Not true. Many contractors get in on a group policy, either through a professional organization or a staffing firm for professionals. Getting married is another option, although that idea isn't to popular among the slashdot crowd.
I suppose dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda does take quite a while on larger drives...
It does, but "throw a bunch of acid on the platters" seems like a bit of a weird, mad scientist solution to trivial-to-solve problem.
Encrypt your entire 3TB hard drive with a 2,048-bit key. When the bad guys come a-knockin', don't zero out the 3TB of data. Zero out the 2,048 bit key, which takes just a few ms. Now instead of 3TB of useful data, you'll have 3TB of pseudorandom garbage.
However, where the rubber meets the road is in front of a jury of people who likely have little clue, nor really care about official P&P.
My understanding is that a jury will never see evidence that was obtained through improper procedures. When the system functions as intended, the judge would bar improperly-obtained evidence from being presented at trial.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but cookbook-type books are generally intended to provide code samples and ideas that will work out of the box.
Drupal releases updates pretty aggressively. Why would you want a Drupal 6 cookbook when Drupal 7 is already out? The review mentions that the two releases are similar, but so what? Drupal 6 code may still run, but surely best practices have changed from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.
At the present time, a cookbook on Drupal 6 is about as useful as a poopy flavored lollipop.
He didn't take a serious look either, he is just gutting programs he doesn't agree with too.
I think the only way to get the budget under control is to quit playing favorites. Cutting the budget always polls more favorably than cutting any specific program. The powerful and well-connected will always make cuts impossible.
Instead, cut every budget line-item by an equal percentage, and let each individual program/department/whatever figure out how to deal with it. Put whatever rules in place that enables this to happen (allow the federal government to conduct layoffs, etc.) That way, nobody can whine, lobby, bribe, blackmail, or whatever other technique they find effective. You want your least-favorite program to get cut? You'll have to accept that your most-favorite program will get the same cut.
Just to be clear, I am against ObamaCare in its current form, as well as the modified form I alluded to in my previous post. Telling me how wrong it is is preaching to the choir. All I was trying to say is that Obama/Pelosi/Reid could have avoided the Constitutionality problem by just calling a spade a spade (or a tax a tax, in this case) and being honest with the American people about what they were doing.
To answer your questions:
What are you going to tax with your ObamaCare MegaTax?
Again, I am completely opposed to this, but if it were my job to find the money to fund this, I'd end the deductibility of health insurance premiums. That would kill two birds with one stone:
1. it would level the playing field between employer-sponsored plans and non-employer-sponsored. Personally, I think tying health insurance to employment is stupid. You lose your job so you lose your health insurance? How does that even make sense?
2. It would raise a shitton of money because you can't really dodge it. Somebody (either the individual or the corporation) is going to have to recognize that income and pay tax on it.
How are you going to force enrollment?
I wouldn't force anybody to enroll in anything. I'd have the government simply purchase a policy on everyone's behalf using the money raised in step 1. You don't have to file any claims if you don't want to. You don't have to use it in any shape or form if you don't want to. Hell, if you really hate your new "free" policy so much, you can just pretend it doesn't even exist and just go on with your life.
Look, you have federal unemployment insurance, whether or not you want it. If you don't like the terms of it, don't file a claim. This would be no different.
If it was up to you, the US would still be an English colony, and France would still be ruled by an absolute monarch.
You are putting words in my mouth. All I said is that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion is not a "humanitarian crisis". I never said that I hoped Gaddafi would win (or Britain, in the case of the US).
Anyhow, since you like these armed Libyan rebels so much, I figure I'll ask. Do you have any credible information on who the hell they are? It's an honest question; I haven't been able to find any credible info, myself. Hell, one of the rebel leaders was quoted in an Italian paper as saying that they receive support from Al-Qaeda. We really know how to pick groups to arm, don't we. So, yeah, I haven't heard anything to make me think that these armed rebels want to replace Gaddafi with a Jeffersonian Democracy. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, so please do.
An untreated cavity (like a vast array of other common minor situations) can easily kill you within a few years, and the process isn't likely to be pleasant.
