Create a new holding company in a different country (say USA or somewhere with desirable local laws) - transfer said.ca domain to new holding company.
Holding company has to have a Canadian presence to hold a.ca.
Try going to whatevermysiteis.COM" C. Tell offending government to go pound sand.
Except they can do more than pound sand, at least as long as FB is doing stuff in Canada, like running advertising.
I guess I am a little pig headed in all this - but really? Some country that you don't even have a presence in is telling you how to run your business? What are they going to do? Fine Facebook? Ok great.... Then what? since FB has no assets (presumably) in Canada - all they're going to get is a judgement. I recognize that these days, they may end up having assets in a banking institution that may have a presence in Canada which might result in a loss,
They have a enough of a presence that Canada can deny it to them, and cause a loss. No might. How significant the loss is anyone's guess, but they do have a presence. And it can be blocked or seized. Merely taking away their ability to advertise and run promotions in Canada etc will cost their bottom line.
but really, they are a US corporation doing things in the US.
They aren't only operating in America. They aren't merely passively accessible from other countries, they are actively conducting business in other countries.
They do business with people within those nations, but are not actually situated within those nations, unless of course they have some headquarters in that nation (or locality).
No. They don't need to headquarters in a nation. They don't even need a branch office. They don't need any staff at all. They only need to have a "presence".
So what is a "presence"?
Pretty much anything that is selling OR promoting your product or service in Canada would count -- "doing business in Canada".
Facebook in particular has deals with the major wireless carriers to promote 'facebook on your mobile phone', and that would qualify it having a Canadian presence. It is actively doing business in Canada.
But Joe Average American running a blog, per your example, is merely accessible from Canada, and he and his site don't have any Canadian presence.
Now if facebook doesn't actually have any offices or staff in Canada, there's not really much that the Canadian government can do directly to them, even if they are deemed to have a presence. But it can go after facebooks canadian partners (such as the aforementioned wireless carriers) and force them to cease dealing with facebook which gives them some limited leverage over facebook insofar as they can make it so that if facebook wants to continue running promotions in Canada, and have its 'app' and 'bookmarks' and whatnot preloaded on phones then it has to meet whatever laws are in place.
Meanwhile they would have zero leverage over your example Joe Average American blogger, who couldn't care what the Canadian governement does in Canada.
Whenever Valve or any other company wants to release DLC on the Xbox 360 or PS3, they have to pay either Microsoft or Sony to certify the content. They charge gamers to make up for the cost of this certification.
How much do you think MS charges to certify a map pack? Its not going to be 10s of thousands. If they just wanted to make up for the cost certification, they could charge 50 cents and still turn a profit. (Of course, charging 50 cents ends up costing 25 cents in transaction fees, so make it 75 cents...)
Of course, the fact that gamers will pay for downloadable content on consoles is certainly a good reason by itself...
This. They can, so they do. The price is set based on what people will pay, not on what it cost. (If it cost more than people would pay, they wouldn't do it, but the set price really has very little to do directly with the cost, beyond determining whether its worth doing in the first place. Business 101.)
No. That was just the FINAL hour before going to the hospital.
The fact remains that preventative dental cleaning is *more expensive* than the alternative. Period. You cannot argue it because the numbers do not lie. Even in the absolute worst case, its cheaper to extract once than to perpetualy clean.
Wow. You are a complete idiot.
1) Simple extractions only work if you do the tooth BEFORE its completely rotted and infected. So if your health care plan is to wait until people show up in the emergency room, then its too late to be a $100 extraction. And even in the cases where it CAN be extracted, its STILL going to cost more simply because it was done in the emergency room. The only way its going to be a $100 extraction is if you do it BEFORE it gets out of hand... and guess what, that's "preventative".
2) Simple extraction is only a fraction of the issue. A nontrivial number of extractions have complications from paralysis to infection. And leaving a gap has consequences too, the other teeth shift causing more problems both medical AND social. And one of those social problems is significantly increased difficulty in getting a job, even at the low end of the totem pole.
3) You've completely ignored any benefit to early detection and prevention or resolution of other diseases and conditions that are detected with routine oral checkups.
But hey, why not go with your plan... just extract everyones teeth, we'll be a toothless society! We won't be wasting any money on cleanings, or implants, or braces, or any of that rubbish. We can even say goodbye to our toothbrushes and toothpaste. Our GDP will go up because there will be no time off work for dental care, and we'll have more spare time without all that brushing.
It sounds like you are trying to disagree with me.
Boot from linux cd/thumb drive, mount the filesystems, game over. Or are we discussing people who actually do encryption? Do you know of real production examples of people doing that?
But then you continue by confirming everything I said, and include examples.
Um... thanks?
For what its worth its not a windows specfic situation either. It applies to Linux and OSX too.
Is it much harder now? Especially when you have access to the hardware.
Actually both 2003 and 2008 have the ability to be exceedingly hard. 2008 moreso than 2003. But in my experience the vast majority servers are very very rarely configured to make it hard.
