1) Limit medical malpractice awards to cut back on defensive medicine. Much of what is done in medicine to limit the chance of malpractice suits. This is not bad behavior on the doctor's part but on the lawyer's part.
Some agreement. The current state of affairs is bad for doctors And patients. The only winner is lawyers.
2) Increase co-pays until people only go to the doctor when they really need to. Limit medical coverage to actual life saving, major medical procedures. Don't cover knee replacements because while they are wonderful, they aren't necessary, just very nice to have. If someone wants a knee replaced, they can pay for it out of pocket or do without.
Higher co-pays that ensure that you only go to the doctor when you "really need to" also encourage/force people to seek treatment only when they are in a life-threatening situation. "gee, this cough and fever are really bad and won't go away, but i've missed too much work to afford my co-pay and clinic visit. Guess i will just lay here until someone calls an ambulance to get me forty thousand dollars worth of pneumonia treatments that could have been prevented by a visit with a doctor and a twelve dollar prescription"
3) Allow medical insurance costs to be based on risk (like life insurance). Otherwise the young and healthy pay too much to subsidize the old and sick.
With the way current health insurance companies lobby in america, this would become their escape clause. Whats that? you once had mono? next price bracket. you used to take a prescription sleep aid? next price bracket.
Gods forbid you actually need any medical attention. "Due to your recent health assessment, our policy states that it would be best to move you into our highest bracket. Here is the prorated bill for the days since you went to the hospital, and here is next months plan. What? this is more then you can afford? I see.. let me just make a note 'refused medical care' There we are, have a good day! and be out of here in a half hour."
America: The Best Health Money Can Buy. poor need not apply
On one hand we have news organizations inflating stories or even creating them out of whole cloth. On the other, we have a reasonable and restrained information/opinion service (techdirt) that highlights the real and often glaring flaws in many systems.
A news organization printing "Teen Shoots Self Due To Video Game" because the unfortunate young person happened to be in a house that held a game console is bad "journalism"
techdirt highlighting the "innovation tax" created by patent thickets or some new lawsuit based on a broad patent that claims to cover all forms of pressing buttons on a keyboard(for example) is simply unfortunate truth.
I would support a measure to at least require timely response to corrections to Credit Bureaus long before i would ever be in favor of a "right to forget" anything on the internet.
Not to say that strong consumer protections are not important. I am all in favor of companies being required to handle their data in safe ways and follow the claims made in their user agreements. But in comparison, a rogue credit bureau can cause infinitely more harm.
reading through the comments that you claim prove your point, all i see is a lot of baseless "well, maybe everyone just became 30% percent better at their job. it could happen!" and "They probably just filed a whole stack of patents in january, for no apparent reason!"
Never addressing the simple idea that the easiest way to get approximately 30% more work out of the same amount of people is to lower the standards of their work or dramatically improve the systems that support it. Since there has been no sign of the latter, might it be the former?
don't worry, you can come along and whine "go back to drinking your koolaid freetard!" whenever you like. It makes your type look terribly clever, honest.
"The Internet is scary and people on there might be allowed to say bad things about me there. I demand they stop saying things i don't like, or else. Anyone who disagrees with that is a slandering pirate pedophile communist fascist."
Thanks for letting us all know your side of the story. I appreciate that you have some strong feelings in this matter. I won't ask you to show me on the doll where the bad people touched you, but i will ask.. Why is the proper response to "speech i don't like" to turn to your state attorney general?
Rather then any number of steps, starting with "ignore them" and traveling on through "starting legal action against the person making the actual speech" you skip straight to "create grandstanding platform for someone who will freely ignore the truth and the law if it makes good soundbites".
that is less an issue of the search engine trying to wring money out of you and more an issue of saturation.