I know nothing about dentistry, but nonetheless, I do not believe that you are telling me the whole story. That, or we have very different definitions of the word "easily".
I have had 2 cavities in my lifetime, the first of which was in my teens. Are you seriously going to have me believe that I'd "easily" be dead right now if I hadn't had them filled? I mean, I have pretty decent dental hygiene. How did anybody live beyond age 20 before the days of modern dental care and dentistry?
The party that insists on shutting down the government over spending components they do not agree with ideologically (not deficits - if it were truly about deficits, or even just spending, then you'd see tax increases on the table, or at least reduction in spending on policies they actually agree with, as it stands, it is simply about an oppertunity to remove things from the budget they disagree with) which consists of less than 3% of last years budget, while also attaching riders which include several ideological components among them seeking to take away medical choice from women and restricting regulatory bodies from creating policy based in science.
What do you expect? Republicans to completely scrap the current FY's ratified budget? That just doesn't even make any sense, and frankly, I don't think they have any business doing that. The right to decide the FY2011 budget belonged to the previous Congress.
This whole debate is ridiculous, anyway. Why didn't Democrats pass the funding bills when they still controlled the House? Maybe they wanted to provoke a battle like this to make Republicans look bad?
Republicans were elected to fix the deficits from FY2012 forward. And by the way, if you don't like that Republicans are tackling only a small percentage of the 2011 spending, did you read Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 proposal? You may not like all of the provisions, but you'll probably like that he took a serious stand against the deficits.
You're right. Obama didn't actually want to get involved at first. Most likely he just caved because he didn't want the US to stand at the sidelines while France and the UK took all the credit for preventing a humanitarian crisis.
What humanitarian crisis? Gaddafi was putting down the armed rebels with force, but what the hell did you expect? If some harebrained, armed militia from Montana marched into DC to overthrow the US government, what would you want to happen? You'll probably want the US government to put down the armed rebels with force. I sure as hell would.
And if you don't think allowing civilians to be bombed and massacred is a humanitarian crisis, then you're sick in the head.
No, I do not think that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion without targeting civilians is a humanitarian crisis. I think it's pretty normal, actually.
jobs are always a lagging indicator. You claim to have an expert knowledge of economics, but you don't understand that jobs are always a lagging indicator of growth.
False. Jobs are not always a lagging indicator, and neither are they "always" a lagging indicator if we limit our consideration to recent recessions in the US economy. In fact, if you look at the 14 US recessions since (and including) the Great Depression, you'll note that the number of times that peak unemployment lagged the end of the recession by even 2 quarters was 3.
I don't think you really understand economics
Well, that is more a reflection on you than on me.
1. Stabalization of credit market, allowing credit to continue to flow. This was done by propping up the banks while dropping interest rates.
That's Bush policy. Glad you're a fan--I am, too. It's one of the few things that Bush got smashingly right, so let's give the poor guy some credit where it's due.
2. Stimulus spending to help state make up shortfalls, and increase economic activity with government funded construction projects. Most of which were long over-due anyway.
No ARRA money was spent until long after the recession had ended. It's patently absurd to claim that ARRA ended the recession.
I guess Republicans can't help themselves from reaching up womens' dresses to take their rights.
Wait, what? The continuing resolution passed yesterday overturned Roe v. Wade? Citation, please.
It sounds to me like you could stand to do a little more thinking for yourself and a little less listening to Democrat press releases. My guess is you have one or two brain cells in there than haven't yet been washed. Time to start using them!
That is one example of complications (a 1 in 400 chance of complications costing £300,000). You would need to sum the cost of all complications (e.g, 1 in 400 at $300,000 and a further 5% at just $5,000 makes quite a difference to the outcome).
Fair enough. But I think my main point still remains: the fact that forgoing a $700 treatment might lead to a $300,000 emergency treatment does not automatically mean that it is less costly to provide the $700 treatment.
btw, the UK does not have socialised medicine. It has nationalised medicine with a very effective private healthcare system to augment it. The economic cost decisions that you mentioned are actually quite rare and left for very expensive treatments - generally treatment won't be withheld, rather a cheaper option will be sought. There are many patients receiving quite expensive treatments that are not cost effective.
