Who's saying this? The problem is insurance companies and always has been. I spent nearly 7 years working in medical billing software development so I have the first hand experience to back this up. Insurance companies go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible for claims to be filed with them and will find any excuse they can to deny payment for a claim. Every carrier is different and has their own specific requirements for claims to even be submitted and here in the USA those requirements are usually different for each state. If they pay on a claim and then decide later that they want that money back because of some dusty, esoteric rule or nitpicking detail, they'll claw it back by taking it out of payments made for other claims. Fee schedules are ridiculously undervalued. All of this is done to ensure profitability for insurance company shareholders at the expense of patient welfare.

This system is why when you book an appointment to see your doctor you end up waiting longer than the actual amount of face time you get with said doctor. The doctors have to double and sometimes triple book appointments just to keep their operation going and pay for overhead.

Basically this. I have only ever once had an employer attempt to put me on a PIP. As soon as HR and the manager tried to hand me the paperwork, I got up, dropped my company ID cards on the table, and I walked out without saying a word. If a PIP lands on my desk, I do not care what justifications management has dreamed up, clearly they are out for blood. Better to immediately leave and find work elsewhere than play their idiotic political games.

A garbage company that is completely incapable of policing the vile, toxic communities in its own games is declaring that it will now police the content on other platforms it does not own.

If you were even remotely correct, piracy would not be as big of an issue as it is today. Yet here we are. As you are not correct and are instead doubling down on your misapprehensions as to what a la carte means, I think you are the one who needs to be less ignorant and pay more attention to what is going on. Streaming today IS effectively Cable 2.0 and you have said nothing of value that would suggest otherwise.

You are attempting to make a distinction where none exists. Renting a single DVD film from a list of available DVD films provided by a service is literally a la carte, or choosing from the menu. Insisting that the service from which you rent the DVD is the a la carte choice and not the DVD itself assumes that you are required to rent ALL of the DVDs they have available, even if you are only interested in watching one.

The content itself is the menu item, not the service provider. Provide a means for people to access to the content of their choice through a single provider for one monthly fee, irrespective of who owns the copyright of the content itself, and the piracy problem is largely solved.

That this continues to be an area of concern for content providers indicates that their current model of locking their content behind their own proprietary streaming platforms is not working.

Repeat after me: "Streaming IS Cable 2.0"

What effectively killed cable TV was that you didn't have much control over the content. You paid a subscription and got some of what you wanted and a lot of crap you had no interest in. You couldn't opt out of the crap you didn't want.

Streaming today has adopted this exact same model. Content gets locked up behind a specific service and you have to pay for that service, including everything else that you aren't interested in just to get access to the little bit you are interested in. For example, take the movie "Greyhound" as an example. I happen to enjoy WW2 films, and I really wanted to see this one movie. What happened to it? Apple got it and locked it behind a mandatory subscription to Apple TV. I have no interest in Apple TV's streaming service, no interest at all in any other content they have on offer, but in order to legally watch the film, I have to subscribe to Apple TV. So I picked it up on the high seas and watched it without the stupid Apple TV subscription requirement. Do I care that it was *gasp* illegal? Not in the slightest.

You keep nattering on about how wonderful it is that we have so many services to choose from and that this model is "true a la carte" when it is not. Nobody gives a shit how many different streaming services there are because nobody wants to have to subscribe to a service and pay for all the extra crap they aren't interested in. People aren't interested in maintaining a roster of active subscriptions to different services just to get access to the content they want. This is why streaming today is considered Cable 2.0. You're forced to pay for a ton of things you don't want just to get access to the few things you do want.

True a la carte is being able to choose any content you want from a single service provider for one monthly fee, irrespective of which company happens to hold the actual copyright on the content itself. That means I should not need a Disney+ subscription just to run through the Clone Wars, I should not need an Amazon Prime subscription to watch Rings of Power, and I should not need an HBO Max subscription just to watch Game of Thrones.

Until content creators pull their heads out of their greedy asses and stop locking their content behind their proprietary streaming platforms just like the cable companies of yore we will continue to have "piracy".

Forgive me, I keep forgetting this is Slashdot and you have to write a litany of disclaimers so people don't feel the urge to argue from the fringe over every nitpicking detail.

When I say "We lie to our children", I mean "we" as in "the majority of society". Congratulations on being the exception. However, exceptions don't disprove the rule.

How very altruistic of you, if true. However, again, I am decidedly uninterested in debating from the fringe of rare exceptions. Whether you like it or not, and whether you believe it or not, most C-suite execs value the people working beneath them only to the extent that it increases their own personal wealth. The moment that value is lessened, for any reason, someone's getting fired. We even had to pass a litany of employment laws just to prevent unscrupulous schmucks at the top of the pyramid from firing people for circumstances beyond their control. That such laws have to exist in the first place is evidence that the majority of people in positions of business power have to be curtailed and controlled by government so as to prevent them from running roughshod over their employees.