I bet, as we speak, someone is running s script to generate a website along the basic theme of "Drivers" "Dell" "NVidia" "Download" in some permutation, filled with part numbers and driver codes for every piece of hardware ever.. Just to saturate the search engines a little more, send more people back down the line to "extremefreedrivers.ru.com.not.a.scam.com" where they will be encouraged to download the "Driver Helper" virus, i mean, utility. The spammers can put nearly infinite pages to work defeating the one or two truly good results because it works for them.
And i think, much like so much of my email spam, it will eventually be dealt with. better algorithms, clever page-readers and link checkers, etc.
c'mon joe, even you can tell there is a difference between user reports to hide what is incredibly likely to be a spam message and a government agent deciding what can and cannot be communicated.
I stand by the statement. People generally want what they are paying for. A bottle of CocaCola had better contain CocaCola, not BobsCola, and so on, and no one likes to be tricked.
yes, there is a smallish subclass of things, purses, some designer clothing and accessories where counterfeits have something of a positive reputation simply because it creates a broader price point, but in those situations the consumer usually knows that they are purchasing an unauthorized product (at a lower price) and would not be so accepting if they were being tricked instead.
It is a fairly simple tactic, designed to lump Counterfeiting and Actual Theft (which people would agree are bad) with Trademark, Digital Copy-Infringement and Patents (which people usually consider confusing, benign/good and confusing, in that order)
Same as those lists of talking points that jump from talking about poisonous counterfeit medication from china to talking about people downloading movies.
It is forging a link, and just like blacksmithing it requires repeated blows with a heavy hammer to bend into shape.
So here we have Xerox, a company that is rightfully worried about bad counterfeit parts (which damage their reputation by being shoddy even more then they damage Xerox's bottom line by being from another supplier), getting bound up with a bunch of content producers who want to have free reign to treat everyone like criminals.
wikileaks also ran over my dog, threw rocks at my cat and poisoned my goldfish.
Funny thing you notice when you poke around a little..
wikileaks is a criminal blah blah .com is owned and operated by..
hmm..
they don't say.
Well, just check whois.. oh, a proxy service.
I know! there seems to be a company name "Accurate Information, Inc"
just what is a broker company in this context? what else has "Accurate Information, Inc" been doing? Where can i see the tax statements for mr Sharp? Is "Accurate Information, Inc" being paid by a third party to perform their "message measurement and enhancement for technical marketers." tasks? what is the purpose of this "Message Enhancement" service?
What's that? not terribly forthcoming with private and business details?
accurateinfodotinfoisacriminalorganization.com
see how foolish that starts to look?
i hope you are paid well to put together your rubbish in the attempts to make disparate quotes look earth-shattering.
Oh look, the Anonymous Troll Effect neatly applied. You are still trying to find ways to blame the messengers for being worried about the rate of patents last year. Any "data" you can smear to it and any innuendo you can use to discredit someone who disagrees with you, you are all over it.
Everyone in the world will immediately switch to pirating everything ever just as soon as all the elderly people are dead, because no one wants to pay for anything ever. We will also kill bank guards and steal all the money from the bank, at least until we can start pirating cars and getting Insane Stunt bonus points. The Lawless Blood Of Piracy beats within our hearts and it drives us to kill and steal, can't they understand that?
I think the great scammer interest kicked up to a higher gear when everyone and everything started having facebook accounts.
Denture cream, discount stores, eggs, bandaids and even ketchup. Facebook pages all around, and TV spots with a little "follow us on facebook and twitter" tag shoved in the end.
Marketers are trying to be "hip" or whatever the kids say today, and this might be encouraging a somewhat less computer savvy group of people to use these sites. Not that we are talking about fools, its just that without experience it is easier to fall into the "allow this mystery application to access your facebook to watch this video" or "Sign in to Cutecatvideo.ru.scam.trap with Facebook!" traps.
And where there is an increase in prey, there is an increase in lowest-level predators. Like the way spam became the criminal money making engine it sorta is After more people started having email accounts and home computers.
And like email, we will start to see more actions on the part of the service providers to screen these attacks, filter them out of our consciousness.
