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October 13 State of US Health CareAfter a long long repeated discussion on Health Care provided by federal government, I finally understand the core issues here. First is the really stereotypical argument, government can not do anything right. I am just going to refute this stereotype right away. Sure someone can bring up tons of evidence, but, this is a totally wrong generalization on existing evidences. However, I do agree Federal Health Care is pretty much destined to fail. Here are my arguments:
1) When operating at lose, will government raise the price like crazy (aka usual private insurance practice)?
Answer is NO because that defeats the purpose.
2) When operating at lose, will government layoff large number of employees (aka usual private company practice)?
Answer is NO.
3) When unable to turn the operation around, will government simply quit (aka usual private company bankruptcy)?
Answer is NO.
The issue is not because government cannot do anything right vs private company. The issue is, when something goes wrong, government cannot resolve it due to inflexibility. A government simply cannot change price, reject candidates, layoff employees, or file chapter11 like a normal private company. Even if you turn a successful insurance to a government agency (no government intervention), the same failure will happen due to the above issues. A government has a lot more responsibility than a private company. When they start something, they can't quit. All they can do is putting more money into it. That's where the problem is. It is not because the government can't do anything right, but, simply because we do not allowed our government to do the same thing as private company.
Now Move On To The Current State of US Health Care.
I am just going to list out some realistic events now.
A) From Doctors
1) they said they are squeezed by insurance because insurance usually don't pay full amount.
2) also they have to pay a lot to malpractice insurance.
B) From Insurance
1) they raise insurance price because the medical bill is so expensive, which is true.
C) From Non-Insured
1) Go to emergency room for treatment that cost 100x more compared to a scheduled treatment.
2) They don't pay at all.
3) Go to emergency room because they will get treated no matter what.
D) From Insured
1) Pay tons of money on insurance because the bill is expensive.
2) Bill is expensive because those frequent emergency user does not pay. Someone has to pay, which is the one with money.
E) From Social Side of Doctors
1) They think they should get paid more.
2) The whole industry is heavily money driven.
3) They expect to get paid more because medical school is expensive.
4) For the people who want to help people and does not have enough money, it is uncommon that they will be a doctor due to higher difficulty to pay for the school.
Conclusion.
You can see a bad cycle here. The whole system is unbalanced to heavy money driven. This is partially caused by expensive education system. The expensive education system encouraged people to focus more on money than helping people. (You can argue about this, but, I believe it is pretty accurate). The industry is so money driving, everything is expensive. Poor choose to not pay at all by going to expensive emergency room. Hospital choose to cover those lose to charge patients even more money. Those charges goes to patients insurance. Those insurance in turn raised the price.
What's left as victim is the people who has some money to pay for the over priced medical bills. They are paying for those expensive emergency room charges indirectly. To say you don't want to pay for the poor (the people didn't pay the bill), you are paying for them in your own bill indirectly. In addition, many of insured are chained to one insurance as they gets older because everywhere else will not accept them or will charge more.
The current medical system is unbalanced. The problems are not solved by private companies. They simply raise the price and pass the problems to the next. Ultimately, the insured are paying more than they should. Certainly US medical is one of the best, but, only if you have the money to pay for it. The system is way too money driven that it becomes inaccessible to less healthy people. It is almost like all bags are LV bags and there is no cheaper alternatives. It is clearly wrong when choices are scarce.
My thoughts:
1) I still believe in Federal Health Care. Sure it will fail like SSN, but, something has to be done. We need a brand new Insurance (not taking away medi-care's money) provided by government. It really helps the people who can't get a decent insurance. And high tax on rich people isn't that bad. People like Bill Gates already donating their money. The tax is just helping them to donate their money instead of doing on their own. And tax raise is only done to rich people, not the poor anyway. And you know the high % of tax rate is only done to the extra amount over the threshold, not the entire income. So, they are still super rich. I believe Federal Health Care is need to give people more choice. If you don't want it, you can subsidize for your own health insurance.