And anyone can go private if they wish to pay for insurance or the cost of treatment just like the US so it's not a 'it must meet the bottom line or you die' situation like you imply.
I have not studied the UK system. I will, however, relate a story.
I recently attended a wedding and was chatting with several doctors from the UK. They each described to me instances where people came to their respective offices asking to pay them directly to either perform some type of medical imaging, or to interpret some already-performed imaging (MRI, CT, etc.) In each case, the doctor was forced to decline, much to the chagrin and protestations of the potential patient. Why were they forced to decline? They are veterinarians.
Now you'll probably respond to me that I don't get British humor and that they were only saying such things to get a rise out of me, and you may be right for all I know. But I will tell you this: in the US, it would never occur to someone to seek human medical care at a veterinarian's office, and neither would it even occur to us to joke about it. Even if the story was a bit apocryphal (actually, I believe them. When it comes to one's own health, people will go to desperate measures out of necessity), the fact that they even were able to concoct such a story tells me a lot about the UK system--things that I would not want to import.
And THAT, that right there, is the problem. Instead of adopting a sane system where the poor could get preventive medicine we instead pay outrageous prices to take care of them when they are at death's door, when it costs CRAZY money to put them back on their feet. if either the state or the fed would have paid that $700 we wouldn't have had a $300,000 bill passed on to the government. Does the current system make ANY sense?
Actually, that's not necessarily true.
I haven't looked up the actual numbers behind this particular issue, but if the chance that an infected tooth spreads and attacks the heart and requires $300,000 in emergency care is less than about 1:500, then it makes economic sense to deny the preventative care. Not that I wish an untreated infected tooth or the resulting medical emergency on any fellow human, but you made an economic claim that was incorrect.
We run into a similar problem with socialized medicine. The UK has a whole bureaucracy set up to determine whether a given treatment is cost-effective or not. If it's not cost effective, you don't get it, sorry.
That chart shows that Barack Obama saved the economy from the Republican engineered disaster.
Actually, that chart shows that Obama and Democrat policies caused the labor market to recover much more slowly than the economy did. The Great Recession ended in June, 2009. That was only a few months after President Obama took office. To claim that any Obama policy ended the Great Recession is silly. If you disagree, please tell me what Obama did between 1/20/09 and 5/31/09 to end the Great Recession.
A decade of Republican policies brought us an economic disaster. Barack Obama brought us back to growth and put us on the path for prosparity.
Please name the specific policies that caused an economic disaster, and those that put us on the "path to prosperity". Don't give me generalities, I want specific policies and bills. My background is in Economics, so please do no hesitate to get into the specific details.
We may wish it was faster, but every competent software developer already has a job, and the economy is only getting better. Err.. it was until the Republican party decided to shut down the government for the second time in as many decades.
Actually, the Republican-controlled House passed a continuing resolution to keep the government open that contained only previously-agreed-upon terms. President Obama has threatened a veto, and Reid (D-NV) won't even bring it up in the Senate. Tell me again who is shutting down the government?
So, exactly how is BHO "head and shoulders above GWB"?
He has only gotten us in 1 war, which is reasonably tractable, and under completely truthful pretenses.
Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a Pogo Stick.
I have no idea why President Obama is bombing the shit out of Libya, but I can guarantee you that he wasn't being truthful about his reasoning (that, or he is a total moron, which I doubt to be the case).
I mean, really. Preventing a humanitarian crisis? Since when does fomenting a civil war qualify as preventing a humanitarian crisis? That's just idiotic, and it's insulting to my intelligence to say that to me. Let's try telling the truth next time, Mr. President.
>Don't forget that instead of universal health care he got us a universal requirement to purchase private insurance.
Which was a Republican Idea (TM).
