to no use when taking notes for anything other than text. If I wanted to copy a graph, I couldn't do so without wasting time or taking my focus away from the prof. If I needed to draw a diagram, I couldn't do it very well on my laptop's small touch pad. And finally, if anything involved non-standard text (subscripts, mathematical symbols, etc), then I encountered even more difficulty. Using a stylus and a tablet may be easier than a laptop now... but that is still just writing and I would rather do it on paper in most cases.
The Act allows for them to apply to the minister for an exemption, upon granting the state will pay the cost
Correction: TFA says they can apply for REIMBURSEMENT. I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay $5000 now and then wait several months to get my money back.
The law as written was meant to ensure companies are responsible for the archaeological costs incurred from digging up their land instead of saddling the taxpayer.
I don't care what laws are meant to do nearly as much as what they actually do. Isn't that part of the reason why/. loves to bash things such as the Patriot Act and SOPA? Please do not defend laws by saying they are meant to do something good.
What do they mean by "physically impossible geometries"? Are they talking about things that have a higher or lower number of physical dimensions (eg: a 4 dimensional object or a 2 dimensional object)? A weird combination of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry?
Anyone that has a large businesses' critical applications tied to decade+ old technology has grossly underperformed in their position. And if they inherited that mess, it was their first priority to clean up after former, horribly inept individual, with the explicit goal of dealing with the elephant in the room. If they still don't have a plan to extricate the business from a miserable position, where it's their job to do so, they're simply not doing their job.
The key words in that are " large businesses'". Small and medium size companies often try and prevent from getting tech that is completely outdated, but they often have small IT budgets and departments. This means they have to choose what is more cost effective... spending ten's of thousands of dollars maintaining a system that meets their needs works or spending hundred's of thousands upgrading a system simply because it is old. Those upgrades do happen occasionally, but not often. One of my friends works in IT a large company... he is still a relatively low ranking employee at his company, and yet, the number of employees that he has working directly under him is about the same size as the entire IT department at my country. When we talk, we are greatly amused at the differences in the working environments and problems we face. When an IT guy says they cannot understand why a company still uses technology X or has not upgraded to Y when X still works, I can tell they have never worked for a small company that views technology as little more than a necessary evil (as far as budgets are concerned). The smaller companies usually recognize that upgrading to various things could offer definite advantages... but most times, upgrading is not economically feasible. I know budget plays a role in every company, but It seems to play a much larger role in small and medium size companies that do not produce IT related products.
But businesses don't want "new". They want stability. They don't want to be constantly changing things because that disrupts their business and costs them a lot of money, with little or no benefit.
That is a big thing. Other departments that use systems hate any changes that disrupt their work. Learning new systems takes work and slows them down and often takes away what they see as advantages. On our old green screens, many users have key sequences memorized so they can carry out various actions (such as data entry) with only occasional glances at the screen. Forcing them to use a new tool takes that away that ability until they relearn it. Even if the new tool offers new feature or options, the user will consider it to be an inconvenience unless it benefits them, personally. If they can see how it benefits other departments, they will usually (grudgingly) accept the changes. If it only improves things on the back end (that only IT people see), they will avoid using it until we force them to use the new tool and take away the old tool.
Not only that, but many users will often use applications incorrectly unless it has checks to prevent this. If a new application implements something to prevent that misuse, the user will complain that the program has a "bug" because they can no longer do something. From their perspective, this is an inconvenience and a disruption because it forces them to change the way they do things without providing them with any benefits. For example, an old version of one of our apps lacked certain data entry checks. So the data entered by one department would often end up creating new data records because one of the users was too lazy to look up an existing record. This meant we would have multiple data records all representing the same supplier or multiple records representing the same customer. While this would occasionally affect other departments, it did not cause that department many (if any) problems... so they didn't see any problem with their way of doing things. When an updated tool was deployed, those users complained that it didn't work right or it was forcing them to do extra work (just a couple seconds), when in reality, it was preventing problems in other departments and saving another guy from spending time every week cleaning up data.
Yes, because getting to a black hole will take a long time.
Your description of time is to general and relative.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
The infallibility of the free market is clearly a matter of Faith, as its proponents are impervious to empirical debunking.
Similar things can be said about those that believe the government has to regulate everything or constantly increase the national debt in an attempt to stimulate the economy, while ignoring empirical evidence that says it won't work.