2) We need a cheaper medical education to the citizen of United State. We need more doctors and cheaper doctors. If the school is so expensive, it is harder for less healthy people to join the field. If they don't have to pay so much loan, they wouldn't need higher salaries. Lower the boundary of medical education. Make it more accessible to more candidates. I believe this will make a healthier system and we currently are.
3) Ultimately we want to reduce unnecessary emergency room visitors. They go there because they know they will be treated without paying the bill. This is really wrong and waste of money. I do not know what should be done. But, perhaps giving them health care will reduce these kind of incidents.
August 26 Get Daily Puppy In Your Gadget. Do you love daily puppy, www.dailypuppy.com ? Don't want to check the site all the time? Well sure, you want to check it all the time, but, you would still want to see them cuddle in your desktop. I found and made a solution to it. Here is how.
1) Go here http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDailyPuppy
This is the RSS Feed site for daily puppy. You can use IE7 or IE8 to view it, and there will be a subscribe button to add the feed to your computer. You need to add the feed to your computer for the later step.
2) Go here to download the my gadget, Feed Slide Show , http://gallery.live.com/LiveItemDetail.aspx?li=d5cac105-ce11-4364-9fb4-a9e5db2ffeb8
This is based on Green Tea's Feedr, but I tweaked it for better experience. He used Vista Slide Show as base. I made it to support Windows7 High DPI Setting, fix the bug of showing n+1 pictures, and allow each instance of this gadget to use its own setting. Meaning, you can launch more than one Feed Slide Show and each one of them show different feeds.
3) Install it and drag it onto desktop. Click Universal Setting Icon to set it up. You will see daily puppy feed in the list if you have added the feed in step1. I specifically added the option to only show one photo, so you can get keep star at the same daily puppy if you want.
 February 19 Truth behind Kindle black and white display.Kindle is a device from Amazon that gets really low customer impression. First, it is expensive and the screen is like 90s black and white portable display. The things is, have you ever seen the device works in action? I went to Sony store and saw a similar text reader. At first, I just laugh at it why even bother to make an overpriced uninspiring device to compete with Amazon's Kindle. I told my brother how silly it is. Then, he came back saying the screen is strange. He thought the screen is fake, like those fake cell phone for display. But, when he press the button, the screen actually changes.
I was amazed at how it looks so realistic to actual paper. There is no light coming out of the screen. It is totally different from our light-shooting TVs. Simply put, it is like real paper, you can't read it when the room is dark. I went online researching on this new technology. It is called Electronic-Paper (e-paper). Now, what amazed me even more? "electronic paper reflects light like ordinary paper and is capable of holding text and images indefinitely without drawing electricity" (Wikipedia). Wow, this is why Amazon is using it. A display that last almost forever since it doesn't use electricity to maintain the graphics. Now everything is clear.
Using my geeky sense, this will be the future of TV technology or at least the mobile display. Why?
1) No light shooting at you.
Pros: Easy on your eyes. Easier to see under the sun.
2) Low Energy Consumption.
Pros: Save earth and your pocket for obvious reason. But, the longer battery life span is where it shines.
3) Realistic Looking Material.
Pros: Well, it pretty much look real since it reflect light like any object. When it is more advanced, we probably can imitate different material for crazy realism. For example, use reflective material to imitate metal reflective property.
4) Long Life Span.
Pros: No loss to color since there is nothing to consume (None-LCD TVs). No loss to brightness since there is no light bulb to burn (LCD TVs). The reason you would want a new TV is only because it's quality getting getter, not because the machine wears out because it will not wear out.
Cons: The fact that you don't need to replace it when it gets old is unattractive to manufactures.
January 30 JMC Photo Gallery Public Feedback Blog EntryJMC Photo Gallery Public Feedback Blog Entry
This entry is dedicated for all public feedback for my free software JMC Photo Gallery.
The official site is here http://jmcphotogallery.net
The open source project site is here http://www.codeplex.com/jmcphotogallery
I am not going to post screenshots or anything here. Please visit my official site for that.