This is how it works:
Republicans come up with something on their own. Democrats come up with something on their own. Republicans vehemently oppose the Democrats' ideas. Democrats cave, and adopt a Republican idea[snip]
Actually, it was more like: Democrats strongly push single-payer socialized medicine. Conservative think tanks try to come up with a more palatable solution that focuses on individual responsibility so conservatives don't look like tone-deaf morons without a plan of their own, knowing full well that their "proposal" will never see the light of day with the Democrat stranglehold on Congress.
At any rate, that was a long time ago. Things change. The Heritage papers weren't written by Constitutional scholars, they were written by policy wonks.
The funny thing about this whole thing is if the Democrats weren't so chickenshit about creating a new tax, they could have done an end-run around the Constitutionality argument. Nobody denies that the federal government has the right to levy taxes, and nobody denies that the federal government can provide a service. So create a new tax called the ObamaCare MegaTax of 2011, and a new service called the ObamaCare Catastrophic Health Insurance Plan. Enroll every man, woman, and child in this new plan.
There, done. Now everybody has some sort of minimal coverage. Let the free market handle any needs beyond that like the MediGap plans do today for Medicare.
Jesus Christ, Democrats. Is it so hard to stay true to your Tax And Spend(TM) ideals? What the hell is in that 2,000 page monstrosity of a bill, anyway?
Music - WTF? First - you're not allowed to share it with others. Second - even if you are inclined to buying music on the move the actual files don't change and you can always re-download them on your main computer. Third, most people's music library will fit on a single micro-SD card and most of those files will never change - you'll just add to them. Fourth, people don't just play music on their smartphones - they play them on their car radio, their clock radio, their TV/DVD/BR player, their MP3-enabled HiFi, the cheap'n'cheerful MP3 "dispensible" player they bought for the beach etc. etc.
For me, it's the synchronization. Kind of a pain to sync files between all of those devices.
Much better to stream to the device. Hell, my car stereo is ancient and doesn't even play MP3s, so I use a bluetooth adapter.
With this service, when you buy a song or an album on Amazon, it's instantly available on every music player you own. That's kinda neat.
Yup, it is very similar. Biggest difference is that in the mainstream world, the ratio of people who know what the fuck Amazon is vs. people who know what the fuck Ubuntu One is is about 10,000:1.
Who the fuck are Expensify? What, if any, notable things have they accomplished?
Judging by your tone, I'm guessing that you don't actually want to know the answer, but Expensify is a browser-based expense reporting workflow tool. It allows employees to create expense reports easily from their credit card statements, and it keeps track of receipts. Employees can submit these expense reports electronically and managers approve electronically.
Optionally, the suite can even hook into quickbooks to save on data entry, and into paypal to pay the reimbursement.
For small business owners like myself, it's actually a pretty slick product (I use it at my company, if you couldn't tell). Employees like the ease of use, and I like that I can easily locate, approve, print out, etc., any expense report at any time, complete with receipts. If the IRS comes a-knockin' to do an audit, I can hand them a well-organized stack of reports with expenses, categories, and receipts.
There are other similar products out there, but this one seems to do what I want it to do and it's not too expensive.
I thought there were very few companies that truly had the power to hand on SSL certs. or I guess I am wrong
Open up your browser's configuration options and look at all of the root certs. I didn't count mine, but it looks like there are a several hundred entities that can issue trusted certs. Whether or not that qualifies as "very few" depends on what you would consider to be a large vs. small number.
"My "cable TV" is netflix streaming + free OTA HD network channels + hulu."
Good luck seeing any live sports.
Huh? The networks carry most games for the local teams. If you like an out-of-market team, that could be a problem, but methinks that would be a problem anyway.
Has anybody here done this successfully? They only appear to support a few models of phones on their webpage. I like my phone, don't want to get a different one.
Slashdot Mirror
Health insurance. Contractors don't get it.
Not true. Many contractors get in on a group policy, either through a professional organization or a staffing firm for professionals. Getting married is another option, although that idea isn't to popular among the slashdot crowd.
I suppose dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda does take quite a while on larger drives...