Wait, so now its "if one person can be that popular, it obviously does not count"? and "You silly kids and your silly tiny ideas cannot compete with the grace and power of The Top 10 Chart"
Lovely.
And then you go on to attack "modern" artists by pretending they are all against the idea of the structure of albums.
Thanks for making your silly idea clear.
Some would accuse you of being a paid shill, but i would hope that a corporate paymaster is getting better shilling for their money.
And with a single signature you managed to kill the good-will that many people had towards your product.
I wonder what you could have done with that three-quarters of a million dollars if you had not spent it on lawyers.
More importantly, why are you trying to encourage legal changes in America when you are having your biggest (from what you seem to be saying) problems in China (where they will happily hang you with your own infringement claims, laughing as you challenge a chinese manufacturer.
What about other, Positive branding models?
Build relationships with your dealers. Keep a database on your site of the Best Places To Get Strung Out With D'Addario. Ok, thats a terrible line. Pay less to a lawfirm and pay someone to come up with a better line, then Use it.
"if you're not buying at Xinhao Music Superstore, you're not playing on D'Addario"
To stretch a metaphor, its like you were sponsoring a Klansman for political office. It does not matter that you really like his position on property tax issues, you are now stained with everything attached to this massive list of companies known far and wide as bullies. Why? Just so they could claim to be representing "small business"?
This lineup of child-laboring, sweatshop-running litigious monsters.. and you.
Be careful what company you keep, if you want to keep your company.
On the post: The Distributed Party Of 'We' Is Already In Control
Re:
Some agreement. The current state of affairs is bad for doctors And patients. The only winner is lawyers.
Higher co-pays that ensure that you only go to the doctor when you "really need to" also encourage/force people to seek treatment only when they are in a life-threatening situation. "gee, this cough and fever are really bad and won't go away, but i've missed too much work to afford my co-pay and clinic visit. Guess i will just lay here until someone calls an ambulance to get me forty thousand dollars worth of pneumonia treatments that could have been prevented by a visit with a doctor and a twelve dollar prescription"
With the way current health insurance companies lobby in america, this would become their escape clause. Whats that? you once had mono? next price bracket. you used to take a prescription sleep aid? next price bracket.
Gods forbid you actually need any medical attention. "Due to your recent health assessment, our policy states that it would be best to move you into our highest bracket. Here is the prorated bill for the days since you went to the hospital, and here is next months plan. What? this is more then you can afford? I see.. let me just make a note 'refused medical care' There we are, have a good day! and be out of here in a half hour."
America: The Best Health Money Can Buy.
poor need not apply
On the post: Techno-Panic Reporting: The Media Deserves No Mercy
Re:
On one hand we have news organizations inflating stories or even creating them out of whole cloth. On the other, we have a reasonable and restrained information/opinion service (techdirt) that highlights the real and often glaring flaws in many systems.
A news organization printing "Teen Shoots Self Due To Video Game" because the unfortunate young person happened to be in a house that held a game console is bad "journalism"
techdirt highlighting the "innovation tax" created by patent thickets or some new lawsuit based on a broad patent that claims to cover all forms of pressing buttons on a keyboard(for example) is simply unfortunate truth.
On the post: Europeans Continue To Push For 'Right To Be Forgotten'; Claim Americans 'Fetishize' Free Speech
Re: Credit Bureaus
I would support a measure to at least require timely response to corrections to Credit Bureaus long before i would ever be in favor of a "right to forget" anything on the internet.
Not to say that strong consumer protections are not important. I am all in favor of companies being required to handle their data in safe ways and follow the claims made in their user agreements. But in comparison, a rogue credit bureau can cause infinitely more harm.
On the post: You Would Think Sony Knew Better Than To Install A Rootkit In The PS3 [Updated]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not exactly a "rootkit"
Mike also shoots brain-signals from his orbiting death station, so cinch that aluminum foil down Tight on your head and bedtime, ok?