If you have any question, please ask here.
If you have any bug report or feature suggestion that you kindly want to share, please post here.
Thank you for trying my program. And please donate me, I am poor LOL.
January 21 JMC Photo Gallery 3.1.0Yuppy,
This build of my free software is going great. Only one last feature, the dynamic background, and I am pretty much done. I am thinking of using sub-namespaces, but it is not important. The movie player is buggy when using the progress slider. Somehow the MediaElement got disabled when I move it with keyboard (high probability) or mouse. Closing Windows doesn't resolve the issue is concerning. December 12 Win7 Aero Peek Ohhhhh YYYYEEEEESSSSSI am so happy right now. I found the program to unlock my most interested feature from Windows 7 Pre-Alpha built. Now, I my Aero Peek is enabled. Oh YES. What does it do? It is a simple feature actually. When I move my mouse on a task, I get to see the actual window without switching to it. This is important. Before, I don't know exactly the window looks like. Sure I have thumb preview and task title for clues, but I still can't see the exact window until I click it and switch to it. This often result in clicking the wrong window, so I have to try another one. This new Aero Peek brings up the window so I can see it clearly, then, back to where it was if I decided not to switch to it. One good example is reference. When I fill out my application form for my grad school, I would like to confirm my GRE scores. Before, I have to switch to my Excel where I saved my info and switch back to my IE for the rest of the form. Now, I can peek my Excel and get back to IE without any mouse click. This not only reduce my mouse click, but also I don't have to relocate my IE task again. This is extremely important when I am using Task Grouping. Task Grouping has been around since XP, but I always turn it off because I often click the wrong task and I have to click twice amount of mouse clicks, mouse movements, and my brain to remember what I have clicked.
Finally, a decent experience with Task Grouping. I am finally willing to switch from my old Win95 task bar style. December 04 Thought on Live Wave 3 and Social Services.Live Wave 3 Social Services are out recently. A new feature or an improved existing feature is the glorified Profile page. Basically the old Profile page is now a facebook like page. It shows your basic information, your web activities, and your friends. A detail page contains more detailed info like Schools for better social network. It sounds good by itself, but it conflicts with Live Space. It even hides Space from the header. I wasn't happy their way of offering Social Services. It was messy and confusing. Thus, it got me to re-evaluate Live Wave3 offerings and Social Services in general.
First the Wave3 offerings. Aside from Hotmail, Contact/People, and Calender, Live offers many social oriented features. Event similar to eInvite. Group (New Feature). Space similar to MySpace, and Profile (New) similar to Facebook. Live Service has 4 social offerings for the same task, connect people together. But it takes them 4 separated domain for the same purpose. I don't think that's a good approach. So, next, someone make a new social trend, MS has to add one more of catch up? That's just say "they can do it, so can I". There is nothing innovative. Worse, users no longer know what to use. I believe all 4 offerings should be consolidated into one place. I don't know how yet. Besides, if I know I won't post it in public, haha. So I am going to analyze each services. What can be added or how it reflect on people's need.
Started from the first wave. The Forum. Forum is still an important role in social networking. It helps people connected by the same interest. Everyone has the right to open up a new topic and reply to it. However, forum is in-personal. There is almost no connection between each user. Everyone is talking to a stranger, thus, the content is usually based on the interest of the forum rather than people themselves. Not only that, a busy forum will have topic sinked down to next page within few hours. There is no social connection, but more of interest connection.
Then, a new player, Blog is born. It is simply put, a strip down version of Forum. One the blog owner can post topic, instead of everyone. This is certainly good choice for owner to share his thought as the main focus, rather than a tiny player in the gigantic forum ocean. The new article and many information based website is well suited for using blog as feedback. MySpace is the most popular player in this trend. It provides a good public space for individual to advertise themselves online. However, this only expose owner to the world, but not connecting to his friends.