With a vanilla set up, they are relatively easy **with physical access**.
..of those that have no health insurance, about 0%.
But that's not 300 million people now is it? So you just pick whatever suits you?
I guess you havent let a tooth rot out. If you had,...
I was in my early twenties, broke, and living on my own. After I spent an hour just rocking back and forth on the floor waiting for the pain to subside, well past the point where I had already tried to use a pair of pliers on it but couldn't get a grip... a friend took me to the hospital.
You obviously worry constantly about every little ailment.
You don't even begin to have a clue.
Thats right. It ends in no pain every single time. The nerve dies. No nerve, no pain.
While I believe you, that it would have eventually subsided, I didn't wait to find out. No sane person would have.... your willfully blind ignorance
This coming from a guy who thinks "prevention" is some sort of snake oil scam.
But your right, its no longer productive to converse.
WOW is constantly changing and improving, and through that, getting new players. It doesn't have this ever-shrinking player base as you insinuate.
Changing yes. Improving, though is debatable. The early game has been accelerated so badly, that you get to the late game without acquiring any of the skills or knowledge or experience you actually need at the late game, and then they get ostracized by the players who expect you to have a clue.
Some friends looked at Aion and specifically said "It's a WOW clone. Why would I drop all my characters and knowledge and friends in WOW to play a slightly shinier WOW clone?"
Because its a whole new world to explore, a whole new set of boss encounters to master, secrets to find. Your friends would rather run another alt up in WoW? That's demented.
And its not like your WoW account disappears if you cancel it for a few months. And its not like you can't try out the new game with some friends.
Show me an independent study for each and every prevenative thing that you propose
And who is going to fund each of these independant studies? And will you actually believe anything that they conclude? Somehow I doubt it.
300 million people * $200/year for dental cleanings is $60 billion dollars/year. Thats just ONE SINGLE "preventative" THING.
What percentage of those people are already getting them done? 40%? 50%? Its not going to cost $60billion more, if half of us are already paying for them anyway.
As a point of reference, a tooth extraction costs between $100 and $200 and when they fall out on their own, its free.
Sure. But a rotten tooth left to its own devices goes something more like this: mild pain / soreness -> intermittent excruciating pain -> constant excruciating unmanagable pain with nausea and dizzyness
now we have a trip the emergency room - that's several times what the extraction would have cost right there $$$ where they dispense something to manage the pain $ and discover its too late for an extraction, the tooth has rotted and will require a root canal instead $$$ and worse its become infected too $$ and taken out the tooth next to it as well, also requiring a root canal $$$ and due to the infection, anesthesia, etc they can't send him home, so that's an overnight in a hospital bed $$$/hour.
What could and should have been a $100 extraction ends up costing the system $10,000+.
And another point of reference: regular dental checkups leads to early detection of a number of mouth, throat, & salivary cancers, each of which is stupidly expensive. And that much more expensive (and lethal) the later they are caught -- say in moderately/advanced stages discovered in an emergency room.
And another point of reference: once diagnosed with cancer - proper dental care is crucial in most cancer therapies - such as radiation therapy. For example proper dental care of a cancer patient dramatically reduces the incidence of mucositis, which is an expensive complication of radiation therapy, requiring feeding tubs, extended hospitilaztion, etc, etc, etc. Giving someone radiation therapy, but not taking care of their mouth will lead to all kinds of serious and expensive complications.
I'm sorry but the people telling me that prevenative medicine saves money are the same people who profit from preventative medicine.
There is such a thing as too much / needless preventative medicine to be sure. But you lose all credibility if you seriously are going to contend that prevention doesn't save money in the long run.
Do you trust your accountant to not embezzle from you? Do you trust the rest of your staff to not slack off every time you turn your back?
The difference being that I hire my staff, and I get to know them, and I supervise them, so yes I trust the people I hire. I might be wrong about them... but I sleep comfortably at night.
Remote admin for IT... I might meet their sales rep. I may or may not meet their network engineers who actually do the work, ever. They might be high quality professional people, they might be like those best buy geek squad employees that root your hard drive for porn and media while they are supposed to be sorting out why someone ipod won't connect...
And quite bluntly, I have little doubt that a LOT of these outsourced IT firms have people who will, when they are bored (perhaps even from home), log in and root around... or browse for porn from your terminal server.
After all where do you think geek squad people apply for jobs? Local outsourced IT is a great land for them... its a bump in pay, work they can do and likely enjoy (setup a vpn, recover a deleted file, restart a print spooler, manage the backups, install patches, upgrade apps, whatever...)
If its one of the ones that rooted customers hard drives for porn and mp3s they'll take those ethics with them... and I wouldn't put it past them to root around for whatever they can find... corporate credit card numbers, payroll information, not to mention look for porn, and mp3s... (many small business PCs are really no different than home pcs in this regard...)
Me, I trust staff more than outsourced IT, no question. And I would entrust critical data to internal staff over outsourced company. But most data really isn't all that critical, and to the OP, yeah its normal for outsourced IT to operate remotely, and nothing to inherently be wary of.
