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Comment Re:what? (Score 3, Insightful) 258

I think the question of whether or not something should be government-run (or at least involved) vs free market is: Are we, as a society, okay if some people don't get this service?

If the answer to that is 'yes', then free market is probably the way to go.
But if the answer to that is 'no', then free market won't work -- free market requires the voluntary participation of buyers AND sellers.

Don't care if some people don't have health care or education because they can't afford it? Free market is the way to go.

Think health care & education are important for a civilized, well-functioning society? Probably need to have government involvement then -- which is not to say our current systems are perfect (far from it!) but "free market" is not the solitary answer.

Comment Re:Here is a thought.. (Score 3, Insightful) 400

Some people object to the concept of the government being the final arbitrator of life and death. If an insurance company refuses to cover something, I can attempt to get funding elsewhere. When the government does so, I have little to no options left- even if it is to have the hospital perform the procedure and take the charges off as part of the charity work needed to keep their tax exempt status which does happen all the time.

Wait, what? So when an insurance company denies you a service, you can "attempt to get funding elsewhere"? Like where, pray-tell? You basically have 4 options:
1. Appeal the denial & hope you can get them to cover it anyway
2. Pay the cost of the procedure in full and figure out how to cover it (debt, fundraiser, etc)
3. Negotiate with the hospital for a self-pay discount or charity care
4. Don't get the procedure.

Those are the same 4 options you have if your plan is provided by the government, and that gov't plan doesn't cover the procedure.

The simple fact of health care is, we can't afford to do all the procedures, for all the people, all the time. We have finite resources - so they HAVE to be allocated. And someone HAS to decide HOW they are allocated, which means someone has to say "we will pay for this" and "we won't pay for that". That's the reality - no getting around it. What "this" and "that" are -- plenty of room for reasonable debate there, with parameters for profitability, ethics & morality, etc.

Personally, the biggest problem that I see with our current system (which is starting to change), is we don't have "health care", we have "disease care". Your doctor is paid to do services for you, not for keeping you healthy. And the impression I get is that many patients are not "partners" in their own health -- they have a problem, they want to go to a doctor and have that problem fixed, and not have to change themselves. "I don't want to change my diet & lifestyle - just give me a pill to pop to make it all better." I think if doctors were reimbursed for keeping you healthy, and patients had a shared stake in that (besides the obvious benefit of living longer, healthier lives), we would have a very different healthcare system (and probably much, much more effective & economical).

Comment Re:Join.me (Score 1) 116

another plug for join.me -- we use it for screen-sharing for work (such as virtual meetings, conference calls, etc). I paid for the professional account ($79/yr, I think?) because I get a conference phone line with that, and it was a simple, easy-to-use service that I felt was worth it.

Stupid-simple to use -- user just visits a simple URL (join.me/my-url-here) to observer. If you pass presenter control to them, the browser will prompt to download an executable that runs to host. No install necessary, just download & run.

Comment Re:Old news (Score 2) 211

I think you are missing the author's points in your rebuttal.

Testing server -- maybe it's not ALWAYS possible with expensive enterprise-y server software, but just about anyone can spin up a VM on their dev machine to simulate (with varying degrees of accuracy) a production environment.

Secret logins & back doors -- you mean you've never created a "god" or "super admin" account (or "secret URL") that could access all kinds of technical / debugging info that regular admins/users shouldn't see? Having such an account means your application has additional logic & code paths to support -- code that's probably not being adequately (if at all) tested and probably has bugs, some of which may be security-related.

Test data in production - yeah, I've worked on systems (such as health care IT systems), where project team puts test data in the system. It sucks for operational users. "What, you mean Dr. Smith doesn't have a 2pm appt w/ TEST, DUMMY today?" "The compliance dept just got a call about a six-figure insurance claim to Medicare for a pregnancy-related hospitalization for a DUMBASS, JOE -- anyone know about that?" Test data belongs in a test database.

Frameworks -- in my humble opinion (and I'm not exactly alone) there are very few situations where run-time performance is actually "absolutely critical". More often (in my experience) time-to-develop "performance" is a bigger factor, and rolling-your-own (to get alleged better run-time performance) will cost you development time, bug-fix time, QA & testing-time -- which, for the vast majority of applications, will cost more than simply buying faster hardware (the happy medium way is to optimize just the critical slow parts in your application that the framework handles sub-optimally).

Choice of languages -- again, I think you missed the point. Any language is fine. His point is to keep your project consistent. If you've developed a hair-brained solution that involves Perl, cgi-bin, bash, PHP, and chunks of C -- it probably works great and flawlessly, like you said. Until that programmer (1) retires or (2) gets hit by a bus. Then the junior programming intern they hire to take his place is screwed. And that's the author's point -- write maintainable code. A mismash of languages & bindings "because they are cool" may function, but it's not maintainable. If your star programmer has this Perl/bash/PHP/C contraption and it's well-documented and logical, then maybe that junior intern will take it over and, with a bit of a learning curve, master it. But if your programmer used 4 different languages because "it's cool to make it complicated" -- well, good luck.

Comment Re:Rules? (Score 1) 278

Yeah, sometimes it's just obnoxious. I splurged on the Bose noise-canceling headphones, so I can actually hear the flight attendants BETTER when my headphones are on! Not that I pay attention to the safety briefing anyway - I'm often asleep already :-)

Most of the time they just let it go, but everyone once in awhile someone decides to exert their authority.