It does, but "throw a bunch of acid on the platters" seems like a bit of a weird, mad scientist solution to trivial-to-solve problem.
Encrypt your entire 3TB hard drive with a 2,048-bit key. When the bad guys come a-knockin', don't zero out the 3TB of data. Zero out the 2,048 bit key, which takes just a few ms. Now instead of 3TB of useful data, you'll have 3TB of pseudorandom garbage.
However, where the rubber meets the road is in front of a jury of people who likely have little clue, nor really care about official P&P.
My understanding is that a jury will never see evidence that was obtained through improper procedures. When the system functions as intended, the judge would bar improperly-obtained evidence from being presented at trial.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but cookbook-type books are generally intended to provide code samples and ideas that will work out of the box.
Drupal releases updates pretty aggressively. Why would you want a Drupal 6 cookbook when Drupal 7 is already out? The review mentions that the two releases are similar, but so what? Drupal 6 code may still run, but surely best practices have changed from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.
At the present time, a cookbook on Drupal 6 is about as useful as a poopy flavored lollipop.
He didn't take a serious look either, he is just gutting programs he doesn't agree with too.
I think the only way to get the budget under control is to quit playing favorites. Cutting the budget always polls more favorably than cutting any specific program. The powerful and well-connected will always make cuts impossible.
Instead, cut every budget line-item by an equal percentage, and let each individual program/department/whatever figure out how to deal with it. Put whatever rules in place that enables this to happen (allow the federal government to conduct layoffs, etc.) That way, nobody can whine, lobby, bribe, blackmail, or whatever other technique they find effective. You want your least-favorite program to get cut? You'll have to accept that your most-favorite program will get the same cut.
There was a period in my life when I went just over a decade without once visiting a dentist. How close to death was I?
Just to be clear, I am against ObamaCare in its current form, as well as the modified form I alluded to in my previous post. Telling me how wrong it is is preaching to the choir. All I was trying to say is that Obama/Pelosi/Reid could have avoided the Constitutionality problem by just calling a spade a spade (or a tax a tax, in this case) and being honest with the American people about what they were doing.
To answer your questions:
What are you going to tax with your ObamaCare MegaTax?
Again, I am completely opposed to this, but if it were my job to find the money to fund this, I'd end the deductibility of health insurance premiums. That would kill two birds with one stone:
1. it would level the playing field between employer-sponsored plans and non-employer-sponsored. Personally, I think tying health insurance to employment is stupid. You lose your job so you lose your health insurance? How does that even make sense?
2. It would raise a shitton of money because you can't really dodge it. Somebody (either the individual or the corporation) is going to have to recognize that income and pay tax on it.
How are you going to force enrollment?
I wouldn't force anybody to enroll in anything. I'd have the government simply purchase a policy on everyone's behalf using the money raised in step 1. You don't have to file any claims if you don't want to. You don't have to use it in any shape or form if you don't want to. Hell, if you really hate your new "free" policy so much, you can just pretend it doesn't even exist and just go on with your life.
Look, you have federal unemployment insurance, whether or not you want it. If you don't like the terms of it, don't file a claim. This would be no different.
I expect any credible leader of a nation not to use deadly force against unarmed protesters. When you do that, you need to be removed.
I guess that means that the US government needs to be removed, in your opinion.
If it was up to you, the US would still be an English colony, and France would still be ruled by an absolute monarch.
You are putting words in my mouth. All I said is that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion is not a "humanitarian crisis". I never said that I hoped Gaddafi would win (or Britain, in the case of the US).
Anyhow, since you like these armed Libyan rebels so much, I figure I'll ask. Do you have any credible information on who the hell they are? It's an honest question; I haven't been able to find any credible info, myself. Hell, one of the rebel leaders was quoted in an Italian paper as saying that they receive support from Al-Qaeda. We really know how to pick groups to arm, don't we. So, yeah, I haven't heard anything to make me think that these armed rebels want to replace Gaddafi with a Jeffersonian Democracy. I'd love to be proven wrong, though, so please do.