But their is a WIDE range of what level of professionalism they'll offer in terms of documenting what they do, and how they manage your systems.
Making things up much? There is a difference between taxes covering people with emergencies, and taxes covering people that would otherwise not run to the doctor.
Thing is, you are covering people when they run to the doctor far too often to fix something that could have been resolved for a fraction of the cost had you covered a routine check up, instead of waiting until they run to emergency.
To use a car analogy the current system amounts to providing people a new engine when it catastrophically expires. And yet it refuses to cover oil changes and tune ups.
That's a forumula that leads to replacing a lot of expensive engines needlessly.
You are claiming that I am already paying for both, but thats not the case. Your entire arguement relies on me buying disingenuous claims about the current situation that are patently and demonstrably false.
Right. You are already paying for new engines. Why not extend the plan to cover tune ups and repairs; it won't cost as much as you think, because you'll need to replace a lot fewer engines... and you are ALREADY paying for engines.
There is nothing disingenuous about my claims, except that you wish them to be.
Medicaid is a fine example of a failed system.
Yes, a failed system in a failed economy in a failed state. So lets not reform it? lets not try and fix it? Lets just piss and moan while the status quo drags us ever downward instead? I'm not sure what your point is there.
They shall tax me for the governments contractless version. Sure, I can keep my private insurance.. but will be paying twice.
Yes. You would absolutely effectively be paying for both. I'm not arguing or pretending otherwise. But your ignoring the fact that you are paying for both now. Only its not called health care its called "medicaid plus whatever plus everyone else showing up in the emergency room". The only thing that changes is how much. And long term, reform could very well cost less than the status quo. You are already paying twice.
I'd hardly call this a cue to shout into the streets about your loss of "FREEDOM" and "CHOICES".
Wrong. This is [...] mandatory payment.
"Mandatory payment" is another way of saying taxes. So we agree.
As for "Mandatory coverage"; you misreading it. Its mandatory that you have coverage, and if you don't have other coverage then you have government coverage. There is a difference.
Only a chump sucker fresh out of an acedemy might think that this wont adversely effect the private insurance industry. Its going to fucking destroy it.
Really? You and many others claim you won't use it and will stick to private. So doing that should keep them going. People are only going to drop private if the government option is better value. I somehow doubt that you beleive that will be the case, given how awful you seem to think it will be.
Seriously, read the bill... ok ok its 1000 pages... but at least read some credible summaries of the bill and verify them, and how it works, and how it affects your private insurance. The reform really is not what you seem to think it is.
They *can* do that now (no "will", no "likely"), without any nationalized medicine. Its called regulation, and they already heavily regulate this industry.
They are effectively expanding the size and scope of medicaid, which gives them more leverage and market power to affect things while working within the free market. I think that's better than even trying to start a debate on government regulation on the price of medicine. I can see the rhetoric now... "Obama wants to turn this country into the USSR and set the price of milk and shoes next." "Obama wants to kill your Grandma by preventing poor little pharma from being able to fund research into [Alzheimars/Cancer/...]"
I mean seriously... they propose making 'end of life counseling available" (something that's actually already in many good private insurance policies too) and they call it "death panels" that will trick the elderly into turning down care, or even just outright effectively sentence them to death...
Whether you like it or not, the people actually paying the freight for health care in the US (us taxpayers) right now do have this thing called FREEDOM. And we have CHOICES we can make regarding health care.
You still will have that choice. The private system isn't going anywhere. Keep using it if you prefer it, and find it serves your needs better for the price.
Only a complete twit would try and frame this as a loss of "FREEDOM" or "CHOICES".
What the hell is going to get BETTER by turning health care over the the US government?
Based on EVERY OTHER COUNTRY that did it:
1) health care cost goes down as a percentage of GDP 2) quality of health care overall goes up 3) fewer health care 'atrocities' committed, such as crowed hospitals dumping uninsured people into alleys
Perhaps you should research your argument before you regurgitate your talking points and CAPITAL letters.
Better job or not, I have a CONTRACT with my insurance company with mutualy agreeable terms.
And you can keep it. The government health reform doesn't take away your option to obtain coverage with an insurance company of your choosing.
That is probably the most amusing part of this debate, really. *IF* you can afford and have alternative private health insurance and you have no intention of using the government option, what do you care how well they run it. Its not going to affect you.
So really, the ONLY objection someone like you should have regarding the health reform bill is regarding what it will cost you in taxes. And the most ironic thing about this whole fiasco is that number is largely a complete unknown... it might even save money in the long run, as all those millions of underinsured and uninsured people currently get their "health care" at the emergency room when things are critical which is the most expensive possible way to provide health care... an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure and all that.
Not to mention that the government will likely be able to bring the price of pills down, as well (given medication prices in other countries as an example). So overall, this might actually reduce costs overall, and as far as the care YOU personally receive it makes no difference at all. Carry on with your "CONTRACT with mutually agreeable terms"; nobody is standing in your way.