There are many friend network before Facebook, but it is the most popular one right now. The first thing is you have to register to view your friend's profile. This is a strong taticts that forces people to register. The reaction is better than I thought. No one cares if they need to register. In fact, this is much better than MySpace because I myself would never open an MySpace account. I would only be a viewer, but not a contributor. Once users are forced to register, normally they will spend more time to complete their profile, thus, encourage them to show off their own profile as well. Now, the neat thing about Facebook is the friend network. You are much easier to find your long lost friends in your city or school. Facebook presented a much simpler open space for people to comment and add stuff. Anyway, I don't like it at all. It is actually really confusing for me. Like I can't even find a place to accept my friend's invitation.
A newer and getting more popular is the Twitter. It is much simpler as you just type like two sentence of what you are doing rather than anything meaningful or elaborate as a blog post. Sometimes people just want a quick update on what's your friends are doing. Or you just want to explore your inner STALKER desire. This is the place. Technically it is not stalking because the target shared it with you.
The future, actually I wouldn't be here if I already know.
But let's re-evaluate social network.
Looking back at Live services. It does offers all the experience that we currently know. But it used too many tools for the same purpose. For example, it uses Profile to expose yourself, but you have to use Home to know what your friends are doing. At worse, the message center are hidden. Space and Profile both expose yourself, but using different approach. And social features are integrated with hotmail in a rather bad manner. For example, I have many contacts I don't recognize because I don't know they are from my Space Network. I deleted them and realize I deleted my Space Network friends. Live offers everything and yet too messy and unfocused. Everything is in its own separate domain rather than coming together with harmony. I am in the process of discovering a better, more complete, and consistent social network experience. I have the criteria listed. The hard part is how to implement them that everything fits together nicely.
I would call it: Windows Live Social. Instead of everything is a separate place, Windows Live Social is a place that seems to be one entity, but they are all separate. December 02 Woot Woot, NEW Live Space Wave 3 is out.This is really cool. The Wave 3 for Live Space is out. My blog spaces some what different now. I am going to tweak it. The new live photo is moved to a better place, the SkyDrive. Now SkyDrive is the central place for everything. Good to see them consolidate some of the services into a more compelling experience. November 21 XAML Power ToyHoly cow, this guy is genius. He cooked up a XAML Power Toy in few days. And so far, the tool looks amazing. The power toy generates WPF form for you. Instead of drag and drop the controls, you drag and drop the display data. Similar to SalesForce form designer or some good highly customizable business systems. The Grid modifier along saves WPF developer tons of hassle. That's not all, turning read only Grid into two way binding Grid in a minute is amazing.
He works at MS. A chubby geeky looking guy with a lot of tattoos on his arm. He is certainly interesting. I hope this power toy will be popular enough to make it into the core of Visual Studio.
Real-life Furbys rediscoveredLOL Real Furby is found. Here is the link
He is missing the ears, but he does look like Furby. Of course, it is not programed to do what Furby can do.
  November 07 2008 SEMA Show Photos2008 SEMA show is here. Take a look on those drooling tricked out cars. But first, you will be forced to go through all my boring private pictures. Don't skip them.
Quote IMG_0087 Feeling Betrayed. 70% Blacks voted Yes on prop8.When the world celebrate US first black president as racial equality, I don't feel any relief or happiness at all. As a Californian, presidential election is nothing special for us. CA is always a Democrat state that holds one of the largest electoral vote in US. This election is much more important on Proposition 8. Proposition 8 bans legalization of gay marriage that was passed recently. Just like blacks, gay people constantly struggle for equal right. President Obama, Governor Schwarzenegger, California Teachers Association, and more oppose proposition 8. For more detail, read here http://www.noonprop8.com/about/who-opposes-prop-8
Why I felt betrayed? Based on CNN result, 70% of African American voted Yes on Prop8 while other races are a lot more balanced. If they are more open minded about marriage, we could really have that 4% we really needed for. Yeah sure, racial equality, I supported that. What do I get in return? A knife stab in the back. Equality??? What an illusion. I respect others' opinion. But, 70%??? No, I cannot sit back and accept that.