The thing is, economics is not a hard science in which you can come up with a theory, test it and find you have a plausible theory or an error in your theory. One theory or model will not always work in every case and, if you look, you can find instances and empirical data the contradicts most models at some point. If there was a perfect model, you would have a lot more people that know exactly how to invest without risk. Faith in a free market is not some delusion as your post implies.... it is just not the cure-all solution that.
You ignored a key part of his argument. Hey said most albums only have a couple song that people want. I happen to agree with this. I haven't bought a lot of mp3s from amazon, but the ones I have seen have an average price of about $1.29. If you actually want an entire album, then I agree that it is worth a little more to get a physical item. However, if I only want 2 songs for a total of $2.58, I cannot justify spending $16.79 + shipping to get several songs I do not want. I added shipping to the cost because I don't have amazon prime and that price doesn't qualify for super saver.
<sarcasm> And I am sure that by comparing this country's statistics related to one subject with the statistics of other countries with different populations densities, cultures, stances on various political and moral topics, availability of mental health treatment, demographics, crime rates (in crimes that are often related to gun violence and crimes that are not), gang activity, methods for punishing crime, and economic climates, you will get you perfectly accurate results. </sarcasm>
The primary purpose of a gun is to propel a bullet to hit what the shooter wants. It is designed to ABLE to kill things (including people), but they are not designed so that killing is their primary function. I have several guns, and guess what? The only thing I have ever shot is targets. Am I using them for something other than their intended purpose? No. My grandfather used to go hunting. He killed deer. Was he misusing it because he was not killing people, even though you claim that is their purpose? No. People that say guns are designed for killing people are often the people that do not have any interest in them and do not know much about the other aspects of their uses. If you aren't interested in guns and don't know much about them, fine... but don't make claims about them when your only knowledge of them comes from the skewed statistics from political groups and the media... which is often very inaccurate.
Some people want guns to be more regulated. I can understand why they would want that... but why don't they focus on enforcing the existing laws as well? I watched one of Feinstein's hearings (she is the CA senator pushing the new gun control laws) in which she had a police commissioner come in and support her bill by answering questions. He pointed out that the background checks stopped thousands ( I think it was roughly 10,000) of people from illegally acquiring guns. That is probably true. However, an opposing senator asked how many of those were actually prosecuted for trying to illegally obtain these guns and the commissioner didn't have any idea. The actual records show that only 18 were taken to court. They would have had to commit a felony by lying on forms that must be completed before a gun shop would even call in a background check. The commissioner responded by stating the police department didn't have time to go after those 'minor offenses' because they were spending their time going after the important ones, such as the murders and robberies caused by guns. I understand that they may not have the resources to go after all of them, but what good are more laws going to be when they won't prosecute the 10,000 obvious felons that were trying to illegally obtain guns? How many of these felons went on illegally obtain the guns through other means to commit the crimes that the commissioner is focusing on? I know there are other mean in which people can try to obtain guns illegally and that people want more laws to try and prevent that. But will making more guns illegal when criminals are not prosecuted with the existing laws in some of the most obvious open & shut cases you can get? I feel that sometimes the 'gun laws only affect the law abiding citizens' argument is overused.... but with examples like this, can you really say that claim doesn't have some validity?
Your explanation of the prices almost makes it sound as if you believe he should be happy he is only paying $18,000 for the 1.5 day stay in a woman's health room, $17,000 for the emergency fees, and other fees ranging from $5,000-10,000. Granted, that is a lot cheaper than the $170,000-250,000 you estimated, but why are those prices that high to begin with? Seriously why does an or cost $100 per minute? I understand that some of things are expensive when prepared for a medical environment and that other costs, such as mal-practice insurance, can cost a great deal as well. But, the very fact a health care provide can pay its employees and keep its doors open (if not expand & upgrade) after negotiating prices that reduce their income by hundreds of thousands of dollars for one person should tell you that things are being over charged. I know that not everyone will have charges that are that high, so the healthcare provider will not be losing hundreds of thousands on everyone... but you must also remember that my procedures cost much more and they will 'lose' a lot of money on them.
