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Comment Maybe now Testers will have budget. (Score 1) 118

I'm a developer that has been working as a tester in the last 5 years.
Always coding to run performance / load / whatever not manual testing.

In my experience working at bank or big publishers, my main problem is always budget.
Enough money for everything except the right number of people testing, the right tools or infrastructure for testing, and so on.

I don't expect that was different with healthcare.gov.

Comment Re:First Flu? (Score 4, Interesting) 541

It's not just hospital workers (although that's what TFA is about.) Plenty of people are required to get a flu shot that you wouldn't expect need it.

The one that surprised me are local refinery workers. There is one refinery in our region that produces virtually all of the petroleum based fuel consumed locally. If the flu were to incapacitate 50% of the employees, the refinery would have to shut down. These are trained people needed to produce a critical product, and the refinery wouldn't have the time to train temps to take over for them. Pipelines don't exist to bring in refined products from elsewhere, and the rest of the nation's refining capacity would be strained to meet the demand.

Refinery workers are exposed to a lot of things you probably wouldn't want to be exposed to, but viruses aren't commonly among them. It'd probably be a great place to work if you wanted to avoid contact with other people.

Comment Re:And the big deal is??? (Score 2, Interesting) 541

Incredibly low side effect rate, very effective, and a guarantee that you're going to get a mild version of the flu before everybody else does.

The reality is quite different.

The flu vaccine has to be produced several months before flu season. So, if the experts pick the wrong strains, or even if they pick the right ones and the flu mutates in that time, you're no better off.

In fact, you are worse off, as your immune system is likely to be worse off, trying to fight this new strain of the flu that is similar, but not exactly the same: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoskins_effect

For the last 18 years getting a flu shot has been a federally mandated condition of my employment and I don't even work in a health care related field--what the heck is the big deal with getting a flu shot?

Freedom to make one's own decisions about medical treatment is a big thing in the US, and people dislike when they are compelled against their will. I'm no exception.

Just about all the improvements in public health over the past few centuries has been from an understanding of disease spread, and modern nutrition. Most people can and will like out the overwhelming majority of their lives without requiring any form of medical assistance. Being cognizant of the spread of the virus has a much higher success rate in preventing infection than does immunization.

Comment Re:That's bright! (Score 1) 451

The fees to review your case is minuscule compared to the medical costs right? Many lawyers will review this kind of thing for free because they view a patient walking up to their door and saying "an insurance company is screwing me can you help?" as a multimillion dollar opportunity they don't want to pass up. They might ask for a fee at first, but give them your number and say, "Give me a call if you have the free time to review my case". My advice is to at least call around.
Media

Submission + - What's replacing P2P, BitTorrent for warez? (computerworld.com)

ericatcw writes: Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast-moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor, V.I. Labs, 100% of the wares in its survey were available on Rapidshare, which according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as Rapidshare to supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally.

Submission + - Gameboy Color Boot ROM Dumped After 10 Years (fpgb.org)

An anonymous reader writes: Costis was able to dump the elusive boot ROM from the Gameboy Color by using various voltage and clock glitching tricks. The boot ROM is what initializes the Gameboy hardware, displays the "GAMEBOY" logo and animation, and makes the trademarked "cling!" sound effect. Even decapping the CPU had failed previously, but now the boot image and specifics on how it was dumped (along with many photos) are available for download at http://www.fpgb.org/

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