Black votes Obama for what? Just for black, nothing more. Obama says no on Prop8 and most black don't listen. If you ask me, this is a racial war instead. Why I vote Obama? I vote him because I read his economy plans and I believe he can bring work force back to US. I believe his vision. But what exactly blacks vote him for? How much do they know about Obama's policies? I doubt they even care.
Now, who am I? I am gay myself. Go figures. If I can't get married in CA, I can do that else where. I don't see myself getting married anytime soon either. Most homosexual marriage are lesbians, not gays anyway. And that stupid argument about family; A father, mother, and a child? Seriously, I am not going to have kids anyway. How about one mother and one child instead since a lot of American families are like this. What's family? Many people treat their pet as part of their family and we should think that's wrong? That's just absurd. Then, there is an argument about marry to an animal as next step. Sure, how about marry to a bug while they are at it. And oops, I stepped on his lady bug. Would I be charged as murdering his wife since I stepped on his bug?
Anyway. I felt the same injustice that blacks felt before. But, what makes me angry is that they sought for equality while rejecting my equality. Yeah sure, we have black president now. But, when are blacks going to treat other people equally? November 03 Windows 7, the new taskbar.Here is a long official presentation video. http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC24/
One of the key changes in Windows 7 is the taskbar. For some people it looks similar to Mac OSX object dock, but it is very different. Here is an overview of that it evolves.
The new taskbar is the consolidation of Win98 Quick Launch Bar, XP Task Group, Vista Thumb Preview, and new important features like Peek, Interactive Thumbnail, and Jump List. Windows 7's improved taskbar is an attractive feature that many people will come to enjoy.
October 17 Marlow PhotoSynthHere is my PhotoSynth on my stuff animal Marlow. Ok, I am a guy, but I have the right to fall for adorable stuff too. PhotoSynth is a Microsoft free service. It reconstructs large collection of photos back to 3D space. When properly Synthed, you will experience virtual reality based on real photos, not fake rendering.
October 16 Windows is certainly falling behind.Here is a rant about out MS is unable to drive the new technology. Link
As you can see, it is a HP computer with touch screen, plus a touch enabled software. But here is the important part. The touch enabled software is not from MS, but from HP. This is certainly not a good thing. MS used to be the one offering great experience and let the manufacture build the hardware for it, like Windows Media Center and Tablet PC. It is what Windows is all about. Provide a satisfying OS, so manufacture can focus on hardware rather than software. But now, HP has to make their own software to be competitive to the new touch era. If surface technology can be pushed earlier, HP wouldn't have to spend time on this. Maybe they will still do it, but instead of a conflicting technology, it will be a supporting technology.
Another thing is Window Mobile.
HTC themselves has to develop their own touch interface to catchup with iPhone. I really think this is a bad way to drive Windows platform. Even worse, there is no plan for a new Window Mobile OS that catch up with current technology. Still that ugly GUI, tiny font, tiny scroll bar, and other legacy experience. I know backward compatibility is important, but it is not business servers need to run super old software.
Windows 7 is coming, I hope they deliver something really fancy. Multi-touch is not going to cut it. Overall experience is more important, especially we are still using mouse and keyboard most of the time. Windows really need some flare now. And I certainly hope Window Mobile can start catching up after Win7 is released. Zune is a really good device, why didn't they make a Zune Phone or upgrade Windows Mobile to Zune experience? Well, so far, MS is getting more organized from previous mess. Finally Window Live no longer fights with Windows on Win7. PDC is coming. Hope MS can really pull it off.
September 26 Windows 7 Wish 1Here is something I really want on Windows 7 or on Vista SP2. We know Vista has real time preview when we move our mouse on the task. But moving my mouse on them is too slow. I hope I can see previews before I move my mouse. Here is a markup on my idea.
