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Comment: And people wonder why I'm against the cloud. (Score 5, Informative) 176

As long as your data is out of your hands it is extremely vulnerable. The hosting company only cares about the money you pay them and little else. If they're hacked, too bad. If they're servers are down, too bad. if the justice department comes with a request, all your data belong to them. Host your own systems on your own property and make your own "in-house" backups. The cloud by definition is vaporware.

Comment: Re:United Nations University, Not the UN (Score 2) 471

by Paleolibertarian (#35849120) Attached to: What Happened To the Climate Refugees?

1. All causations involve correlations. Carbon dioxide certainly is a greenhouse gas, greenhouse gasses do cause warming, so certainly an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause warming. If it isn't the carbon dioxide causing the warming, what is it?

Actually there IS a strong correlation between the variability of the Sun and global temperatures. I.E. When the sun is hotter the Earth is warmer and when the Sun is cooler the Earth is cooler. Yet. this data is completely ignored by climate scientists.
--
There are 10 kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand binary and those who don't.

Comment: Re:-1 False Assumption (Score 1) 976

by Paleolibertarian (#31838192) Attached to: Red-Light Camera Ticket Revenue and Short Yellows

Because of the Uniform Vehicle Code 98-100% of states have very similar laws and when it comes to traffic lights, if the laws were radically different you might have a basis for challenging the law on the grounds of deception.

If your bumper is over the first line of the crosswalk you are considered to be in the intersection. In fact you can be cited for blocking the intersection if you ARE in the crosswalk. Additionally it is a violation to back out of an intersection once you have entered it. I got a ticket for that.

If your front bumper is over the first line of the crosswalk you are OBLIGATED to clear the intersection and since you can't back up you must either go forward through the intersection or refrain from entering it if you cannot reasonably be sure you could go all the way through safely.

Some traffic signals are delayed for the express purpose of allowing vehicles to clear the intersection before cross traffic is given the green light.

The length of the yellow light is of no effect on whether you ran a light and for legal purposes it is the same as a green light. There is no crime of entering on a yellow light. There are only the crimes of entering on a red light or blocking the intersection.

IANAL

Edwin

Comment: Re:Healthcare used to be cheap. Believe it or NOT! (Score 1) 826

by Paleolibertarian (#31603736) Attached to: US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card

Thank you for the well written response.

My problem is NOT with any person or corporation (although my belief that corporations having a special status via government charter is inherently evil) making a profit.

My problem is with the government controlling things via mandated coverage, mandated prescription drug coverage and every other government regulation which seeks to disconnect the price/benefit market mechanism between the consumer and the provider.

When the consumer no longer has to pay directly out of his pocket for care when it is delivered, he tends to not care as much about what the care costs because the insurance or the government will pay for it.

With insurance being mandated the consumer doesn't have a choice whether he gets the insurance or not so he tends to demand the best care his insurance will pay for. Doctors are more than happy to provide the most expensive treatments whether they are of any great benefit or not. There are lots of procedures and expensive tests which are of little benefit and may actually cause more harm. Doctors aren't perfect and they want to cover their behinds in case of the all to common malpractice lawsuits.

And I haven't even scratched the surface of the rapacious prices for drugs from Big Pharma.

The FDA bears a large part of the blame for high medical costs.

My main point is simply that government intervention has the unintended consequence of driving up costs.

As to what my recommendations are for fixing the problem if you haven't already guessed it, deregulate the medical industry and abolish the FDA completely. Remove the corporate shield that makes it impossible to sue the actual people who own the large corporations for malpractice and their callous disregard for thew welfare of their customers (patients).

Non-profit's are great and we should have more of them. we used to have lots of them but then government intervention has reduced the number and effectiveness of non-profits across the board.

I would like suggest to anyone that they read this book; More Harm Than Good by Alan Zelicoff and Michael Bellomo.

http://www.amazon.com/More-Harm-Than-Good-Treatments/dp/0814400272/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1269465093&sr=8-1

Comment: Healthcare used to be cheap. Believe it or NOT! (Score 2, Informative) 826

by Paleolibertarian (#31593908) Attached to: US Lawmakers Eyeing National ID Card

Not knowing the average age of posters I'm willing to bet it's somewhere around 30. Well I'm almost 60 and I can tell you that health care used to be cheap. A doctor's visit was $8 and insurance cost me around $30/month but most people didn't need it because we were more fit back then.

So what happened? In one word I'll tell you. Government!

First the government mandated that employers provide insurance to their employees. The insurance companies loved this since it brought them more customers. The side effect however was that having insurance meant that instead of simply putting a band-aid on it people went to the doctor or the emergency room and the insurance company got billed. Higher demand and assurance of payment meant that doctors and hospitals could raise fees. Higher costs forced up insurance rates. Unfortunately the higher costs put more burden on people with fixed incomes and the poor. And lets not forget the unions hand in all of this.

So government created Medicare and Medicaid.

This was fucking great for the doctors, hospitals and even the insurance companies. Doctors and hospitals could charge more for their services and the insurance companies could raise their rates. More money running through the insurance companies means more cash flow, always a good thing.

Meanwhile people began to believe that medical care was a right and not something you had to pay for. The disconnecting of the cost-benefit ratio was removed from the consumer and thrust into the hands of Insurance companies and faceless bureaucrats.

Things went along like that with ever increasing costs and more demands for government to do something. So in order to get elected the knotheads in congress made more poorly thought-out laws. They kept getting elected by knothead voters. And so it goes.

So now, not only is medical care extremely expensive but the government will now force everyone to buy insurance even if they are young and strong and don't need it.

And the costs WILL go up.

Cost cutting won't work and will result in less quality and less availability. Even more of the costs will be taken up by paper(computer)work. I do consulting for a large medical clinic and about 1/3 or more of the staff have nothing to do with providing health care. Their jobs are exclusively doing the work necessary to bill the insurance companies or the government for payment. The billing costs so much that people with no insurance at all get a greatly reduced rate for care.

So everybody, despite all of the assurances from the news parrots and government lackeys, costs WILL go up and taxes WILL go up to pay for it. Either taxes will go up or the debt will go up. My guess is both will go up. Increases in taxes and debt are unsustainable and eventually lenders will stop lending and taxpayers won't be able to pay.

I hear the economy in Argentina is improving.

It is indeed desirable to be well descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors. -- Plutarch

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