You were drunk at 6:43 AM by my clock, which gets you a free round.
I actually glanced around in your journal to see a mention of country but didn't find one. Sorry about presuming you were within a few hours of my time zone!
As for me, I think that protecting the citizens militarily is non-negotiable.
Non-neggotiable as in we should spend our entire GDP on it? Half? A quarter? Whatever Halliburton says? How is starting fights all over the planet protecting our citizens? I'd rather close a lot of foreign bases and mind our own business. We can keep a strong defensive military, use it sparingly. It'd save trillions.
You wouldn't suggest we disband your local police, with all their expensive training, firearms, and vehicles-- would you?
I'd suggest we do something a little different. My taxes keep going up paying for prisons and cops. I don't think non-violent drug posession should be punished by jail time. I'd rather they go after the real criminals: violent crime, property crime, etc. Crime with a victim.
Here's a guess: Some exec has your ssid/etc in a spreadsheet on his blackberry. It gets stolen, compromising your identity. This device might help protect your data.
You know there's gearheads that'll spend thousands of dollars to bring their car from 195hp to 205hp? Sometimes it's irrationally all about who has the biggest number.
huh? USB 1.0 is 12Mbps, 2.0 is 480Mbps. Uncompressed CD audio is 1.4Mbps.
So, assuming it isn't USB 2.0, and assuming it doesn't compress the signal, you could fit 8.5 CD-quality audio streams through USB. Or you could fit a single audio stream 8.5 times as good as CD-quality.
You'd better redefine maximum. Here is a 50% efficient diesel engine with 5 million ft/lbs of torque!
Re:We are not prepared to take sensible solutions.
on
The Engine of US Jobs
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· Score: 1
Interesting. I like the idea of everything paying for itself.
The biggest cause of disease is genetic, though. Are we going to tax people with bad genes if they want to have kids? That's an icky road to go down.
I like the idea of taxing people to have kids. Reversably sterilize everyone at birth. Anyone wanting kids should have to take a class and pay a fee in order to get a parenting license. Then, you untie their tubes and let them reproduce.
Actually, you might be wrong about your approach. Fat smokers use less healthcare than healthy people because they die sooner. You should tax carrots and jogging. My grandpa lived to 94, never smoked drank or anything. He must have cost 10 million in health care over his life. My sensible uncle died at 70 from smoking, probably 1/10th the healthcare needs.
Did I mention that I've had to contact support 3 times and each time made me vow to cancel my service? (Fortunately I am very lazy and tend to procrastinate)
Each of these support experiences was more english-impaired, dysfunctional, time-consuming and hellish than the last. My latest (and, once again, allegedly last) support issue involved 3 phone calls, 5 chats, 2 emails, and over 3 hours of time spread over 2 weeks to correct a very simple billing issue.
Earthlink has screwed me extra on support because I lucked out and got reliable service.
I'm in the regrettable position of forgiving them slowly right now. I've got to feed the hate to motivate me to get away before I need to contact them again. Then again, I'm absolutely dreading cancelling my service. There's no way that'll go well.
Thanks for the information. I'm going to start the process of moving away. I don't think the $10/mo solution is good for me since the alternatives aren't $10/mo cheaper.
If I trusted them to cancel my email immediately and have it available again immediately it wouldn't be much risk. I don't trust them, though, all my chats/emails/calls to support have given me a headache.
Healthcare has been going up in price double digits for many years. GDP is going up by single digits. Boomers are retiring, further driving up prices. Healthcare costs can't exceed GDP, not for long anyway.
Something has got to limit healthcare increases. We already ration care.
I never said healthcare is zero sum. It just can't keep doubling in price every few years forever.
Everywhere I've lived there are street vendors. Everything from a family selling burritos out of a cooler to "roach coach" mobile kitchens. Many are licensed, many aren't. There's a hotdog vendor in front of the library most days. Even Home Depot has a vendor, although the name "Hot Digity Dog" makes me queasy.
I've heard of many e. coli poisonings from fast food chains and mass market foodstuffs. I don't think of fast-food chains as clean or responsible.
I thought socialized medicine removed the 40% eaten by insurance billing, overhead, duplication of systems, profit, etc. Balanced against that is the possible increased efficiency of market-driven forces. The US system isn't doing very well, either at reigning in costs or providing good care.
