You could have just posted this pic:

SOCIALISM!

Absolutely provably false.

Harvard Business Review published a piece on this recently. It uses raw data to compare the US health care system to other developed nations. It's conclusions:

(emphasis theirs)

The article also goes on to state that most pharmaceutical companies spend over TWICE as much on marketing as they do on R and that the gap between R&D and marketing continues to grow. By moving to a government single payer health insurance system, the pharmaceutical industries would have to forego their ~20% annual profit margins and live with profit margins in line with the state of the economy.

The outraged opposition from "Real Americans" to public health care is entirely a manufactured product, supported by those who have interests in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

On a personal note, I talk with some friends from Europe on a regular basis about this, and they don't really understand the fuss, or the need for insurance to be involved. One friend from Denmark summed it up by saying "If you're a citizen, you pay taxes and get health care. If you're sick, you go to the doctor, you get treated, the doctor sends the bill to the government. The end".

As opposed to my current situation, where the Family Practitioner that my family has been going to since my son was born (the OB/GYN that delivered him works there) is now suddenly not covered by my insurance company - EVEN THOUGH the insurance company's own website says that certain doctors at the practice participate, and EVEN THOUGH we have previously had coverage for things performed at the doc's place. We got a bill for over $500 for a STATE MANDATED health checkup for my son that was required before he could enroll in Kindergarten - not a drop of it was covered. My employer stepped in and reimbursed me for a portion of it, but told me sadly that they couldn't fight the insurance company and that I'd have to change doctors.

We need health care reform. The Right Wing in Washington opposes it. They will fight it at any cost, because it cuts into their backing funds from the insurance and pharma industries - regardless of the fact that polls show that almost 3/4 of Americans support a public option.

Please, don't fight against your best interests.

Your talking points are way out of date; please report to Fox News for today's new talking points.

(the "10 years of taxes, 6 years of benefits in the CBO report" talking point has been conclusively disproven)

The thing that bugs the shit out of me right now is stuff like Clear Type and whatever the default font Microsoft uses for Word 2007 now. It seriously looks like it would work better on a CRT moniter - on LCD's it looks like a blurry mess! It's SUPER anti-aliased, when LCD's provide you nothing if not crisp, perfectly aligned geometry - which looks TERRIBAD with this fuzzy font.

Anymore, the first thing I do when I open a new word doc for editing is switch the font to Arial or something other than the Calibri default.

If anyone knows how to fix that, be my guest and enlighten me, but I've tried all the built in calibration tools - you go through them and they look great at the end, but then back to word and just ugh, a fuzzy mess.

Digital river will sell you a legit upgrade copy of Windows 7 for $30 if you are a student at a qualifying university. Their authentication of said is that you have a *@*.edu email address.

I bought a copy of windows 7 for my wife to go along with the new macbook pro I got her for xmas. I installed it before this update came out and found it unusable, so I backed off to a copy of windows XP that i can justify using legally because it's the key from her old laptop, which was soon to be reinstalled with Fedora. I'll probably upgrade now.

Great find, thanks.

Service companies. Value-added resellers.

Case in point: me. I work for Rackspace. We are NOT the cheapest in the business. But - we hire better, more knowledgeable people (largest private sector employer of RHCE's), and we support and treat our customers better.

If you want a server, you can go anywhere. We know that. We know that we have to come through for the end user in order to stay relevant. It's what makes this a great job, that atmosphere, that dedication to the customer.

I know it's late replying. There are lots of independent labels, and the cost of recording and producing music is dropping significantly every year. 20 years ago, digital recording used to take $500,000 worth of equipment (racks full of DATs), 10 years ago it took $5000 (several echo laylas with preamps, hardware compressor, mixing board/preamp), now it takes $500 (two M-Audio Delta 1010LT and CEPro will give you simultaneous 20 track recording).

The problem is distribution. A lot of indie labels still have distribution deals with the big guys, which, to me, just perpetuates the system. Bands jump ship from indie to major label in order to get their records into walmart/bestbuy.