On the post: And Now Europe Feels The Need To Catch Up To China And The US In The Self-Destructive Patent Race
Re:
reading through the comments that you claim prove your point, all i see is a lot of baseless "well, maybe everyone just became 30% percent better at their job. it could happen!" and "They probably just filed a whole stack of patents in january, for no apparent reason!"
Never addressing the simple idea that the easiest way to get approximately 30% more work out of the same amount of people is to lower the standards of their work or dramatically improve the systems that support it. Since there has been no sign of the latter, might it be the former?
don't worry, you can come along and whine "go back to drinking your koolaid freetard!" whenever you like. It makes your type look terribly clever, honest.
On the post: How Would US Politicians Respond If Spain Seized Domains Of American Companies?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
repeating earlier dismissive remarks in an attempt to "get the last word", and not actually replying to any comments or concerns.
On the post: Why Have We Let State AGs Become De Facto Internet Regulators?
Re: Bologna
Thanks for letting us all know your side of the story. I appreciate that you have some strong feelings in this matter. I won't ask you to show me on the doll where the bad people touched you, but i will ask.. Why is the proper response to "speech i don't like" to turn to your state attorney general?
Rather then any number of steps, starting with "ignore them" and traveling on through "starting legal action against the person making the actual speech" you skip straight to "create grandstanding platform for someone who will freely ignore the truth and the law if it makes good soundbites".
On the post: Google's Childish Response To Microsoft Using Google To Increase Bing Relevance
Re:
I bet, as we speak, someone is running s script to generate a website along the basic theme of "Drivers" "Dell" "NVidia" "Download" in some permutation, filled with part numbers and driver codes for every piece of hardware ever.. Just to saturate the search engines a little more, send more people back down the line to "extremefreedrivers.ru.com.not.a.scam.com" where they will be encouraged to download the "Driver Helper" virus, i mean, utility. The spammers can put nearly infinite pages to work defeating the one or two truly good results because it works for them.
And i think, much like so much of my email spam, it will eventually be dealt with. better algorithms, clever page-readers and link checkers, etc.
On the post: Government Putting Quite A Lot Of Effort Into Tracking Down 'Anonymous'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Ironic That Xerox Wants Laws To Break The Copying Machine On The Internet
Re: Re: Re: Trademark vs Copyright
I stand by the statement. People generally want what they are paying for. A bottle of CocaCola had better contain CocaCola, not BobsCola, and so on, and no one likes to be tricked.
yes, there is a smallish subclass of things, purses, some designer clothing and accessories where counterfeits have something of a positive reputation simply because it creates a broader price point, but in those situations the consumer usually knows that they are purchasing an unauthorized product (at a lower price) and would not be so accepting if they were being tricked instead.
On the post: Ironic That Xerox Wants Laws To Break The Copying Machine On The Internet
Re: Trademark vs Copyright
Same as those lists of talking points that jump from talking about poisonous counterfeit medication from china to talking about people downloading movies.
It is forging a link, and just like blacksmithing it requires repeated blows with a heavy hammer to bend into shape.
So here we have Xerox, a company that is rightfully worried about bad counterfeit parts (which damage their reputation by being shoddy even more then they damage Xerox's bottom line by being from another supplier), getting bound up with a bunch of content producers who want to have free reign to treat everyone like criminals.
It is regrettable.
On the post: Pomplamoose On Making A Career While Making Music They Like
Re: Re: Re:
This one goes right up there on the wall next to "This only works for small bands" and "this only works for large bands".
I also enjoy the back-handed compliments of..
"For someone who likes music, music in and of itself is not hard work."
"That's okay, they are a great example of modern times."
"More power to them,let's just hope the whole music world doesn't turn into this.".
It is like a condescending head-pat from some great authority figure before waggling their finger from on high.