And please don't raise the spectre of government making healthcare choices. My insurance company makes those choices right now, with no appeal, and I can't vote the fuckers out.
The GP's proposal is draconian, but we're going to have to face some facts soon. Double digit increases in health care costs cannot continue forever. Eventually we'll spend more than our GNP on healthcare.
The cold hard fact is that we are going to have to ration care very soon. There are lots of ways to do it. Right now, we do it by making insurance more expensive, lower coverage, and available to fewer people. I know several people who go without insurance because it'll cost them hundreds of dollars a month for employer coverage. I know many people who simply aren't offered insurance. Insurance is very expensive to pick up on your own. I picked the cheapest policy, which has horrifying coverage. I've got a $1,000/year cap on outpatient care. A nontrivial trip to the hospital could bankrupt me. There are scores of millions of uninsured in the US.
I think our current policy of rationing care is idiotic. We're scrimping on the cheap stuff: healthcare for young people, preventative care, routine check-ups, etc. Spending on some of this might actually save money.
We simply cannot afford to give everyone heroic care. Maybe cutting back on the most expensive patients, or the closest to death will give 100x as many people much better care. Maybe that's a good idea. We should at least talk about it and consider it.
I watched all of my grandparents die. Every one of them died completely senile or alzheimered. It would have been less traumatic if they'd died a bit sooner. Nobody should have to explain who they are to their grandpa and why they can't/won't put him out of his misery. The spending was insane: hundreds of surgeries, transplants, transfusions, mountains of pills, hundreds of specialists and for what? To extend their already full lives by a few days, weeks, or months. Going through that four times inspired me to make a living will that specifies what I consider to be "enough."
I don't want to die, and when I'm near death I sure won't volunteer to forego treatment as long as I'm still sane and able to find some happiness. I will understand having limits on my care. I will understand especially if such limits ensured I had enough care to reach a ripe old age.
Hm, maybe I should read the earthlink newsletter once in a while.
Do you know if/how I quit earthlink and register my current email address as a free account? I don't want to play roulette, it is a high-demand username.
Yeah, that's not the problem. I'm registered at hundreds if not thousands of sites with my earthlink address. All my friends know my earthlink address. I'm really dreading getting everything changed. My best idea so far is to send a mass email advising of the change, and pick through my 5,000 messages looking for anywhere I've registered and change it. Wait a month and see what still comes to my earthlink address, fixing those. Wait another month, hopefully volume has dropped off. Repeat until I go a month or two with no nonspam messages and feel comfortable saying goodbye forever to anything I forgot.
It's going to take many hours of boring eyestrain-inducing suffering.
I'm not happy with my bank anymore, and changing that is quite easy in comparison. Maybe I should do that first to build my confidence. I'll only have to change about 20 things that hook into my account and comb through say a year of statements to make that happen.
I stopped registering under my earthlink address a year or two ago, but I haven't taken on the backlog yet.
I use earthlink, ever since they bought netcom back in the 90s.
I'm basically happy with it. I get 1.5/256k aDSL for $40, which is pretty pricey but it has flaked out for a total of 1 hour in 4 years. I've learned to avoid calling support, even for billing problems, unless it's worth wasting an hour and getting upset about. That's just never gone well.
Someday I'm going to migrate to a non-ISP-issued email account for good and just hop from cheapest to cheapest.
I miss my netcom shell account, I miss my old email address. It's hard to give that up. There's nothing holding me to earthlink but inertia right now though. I've never used their proprietary software, so my only addiction is to the email address.
Does your keyboard have '$'? Mine doesn't have '£', but '$' is used in some computer languages. I've always wondered about it. My friend's Spanish keyboard has '$' but no '£.'
I learned to type and spent so much time on Commodore keyboards I had trouble for a long time unlearning shift-2 for ". I wish I'd known of UK keyboards back then!
That's a big reason I decided to go with Commodore instead of TRS-80. All caps make my eyes hurt. The joysticks were irritating to me, even though the idea of analog position-sensing input devices is cool.
My only complaint about my 64 emulator is the keyboard. The c64 keyboard had some weird keys, and it doesn't map prettily to a modern keyboard. I think a " is shift-2, but I always have to poke around a bit to figure it out.