It seems a bit weird at first when start button is moved up and system tray is at left now. But, I think I wouldn't mind the change. I now have nice big launch icons. Nice preview on my taskband. A stable language bar (no more moving around because more buttons on different languages). A nice space for system tray icons. A fully detailed area for time and date.
I think I will love this kind of setup, especially now I don't have big wasted spaces on each side when reading articles. My proposal is subtle too. All I am wishing for is to activate preview at all time. It doesn't have to be real time; 10 seconds updates are fine, but it is better if I can choose it is real time or not. Real time is good for WMP playing movie and me doing other stuff at same time. I believe only adding few lines of code will activate such thing, and some more lines of code for better experience, like how big the preview should be.
The orientation is a lot different than before. Taskbar on the side is rarely being used before. But, I think it is time for change. Such change is subtle and allows many users to choose between preview based taskband or text based taskband. I hope someone from the Win7 UI team takse a look at this.
September 23 I'm a PC, TheRealPCHave you noticed the guy in I'm a PC ads from Microsoft is different than the Mac ads? Because he is a different guy. He is a real Microsoft engineer, not a fake actor for hire. Of course, he hates the outfit. Check out his video above.
September 22 Windows7 drops Photo Gallery in favor of free Windows Live ApplicationsFinally, it is official from Microsoft.
I have waiting for an answer from Microsoft for awhile now. Windows Live offers the same applications as Vista Applications. It becomes quite confusing when a company offers more than one solution to the same demand. Finally, Microsoft consolidated the choices. Windows 7 no longer comes with Mail, Photo Gallery, and Movie Maker. If you want those free offerings from Microsoft, please go to http://get.live.com/ to download Windows Live applications. Windows Live applications has some of the good features you don't see in normal Windows App.
First, WL Mail allows you to connect to multiple Hotmail accounts, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and more. If you use Hotmail, you have calendar online. This application automatically sync your online calendar; sending alerts to your desktop. This is way better than Vista Mail.
Second, WL Photo Gallery not only has all the features of Vista Photo Gallery. You can upload your photos to your Live Photo or Fliker directly. You don't have to open a web browser to do many things. This program also feature a new "people tag" feature where you can click on the face and choose whose face it is. I don't really care feature like this, but it is better than nothing.
Third, WL Movie Maker offers the same capability as Vista Movie maker (expected same capability on full release, beta functions are still limited). Aside from that, it allows you to rotate video and upload result to soapbox or youtube.
All three programs offers connectivity to Windows Live online services and your favorite online services like youtube and facebook. Such offering is way better than what Window could offer without potential law suit. Take a note that Windows Live Messenger is already not bundled with Vista; you have to download it separately. Now, Windows 7 still suffers the same problem as Vista. Why do I want Windows 7 if all these cool software are available to XP and Vista for free? What's the future of Windows? Perhaps they are bundling other new apps for more law suits? This is just to reduce existing law suits, so, they can break more laws? LOL. That would be funny when that happens. September 09 Obama's Take On McCain's Version Of ChangeI am leaning toward Obama's policy; Health Care and a more defined solution to economy. But come on, how can I vote someone referring McCain as pig? That's just low. Same as the when he trashs talk about people are bitter and hold on to their bible and guns. That's an insult. Since I am in California, I know he is not referring to me, but I still can't stand it. Obama may have good policies to fix our problem, but he is just an unexperienced jerk. It is like those graduates working as upper managers, and thinking they are so elite and better than the rest of us. I doubt he has any experience on shaping the government, all just talk as if everything will just work the way he demanded. McCain on the other hand, he is humble, confident, and consistent. A great leader to follow. If I am under his command in the military, I would be loyal to him. But Obama on the other hand, I would only follow him for his technical skills, nothing more. If only McCain has good policies to convince me that he has the solution to our problems, I would vote for him any day. Now, vote for character (McCain) or vote for ideas (Obama), that's a hard choice to be made.
Quote YouTube - Obama's Take On McCain's Version Of Change |
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