Comment Re:Of course! And you never need more than 640K RA (Score 1) 373

Or get a 120GB SSD (around $100 right now), which is big enough to install Windows + pretty much all your apps (Visual Studio, Office, Photoshop, etc), and still have plenty enough left-over space that your SSD can move blocks around for years to come.

And then you can avoid worrying about junctions :-)

Comment Re:Of course! And you never need more than 640K RA (Score 1) 373

It all depends on your priorities & values.

I find the 120-250GB SSDs a really good value right now. For $100-$200, I get plenty of fast storage to install my OS and all applications on. It definitely makes the system feel zippier; I have an SSD as the system drive in all 4 systems I have. I keep most of my data (documents, photos, videos, download archives) on my HDD, not necessarily because it's more reliable but because that data is typically not frequently accessed, any millisecond delay won't be noticed anyway, and I don't want to have to worry about managing the size of my personal data store vs free space on the SSD.

On the issue of reliability, all drives fail. Maybe statistically SSDs will fail sooner than HDDs (although I'm not even sure if that's true), but that means very little on an individual drive basis. If all of your data is on a single drive, you are definitely at risk. Anecdotally, I've had more HDDs fail on me in the last 15 years (3-4) than SSDs (0). (although I did have some SSDs with undesirable behavior that needed a firmware upgrade).

Comment Re:So what. Doctors SHOULD be paid more. (Score 3) 336

I work in the healthcare IT field (formerly at an IT vendor). The reality is -- health care organizations are becoming IT shops. And that's expensive. Big iron servers, expensive SAN storage, workstations in every clinic office / nursing unit, and certified trained staff to run it all... It adds up.

There's definitely some research that suggests it results in better care -- warnings for med interactions, doing the right procedure on the right patient, etc. But it's really being driven in the name of compliance (and CYA). Document & audit trail EVERYTHING, so you can justify the charges if Medicare comes knocking for an audit. Or in case there's a lawsuit. It's complicated, and expensive. And Medicare (and the insurance companies) just make it more complicated & expensive by increasing complexity of the billing rules.

Comment Re:No (Score 2) 522

I disagree -- your argument is essentially the same as the RIAA/MPAA: "Unless we protect music, artists won't get paid and they won't make music anymore". Which is complete & utter bunk, because plenty of artists make music without ever making a cent in profit. People may not continue to do what they currently do -- in fact, a great many (myself included) would not. But we WOULD find things to do instead that we enjoy a lot more, and are probably much better at.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is in effect here -- when basic survival needs are taken care of, then you move up the pyramid eventually getting to esteem & self-actualization, where people WANT to build things, achieve recognition, solve problems, be creative, etc. BECAUSE they want to. BECAUSE they want to "be good people".

Some people do what they need to, because they our society is NOT setup to care for people's basic needs (food, shelter, security, health). And if society did start caring for those basic needs, yeah -- some people would probably just sit around & be lazy, at least for awhile, because they only know how to live in scarcity. Just the way that poor/middle-income people win the lottery & ruin their lives, because they don't know understand how to live with money & security. But within a generation (perhaps less), I think a great creative energy would be unleashed.

Comment Re:No (Score 1) 522

I spent a lot of time thinking about this on a recent vacation -- I'm in a comfortable, well-paying job right now, where I'm bored stiff & don't care about the work I have assigned to me. I have lots of fun ideas for apps / projects that I'd love to develop, outside of my current work context. But I spend so much time "at work" that I have comparatively little time left over to work on these projects, and by the end of the day / week not always much mental energy & stamina left either.

My solution may not work for most, but I'm actually quitting over it - I'm tired of dragging myself into a job I'm not engaged with. Fortunately, as I was considering this an old colleague contacted me and is involved in a startup he wanted to recruit me for that's more in-line with the kind of creative development that I want to do. So that's definitely exciting for me and should keep me engaged for awhile. Pay won't be as good / stable, at least initially, but the economic upside is much higher (incentive stock options), and my personal motivation & engagement will be much, much higher as well. I'm willing to take some economic risk for that. Life's too short to waste it doing something you don't love (which I'm slowly learning).

Comment Re:Raspberry Pi (Score 1, Redundant) 352

If I were a weaker man, and there are plenty of weaker men, installing Windows would be the 'solution'.

So just to clarify, you are not a "weaker man" because you are choosing a tool that is more difficult to acquire & has no official support... for what purpose again?

Without knowing more about what the ultimate goal is, it seems like you are just being pig-headed & stubborn, pushing your own personal agenda / Windows vendetta over the priorities of The Company.

Is the goal of The Company to be a linux shop?
Or is it merely to have a working desktop environment to do their traditional office tasks (email, calendar, word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations)? If the latter, and you are advocating for linux workstations -- what's your justification? Lower cost of acquisition or lower total-cost-of-ownership (TCO)?
If you have calculated a lower TCO, are you including a fair & reasonable support cost for each option (esp if these are not tech-savvy office people)? If you are just doing this as a favor -- what happens to that TCO if you get hit by a bus and they have to hire/contract a 3rd party linux admin?

Not trying to say going linux on the desktop is wrong, by any stretch -- just that you should clarify the ultimate goals & priorities, and pick the right tool based on that. I would posit THAT is the sign of a stronger man - the right tool for the job.

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