Slashdot Mirror
You were drunk at 6:43 AM by my clock, which gets you a free round.
I actually glanced around in your journal to see a mention of country but didn't find one. Sorry about presuming you were within a few hours of my time zone!
Drunk at 6:43am?
I salute you, sir.
Actually, there are reusable pads now. Just a trip through the washing machine and good as new! Here's some
One-time pads are bad for the environment.
I'd suggest we do something a little different. My taxes keep going up paying for prisons and cops. I don't think non-violent drug posession should be punished by jail time. I'd rather they go after the real criminals: violent crime, property crime, etc. Crime with a victim.
Here's a guess: Some exec has your ssid/etc in a spreadsheet on his blackberry. It gets stolen, compromising your identity. This device might help protect your data.
You know there's gearheads that'll spend thousands of dollars to bring their car from 195hp to 205hp? Sometimes it's irrationally all about who has the biggest number.
That's a funny quote, but it's not true. I used paralink's translator and got
The spirit wishes, but the flesh is weak.
2+3 = 101. Everyone knows one-handed math teachers count on their fingers in binary.
huh? USB 1.0 is 12Mbps, 2.0 is 480Mbps. Uncompressed CD audio is 1.4Mbps.
So, assuming it isn't USB 2.0, and assuming it doesn't compress the signal, you could fit 8.5 CD-quality audio streams through USB. Or you could fit a single audio stream 8.5 times as good as CD-quality.
You'd better redefine maximum. Here is a 50% efficient diesel engine with 5 million ft/lbs of torque!
Interesting. I like the idea of everything paying for itself.
The biggest cause of disease is genetic, though. Are we going to tax people with bad genes if they want to have kids? That's an icky road to go down.
I like the idea of taxing people to have kids. Reversably sterilize everyone at birth. Anyone wanting kids should have to take a class and pay a fee in order to get a parenting license. Then, you untie their tubes and let them reproduce.
Actually, you might be wrong about your approach. Fat smokers use less healthcare than healthy people because they die sooner. You should tax carrots and jogging. My grandpa lived to 94, never smoked drank or anything. He must have cost 10 million in health care over his life. My sensible uncle died at 70 from smoking, probably 1/10th the healthcare needs.
Did I mention that I've had to contact support 3 times and each time made me vow to cancel my service? (Fortunately I am very lazy and tend to procrastinate)
Each of these support experiences was more english-impaired, dysfunctional, time-consuming and hellish than the last. My latest (and, once again, allegedly last) support issue involved 3 phone calls, 5 chats, 2 emails, and over 3 hours of time spread over 2 weeks to correct a very simple billing issue.
Earthlink has screwed me extra on support because I lucked out and got reliable service.
I'm in the regrettable position of forgiving them slowly right now. I've got to feed the hate to motivate me to get away before I need to contact them again. Then again, I'm absolutely dreading cancelling my service. There's no way that'll go well.
Thanks for the information. I'm going to start the process of moving away. I don't think the $10/mo solution is good for me since the alternatives aren't $10/mo cheaper.
If I trusted them to cancel my email immediately and have it available again immediately it wouldn't be much risk. I don't trust them, though, all my chats/emails/calls to support have given me a headache.
Healthcare has been going up in price double digits for many years. GDP is going up by single digits. Boomers are retiring, further driving up prices. Healthcare costs can't exceed GDP, not for long anyway.
Something has got to limit healthcare increases. We already ration care.
I never said healthcare is zero sum. It just can't keep doubling in price every few years forever.
Everywhere I've lived there are street vendors. Everything from a family selling burritos out of a cooler to "roach coach" mobile kitchens. Many are licensed, many aren't. There's a hotdog vendor in front of the library most days. Even Home Depot has a vendor, although the name "Hot Digity Dog" makes me queasy.
I've heard of many e. coli poisonings from fast food chains and mass market foodstuffs. I don't think of fast-food chains as clean or responsible.
Why do we have a higher percentage of prisoners than countries that don't execute at all?
I thought socialized medicine removed the 40% eaten by insurance billing, overhead, duplication of systems, profit, etc. Balanced against that is the possible increased efficiency of market-driven forces. The US system isn't doing very well, either at reigning in costs or providing good care.