Does this include the fact that it's over a thousand pages long,
No. It should be shorter. But I don't really think that's really a realistic expectation.
and the fact that Obama is trying to get it passed without giving anybody in Congress a chance to read it, or even have their staff read it for them?
Then again, with 1000 pages to pluck issues with, they shouldn't have to resort to making stuff up.
Should they be given more time to debate it is almost a red herring. They've had time to examine it; and they've got more than enough staff to break it up into manageable chunks, especially if they spread the work between them. The bulk of it really isn't that contentious, and they should be able to identify the contentious bits quickly... all that is true... and yet they aren't really debating it now.
If we actually gave them more time, I still doubt they'd actually read it or debate it. The talking points and positions were written and entrenched before it came off the press. I'm not sure what benefit there would be to prolonging this 'debate' such as it is.
Do you think that voting to get a pig in a poke is reasonable?
If there was really a cat in the bag, they would know about it by now.
The point began and ended with noting that the U.S. federal government is well-known for its gaffes, and that they're never referenced in any debate on health reform.
And my counter point was that the private enterprise is known for its gaffes too, and covering them up, and denying any accountability. Not to mention operating at a far lower level of scrutiny. And all this isn't referenced either.
I don't know why you took such a simple idea and ran for the hills with it
If by "ran for the hills with it", you mean that I pointed out that your point really applies just as well vs private health care, then sure. Maybe I made the point with antagonistic rhetoric, but really, my point was as simple as yours, and directed right at it.
I like how you leapt from assumption to assumption until you landed at your preferred conclusion.
I'm curious what you think my conclusion was.
The only assumption I made was that the parent poster has zero data whatsoever that would demonstrate that the people currently running health care aren't making worse mistakes / decisions.
And my conclusion, for the record, really wasn't that government health care would be better or more reliable or anything. My point was that before we label the government as categorically unfit to run it, we should establish that the people currently in charge are actually doing a better job than the gov't would.
As far as my bias on the subject, yes, I am in favor of govt doing what they are proposing. Everything I've read and seen about the actual bill (as opposed to stuff like that vacuum skulled Palin's fictional death panels) is quite reasonable.
And there is clear evidence from Europe and Canada that government run health care is delivering better results than the status quo, and at lower costs.
And finally, the govt ALREADY runs health care for the military and has for decades, and I don't think they've proven categorically unfit to run it -- and I don't see any horrific "death panels", nor do I see any "washington bureaucrats blocking doctors from giving care" either.
This is why the health care reform debate is a shit-flinging monkey fight.
Its a shit flinging monkey fight because, in this case, the right is making asses of themselves.
(And I'm not saying the left don't make asses of themselves on a regular basis, but in this case, its the right.)
On the one hand, are you under some delusion that your health insurance company is somehow doing a better job? With greater reliability, efficiency, and accountability? Fewer errors, fewer denied valid claims?? Do you just take it on faith, or do you have any evidence at all that your insurance company is doing a better job?
4 hours a day in most other games, not casual. In EVE, that's casual.
I don't think you know what casual is. Even 4 hours a day is not casual.
4-8 hours a WEEK is casual. A few hours on Monday, then again for a quick hour on Wednesday, and then maybe a 6 hour session on Saturday, the following week its 3 hours on Tuesday and that's it. The week after that its 4 hours Tuesday, and 8 on Sunday. That's how casuals play. Casually, when it suits, working around their regular schedule.
Four hours a day, isn't casual, its full on part time job. More than four hours a day starts to get into the territory of a full time job.
of DVD players is illegal? I mean they are specifically designed to circumvent DVD encryption.
Of course not. They are expressly licensed and given the keys to do what they do. Its not 'circumvention' when you have the owners key AND their express permission.
Have some care for whomever is paying for the upbound bandwidth... if you ball out midway through, having each item on separate pages means they don't have to send what you don't look at.
Interesting theory. But how would doling out 4 more paragraphs per page, and making a 20 page article 4 pages break the bank? In fact, I'd argue that on the vast majority of sites all the 'structure' (javascript, html tables, classes names, ids, spans, menu items, etc) that goes with each page makes it take far more bandwidth to send 20 separate pages than the 4 extra paragraphs would.
I have to occasionally run some really old software for programming old Motorola 2-way radios and other similiar equipment. The software is dos only and is not usb-serial port adapter aware. Further, it just doesn't work well in emulation (dosbox, virtualpc, etc...).
I have an old Panasonic laptop with a serial port that I drag around for when I have to deal with these and other situations.
Not everything can be solved with an adapter.
I agree serial is dying. But for me at least, it won't be dead for some years yet.
Premier edition has ads, standard is "free, ad supported". Your right, I don't think they actually show ads on spreadsheets and documents, at this time... yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Create a new holding company in a different country (say USA or somewhere with desirable local laws) - transfer said .ca domain to new holding company.
Holding company has to have a Canadian presence to hold a .ca.
Try going to whatevermysiteis.COM" C. Tell offending government to go pound sand.
