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Comment Re:Who needs free voice? (Score 1) 134

There are still lots of places with voice cell service but practically no data.

As we found out in the Presidential election, there are not many people there.

Wait, there is possibly a correlation to be had!

There are not many people using BlackBerry.

Therefore my conclusion is that rural residency causes BlackBerry use.

**Yes, I know this poor attempt at humor is US centric. Forgive me, I will work on my international humor for my next appearance.

Comment Re:Horrible Summary is Horrible (Score 1) 164

I have been doing user firmware and operating system / feature / Gracenote updates on my Mopar "MyGig/UConnect" infotainment system since 2008.

I download a CD/DVD image, burn it, put it in my van and it reboots, installs/upgrades, then I am good to go.

The only thing owners can't do (easily) is update the Navteq maps because they (Mopar) want like $200 for that (hello smartphone!).

Comment Re:It's convenience and security. (Score 1) 835

Ever heard of PGP? I have put my PGP fingerprint on my business card, now every person that I meet is able to send me email, encrypted with my public key. That's as easy as it gets, and PGP is 100% safe and more than a decade old. No, you cannot have a man in the middle attack thanks to the fingerprint which you are supposed to manually check. If you add to this a web of trust and signed signatures, then it's a pretty good system. It's really trivial to listen to a fax and print it, since there is absolutely zero encryption. Don't think that this is reserved for the high profile government organization, phone wires are most of the time quite accessible, and putting a device to listen to it is fairly easy for those who know a bit about them. Absolutely all telecoms employee working on the physical infrastructure will know how to do that.

I know what PGP is.

My real-estate agent, doctor, school business office, and parents do not.

(Aside from that, PGP is *not* easy to use, especially when you have people who may have Macs or Windows or whatever, with varying tech abilities, corporate polices, access rights, software versions, etc etc. A fax machine has one standard implementation that is guaranteed to work no matter what, and all it takes is at most 12 button presses that everyone since 1980 has been accustom to using - 1 503 555 1212 [SEND])

Comment Re:Sad, but not unexpected (Score 1) 523

As for economy and TOC, I'm staying on what most people consider the less than green side. I have a sports car that gets 26mpg. It gets me and up to 3 passengers and luggage or groceries from Point A to Point B quickly. MSRP was around $38k, and I paid $25k one year used. Now at 11 years old and 120,000 miles, if it were a EV or hybrid, it would have likely required two battery swaps and who knows what other changes. What's MTBF on the motors they use? How do the electronics stand up in hot climates? As a good old fashion IC motor, it's required 2 water pumps, an alternator, and 2 new batteries, and a few other little things

(emphasis added by me)

"Consumer Reports decided to do a re-test a 2002 Prius, with 206,000 on the clock, and found that it delivered 46.3mpg, compared to 48.6 in the original test with a new car. Lower? Yes, but not bad for 206,000 miles."

I had a headlight fault in my car. It seems the ground wire to the headlights broke internally. 15 minutes and $5 in parts later it was fixed in the auto parts store parking lot. A friend of mine has a Prius. Hers has a headlight fault, where the headlights will just turn themselves off or flash, due to an overheating controller. It costs hundreds of dollars, and serious work to just get the light out. Google around for replacing a Prius headlight, and you'll see plenty of pictures where you have to take the front bumper off to accomplish it.

First, you seem to concentrate headlight bad luck around you, anecdotally.

Also anecdotally, I have a friend with a Subaru Tribecca that also has to remove the bumper to replace a headlight bulb. And since my friend didn't know that - he actually ended up causing $1000 in damage trying to do it without removing the bumper, but it still would have cost him $200 in labor to get it done. Now he knows what needs to be done and how to do it so he can do it himself without breaking things, but it is still a pain in the ass.

So I guess that negates your "green cars are bad because a prius headlight is hard to fix" argument.

I also read horror stories about the first generation of the VW New Beetle that required pulling the engine to replace a headlight assembly (I read in a forum about someone who lost one to a rock). Some times a design makes it hard to fix something. It has nothing to do with if it is a hybrid, or electric, or magic ferry dust, or powered by grinding up puppies and kittens. A bad design is a bad design.

My second car is a used full size SUV. That's my spare vehicle, in case the first one is down for some reason, and for transporting anything larger than my car will carry. I dare anyone to consider doing home renovations driving a Tesla Roadster. :) You won't even fit a stack of bricks or a few sheets of plywood in a Prius. :) The mileage isn't great, but if I can accomplish in one trip what would take 4 in a smaller car, the effective efficiency is better. And sometimes there is just no substitute for an urban assault vehicle. :)

Since your SUV is your second car you can still get a hybrid or electric car for your primary car for your daily use, and still have that SUV to haul those bricks and plywood. :)

Comment Re:Good. (Score 1) 254

Actually Insurance companies wont be involved in re-engineering the medical coding. They just get the bill.

Not true. The insurance company I worked for had a 3 year project to implement ICD-10 and it went relatively smoothly, and was not any more difficult than any of our other IT projects. It's just a project like any other project. Planned, budgeted, executed. Nothing to see here.

What TFA and other commentors don't seem to get is that the health industry is *massively regulated* and beurocratic. They have to deal with things like this *all the time*.

Between Medicare/Medicaid requirements, HIPAA, Health organizations (like Blue-Cross), HMO requirements, Drug laws, and every damn state having different Insurance commissions and regulations - EVERY YEAR insurance companies and hospitals and providers have to make massive system changes for one reason or another.

The pain in the ass is that most every law change always takes effect January 1. Which makes IT in the health industry suck between November and February. I wish they would some times pick different quarters to implement things in so that we could spread out the workload a little better.

Comment Re:What is wrong with this bill as written? (Score 1) 735

This is slashdot, no one actually clicks through and reads details before they post (although we violated that rule).

The bill as written is actually pretty good.

Here is the link to the actual bill:

Tennessee HB 0368/SB 0893

Just like guns, automobiles or iPhone jailbreaks: I am sure this bill could be misused. However, it appears to be a good bill - and it is sad that we even would need a bill such as this.

Comment Re:No. (Score 1) 1486

Science is demonstrable, repeatable and self-correcting. Most importantly: Science Delivers. Not understanding the intricacies doesn't make it "faith". Faith is an idea with no evidence to back it up no matter how adept the 'experts'. Even more important, the 'experts' often don't agree on even the basics. Witness all the various religions and factions thereof.

+1000 "absolutely true"

Science has brought us actual physically verifiable objects, even though I personally might not understand all of the details which led to the object's existence. Even scientific "theory" is based on data that we can verify - and science is willing to accept when it is wrong and make constant adjustments to get more accurate over time.

Has a Christian "expert" ever actually turned a river to blood, resurrected someone who was dead for three days, or created a woman from a rib bone?

Comment Nope on 3D (Score 1) 535

I had a 32 inch Sony CRT which we used for 10 years. Then we replaced it with a 57 inch rear projection TV - used that for 10 years and just gave it away and purchased a new 47 inch LED LCD. Didn't even look at the 3D tv models. I have no interest. And now we won't be buying another TV for years - maybe a decade based on past patterns. Coincidentally, the 32 inch Sony CRT is still in use as the primary TV of the friend we gave it to. 3D sucks. Probably will never be one in my house...

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