And please don't raise the spectre of government making healthcare choices. My insurance company makes those choices right now, with no appeal, and I can't vote the fuckers out.
The GP's proposal is draconian, but we're going to have to face some facts soon. Double digit increases in health care costs cannot continue forever. Eventually we'll spend more than our GNP on healthcare.
The cold hard fact is that we are going to have to ration care very soon. There are lots of ways to do it. Right now, we do it by making insurance more expensive, lower coverage, and available to fewer people. I know several people who go without insurance because it'll cost them hundreds of dollars a month for employer coverage. I know many people who simply aren't offered insurance. Insurance is very expensive to pick up on your own. I picked the cheapest policy, which has horrifying coverage. I've got a $1,000/year cap on outpatient care. A nontrivial trip to the hospital could bankrupt me. There are scores of millions of uninsured in the US.
I think our current policy of rationing care is idiotic. We're scrimping on the cheap stuff: healthcare for young people, preventative care, routine check-ups, etc. Spending on some of this might actually save money.
We simply cannot afford to give everyone heroic care. Maybe cutting back on the most expensive patients, or the closest to death will give 100x as many people much better care. Maybe that's a good idea. We should at least talk about it and consider it.
I watched all of my grandparents die. Every one of them died completely senile or alzheimered. It would have been less traumatic if they'd died a bit sooner. Nobody should have to explain who they are to their grandpa and why they can't/won't put him out of his misery. The spending was insane: hundreds of surgeries, transplants, transfusions, mountains of pills, hundreds of specialists and for what? To extend their already full lives by a few days, weeks, or months. Going through that four times inspired me to make a living will that specifies what I consider to be "enough."
I don't want to die, and when I'm near death I sure won't volunteer to forego treatment as long as I'm still sane and able to find some happiness. I will understand having limits on my care. I will understand especially if such limits ensured I had enough care to reach a ripe old age.
Hm, maybe I should read the earthlink newsletter once in a while.
Do you know if/how I quit earthlink and register my current email address as a free account? I don't want to play roulette, it is a high-demand username.
Yeah, that's not the problem. I'm registered at hundreds if not thousands of sites with my earthlink address. All my friends know my earthlink address. I'm really dreading getting everything changed. My best idea so far is to send a mass email advising of the change, and pick through my 5,000 messages looking for anywhere I've registered and change it. Wait a month and see what still comes to my earthlink address, fixing those. Wait another month, hopefully volume has dropped off. Repeat until I go a month or two with no nonspam messages and feel comfortable saying goodbye forever to anything I forgot.
It's going to take many hours of boring eyestrain-inducing suffering.
I'm not happy with my bank anymore, and changing that is quite easy in comparison. Maybe I should do that first to build my confidence. I'll only have to change about 20 things that hook into my account and comb through say a year of statements to make that happen.
I stopped registering under my earthlink address a year or two ago, but I haven't taken on the backlog yet.
I use earthlink, ever since they bought netcom back in the 90s.
I'm basically happy with it. I get 1.5/256k aDSL for $40, which is pretty pricey but it has flaked out for a total of 1 hour in 4 years. I've learned to avoid calling support, even for billing problems, unless it's worth wasting an hour and getting upset about. That's just never gone well.
Someday I'm going to migrate to a non-ISP-issued email account for good and just hop from cheapest to cheapest.
I miss my netcom shell account, I miss my old email address. It's hard to give that up. There's nothing holding me to earthlink but inertia right now though. I've never used their proprietary software, so my only addiction is to the email address.
Does your keyboard have '$'? Mine doesn't have '£', but '$' is used in some computer languages. I've always wondered about it. My friend's Spanish keyboard has '$' but no '£.'
I learned to type and spent so much time on Commodore keyboards I had trouble for a long time unlearning shift-2 for ". I wish I'd known of UK keyboards back then!
That's a big reason I decided to go with Commodore instead of TRS-80. All caps make my eyes hurt. The joysticks were irritating to me, even though the idea of analog position-sensing input devices is cool.
You had lowercase letters, too. here is how you turn on lowercase/graphics.
My only complaint about my 64 emulator is the keyboard. The c64 keyboard had some weird keys, and it doesn't map prettily to a modern keyboard. I think a " is shift-2, but I always have to poke around a bit to figure it out.