An untreated cavity (like a vast array of other common minor situations) can easily kill you within a few years, and the process isn't likely to be pleasant.
I know nothing about dentistry, but nonetheless, I do not believe that you are telling me the whole story. That, or we have very different definitions of the word "easily".
I have had 2 cavities in my lifetime, the first of which was in my teens. Are you seriously going to have me believe that I'd "easily" be dead right now if I hadn't had them filled? I mean, I have pretty decent dental hygiene. How did anybody live beyond age 20 before the days of modern dental care and dentistry?
The party that insists on shutting down the government over spending components they do not agree with ideologically (not deficits - if it were truly about deficits, or even just spending, then you'd see tax increases on the table, or at least reduction in spending on policies they actually agree with, as it stands, it is simply about an oppertunity to remove things from the budget they disagree with) which consists of less than 3% of last years budget, while also attaching riders which include several ideological components among them seeking to take away medical choice from women and restricting regulatory bodies from creating policy based in science.
What do you expect? Republicans to completely scrap the current FY's ratified budget? That just doesn't even make any sense, and frankly, I don't think they have any business doing that. The right to decide the FY2011 budget belonged to the previous Congress.
This whole debate is ridiculous, anyway. Why didn't Democrats pass the funding bills when they still controlled the House? Maybe they wanted to provoke a battle like this to make Republicans look bad?
Republicans were elected to fix the deficits from FY2012 forward. And by the way, if you don't like that Republicans are tackling only a small percentage of the 2011 spending, did you read Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 proposal? You may not like all of the provisions, but you'll probably like that he took a serious stand against the deficits.
You're right. Obama didn't actually want to get involved at first. Most likely he just caved because he didn't want the US to stand at the sidelines while France and the UK took all the credit for preventing a humanitarian crisis.
What humanitarian crisis? Gaddafi was putting down the armed rebels with force, but what the hell did you expect? If some harebrained, armed militia from Montana marched into DC to overthrow the US government, what would you want to happen? You'll probably want the US government to put down the armed rebels with force. I sure as hell would.
And if you don't think allowing civilians to be bombed and massacred is a humanitarian crisis, then you're sick in the head.
No, I do not think that a sovereign government putting down an armed rebellion without targeting civilians is a humanitarian crisis. I think it's pretty normal, actually.
jobs are always a lagging indicator. You claim to have an expert knowledge of economics, but you don't understand that jobs are always a lagging indicator of growth.
False. Jobs are not always a lagging indicator, and neither are they "always" a lagging indicator if we limit our consideration to recent recessions in the US economy. In fact, if you look at the 14 US recessions since (and including) the Great Depression, you'll note that the number of times that peak unemployment lagged the end of the recession by even 2 quarters was 3.
I don't think you really understand economics
Well, that is more a reflection on you than on me.
1. Stabalization of credit market, allowing credit to continue to flow. This was done by propping up the banks while dropping interest rates.
That's Bush policy. Glad you're a fan--I am, too. It's one of the few things that Bush got smashingly right, so let's give the poor guy some credit where it's due.
2. Stimulus spending to help state make up shortfalls, and increase economic activity with government funded construction projects. Most of which were long over-due anyway.
No ARRA money was spent until long after the recession had ended. It's patently absurd to claim that ARRA ended the recession.
I guess Republicans can't help themselves from reaching up womens' dresses to take their rights.
Wait, what? The continuing resolution passed yesterday overturned Roe v. Wade? Citation, please.
It sounds to me like you could stand to do a little more thinking for yourself and a little less listening to Democrat press releases. My guess is you have one or two brain cells in there than haven't yet been washed. Time to start using them!
That is one example of complications (a 1 in 400 chance of complications costing £300,000). You would need to sum the cost of all complications (e.g, 1 in 400 at $300,000 and a further 5% at just $5,000 makes quite a difference to the outcome).
