Duff

29 ms·

241.
by Duff 15y ago
Most Americans aren't Medicare or Medicaid beneficiaries, but we're all affected by these programs. Medicare sets a price floor on all procedures covered by the program. Also, Medicare will not compensate providers for bad outcomes, but Med
242.
by Duff 15y ago
It should get amusing when the crowd of folks who claimed that Fukushima was no big deal show up. Oh wait, they're here already.
243.
by Duff 15y ago
Unless the point is to say "Wow, Coal is a very dangerous energy source on a global basis." or "Wow, China is really bad at operating coal power plants", this isn't very informative. Obviously, the coal figures are reflecting the health iss
244.
by Duff 15y ago
I agree. The wikipedia people seem petty and bureaucratic at times, but their hearts are usually in the right place. My coworkers all got together a few years ago to create a gag article about another coworker as a practical joke. We built
245.
by Duff 15y ago
"Simple" means different things to different people. Apple aims their products at individual people. "Think Different" means "Don't think about your computer". So write your book, keep your spreadsheets, whatever. The user doesn't care abou
246.
by Duff 15y ago
Sorry about my mangling of the english language! From the end user's perspective, features often reduce complexity, sometimes dramatically so. Before "mail merge" was a common MS Word feature, collating form letters was a tedious job. Good
247.
by Duff 15y ago
Features don't necessarily translate into more complexity.
248.
by Duff 15y ago
NYC has its charms, but it has its nightmarish qualities too. People tend to live in places convenient to their first job. Getting around for work is a nightmare unless you live in an area served by the right public transit connections. Now
249.
by Duff 15y ago
I think that you're right. Given the back catalog of millions of songs, the only music that isn't a low-value commodity is new/emerging stuff that happens to be a sub-genre of it's own. Even quality independent bands with followings aren't
250.
by Duff 15y ago
I see this as a complement to a recent Planet Money podcast "How Money Got Weird"... about the rise of financialization in america. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/09/30/140954343/the-frid... The validity of a particular metric is irr
251.
by Duff 15y ago
Not a structure; it was replaced by airborne command posts.
252.
by Duff 15y ago
I think the way threads like this go reflect the inane way that we as a society discuss important social issues. At the risk of being boring, I agree with your two thoughts. I would say "this is an interesting problem for law enforcement. h
253.
by Duff 15y ago
Who wrote the source report? Mediocre journalism is consists of stringing together press releases.
254.
by Duff 15y ago
Note he didn't point out crimes like embezzlement, bookmaking or murder. When spokespeople for the police say "We can't do X, which makes it harder to stop child pornography and drug dealing", that's PR-speak for "It's bad, trust us and don
255.
by Duff 15y ago
The military probably has radar on satellites similar to aircraft-mounted battlefield management systems like JSTARS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-8_Joint_STARS ) Basically, they can identify tanks, buildings, and other large objects via
256.
by Duff 15y ago
They get nasty. You cannot underestimate the complexity that collective bargaining agreements bring. New York City, as an example, has something like 15,000 variations for payroll categories. Plus garnishments, domestic relations orders, et
257.
by Duff 15y ago
Totally. I used to write event handling rules for the Tivoli Enterprise Console, which used a Prolog dialect and a godawful DSL based on prolog. I had a ton of fun doing it... basically you had to write rules to normalize SMTP traps from va
258.
by Duff 15y ago
I think that with a modern database like SQL Server, the old-school "high priest" DBA is obsolete. But... if you don't have someone dedicated to thinking about database issues, you need to treat database changes just like your code. It need
259.
by Duff 15y ago
I'd amend this to say "A PROPERLY shuffled deck of cards is unique in all human history". Without proper shuffling, a card deck is like an encryption key with a poor initialization vector -- it's more predictable. Card decks ship in order,
260.
by Duff 15y ago
That's great... I somehow never ran into that before. Thanks!
261.
by Duff 15y ago
Ha! I take it you don't follow state politics much. State Legislatures make the Congress look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
262.
by Duff 15y ago
My perspective on Perl is that it's like a Dremel tool. If you've ever had a household project that requires a tool you don't have or skill you don't know, you can usually take your Dremel out, dig through the gift pack of attachments that
263.
by Duff 15y ago
Democracy is messy, and everyone has dirty laundry.
264.
by Duff 15y ago
My layman's understanding is that you cannot invoke the 5th amendment in many circumstances where you might want to. The Supreme Court has also ruled that an adverse inference may be taken if you assert your 5th amendment right. The safest
265.
by Duff 15y ago
In practice, the direct appointment of Senators gave local political machinery complete and utter control. The result was an institution in the Senate the was regressive by nearly any measure by the 1890's and 1900's.
266.
by Duff 15y ago
The issue here isn't this particular problem. The insider trading problem is just a particularly egregious example of how modern American government holds many of the fundamental founding principles of the nation in contempt . I respect th
267.
by Duff 15y ago
Cops. District Attorneys. Prison Guards. Lots of folks.
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by Duff 15y ago
Good catch!
269.
by Duff 15y ago
I've become something of a political cynic at this point in my life. Stories like this usually leave me unmoved. But this particular story has left almost shaking in anger -- this is more than graft. Our government will persecute all sorts
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by Duff 15y ago
Why? You have zero liability for fraud -- it's you bank's problem. Just don't use a debit card.

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