Don't worry. The internet is changing that. Soon that piece of the puzzle will fall off of the map, and at that point, there won't be any need for a record label. Bands will pay a recording studio to perform work, take the masters to a producer to perform the mix, get the album, sell it online. They'll have a management staff to coordinate merchandise and touring.

After recording, touring support, merch support, and distribution, the only reason labels exist is to loan a band money. As the price comes down, this will continue to fall away.

30 years, and we will have witnessed the death of the Major record label. We live in exciting times.

~X

I love you.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop NYCL.

These seem to be serious allegations. I hope there's action taken this time.

These deserve to be kept in mind:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/ (Courtney Love Does the Math, from 2000 - looking at it now, oddly prophetic)
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html (The Problem with Music, by Producer Steve Albini - great insight into the process of Major Label music)

This is why we should care. I know that it's clichéd, but these companies care nothing about you, or about music, or about the well-being of the world in which they operate. They are wholly evil, in a way that almost no other business is.

I'm sorry, but no.

I read Ringworld for the first time a couple of months ago, and to be honest, I was entirely underwhelmed. The premise was silly in the first place, the characters might have looked good once but now seemed to be simple caricatures of silly stereotypes from the dawn of modern sci-fi, and the writing was not very good.

There was nothing at all resolved - why was this ring built? Who built it? Why did they build it? What happened to it? Where did they go? How long ago did they leave? What has happened in the mean time? What else is on the ring? Are there any civilizations that are modern remaining on it?

And on top of that, the author has NO concept of falling action. Literally, the main plot point (how do we get off this thing?) was resolved (maybe, kind of), and three paragraphs later, the book was over.

I was completely underwhelmed. My wife tells me there are sequels, but without the first book actually being finished, I think that they've got to be just finishing up the story that was essentially abandoned.

Now, I guess I would have to concede that if you are talking about making a show about the whole series, including all the information in the sequels (which is substantial, according to what I'm reading on Wikipedia), then maybe. But the book its self left me extremely unsatisfied.

~W

Receiving the signal is not illegal. In fact, if you go get a satellite and a receiver, and plug them up correctly, you will get the DirecTV information channel.

The signal, however, is encrypted and locked out based on your access. Decrypting the signal (getting free pay per view and free porn and free movies/tv etc) is illegal.

They've cracked down on people buying card readers and people downloading the software to program them.

This gives you an idea of the size of the ships involved:
http://www.gossipgamers.com/images/eve1.jpg

Anyway, yeah, Titans are huge, and the rest of the ships there are dreadnoughts mostly (they're also huge). Check the chart - in my opinion, most of the fun combat is in cruiser sized ships. Find the Caracal or the Rupture or the Vexor to see a size comparison. There's lots of maneuvering with those kind of ships.

Something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aeyt-T_U2Vg gives you a better idea, but even that ship is more of an up-close slug fest kind of ship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUDLQEZf9J8 is another idea of combat. Keep in mind, if you zoom in you get great visuals but after a while, you stay zoomed out to get an idea of the arena of combat. It's strategical, not twitch, so much.

~X

CCP's favoritism of BoB is something that gets trotted out every time they accomplish anything. It's years in the past.

In this engagement, BoB (IT) won. The people who jumped in were dumb. They knew this might happen.

In a previous engagement (check the corporation alliance and org forum for post by SK Rooster), BoB/IT jumped in to someone else and lost 40 dreadnoughts. Favoritism? Not so much. Whenever BoB loses, it's cause they suck, whenever they win, it's because they are getting help from the Developers and GM's. Right?

Yeah, I have no idea what I'm supposed to say here. I've been at Rackspace for 2 years, and I do a lot of deployment, and before that I worked for Virginia Tech, and I revived and ran the CS department linux mirror (mirror.cs.vt.edu), which rsynced ISO's.... plus all the ones that I've done for personal installs etc...