Fair enough. But I think my main point still remains: the fact that forgoing a $700 treatment might lead to a $300,000 emergency treatment does not automatically mean that it is less costly to provide the $700 treatment.
btw, the UK does not have socialised medicine. It has nationalised medicine with a very effective private healthcare system to augment it. The economic cost decisions that you mentioned are actually quite rare and left for very expensive treatments - generally treatment won't be withheld, rather a cheaper option will be sought. There are many patients receiving quite expensive treatments that are not cost effective.
And anyone can go private if they wish to pay for insurance or the cost of treatment just like the US so it's not a 'it must meet the bottom line or you die' situation like you imply.
I have not studied the UK system. I will, however, relate a story.
I recently attended a wedding and was chatting with several doctors from the UK. They each described to me instances where people came to their respective offices asking to pay them directly to either perform some type of medical imaging, or to interpret some already-performed imaging (MRI, CT, etc.) In each case, the doctor was forced to decline, much to the chagrin and protestations of the potential patient. Why were they forced to decline? They are veterinarians.
Now you'll probably respond to me that I don't get British humor and that they were only saying such things to get a rise out of me, and you may be right for all I know. But I will tell you this: in the US, it would never occur to someone to seek human medical care at a veterinarian's office, and neither would it even occur to us to joke about it. Even if the story was a bit apocryphal (actually, I believe them. When it comes to one's own health, people will go to desperate measures out of necessity), the fact that they even were able to concoct such a story tells me a lot about the UK system--things that I would not want to import.
And THAT, that right there, is the problem. Instead of adopting a sane system where the poor could get preventive medicine we instead pay outrageous prices to take care of them when they are at death's door, when it costs CRAZY money to put them back on their feet. if either the state or the fed would have paid that $700 we wouldn't have had a $300,000 bill passed on to the government. Does the current system make ANY sense?
Actually, that's not necessarily true.
I haven't looked up the actual numbers behind this particular issue, but if the chance that an infected tooth spreads and attacks the heart and requires $300,000 in emergency care is less than about 1:500, then it makes economic sense to deny the preventative care. Not that I wish an untreated infected tooth or the resulting medical emergency on any fellow human, but you made an economic claim that was incorrect.
We run into a similar problem with socialized medicine. The UK has a whole bureaucracy set up to determine whether a given treatment is cost-effective or not. If it's not cost effective, you don't get it, sorry.
Look at this chart.
That chart shows that Barack Obama saved the economy from the Republican engineered disaster.
Actually, that chart shows that Obama and Democrat policies caused the labor market to recover much more slowly than the economy did. The Great Recession ended in June, 2009. That was only a few months after President Obama took office. To claim that any Obama policy ended the Great Recession is silly. If you disagree, please tell me what Obama did between 1/20/09 and 5/31/09 to end the Great Recession.
A decade of Republican policies brought us an economic disaster. Barack Obama brought us back to growth and put us on the path for prosparity.
Please name the specific policies that caused an economic disaster, and those that put us on the "path to prosperity". Don't give me generalities, I want specific policies and bills. My background is in Economics, so please do no hesitate to get into the specific details.
We may wish it was faster, but every competent software developer already has a job, and the economy is only getting better. Err.. it was until the Republican party decided to shut down the government for the second time in as many decades.
Actually, the Republican-controlled House passed a continuing resolution to keep the government open that contained only previously-agreed-upon terms. President Obama has threatened a veto, and Reid (D-NV) won't even bring it up in the Senate. Tell me again who is shutting down the government?
So, exactly how is BHO "head and shoulders above GWB"?
He has only gotten us in 1 war, which is reasonably tractable, and under completely truthful pretenses.
Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a Pogo Stick.
I have no idea why President Obama is bombing the shit out of Libya, but I can guarantee you that he wasn't being truthful about his reasoning (that, or he is a total moron, which I doubt to be the case).
I mean, really. Preventing a humanitarian crisis? Since when does fomenting a civil war qualify as preventing a humanitarian crisis? That's just idiotic, and it's insulting to my intelligence to say that to me. Let's try telling the truth next time, Mr. President.
>Don't forget that instead of universal health care he got us a universal requirement to purchase private insurance.
Which was a Republican Idea (TM).
This is how it works:
Republicans come up with something on their own.