Except they can do more than pound sand, at least as long as FB is doing stuff in Canada, like running advertising.
I guess I am a little pig headed in all this - but really? Some country that you don't even have a presence in is telling you how to run your business? What are they going to do? Fine Facebook? Ok great.... Then what? since FB has no assets (presumably) in Canada - all they're going to get is a judgement. I recognize that these days, they may end up having assets in a banking institution that may have a presence in Canada which might result in a loss,
They have a enough of a presence that Canada can deny it to them, and cause a loss. No might. How significant the loss is anyone's guess, but they do have a presence. And it can be blocked or seized. Merely taking away their ability to advertise and run promotions in Canada etc will cost their bottom line.
but really, they are a US corporation doing things in the US.
They aren't only operating in America. They aren't merely passively accessible from other countries, they are actively conducting business in other countries.
They do business with people within those nations, but are not actually situated within those nations, unless of course they have some headquarters in that nation (or locality).
No. They don't need to headquarters in a nation. They don't even need a branch office. They don't need any staff at all. They only need to have a "presence".
So what is a "presence"?
Pretty much anything that is selling OR promoting your product or service in Canada would count -- "doing business in Canada".
Facebook in particular has deals with the major wireless carriers to promote 'facebook on your mobile phone', and that would qualify it having a Canadian presence. It is actively doing business in Canada.
But Joe Average American running a blog, per your example, is merely accessible from Canada, and he and his site don't have any Canadian presence.
Now if facebook doesn't actually have any offices or staff in Canada, there's not really much that the Canadian government can do directly to them, even if they are deemed to have a presence. But it can go after facebooks canadian partners (such as the aforementioned wireless carriers) and force them to cease dealing with facebook which gives them some limited leverage over facebook insofar as they can make it so that if facebook wants to continue running promotions in Canada, and have its 'app' and 'bookmarks' and whatnot preloaded on phones then it has to meet whatever laws are in place.
Meanwhile they would have zero leverage over your example Joe Average American blogger, who couldn't care what the Canadian governement does in Canada.
Whenever Valve or any other company wants to release DLC on the Xbox 360 or PS3, they have to pay either Microsoft or Sony to certify the content. They charge gamers to make up for the cost of this certification.
How much do you think MS charges to certify a map pack? Its not going to be 10s of thousands. If they just wanted to make up for the cost certification, they could charge 50 cents and still turn a profit. (Of course, charging 50 cents ends up costing 25 cents in transaction fees, so make it 75 cents...)
Of course, the fact that gamers will pay for downloadable content on consoles is certainly a good reason by itself...
This. They can, so they do. The price is set based on what people will pay, not on what it cost. (If it cost more than people would pay, they wouldn't do it, but the set price really has very little to do directly with the cost, beyond determining whether its worth doing in the first place. Business 101.)
A whole hour? WOW!
No. That was just the FINAL hour before going to the hospital.
The fact remains that preventative dental cleaning is *more expensive* than the alternative. Period. You cannot argue it because the numbers do not lie. Even in the absolute worst case, its cheaper to extract once than to perpetualy clean.
Wow. You are a complete idiot.
1) Simple extractions only work if you do the tooth BEFORE its completely rotted and infected. So if your health care plan is to wait until people show up in the emergency room, then its too late to be a $100 extraction. And even in the cases where it CAN be extracted, its STILL going to cost more simply because it was done in the emergency room. The only way its going to be a $100 extraction is if you do it BEFORE it gets out of hand... and guess what, that's "preventative".
2) Simple extraction is only a fraction of the issue. A nontrivial number of extractions have complications from paralysis to infection. And leaving a gap has consequences too, the other teeth shift causing more problems both medical AND social. And one of those social problems is significantly increased difficulty in getting a job, even at the low end of the totem pole.
3) You've completely ignored any benefit to early detection and prevention or resolution of other diseases and conditions that are detected with routine oral checkups.
But hey, why not go with your plan... just extract everyones teeth, we'll be a toothless society! We won't be wasting any money on cleanings, or implants, or braces, or any of that rubbish. We can even say goodbye to our toothbrushes and toothpaste. Our GDP will go up because there will be no time off work for dental care, and we'll have more spare time without all that brushing.
Its a flawless plan.
You go girl!
Really?
It sounds like you are trying to disagree with me.
Boot from linux cd/thumb drive, mount the filesystems, game over.
Or are we discussing people who actually do encryption? Do you know of real production examples of people doing that?
But then you continue by confirming everything I said, and include examples.
Um... thanks?
For what its worth its not a windows specfic situation either. It applies to Linux and OSX too.
Is it much harder now? Especially when you have access to the hardware.
Actually both 2003 and 2008 have the ability to be exceedingly hard. 2008 moreso than 2003. But in my experience the vast majority servers are very very rarely configured to make it hard.
With a vanilla set up, they are relatively easy **with physical access**.
..of those that have no health insurance, about 0%.
But that's not 300 million people now is it? So you just pick whatever suits you?