Why does it have to solve a problem? If you are on Slashdot, surely you can understand that some things have a 'geek factor' and people want to buy or make one because of that.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of companies and businesses have programmers that do not fall under the 'tech company' category. Insurance companies, colleges, railroad companies, large store chains (eg: Walmart and Target), RV companies, and many other industries all have in-house programmers. All of these businesses and industries are scattered across the country. Unless you absolutely must work in a tech company in silicone valley, you should not limit your options. My first career oriented job was at a relatively small health insurance. A very large part of their software was developed in-house. They had some developers that were only in their twenties, but the majority of them were at least 40, if not in their 50s or early 60s and preparing to retire. Why? These companies see the software as just an in-house solution to a problem and not a product in itself. They do not need someone that can write in whatever the fashionable language of the day is. They need someone that has the skill and efficiency to maintain a system that was probably written some time ago in a language that fit their needs. A 20 year old that only knows C# is not going to be of any use to them when they need someone that can quickly adapt their in-house solution that was written in C or Fortran to fit new health insurance laws.
Some places higher young programmers because they are cheaper.... but some places purposely higher older, experience people. Consider all options, not just tech companies in Silicone Valley.
Discrete Math: Yes. I do not think I actually took a course labeled 'discrete math', but I know many of my CS classes used it.
Algebra & Calculus: It depends on what you plan on doing. Some careers related to CS may require it. However, most software development positions for businesses only require basic algebra when writing code.
Technical writing: No. In my experience, you just use common sense. You write for your intended audience and include information that is relevant. Upper management does not want to know what algorithms you use to complete something. Documentation created for other developers to maintain your code in the future does not need fluff or information that only applies to the initial implementation of the project (eg: budget and deadlines).
Other courses: Not necessary to CS. They are intended to give you a more well-rounded education and make you pay for more credit hours. Unless your career is closely related to one of these fields, they will be useless. If you were actually trying to get a B.S. degree, then take them. If you are just trying to learn the CS realted things you would get from the degree, don't bother with things like psych and business. They are of no use to most people.
Doh! I made an error when correcting someone else's error.
I said 700 dollars and meant 700 million.
Doh... I make a error when I correct someone else's error!
700 dollars -> 700 million dollars.
7 Billion pennies totals 70 million dollars, not 700 dollars. 700 is a large amount... but so is 630 million. :)
Why shouldn't the Senate be connected to the states? The House of Representatives is. Unless you are planning on getting rid of states completely (and all of the state-level laws, regulations, taxes, public representation, correctional facilities, etc.), you have to ensure Congress consists state representatives. Our entire country is built on the concept of different levels of government with different levels of authority. By removing state representation, you are essentially talking about a fundamental recreation of our government.
You say that it is insane that New York gets the same number of senators as North Dakota. Why is that insane? We have the House of Representatives to ensure that people are represented in terms of population. We have the senate to ensure the needs of the less populated states are not simply ignored. Because the Senate and House represent the population in different ways, different needs can be addressed, which forces compromise. The conflict between the Senate and House also will delay bills and limit heat-of-the-moment and knee-jerk bills from being passed to quickly... this does not always happen, but it does to an extent.
You want an automated system to create districts that ignore states. Well, even if you ignore the concept that our entire federal legislative system is built on the idea of state representation and such a change would mean a recreation of our country's government, how would you create such a system that was fair to all? It would obviously have to be dynamic to change as the population changes. But a change in the algorithm to create the states could have just as much of an affect as intentional gerrymandering. In many cases, large cities have very different needs than the rest of the state. If an automated system made a put a large city in a single district, then you have 1 district that will view things a certain way. If the automated system split the city into quadrants and included a little bit of area around the city, then you will have 4 districts that represent the city that will also override the needs of the areas surrounding the city. What type of automated algorithm can be created that is fair to all? Gerrymandering is typically done by parties. An automated system could potentially be far worse, IMO
I don't know much about tax laws and financial laws other than they can often be complex and confusing. I suspect the complexity grows substantially with non-profit organizations (such the Linux Foundation, in which Torvalds is a key person). Perhaps by accepting tips for what is essentially his job, he is opening up a can of worms that he doesn't want to touch.
That is just wild speculation, though.
According to the article the UAS is completely autonomous. This means the sub can simply 'listen' to what the drone broadcasts without giving away its location. The drone may indicate a sub is within listening range, but it does not give away its location.
Perhaps the grades are lower because the notes are not as helpful.
When I was in college, I always found that laptop notes were of little to no use when taking notes for anything other than text. If I wanted to copy a graph, I couldn't do so without wasting time or taking my focus away from the prof. If I needed to draw a diagram, I couldn't do it very well on my laptop's small touch pad. And finally, if anything involved non-standard text (subscripts, mathematical symbols, etc), then I encountered even more difficulty. Using a stylus and a tablet may be easier than a laptop now... but that is still just writing and I would rather do it on paper in most cases.