Democrats come up with something on their own.
Republicans vehemently oppose the Democrats' ideas.
Democrats cave, and adopt a Republican idea[snip]
Actually, it was more like:
Democrats strongly push single-payer socialized medicine.
Conservative think tanks try to come up with a more palatable solution that focuses on individual responsibility so conservatives don't look like tone-deaf morons without a plan of their own, knowing full well that their "proposal" will never see the light of day with the Democrat stranglehold on Congress.
At any rate, that was a long time ago. Things change. The Heritage papers weren't written by Constitutional scholars, they were written by policy wonks.
The funny thing about this whole thing is if the Democrats weren't so chickenshit about creating a new tax, they could have done an end-run around the Constitutionality argument. Nobody denies that the federal government has the right to levy taxes, and nobody denies that the federal government can provide a service. So create a new tax called the ObamaCare MegaTax of 2011, and a new service called the ObamaCare Catastrophic Health Insurance Plan. Enroll every man, woman, and child in this new plan.
There, done. Now everybody has some sort of minimal coverage. Let the free market handle any needs beyond that like the MediGap plans do today for Medicare.
Jesus Christ, Democrats. Is it so hard to stay true to your Tax And Spend(TM) ideals? What the hell is in that 2,000 page monstrosity of a bill, anyway?
Music - WTF? First - you're not allowed to share it with others. Second - even if you are inclined to buying music on the move the actual files don't change and you can always re-download them on your main computer. Third, most people's music library will fit on a single micro-SD card and most of those files will never change - you'll just add to them. Fourth, people don't just play music on their smartphones - they play them on their car radio, their clock radio, their TV/DVD/BR player, their MP3-enabled HiFi, the cheap'n'cheerful MP3 "dispensible" player they bought for the beach etc. etc.
For me, it's the synchronization. Kind of a pain to sync files between all of those devices.
Much better to stream to the device. Hell, my car stereo is ancient and doesn't even play MP3s, so I use a bluetooth adapter.
With this service, when you buy a song or an album on Amazon, it's instantly available on every music player you own. That's kinda neat.
There's a music searcher app that you install that finds all of your music for you. That's why it's tied to Windows/OS X.
Link, please?
http://one.ubuntu.com/music has been around awhile. Sounds samey.
Yup, it is very similar. Biggest difference is that in the mainstream world, the ratio of people who know what the fuck Amazon is vs. people who know what the fuck Ubuntu One is is about 10,000:1.
Who the fuck are Expensify? What, if any, notable things have they accomplished?
Judging by your tone, I'm guessing that you don't actually want to know the answer, but Expensify is a browser-based expense reporting workflow tool. It allows employees to create expense reports easily from their credit card statements, and it keeps track of receipts. Employees can submit these expense reports electronically and managers approve electronically.
Optionally, the suite can even hook into quickbooks to save on data entry, and into paypal to pay the reimbursement.
For small business owners like myself, it's actually a pretty slick product (I use it at my company, if you couldn't tell). Employees like the ease of use, and I like that I can easily locate, approve, print out, etc., any expense report at any time, complete with receipts. If the IRS comes a-knockin' to do an audit, I can hand them a well-organized stack of reports with expenses, categories, and receipts.
There are other similar products out there, but this one seems to do what I want it to do and it's not too expensive.
I thought there were very few companies that truly had the power to hand on SSL certs. or I guess I am wrong
Open up your browser's configuration options and look at all of the root certs. I didn't count mine, but it looks like there are a several hundred entities that can issue trusted certs. Whether or not that qualifies as "very few" depends on what you would consider to be a large vs. small number.
"My "cable TV" is netflix streaming + free OTA HD network channels + hulu."
Good luck seeing any live sports.
Huh? The networks carry most games for the local teams. If you like an out-of-market team, that could be a problem, but methinks that would be a problem anyway.
For Verizon, activate on Page Plus.
Has anybody here done this successfully? They only appear to support a few models of phones on their webpage. I like my phone, don't want to get a different one.
Yes, people have done this successfully.