On the post: The Background Story Of The NY Times' Relationship With Julian Assange
Re: Wikileaks is bunch of bitchy criminals
Funny thing you notice when you poke around a little..
wikileaks is a criminal blah blah .com is owned and operated by..
hmm..
they don't say.
Well, just check whois.. oh, a proxy service.
I know! there seems to be a company name "Accurate Information, Inc"
just what is a broker company in this context? what else has "Accurate Information, Inc" been doing? Where can i see the tax statements for mr Sharp? Is "Accurate Information, Inc" being paid by a third party to perform their "message measurement and enhancement for technical marketers." tasks? what is the purpose of this "Message Enhancement" service?
What's that? not terribly forthcoming with private and business details?
accurateinfodotinfoisacriminalorganization.com
see how foolish that starts to look?
i hope you are paid well to put together your rubbish in the attempts to make disparate quotes look earth-shattering.
On the post: The State Of Innovation Is Not Defined By The State Of Our Patent Trolls
Re:
Excellent work!
On the post: Taking The Long View: App Developer Happy That Piracy Doubled His Sales
Re: Not just the future
Everyone in the world will immediately switch to pirating everything ever just as soon as all the elderly people are dead, because no one wants to pay for anything ever. We will also kill bank guards and steal all the money from the bank, at least until we can start pirating cars and getting Insane Stunt bonus points. The Lawless Blood Of Piracy beats within our hearts and it drives us to kill and steal, can't they understand that?
/sarc
On the post: Scammers Move In: Facebook Getting Sketchy
Denture cream, discount stores, eggs, bandaids and even ketchup. Facebook pages all around, and TV spots with a little "follow us on facebook and twitter" tag shoved in the end.
Marketers are trying to be "hip" or whatever the kids say today, and this might be encouraging a somewhat less computer savvy group of people to use these sites. Not that we are talking about fools, its just that without experience it is easier to fall into the "allow this mystery application to access your facebook to watch this video" or "Sign in to Cutecatvideo.ru.scam.trap with Facebook!" traps.
And where there is an increase in prey, there is an increase in lowest-level predators. Like the way spam became the criminal money making engine it sorta is After more people started having email accounts and home computers.
And like email, we will start to see more actions on the part of the service providers to screen these attacks, filter them out of our consciousness.
On the post: Band Tries To Take 'Open Source' Lessons To The Music World
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Lovely.
And then you go on to attack "modern" artists by pretending they are all against the idea of the structure of albums.
Thanks for making your silly idea clear.
Some would accuse you of being a paid shill, but i would hope that a corporate paymaster is getting better shilling for their money.
On the post: A Key Myth That Drives Bad Policy: Stronger IP Laws Mean More Creativity
*this message brought to you by the United American Vault Building Corporations of America.
On the post: How Facebook Used White Space To Crush Myspace
When i heard "white space" it made me think of the actual white space on the page.
clean orderly design i can see, nebulous company policies are harder to make decisions on.
On the post: The Companies Who Support Censoring The Internet
Re: counterfeiting and law suits.
I wonder what you could have done with that three-quarters of a million dollars if you had not spent it on lawyers.
More importantly, why are you trying to encourage legal changes in America when you are having your biggest (from what you seem to be saying) problems in China (where they will happily hang you with your own infringement claims, laughing as you challenge a chinese manufacturer.
What about other, Positive branding models?
Build relationships with your dealers. Keep a database on your site of the Best Places To Get Strung Out With D'Addario. Ok, thats a terrible line. Pay less to a lawfirm and pay someone to come up with a better line, then Use it.
"if you're not buying at Xinhao Music Superstore, you're not playing on D'Addario"
To stretch a metaphor, its like you were sponsoring a Klansman for political office. It does not matter that you really like his position on property tax issues, you are now stained with everything attached to this massive list of companies known far and wide as bullies. Why? Just so they could claim to be representing "small business"?
This lineup of child-laboring, sweatshop-running litigious monsters.. and you.
Be careful what company you keep, if you want to keep your company.
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