On a similar note, could news like this be marked "Of interest to US Residents only" so I can exclude them from my view?
You obviously don't appreciate the humorous value of these news, and the nice warm "I'm so glad I don't have to deal with this crap" fuzzy feeling afterwards.
Read your own signature and apply it to other people's posts (oh, and add "and try to understand" after the "read" part). It would save you from some embarassment.
But over the course of, say, 20 years while your kids grow up, how many people are going to even come spent more than 25% of the $260,000 they pay in premiums.
Quite a few of them. All it takes is cancer, or a heart attack. Two of the top killers in industrialized nations.
It's true for the spina bifida surgery (I was tempted to disagree, but I re-checked).
However, this is because the operation is still in a trial phase. It still has to be proven that the intrauterine operation gives a better outcome than a postnatal operation. I guess that all other hospitals around the world are waiting for the outcome - they don't want to be the ones to have performed complex and risky procedures that later turned out to be no better (or worse) than the conventional, tested approach.
The medical system in the US is fundamentally flawed, and facing it WITHOUT insurance could easily bancrupt you.
Actually, the nasty thing is that it can also bankrupt you WITH insurance. At a certain point, even 20% of the medical bill will be too much. Especially considering that you're not likely to start working immediately after a procedure that expensive.
I would guess the latter. It's easy to be naive (and easy to get really good-sounding health insurance) if you're young and healthy. Take one of the two away, and hell breaks loose.
But, six-figure medical bill, WTF? do you have AIDS?!
No. Pretty much any large surgery can get pretty close to that (especially in the US). If it's anything that requires some sort of specialist (cardiology, neurology, oncology), the price tag will start in the six-figure realm and go up from there.
Instead of great health coverage for you, get LIFE INSURANCE. You can probably get some cheap 30-year term insurance which will cover your family in case something happens to you.
Don't forget some sort of disability/invalidity insurance (don't know if they've got that thing on your side of the pond, it's the big thing over here in Yurrop). If you can't get that (pre-existing medical conditions and certain professional fields are a factor here), go with accident insurance.
For all the things that don't kill you but make you unable to work.
Black holes are boring. They may exists, but they'll probably evaporate in an instant if they're ever created in the LHC.
However...
Negative strangelets would be a completely different beast. It's not exactly sure whether they actually exist, or if they would be stable, but if the answer is yes for both questions, they could gobble up earth faster than a miniature black hole, since they would attract matter (positively charged atomic nuclei, mostly) by their electrical charge (negative), which is stronger by several orders of magnitude than the gravitational pull of a micro-micro-black hole.
Replacing these is not all that doable and extremely expensive because of re-tooling, re-design (yeah, government may re-tool before re-design:P), etc..
Europe did something like that, uh, a couple of years ago. Some European countries did something similar even longer ago. Are you saying there's something Europe can do that the US are incapable of ?
It's perfectly doable to phase out old bills and phase in new ones.
Ain't going to happen. Europe does it (as well as integrating a whole bunch of additional anti-counterfeit measures), so it must be un-American. Never mind the blind, God (with a capital G) must hate them or they wouldn't be blind, right ? Also, it could help the terrorists. Dollar notes are just fine the way they are.
Through matrix multiplication you only consume 2N spaces (maybe 2N+2 to denote orientation of each matrix) but you have N^2 data points after decoding.
And those N^2 dots are not independent from each other. You cannot re-create every N^2 matrix by multiplying 2 N vectors. Your hypothetical compression would be lossy.
When you throw in shapes, you further increase the amount of data that you can hold.
No. No. No.
As soon as you enforce some sort of format, you decrease the amount of data, by eliminating possible combinations of dots from the total pool.
Think about it: If you're trying to come up with a password, and introduce the rule "Capital letters must be adjacent to at least one more capital letter." - have you increased or decreased the number of possible passwords ?
So, how many verbal arguments do not lead to violence ? Did they consider that too ? They better had, or they might be dealing with lots and lots of false alarms.
Well, what a LOT of Americans don't know about the German schools is there's three "tiers", and you get put into one of the tiers after age 10.
What's even worse: A large number of the Americans who do know about the three tiers do not know that the system is far from being "rigid". Even if you attended the Hauptschule (that's the ditch digger tier), you can eventually gain the diplomas of the higher tiers and even go to university later in your life. It might need a bit of hard work (since you probably have a job while working on the diplomas), but it is entirely possible.
Just look at former chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He worked his way up from ditch diggers school all the way to a degree in Law. Gotta admire the guy, even if I didn't really agree with his politics.
Often, this coincides with the original cancer cell "de-differentiating" (integrating?:) ) into a sort of stem cell,
There are various degrees of "de-differentiation" (which means that the cancer cell loses the properties of the cells that make up the tissue it originally came from, like receptors). The worst case is turning into something completely unrecognizable. The more similarity to the original the cancer cells retain, the better is the outlook for treatment, because the cancer cells might still respond to certain signals (for example hormones) that slow down its rate of division.
