I still think that for most office uses, a mouse is better than a touch screen. If I'm spending a lot of time entering data, a all-in-one touch screen device is miles behind a monitor at eye level several feet away, a good tactile keyboard flat on my desk, and a mouse a few inches away. Maybe I'm constrained by what I already know, but I can't picture a touch device being better.
I don't know if it is necessarily bad for them to do this. If they don't what is to stop someone else from filing a similar patent and suing them. It seems like this is the best way for them to protect themselves.
If, on the other hand, they start using this patent to sue others: that would be very bad indeed.
EVERYBODY will have health problems and use their health insurance. Very few people will have their house burn down and use their fire insurance. Therefore, there is a massive difference in price.
That is because everybody uses health insurance for things that really shouldn't be insured.
My Dad was recently complaining that his prescription coverage was cut, so he was now paying about $100/mo for his prescriptions. I asked how much the pills would cost with no coverage, and he dug out the bills and determined they would cost about $600/mo. This sounds outrageous I suppose, until you realize that he pays about $1100/mo for insurance. Granted, that is for more than just drugs, but if insurance was really for unaffordable things, it wouldn't cost that much. My dad is still paying for his monthly prescriptions... just in a roundabout way.
Anecdotes aside, the article points this out too. Would you expect your fire insurance to cover the cost of batteries for a smoke detector? Of course not. But if it did, the batteries would most likely cost more, since instead of having to sell to millions of battery buyers in Wal-mart, battery makers would be selling to mere dozens of fire insurance companies, who would pass on the costs to those buying the insurance, and hence have no incentive to control battery costs. Even worse, the administrative costs of having people constantly file battery-replacement claims would dwarf the cost of the battery itself. So people would suddenly be paying $25 more a month to avoid buying $2 worth of batteries.
Sounds absurd I'm sure, but that is exactly how our comprehensive health insurance works today.
If people actually used health insurance for things that are equivalent to a house burning down, it would function more like other insurance, and get cheaper. I'm 26, and my most expensive health expense to date was my birth. The next closest thing was probably when I had my adenoids out when I was 7. After that, when I broke my big toe ($900). None of those are akin to having a house burn down or getting in a car wreck. The first two were predictable and all three could be payable with credit or HSAs. It makes no sense to pay thousands of dollars a month so you can go to the doctor for free when it would only cost $150 anyway.
Yes, but most people's health problems are not as severe as to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Your argument assumes everyone will become so ill as to require massively expensive treatment at some point, but they don't.
My point, though, is that multiple competing private health care providers create administrative overhead without delivering the benefits of competition because sick people are a captive market, and thus normal market forces are unable to operate properly. If you look into the history of private fire companies you'll see problems which are echoed in today's health care system.
I had a friend in college who went everywhere with two tupperware containers. When he was asked whether or not he wanted left overs he would feign a no, but as soon as he was asked a second time he would say "I guess so" and pull out his tupperware.
"An adult or a teen celebrity might twitter but most regular kids see what they are communicating as too private to share with anyone other than the person for whom it is intended, much less any old creep who chooses to subscribe."
That doesn't jive with me- just look at wall postings on facebook (I'm a youth worker, so I have 100+ teens on my friends list- it is amazing the details that they post for anyone, including old aunt Agnes, to read)
Agreed. My partner is an IT technician at a school. His friends list has a lot of ex/current pupils & some of the things he sees published make me blush!
My understanding is that it is not supposed to be a business phone. It is supposed to be a middle-of-the-road phone, excellent for both your business life (like a black berry) and personal life (like an iphone). So these being in the same breath makes perfect sense.
With utilities, you pay based on how much you use, not on how difficult it is to get them to you. So, for example, if you live on a farm in the middle of nowhere, it is more expensive to give you power than if you live in the city (you need dedicated infrastructure to get the power to you, and chances are you are further away from the power plant which means more power gets lost in transmission). Yet you pay the same per kw/h as if you lived in the city. Where you start paying more is if you use more power. (at least, this is the case where I live. Sorry if it is different in the US)
Postage works exactly the same way. No matter how expensive it is to get a package to you, you pay a fixed rate for it. However, you also pay proportional to the cost you impose on the system is that you pay per package.
> With utilities, you pay based on how much you use, not on how difficult it is to get them to you.
Actually, you do pay for untilities based on how expensive it is to get to you. The local power folks won't run a line to whereever you happen to be "for free". They'll charge you, the developer, someone. If you're a long way from "enough" capacity, the cost can be significant.
That's why some folks aren't on the untilities grid.
Rates vary - substantially - by reigion depending on sources of power and transmission costs. If you live in an area with hydroelectric power, you pay much lower rates, for example. If you live a rural area, you have to pay for the connections.
Perhaps utilities were a bad choice of example on my part because of this usage confusion.
I've played Catan with cards instead of dice- you have 36 cards, each with a number that can be attained by rolling two dice. How many times a number appears in the deck is its odds of being rolled. Statistically, you will roll 7 6/36 times, so there are 6 sevens in the deck. There is only one 2 and one 12 because their odds are 1/36. You shuffle the deck, and draw a card instead of rolling (once you go through the deck, you just reshuffle). This means that luck plays into when you will get a resource, but not if you will.
Flattening the bell curve can help a good deal, but the only way to guarantee that you get a resource each turn is to redraw until you hit a match with one of your settlements... unless I'm misunderstanding you.
edit: NM, I misread your last sentence. I've never seen a territory run dry for the whole game, but this would indeed prevent that.