I guess you havent let a tooth rot out. If you had,...
I was in my early twenties, broke, and living on my own. After I spent an hour just rocking back and forth on the floor waiting for the pain to subside, well past the point where I had already tried to use a pair of pliers on it but couldn't get a grip... a friend took me to the hospital.
You obviously worry constantly about every little ailment.
You don't even begin to have a clue.
Thats right. It ends in no pain every single time. The nerve dies. No nerve, no pain.
While I believe you, that it would have eventually subsided, I didn't wait to find out. No sane person would have. ... your willfully blind ignorance
This coming from a guy who thinks "prevention" is some sort of snake oil scam.
But your right, its no longer productive to converse.
WOW is constantly changing and improving, and through that, getting new players. It doesn't have this ever-shrinking player base as you insinuate.
Changing yes. Improving, though is debatable. The early game has been accelerated so badly, that you get to the late game without acquiring any of the skills or knowledge or experience you actually need at the late game, and then they get ostracized by the players who expect you to have a clue.
Some friends looked at Aion and specifically said "It's a WOW clone. Why would I drop all my characters and knowledge and friends in WOW to play a slightly shinier WOW clone?"
Because its a whole new world to explore, a whole new set of boss encounters to master, secrets to find. Your friends would rather run another alt up in WoW? That's demented.
And its not like your WoW account disappears if you cancel it for a few months. And its not like you can't try out the new game with some friends.
Show me an independent study for each and every prevenative thing that you propose
And who is going to fund each of these independant studies? And will you actually believe anything that they conclude? Somehow I doubt it.
300 million people * $200/year for dental cleanings is $60 billion dollars/year. Thats just ONE SINGLE "preventative" THING.
What percentage of those people are already getting them done? 40%? 50%? Its not going to cost $60billion more, if half of us are already paying for them anyway.
As a point of reference, a tooth extraction costs between $100 and $200 and when they fall out on their own, its free.
Sure. But a rotten tooth left to its own devices goes something more like this:
mild pain / soreness -> intermittent excruciating pain ->
constant excruciating unmanagable pain with nausea and dizzyness
now we have a trip the emergency room - that's several times what the extraction would have cost right there $$$
where they dispense something to manage the pain $
and discover its too late for an extraction, the tooth has rotted and will require a root canal instead $$$
and worse its become infected too $$
and taken out the tooth next to it as well, also requiring a root canal $$$
and due to the infection, anesthesia, etc they can't send him home, so that's an overnight in a hospital bed $$$/hour.
What could and should have been a $100 extraction ends up costing the system $10,000+.
And another point of reference: regular dental checkups leads to early detection of a number of mouth, throat, & salivary cancers, each of which is stupidly expensive. And that much more expensive (and lethal) the later they are caught -- say in moderately/advanced stages discovered in an emergency room.
And another point of reference: once diagnosed with cancer - proper dental care is crucial in most cancer therapies - such as radiation therapy. For example proper dental care of a cancer patient dramatically reduces the incidence of mucositis, which is an expensive complication of radiation therapy, requiring feeding tubs, extended hospitilaztion, etc, etc, etc. Giving someone radiation therapy, but not taking care of their mouth will lead to all kinds of serious and expensive complications.
I'm sorry but the people telling me that prevenative medicine saves money are the same people who profit from preventative medicine.
There is such a thing as too much / needless preventative medicine to be sure. But you lose all credibility if you seriously are going to contend that prevention doesn't save money in the long run.
Do you trust your accountant to not embezzle from you? Do you trust the rest of your staff to not slack off every time you turn your back? The difference being that I hire my staff, and I get to know them, and I supervise them, so yes I trust the people I hire. I might be wrong about them... but I sleep comfortably at night. Remote admin for IT... I might meet their sales rep. I may or may not meet their network engineers who actually do the work, ever. They might be high quality professional people, they might be like those best buy geek squad employees that root your hard drive for porn and media while they are supposed to be sorting out why someone ipod won't connect... And quite bluntly, I have little doubt that a LOT of these outsourced IT firms have people who will, when they are bored (perhaps even from home), log in and root around... or browse for porn from your terminal server. After all where do you think geek squad people apply for jobs? Local outsourced IT is a great land for them... its a bump in pay, work they can do and likely enjoy (setup a vpn, recover a deleted file, restart a print spooler, manage the backups, install patches, upgrade apps, whatever...) If its one of the ones that rooted customers hard drives for porn and mp3s they'll take those ethics with them... and I wouldn't put it past them to root around for whatever they can find... corporate credit card numbers, payroll information, not to mention look for porn, and mp3s... (many small business PCs are really no different than home pcs in this regard...) Me, I trust staff more than outsourced IT, no question. And I would entrust critical data to internal staff over outsourced company. But most data really isn't all that critical, and to the OP, yeah its normal for outsourced IT to operate remotely, and nothing to inherently be wary of. But their is a WIDE range of what level of professionalism they'll offer in terms of documenting what they do, and how they manage your systems.