Slashdot Mirror
You obviously don't appreciate the humorous value of these news, and the nice warm "I'm so glad I don't have to deal with this crap" fuzzy feeling afterwards.
Read your own signature and apply it to other people's posts (oh, and add "and try to understand" after the "read" part). It would save you from some embarassment.
Quite a few of them. All it takes is cancer, or a heart attack. Two of the top killers in industrialized nations.
Note that the original post was not about negotiating with the insurance company, but with the service provider (doctor, hospital, etc).
It's true for the spina bifida surgery (I was tempted to disagree, but I re-checked).
However, this is because the operation is still in a trial phase. It still has to be proven that the intrauterine operation gives a better outcome than a postnatal operation. I guess that all other hospitals around the world are waiting for the outcome - they don't want to be the ones to have performed complex and risky procedures that later turned out to be no better (or worse) than the conventional, tested approach.
Yep. "I want 50% off everything, or I'm going to die right here."
Actually, the nasty thing is that it can also bankrupt you WITH insurance. At a certain point, even 20% of the medical bill will be too much. Especially considering that you're not likely to start working immediately after a procedure that expensive.
I would guess the latter. It's easy to be naive (and easy to get really good-sounding health insurance) if you're young and healthy. Take one of the two away, and hell breaks loose.
No. Pretty much any large surgery can get pretty close to that (especially in the US). If it's anything that requires some sort of specialist (cardiology, neurology, oncology), the price tag will start in the six-figure realm and go up from there.
I take it you haven't been smacked with a six-figure medical bill yet.
I would also guess that you're not too old, and in fairly good health.
Don't forget some sort of disability/invalidity insurance (don't know if they've got that thing on your side of the pond, it's the big thing over here in Yurrop). If you can't get that (pre-existing medical conditions and certain professional fields are a factor here), go with accident insurance.
For all the things that don't kill you but make you unable to work.
"If it sounds too good to be true, it isn't."
Ask your doctor which one he would choose, and just go with it.
The answer will probably consist of the plan that makes him the most money.
However
Negative strangelets would be a completely different beast. It's not exactly sure whether they actually exist, or if they would be stable, but if the answer is yes for both questions, they could gobble up earth faster than a miniature black hole, since they would attract matter (positively charged atomic nuclei, mostly) by their electrical charge (negative), which is stronger by several orders of magnitude than the gravitational pull of a micro-micro-black hole.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik
Not as much visual appeal and pretty colors, but way more functional.
Yeah. Next thing you're saying is that handicapped access isn't necessary because all the dudes in wheelchairs can bring their own crane, huh ?
Needing a device to deal with an everyday item like cash is a pain in the ass. Also, those devices are hardly available for free.
Europe did something like that, uh, a couple of years ago. Some European countries did something similar even longer ago. Are you saying there's something Europe can do that the US are incapable of ?
It's perfectly doable to phase out old bills and phase in new ones.
Ain't going to happen. Europe does it (as well as integrating a whole bunch of additional anti-counterfeit measures), so it must be un-American. Never mind the blind, God (with a capital G) must hate them or they wouldn't be blind, right ? Also, it could help the terrorists. Dollar notes are just fine the way they are.
And those N^2 dots are not independent from each other. You cannot re-create every N^2 matrix by multiplying 2 N vectors. Your hypothetical compression would be lossy.
No. No. No.
As soon as you enforce some sort of format, you decrease the amount of data, by eliminating possible combinations of dots from the total pool.
Think about it: If you're trying to come up with a password, and introduce the rule "Capital letters must be adjacent to at least one more capital letter." - have you increased or decreased the number of possible passwords ?
So, how many verbal arguments do not lead to violence ? Did they consider that too ? They better had, or they might be dealing with lots and lots of false alarms.
Do you want the answer ?
Because they can. (And because most others cannot).
It's as simple as that.
What's even worse: A large number of the Americans who do know about the three tiers do not know that the system is far from being "rigid". Even if you attended the Hauptschule (that's the ditch digger tier), you can eventually gain the diplomas of the higher tiers and even go to university later in your life. It might need a bit of hard work (since you probably have a job while working on the diplomas), but it is entirely possible.
Just look at former chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He worked his way up from ditch diggers school all the way to a degree in Law. Gotta admire the guy, even if I didn't really agree with his politics.
"beer".
There are various degrees of "de-differentiation" (which means that the cancer cell loses the properties of the cells that make up the tissue it originally came from, like receptors). The worst case is turning into something completely unrecognizable. The more similarity to the original the cancer cells retain, the better is the outlook for treatment, because the cancer cells might still respond to certain signals (for example hormones) that slow down its rate of division.
, halfway across the galaxy, and yet it's still so hard to find planets.