draz

Medicine :-)

<quote>Twitter isn’t just going to disappear. It’s just going to become a new way to follow celebrities, corporations, and the like,” said Toubia.</quote> Funny, I thought Twitter IS that for the past few years... :-) Essentially, what they're saying is that Twitter is a passive way to consume information. Didn't we all know that already. Am I missing anything?

I actually thought of that, but I realized that BoingBoing (and the like) beat them to it but being the gatekeeper to the internet. From last I've seen, they have their own shopping portal (and Amazon was access was complimentary). Why would I go out of my way to download the SkyMall app? What value would it give me?

I propose a 4th reason why they merged with Xhibit: the owners of SkyMall realized that with WiFi becoming more and more prominent on flights, bored traveler are less and less likely to flip through their magazines, but instead get online (where they'd have their own set of advertisements, shopping capabilities, etc). I think, therefore, it was the right move to cash out before companies themselves pull out of their agreements with SkyMall.

Yes, they want more money from higher paying insurance. But if they were to officially have a menu of prices for different entities (self pay, insurance A, insurance B, etc), that'd be against the law. So they come up a "catch all" number, and they grab as much as they can get from each entity.

I generally agree with your sentiment. However, here's something to consider - medical practices mostly over-charge to avoid insurance fraud. Wait, what?? Yes, here's how it works: if they were to ask you, "what insurance do you have" and then charge you differently (i.e. one insurance pays them better than the other, so they'd charge more), they'd be committing a crime.

So, instead, they charge EVERYONE a crazy amount, and then they get X% of the amount billed from one insurance, Y% from another insurance, etc. Fair? Not really -- if you don't have insurance, you get hit with the FULL amount (since you don't have the negotiating power the insurance company has). So while company X paid $200 for an MRI, you'd pay out of pocket $2500 without insurance.

In reality, what happens? Normally, people without insurance are an underserved population. They send them letters, and they don't pay. At the end of the day, the hospital/private practice just ends up writing this amount off, and they call it a day. It ends up being a silly game where they bill knowing they won't get paid, and then spend more money on trying to collect rather than give more realistic prices.

I, therefore, welcome this transparency.

source: I work for one of the largest and prestigious medical/research institutions in the US, and I used to do Analytics for their financial data warehouse.

You bring up an interesting point that reminded me of an article I read a week ago about how Germany does the exact opposite (with overall better financial implications):

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21579145-ingred...

"Germany managed to avoid a surge of lay-offs after the financial crisis and has done far better than others at getting the young and the hard-to-employ into work.

How did it manage that? Most explanations heap praise on the Mittelstand model and the system of vocational training. Firms such as Storopack or Rösch take on apprentices, mixing practical training with classroom tuition."

Of course, this is NOT the only reason for their current financial prowess in Europe, but a contributing factor

that's actually good enough for my purposes :-) (I'm looking to get a zip code from the browser and then show stores, for example, in a 50 mile radius). 2 adjacent zip codes would still be around 50 miles from the store.

Related: can you expand it to include the reverse (geolocation to zip code)? Anyone know of a restful service that might do that, alternatively?

Yes, they do. But when they see the money in front of them, they think long and hard about it. When, however, you introduce all kinds of financial instruments, you are no longer seeing money rather some abstract thing, and THAT makes it easier to rationalize all kinds of actions.

Dan Ariely mentions these types of products (albeit in the context of cheating): the more removed the product is from real money, the easier it becomes to justify all kinds of actions you normally wouldn't perform: stealing it, spending it, etc.

for those looking for the adversarial approach, there's also Start with No (http://amzn.to/16QO6sO). While I haven't really used those tactics, I did find many of the strategies outlined employed in the corporate environment.

part of Computability

Just putting it out there so it won't sound like I'm trolling: I like it. Now, isn't this a subset of Quora? (which might not be a bad thing because it's trying to grab a particular niche, but still I'd like to understand the "secret sauce" here)

I dont think it was. I actually was working on it as it started acting up. Wrote them an email, they said "some issues with UI," and a few minutes later it was down.

From the time I got Dropbox, I stopped saving anything I cared about on my desktop, My Documents/Documents (OSX), or any other random place on my computer. (It would be nice, however, if Dropbox added some secure folders with encryption/password. But that's a whole other discussion....). I'm curious to know whether other people also abandoned local storage in favor of the "Dropbox model" I am using.

agreed. I don't believe those who left were unhappy, rather they thought that they had more upside by going to Color. Obviously, it didn't pan out. "Genius?" No, just luck for Apple, less so for the employees.

Those employees were given options at Apple ($80M worth) that were probably lost once they left the company to work at Color. Then Apple ended up getting them back on the cheap. So instead of $160M, Apple ended up paying $80M + $7M.

I received the same kind of email from AT&T awhile ago. I immediately called them up, and asked to opt-out. After 30 minutes on the phone, the representative told me that the "feature" hasn't been rolled out yet, and I should call back a month later. Guess what? I completely forgot about it. That was probably the intention all along.... Thanks for the reminder, though!

makes me wonder whether this also has to do with root access into the device (debug mode). I.e., Apple has its own version of the chip that allows them to enter in that mode.

suggestion: it would be nice if people could request examples, and others could submit code snippets

has anybody seen the pricing for this?? outrageous!! http://static.ips.apple.com.edgekey.net/ipa_preauth/content/...

Look specifically at the data plans

something about this page crashes my Chrome (Mac, 21.0.1180.82). Anyone else? A link to the text?

that's because every executive knows that 3D graphs (especially pie charts!) contain more meaningful information!

reminds me of "relative time" Jews and Muslims (and Japanese, until 1872) use. This is a French wikipedia article I stumbled upon: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaot_zmaniot

consulting work: plain vanilla implementation (installation), special plug-ins, support, etc. How does RedHat make money?

i actually thought this design closely resembles the 4S: http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uplo...

I saw a few other designs that reminded me of other versions. It made me wonder whether this 4S design, for example, was the original intent, but engineering restrictions at the time did not allow for this execution. Will we be seeing future iPhone designs resembling one of these?

Last year I went to a conference and met an American Express guy. To make a long story short, he was telling me Amex (and other credit card companies) also sells information to 3rd parties. For example, you like Italian food (they can tell by multiple purchases in Italian restaurants) and fly on Airline X? The airline might be interested in that data, so it could change its food offering on the plane. This is just ONE example.... So, I'm not surprised.

New York is a "at-will" employment state. Unless otherwise specified, both parties can do as they wish (give a 1 day notice, for example. Though that would look very bad for future employers...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

Anyone from DreamWorks (or any other studio)? Could this be used to generate crowds of people in movies, or is it too inefficient?