-Me
The Act allows for them to apply to the minister for an exemption, upon granting the state will pay the cost
Correction: TFA says they can apply for REIMBURSEMENT. I don't know about you, but I don't want to pay $5000 now and then wait several months to get my money back.
The law as written was meant to ensure companies are responsible for the archaeological costs incurred from digging up their land instead of saddling the taxpayer.
I don't care what laws are meant to do nearly as much as what they actually do. Isn't that part of the reason why /. loves to bash things such as the Patriot Act and SOPA? Please do not defend laws by saying they are meant to do something good.
What do they mean by "physically impossible geometries"? Are they talking about things that have a higher or lower number of physical dimensions (eg: a 4 dimensional object or a 2 dimensional object)? A weird combination of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry?
30,000? And where did you get that number?
Anyone that has a large businesses' critical applications tied to decade+ old technology has grossly underperformed in their position. And if they inherited that mess, it was their first priority to clean up after former, horribly inept individual, with the explicit goal of dealing with the elephant in the room. If they still don't have a plan to extricate the business from a miserable position, where it's their job to do so, they're simply not doing their job.
The key words in that are " large businesses'". Small and medium size companies often try and prevent from getting tech that is completely outdated, but they often have small IT budgets and departments. This means they have to choose what is more cost effective... spending ten's of thousands of dollars maintaining a system that meets their needs works or spending hundred's of thousands upgrading a system simply because it is old. Those upgrades do happen occasionally, but not often. One of my friends works in IT a large company... he is still a relatively low ranking employee at his company, and yet, the number of employees that he has working directly under him is about the same size as the entire IT department at my country. When we talk, we are greatly amused at the differences in the working environments and problems we face. When an IT guy says they cannot understand why a company still uses technology X or has not upgraded to Y when X still works, I can tell they have never worked for a small company that views technology as little more than a necessary evil (as far as budgets are concerned). The smaller companies usually recognize that upgrading to various things could offer definite advantages... but most times, upgrading is not economically feasible. I know budget plays a role in every company, but It seems to play a much larger role in small and medium size companies that do not produce IT related products.
My $0.02
But businesses don't want "new". They want stability. They don't want to be constantly changing things because that disrupts their business and costs them a lot of money, with little or no benefit.
That is a big thing. Other departments that use systems hate any changes that disrupt their work. Learning new systems takes work and slows them down and often takes away what they see as advantages. On our old green screens, many users have key sequences memorized so they can carry out various actions (such as data entry) with only occasional glances at the screen. Forcing them to use a new tool takes that away that ability until they relearn it. Even if the new tool offers new feature or options, the user will consider it to be an inconvenience unless it benefits them, personally. If they can see how it benefits other departments, they will usually (grudgingly) accept the changes. If it only improves things on the back end (that only IT people see), they will avoid using it until we force them to use the new tool and take away the old tool.
Not only that, but many users will often use applications incorrectly unless it has checks to prevent this. If a new application implements something to prevent that misuse, the user will complain that the program has a "bug" because they can no longer do something. From their perspective, this is an inconvenience and a disruption because it forces them to change the way they do things without providing them with any benefits. For example, an old version of one of our apps lacked certain data entry checks. So the data entered by one department would often end up creating new data records because one of the users was too lazy to look up an existing record. This meant we would have multiple data records all representing the same supplier or multiple records representing the same customer. While this would occasionally affect other departments, it did not cause that department many (if any) problems... so they didn't see any problem with their way of doing things. When an updated tool was deployed, those users complained that it didn't work right or it was forcing them to do extra work (just a couple seconds), when in reality, it was preventing problems in other departments and saving another guy from spending time every week cleaning up data.
"Don't want a gaming console that requires a persistent internet connection? 'Don't buy it.'"
There, fixed it.
Yes, because getting to a black hole will take a long time.
Your description of time is to general and relative.
The infallibility of the free market is clearly a matter of Faith, as its proponents are impervious to empirical debunking.
Similar things can be said about those that believe the government has to regulate everything or constantly increase the national debt in an attempt to stimulate the economy, while ignoring empirical evidence that says it won't work.