Making things up much? There is a difference between taxes covering people with emergencies, and taxes covering people that would otherwise not run to the doctor.
Thing is, you are covering people when they run to the doctor far too often to fix something that could have been resolved for a fraction of the cost had you covered a routine check up, instead of waiting until they run to emergency.
To use a car analogy the current system amounts to providing people a new engine when it catastrophically expires. And yet it refuses to cover oil changes and tune ups.
That's a forumula that leads to replacing a lot of expensive engines needlessly.
You are claiming that I am already paying for both, but thats not the case. Your entire arguement relies on me buying disingenuous claims about the current situation that are patently and demonstrably false.
Right. You are already paying for new engines. Why not extend the plan to cover tune ups and repairs; it won't cost as much as you think, because you'll need to replace a lot fewer engines... and you are ALREADY paying for engines.
There is nothing disingenuous about my claims, except that you wish them to be.
Medicaid is a fine example of a failed system.
Yes, a failed system in a failed economy in a failed state. So lets not reform it? lets not try and fix it? Lets just piss and moan while the status quo drags us ever downward instead? I'm not sure what your point is there.
They shall tax me for the governments contractless version. Sure, I can keep my private insurance.. but will be paying twice.
Yes. You would absolutely effectively be paying for both. I'm not arguing or pretending otherwise. But your ignoring the fact that you are paying for both now. Only its not called health care its called "medicaid plus whatever plus everyone else showing up in the emergency room". The only thing that changes is how much. And long term, reform could very well cost less than the status quo. You are already paying twice.
I'd hardly call this a cue to shout into the streets about your loss of "FREEDOM" and "CHOICES".
Wrong. This is [...] mandatory payment.
"Mandatory payment" is another way of saying taxes. So we agree.
As for "Mandatory coverage"; you misreading it. Its mandatory that you have coverage, and if you don't have other coverage then you have government coverage. There is a difference.
Only a chump sucker fresh out of an acedemy might think that this wont adversely effect the private insurance industry. Its going to fucking destroy it.
Really? You and many others claim you won't use it and will stick to private. So doing that should keep them going. People are only going to drop private if the government option is better value. I somehow doubt that you beleive that will be the case, given how awful you seem to think it will be.
Seriously, read the bill... ok ok its 1000 pages... but at least read some credible summaries of the bill and verify them, and how it works, and how it affects your private insurance. The reform really is not what you seem to think it is.
They *can* do that now (no "will", no "likely"), without any nationalized medicine. Its called regulation, and they already heavily regulate this industry.
They are effectively expanding the size and scope of medicaid, which gives them more leverage and market power to affect things while working within the free market. I think that's better than even trying to start a debate on government regulation on the price of medicine. I can see the rhetoric now... "Obama wants to turn this country into the USSR and set the price of milk and shoes next." "Obama wants to kill your Grandma by preventing poor little pharma from being able to fund research into [Alzheimars/Cancer/...]"
I mean seriously... they propose making 'end of life counseling available" (something that's actually already in many good private insurance policies too) and they call it "death panels" that will trick the elderly into turning down care, or even just outright effectively sentence them to death...
Whether you like it or not, the people actually paying the freight for health care in the US (us taxpayers) right now do have this thing called FREEDOM. And we have CHOICES we can make regarding health care.
You still will have that choice. The private system isn't going anywhere. Keep using it if you prefer it, and find it serves your needs better for the price.
Only a complete twit would try and frame this as a loss of "FREEDOM" or "CHOICES".
What the hell is going to get BETTER by turning health care over the the US government?
Based on EVERY OTHER COUNTRY that did it:
1) health care cost goes down as a percentage of GDP
2) quality of health care overall goes up
3) fewer health care 'atrocities' committed, such as crowed hospitals dumping uninsured people into alleys
Perhaps you should research your argument before you regurgitate your talking points and CAPITAL letters.
Better job or not, I have a CONTRACT with my insurance company with mutualy agreeable terms.
And you can keep it. The government health reform doesn't take away your option to obtain coverage with an insurance company of your choosing.
That is probably the most amusing part of this debate, really. *IF* you can afford and have alternative private health insurance and you have no intention of using the government option, what do you care how well they run it. Its not going to affect you.
So really, the ONLY objection someone like you should have regarding the health reform bill is regarding what it will cost you in taxes. And the most ironic thing about this whole fiasco is that number is largely a complete unknown... it might even save money in the long run, as all those millions of underinsured and uninsured people currently get their "health care" at the emergency room when things are critical which is the most expensive possible way to provide health care... an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure and all that.
Not to mention that the government will likely be able to bring the price of pills down, as well (given medication prices in other countries as an example). So overall, this might actually reduce costs overall, and as far as the care YOU personally receive it makes no difference at all. Carry on with your "CONTRACT with mutually agreeable terms"; nobody is standing in your way.
Does this include the fact that it's over a thousand pages long,
No. It should be shorter. But I don't really think that's really a realistic expectation.
and the fact that Obama is trying to get it passed without giving anybody in Congress a chance to read it, or even have their staff read it for them?