You might consider yourself a benevolent exec, keen to spread the wealth around from your various successes and again I congratulate you on being the exception to the rule. However, as I've already stated above, exceptions do not disprove the rule and I am only interested in what is generally true, not what is occasionally true. The preponderance of evidence, both in my own personal experience and just reading the news, indicates that the majority of C-suite inhabitants are schmucks with oversized egos to match their oversized paychecks. The reason for this is so simple that we even have a cliche for it: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Give a person any sort of authority over someone else and you will find out very quickly how big of an asshole that person can be to the people over whom they have power.

I think part of the rub other folks might have with your take is that you assume everyone has the same definition of success as you do. But not everyone wants what you want in life.

I lived the life of pursuing ever higher salaries, climbing the corporate ladder, and working 80 hours a week. And I did reap the monetary rewards for that effort. At one point I was pulling a quarter million dollars a year on a base salary not counting bonuses and stocks, owned multiple properties, and even had a few fancy collector cars.

You know what I learned? None of it made me feel any happier and none of it made me feel like I was a success. Instead I realized I was slaving away at a thankless job so some schmuck at the top of the pyramid could get even more rich off the fruits of my labor. I was getting bent over by the tax man every year, paying tens of thousands of dollars above my normal withholdings into a system that does not have my interests in mind.

So I sold the cars, quit the job, and am in the process of getting rid of the last house now. I no longer have any interest in wasting away in some office, pissing away my life making someone else rich and dumping stacks of cash into the government via taxes. My definition of success is to work as little as possible, paying as little taxes as possible, and putting the surplus effort into things that directly and exclusively improve my own existence.

I think part of the problem is that we lie to our children by telling them that the only way to find success and happiness in life is to follow a path that serves our own long term interests, not theirs. We tell them they have to go to college, they have to climb the corporate ladder, and slave away at a job under the vague promise that it will all mean something to them at some indeterminate point in their future. After all, someone has to keep contributing to Social Security and pay for Medicare and all those juicy government programs you qualify for when you retire.

There is no such thing as a dangerous woman. Only dangerous men. That is why women choose the bear over the man. Men are evil. Stupid and evil. The mainstream media and social media tell us so.

Pay no mind to the growing list of women educators getting arrested for having sex with their underage students and absolutely do not make note of the sentencing disparities between men convicted of the same crimes.

No, no. Men bad. Women good. Got it? Good. Glad we got that sorted out.

What are you nattering on about? There are plenty of houses in the suburbs being sold without the onerous requirement of a tyrannical HOA. The last two homes I have purchased are literally 10 minutes out of town and have no HOA. I refuse to consider any property that has an HOA.

Sure thereâ(TM)s an HOA in those developments where every third house is the same and theyâ(TM)re all built like shit by the lowest bidder. But that is not the only option out there.

The problem with the Democrat party is that they actually do not think too highly of the American public. In fact, quite the opposite, they think too little of the American public if this last election is any indication. What the Democrat party has become quite adept at is virtue signalling about irrelevant issues and insisting anyone who isn't in lockstep with their progressive ideology must be a fascist, Hitler loving, racist piece of garbage.

But you are free to keep believing the lie that Democrats appeal to maturity, empathy, facts, and maturity. Just know that's not what the majority of the American people are thinking and why the Democrats will be sitting on the political sidelines for the next few years. Common sense suggests that these next four years would be an ideal time for the Democrat party to re-evaluate their position on the political stage and get rid of the things that aren't working. But that would require the willingness to be introspective and thoughtful and actually talk to the American public that you claim they think so highly of. If the fallout from the catastrophic Democrat loss this year is any indication, however, I think that it is unlikely.

I use my PC every day. It stays on 24x7. Same with the servers I have in a small 12U rack. Plus two laptops.

Of course, that is here in the USA. I understand from a friend of mine who lives in Thailand that they primarily use phones and PCs are not as common as they are here.

I would say that improper handling of classified documents and data should be universally punished without regard for the circumstances.

If you knowingly pass classified government data on a private email server running in your closet, you should go to jail. If you store government documents in a seedy resort, irrespective of which room it is found in, you should go to jail. If you store classified government documents in your garage next to your classic Corvette, you should go to jail.

Perhaps it is time to dispense with the litany of acronyms to describe the various levels of classified data that these government agencies get all hot and bothered over and start enforcing the rule of law already on the books. Without regard for the celebrity status or political position of the offenders.

Because you know damn well that if any one of us plebs did any one of these things we would spend decades in prison.

Hitchens Razor. That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Whenever I hear anybody make a claim about anything and then attempt to substantiate that claim by insisting other people do their own research to arrive at the same conclusion, I immediately dismiss everything they have to say. If you cannot back up your claims with real, testable evidence, then your claims are without merit.

It is Texas so I think as soon as you get an alert, you are obligated to not only grab your gun and saddle your horse, but you also need to round up a dozen or more of your neighbors with their guns and horses and form a posse to cut the offenders off at the pass.