The thing is, economics is not a hard science in which you can come up with a theory, test it and find you have a plausible theory or an error in your theory. One theory or model will not always work in every case and, if you look, you can find instances and empirical data the contradicts most models at some point. If there was a perfect model, you would have a lot more people that know exactly how to invest without risk. Faith in a free market is not some delusion as your post implies.... it is just not the cure-all solution that.
You ignored a key part of his argument. Hey said most albums only have a couple song that people want. I happen to agree with this. I haven't bought a lot of mp3s from amazon, but the ones I have seen have an average price of about $1.29. If you actually want an entire album, then I agree that it is worth a little more to get a physical item. However, if I only want 2 songs for a total of $2.58, I cannot justify spending $16.79 + shipping to get several songs I do not want. I added shipping to the cost because I don't have amazon prime and that price doesn't qualify for super saver.
The bar must be empty because the work never ends.
<sarcasm> And I am sure that by comparing this country's statistics related to one subject with the statistics of other countries with different populations densities, cultures, stances on various political and moral topics, availability of mental health treatment, demographics, crime rates (in crimes that are often related to gun violence and crimes that are not), gang activity, methods for punishing crime, and economic climates, you will get you perfectly accurate results. </sarcasm>
Correlation or Causation?
Guns primary purpose is to kill people.
The primary purpose of a gun is to propel a bullet to hit what the shooter wants. It is designed to ABLE to kill things (including people), but they are not designed so that killing is their primary function. I have several guns, and guess what? The only thing I have ever shot is targets. Am I using them for something other than their intended purpose? No. My grandfather used to go hunting. He killed deer. Was he misusing it because he was not killing people, even though you claim that is their purpose? No. People that say guns are designed for killing people are often the people that do not have any interest in them and do not know much about the other aspects of their uses. If you aren't interested in guns and don't know much about them, fine... but don't make claims about them when your only knowledge of them comes from the skewed statistics from political groups and the media... which is often very inaccurate.
Some people want guns to be more regulated. I can understand why they would want that... but why don't they focus on enforcing the existing laws as well? I watched one of Feinstein's hearings (she is the CA senator pushing the new gun control laws) in which she had a police commissioner come in and support her bill by answering questions. He pointed out that the background checks stopped thousands ( I think it was roughly 10,000) of people from illegally acquiring guns. That is probably true. However, an opposing senator asked how many of those were actually prosecuted for trying to illegally obtain these guns and the commissioner didn't have any idea. The actual records show that only 18 were taken to court. They would have had to commit a felony by lying on forms that must be completed before a gun shop would even call in a background check. The commissioner responded by stating the police department didn't have time to go after those 'minor offenses' because they were spending their time going after the important ones, such as the murders and robberies caused by guns. I understand that they may not have the resources to go after all of them, but what good are more laws going to be when they won't prosecute the 10,000 obvious felons that were trying to illegally obtain guns? How many of these felons went on illegally obtain the guns through other means to commit the crimes that the commissioner is focusing on? I know there are other mean in which people can try to obtain guns illegally and that people want more laws to try and prevent that. But will making more guns illegal when criminals are not prosecuted with the existing laws in some of the most obvious open & shut cases you can get? I feel that sometimes the 'gun laws only affect the law abiding citizens' argument is overused.... but with examples like this, can you really say that claim doesn't have some validity?
I think I saw this on House.
Your explanation of the prices almost makes it sound as if you believe he should be happy he is only paying $18,000 for the 1.5 day stay in a woman's health room, $17,000 for the emergency fees, and other fees ranging from $5,000-10,000. Granted, that is a lot cheaper than the $170,000-250,000 you estimated, but why are those prices that high to begin with? Seriously why does an or cost $100 per minute? I understand that some of things are expensive when prepared for a medical environment and that other costs, such as mal-practice insurance, can cost a great deal as well. But, the very fact a health care provide can pay its employees and keep its doors open (if not expand & upgrade) after negotiating prices that reduce their income by hundreds of thousands of dollars for one person should tell you that things are being over charged. I know that not everyone will have charges that are that high, so the healthcare provider will not be losing hundreds of thousands on everyone... but you must also remember that my procedures cost much more and they will 'lose' a lot of money on them.
"A very small fraction of our customer base ultimately choose those options."
Translation: Very small fraction of their customer base has excessive amounts of money laying around to throw at TWC's overpriced and capped services.
Why does it have to solve a problem? If you are on Slashdot, surely you can understand that some things have a 'geek factor' and people want to buy or make one because of that.