Then again, with 1000 pages to pluck issues with, they shouldn't have to resort to making stuff up.
Should they be given more time to debate it is almost a red herring. They've had time to examine it; and they've got more than enough staff to break it up into manageable chunks, especially if they spread the work between them. The bulk of it really isn't that contentious, and they should be able to identify the contentious bits quickly... all that is true... and yet they aren't really debating it now.
If we actually gave them more time, I still doubt they'd actually read it or debate it. The talking points and positions were written and entrenched before it came off the press. I'm not sure what benefit there would be to prolonging this 'debate' such as it is.
Do you think that voting to get a pig in a poke is reasonable?
If there was really a cat in the bag, they would know about it by now.
The point began and ended with noting that the U.S. federal government is well-known for its gaffes, and that they're never referenced in any debate on health reform.
And my counter point was that the private enterprise is known for its gaffes too, and covering them up, and denying any accountability. Not to mention operating at a far lower level of scrutiny. And all this isn't referenced either.
I don't know why you took such a simple idea and ran for the hills with it
If by "ran for the hills with it", you mean that I pointed out that your point really applies just as well vs private health care, then sure. Maybe I made the point with antagonistic rhetoric, but really, my point was as simple as yours, and directed right at it.
I like money.
Until you need health care.
I like how you leapt from assumption to assumption until you landed at your preferred conclusion.
I'm curious what you think my conclusion was.
The only assumption I made was that the parent poster has zero data whatsoever that would demonstrate that the people currently running health care aren't making worse mistakes / decisions.
And my conclusion, for the record, really wasn't that government health care would be better or more reliable or anything. My point was that before we label the government as categorically unfit to run it, we should establish that the people currently in charge are actually doing a better job than the gov't would.
As far as my bias on the subject, yes, I am in favor of govt doing what they are proposing. Everything I've read and seen about the actual bill (as opposed to stuff like that vacuum skulled Palin's fictional death panels) is quite reasonable.
And there is clear evidence from Europe and Canada that government run health care is delivering better results than the status quo, and at lower costs.
And finally, the govt ALREADY runs health care for the military and has for decades, and I don't think they've proven categorically unfit to run it -- and I don't see any horrific "death panels", nor do I see any "washington bureaucrats blocking doctors from giving care" either.
This is why the health care reform debate is a shit-flinging monkey fight.
Its a shit flinging monkey fight because, in this case, the right is making asses of themselves.
(And I'm not saying the left don't make asses of themselves on a regular basis, but in this case, its the right.)
Well they're making tons of money, so they must be doing something right! =D\
Yes, but is it providing health care to those who need it? Or is it providing health care until you need it?
Turns out the latter is much more profitable. That's what shareholders want. But is that what anyone looking for health care actually wants?
LET'S LET THEM RUN HEALTH CARE NEXT!
Yes, let's.
On the one hand, are you under some delusion that your health insurance company is somehow doing a better job? With greater reliability, efficiency, and accountability? Fewer errors, fewer denied valid claims?? Do you just take it on faith, or do you have any evidence at all that your insurance company is doing a better job?
4 hours a day in most other games, not casual. In EVE, that's casual.
I don't think you know what casual is. Even 4 hours a day is not casual.
4-8 hours a WEEK is casual. A few hours on Monday, then again for a quick hour on Wednesday, and then maybe a 6 hour session on Saturday, the following week its 3 hours on Tuesday and that's it. The week after that its 4 hours Tuesday, and 8 on Sunday. That's how casuals play. Casually, when it suits, working around their regular schedule.
Four hours a day, isn't casual, its full on part time job. More than four hours a day starts to get into the territory of a full time job.
of DVD players is illegal? I mean they are specifically designed to circumvent DVD encryption.
Of course not. They are expressly licensed and given the keys to do what they do. Its not 'circumvention' when you have the owners key AND their express permission.
Have some care for whomever is paying for the upbound bandwidth... if you ball out midway through, having each item on separate pages means they don't have to send what you don't look at.
Interesting theory. But how would doling out 4 more paragraphs per page, and making a 20 page article 4 pages break the bank? In fact, I'd argue that on the vast majority of sites all the 'structure' (javascript, html tables, classes names, ids, spans, menu items, etc) that goes with each page makes it take far more bandwidth to send 20 separate pages than the 4 extra paragraphs would.
I have to occasionally run some really old software for programming old Motorola 2-way radios and other similiar equipment. The software is dos only and is not usb-serial port adapter aware. Further, it just doesn't work well in emulation (dosbox, virtualpc, etc...).
I have an old Panasonic laptop with a serial port that I drag around for when I have to deal with these and other situations.
Not everything can be solved with an adapter.
I agree serial is dying. But for me at least, it won't be dead for some years yet.
Premier edition has ads, standard is "free, ad supported". Your right, I don't think they actually show ads on spreadsheets and documents, at this time... yet.