Actually I'm much younger, but maybe my roommate was inflating the stratification of his schooling to make his lot out to be tougher than mine. I'm the one paying student loans regardless!
Dime-store psychology. Support your absolutist social claims regarding an inverse relationship between measured intelligence and physical violence with some kind of evidence! Otherwise you are building a hefty straw man which any reasonable examination will raze. This isn't a matter of political correctness; it is a matter of supporting an argument with facts instead of Hollywood stereotypes.
This is how they do it in the UK (or so my college roommate from Manchester told me). Brits are tracked early and often and it routes them right up through college (again, so he told me). This puts intense pressue on young kids to track right or else march off to work in the mines. Our system does not challenge the cream of the crop enough, but at least it is egalitarian enough to afford equal opportunity at every step. My school district broke down my class into three groups; remedial, academic, and honors. Credits and grades were weighted based on difficulty. Still, I got the most benefit out of the things I drove myself to do, even in college.
Also, bullying and violence is absolutely not exclusive to the "slow" and pacifism is not exclusive to the "geniuses". The "protection" argument is stirctly bogus.
At first I bristled at this idea, particularly since the BMI is total bunk and not an accurate/conistent indicator of anything. Then I reconsidered; this is not about incentive to be healthy, it is managed risk. All the insurance industry is doing here is going more granular with their risk assessments for their customers. Regardless of what causes conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, etc, they are still risk factors that incur healthcare costs with greater frequency and amplitude. Insurance is not about fairness, it is all about individual risk. I don't agree that the BMI is a good indicator of risk (too flawed to be a consistent indicator of "obesity"), but the other health conditions are.
The spooky thing here is what if we extend this demographic probability risk logic to more benign risk indicators like height, race, and gender? I'd bet there are stats out there that could be interpreted to indicate less risk for a 5'4" white woman than for a 6'3" black man; does that make it okay to charge the the latter more for the same health insurance? Either you are managing risk based on probability data or you aren't. Anything else is just a tax on hot-button health issues.
Ultimately this is the insurance companies' prerogative. The bastards.
There were indeed price/performance deltas back in the PPC days of the Mac, but with the Intel switch the list prices for Macs compared to Dells have equalized. In fact, a MacBook compared to a similarly-spec'd Dell XPS (the Inspiron line can't spec up to the MacBook) favor the Mac by better than 100 bucks. Actually, the XPS noted here is eerily similar to the Macbook... I'm sure it is just a coincidence.
MacBook midrange white @ $1,299 Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger 2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512 120GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm XGA 1280 by 800 (native) TFT display with built-in iSight SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Dell XPS M1330 white @ $1,474 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache Windows Vista Home Premium Edition XGA Standard Display with 2.0 Megapixel Webcam 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz 120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
The Dell has slightly better graphics capability and the Mac has a slight CPU advantage, but the point is the old bunk argument about how expensive Macs are is indeed just bunk. It doesn't matter if PC users chuck their rigs sooner or not- the Macs are less expensive than their brand name PC counterparts nowadays.
You also don't get things like group policy or centralized (to a server in your enterprise) updates.
You don't get that with Windows unless you are running a Windows server to push those policies and updates. Same with Macs. OS X Server offers these things along with pretty much everything else you'd expect from a server OS. And an unlimited license costs just $1000 and comes bundled with and Apple server. Cheap!
The big shortcoming with Apple and the enterprise is their treatment of enterprise customers; no roadmap, scattered support, no roadmap, stilted access to parts, and NO ROADMAP!
Lots of people use the WiMP, why would they have a problem with the GIMP? An earlier post noted how convoluted the Windows Start menu can get if left to its own devices. This is an excellent point, and both platforms have their incongruities with common sense. Software names almost never signify what they do. The bottom line is that users must develop a familiarity with their operating environment and the tools within it. Period.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually I'm much younger, but maybe my roommate was inflating the stratification of his schooling to make his lot out to be tougher than mine. I'm the one paying student loans regardless!
Dime-store psychology. Support your absolutist social claims regarding an inverse relationship between measured intelligence and physical violence with some kind of evidence! Otherwise you are building a hefty straw man which any reasonable examination will raze. This isn't a matter of political correctness; it is a matter of supporting an argument with facts instead of Hollywood stereotypes.
This is how they do it in the UK (or so my college roommate from Manchester told me). Brits are tracked early and often and it routes them right up through college (again, so he told me). This puts intense pressue on young kids to track right or else march off to work in the mines. Our system does not challenge the cream of the crop enough, but at least it is egalitarian enough to afford equal opportunity at every step. My school district broke down my class into three groups; remedial, academic, and honors. Credits and grades were weighted based on difficulty. Still, I got the most benefit out of the things I drove myself to do, even in college.
Also, bullying and violence is absolutely not exclusive to the "slow" and pacifism is not exclusive to the "geniuses". The "protection" argument is stirctly bogus.
At first I bristled at this idea, particularly since the BMI is total bunk and not an accurate/conistent indicator of anything. Then I reconsidered; this is not about incentive to be healthy, it is managed risk. All the insurance industry is doing here is going more granular with their risk assessments for their customers. Regardless of what causes conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, etc, they are still risk factors that incur healthcare costs with greater frequency and amplitude. Insurance is not about fairness, it is all about individual risk. I don't agree that the BMI is a good indicator of risk (too flawed to be a consistent indicator of "obesity"), but the other health conditions are.
The spooky thing here is what if we extend this demographic probability risk logic to more benign risk indicators like height, race, and gender? I'd bet there are stats out there that could be interpreted to indicate less risk for a 5'4" white woman than for a 6'3" black man; does that make it okay to charge the the latter more for the same health insurance? Either you are managing risk based on probability data or you aren't. Anything else is just a tax on hot-button health issues.
Ultimately this is the insurance companies' prerogative. The bastards.
There were indeed price/performance deltas back in the PPC days of the Mac, but with the Intel switch the list prices for Macs compared to Dells have equalized. In fact, a MacBook compared to a similarly-spec'd Dell XPS (the Inspiron line can't spec up to the MacBook) favor the Mac by better than 100 bucks. Actually, the XPS noted here is eerily similar to the Macbook... I'm sure it is just a coincidence.
MacBook midrange white @ $1,299
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x512
120GB Serial ATA @ 5400 rpm
XGA 1280 by 800 (native) TFT display with built-in iSight
SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
Dell XPS M1330 white @ $1,474
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB, 4MB Cache
Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
XGA Standard Display with 2.0 Megapixel Webcam
1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 667MHz
120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW Drive)
The Dell has slightly better graphics capability and the Mac has a slight CPU advantage, but the point is the old bunk argument about how expensive Macs are is indeed just bunk. It doesn't matter if PC users chuck their rigs sooner or not- the Macs are less expensive than their brand name PC counterparts nowadays.
You also don't get things like group policy or centralized (to a server in your enterprise) updates.
You don't get that with Windows unless you are running a Windows server to push those policies and updates. Same with Macs. OS X Server offers these things along with pretty much everything else you'd expect from a server OS. And an unlimited license costs just $1000 and comes bundled with and Apple server. Cheap!
The big shortcoming with Apple and the enterprise is their treatment of enterprise customers; no roadmap, scattered support, no roadmap, stilted access to parts, and NO ROADMAP!
Lots of people use the WiMP, why would they have a problem with the GIMP? An earlier post noted how convoluted the Windows Start menu can get if left to its own devices. This is an excellent point, and both platforms have their incongruities with common sense. Software names almost never signify what they do. The bottom line is that users must develop a familiarity with their operating environment and the tools within it. Period.