|
Post by Sniffles on Apr 9, 2023 1:11:14 GMT
Have the hospitals there started to use the term "customers" instead of "patients", like some here have done? GACK! No. No no no no no no no no no. Medical tourism is the newest big money maker. The hospitals that cater to this billions $$$ a year money pit resemble showrooms selling luxury sports car. Nurses carry computer tablets instead of clip boards. Everything is computerized, waiting rooms spacious and impeccably cleaned every few minutes. A 15 minute wait to see a physician is an unusually long period of time. They aren't cheap but compared to the ridiculous prices in the US and the interminable waiting lines in many European hospitals the services they offer are Disneyland compared to dirt lot baseball fields.
Rooms are private single bed with a comfortable couch for friend or family member to stay with the patient. They are over staffed with NAs and orderlies appearing in seconds on receiving assist requests. Behind the scenes are some of the richest entrepreneurs of the world that know they will get their entire investment back every year.
As example. a down on his luck person from California checked in a few days ago to one of the hospitals. Surgery, drugs, and sundry and 5 days in a luxury room, a hefty $2500, given a $500 discount for paying cash. About average normal.
And all the hospitals expect facilitators to be roaming the halls and front office service representatives appear as if by magic to offer some of the finest polished sales pitches ever heard. Get on and stay on the good side of consulates and embassy's the rule of thumb. They know all the tricks of the trade, right down to paying the bills which include all drugs an ancillary services bundled into one incomprehensible undetailed glop. It can take me hours or even days of sleuthing to find out the individual costs of the drugs, usually 500% to 2000% mark up and then I need to call in an expert to translate the medical-eeze. I mention the above patient in that his case was unusual. Somebody put the bird dogs on his trail. Usually the US could not care less about the health and welfare of average citizen.
I've got another patient from Belgium right now. 2 months extended stay with therapy. When I appear they roll out the red carpet. I even had one of his physicians take me to lunch at a very upscale restaurant. The hospitals try to use us a glowing recommendations to impress the socialized medicals back home. Cheaper or free back home, but in my patients case he needed immediate care and the Belgian system put him on a six week waiting list.
When I'm on the job I cheat. I take the tricks from Squishy's cop demeanor playbook. A blank stony faced silence and hint of a glowering frown, keeping my words sparse and terse. Universally intimidates drunk driver pull overs, entire crowds in the bars, or hospital staff.
(As a silly aside, it was pointed out now and then I get extra special service attention. It turned out some governments know me and have me listed as a favored minority. I'm Swedish and it's brown lipstick time when it comes to catering to us.)
|
|
|
Post by Sniffles on Apr 9, 2023 1:17:47 GMT
Remember when you could download a demo of a game, or get a dozen on a CD in a gaming magazine? You could play one level, or play for 30 minutes, etc., and if you liked it could then go buy the full game. It seems today many devs are trying to sell us, at full price, a demo, then nickel and dime us to death with "DLC" to flesh that out to a full game.
Luckily on Steam, when a game goes on sale so do the DLC packs, so they're usually very cheap to pick-up. Pennies in some cases.
It's a Steam free world here, partially behind the great Chinese bamboo firewall. Microsoft must be paying some major kickbacks for it's OS products to have clear sailing for their phone homes. Of course Steam and others of that crowd could not give a rodents rectum if the software goes unsupported. And they keep a pretty thorough list of VPNs which automatically get blocked. It took me half a forever to find and block the phone home for FO 4. Accidentally click the wrong menu item and it's ctrl-alt-del and restart the game
|
|
|
Post by dogonporch on Apr 9, 2023 1:53:02 GMT
Luckily on Steam, when a game goes on sale so do the DLC packs, so they're usually very cheap to pick-up. Pennies in some cases.
It's a Steam free world here, partially behind the great Chinese bamboo firewall. Microsoft must be paying some major kickbacks for it's OS products to have clear sailing for their phone homes. Of course Steam and others of that crowd could not give a rodents rectum if the software goes unsupported. And they keep a pretty thorough list of VPNs which automatically get blocked. It took me half a forever to find and block the phone home for FO 4. Accidentally click the wrong menu item and it's ctrl-alt-del and restart the game
This rig is just for Steam games in particular. So they can snoop to their heart's content. There's nothing else on it.
I'm more worried about my own nasty government's desire to censor the internet. They wants us to play Canadian made/designed games...for example. They're just getting rolling up here...Communist Canada....who'd a thunk?
There's hope though...perhaps we can still remove Trudeau via the election process. But, seeing Communist China apparently rigged the election to get him in TWICE, we're a little dubious that we can...
|
|
|
Post by Sniffles on Apr 10, 2023 1:45:25 GMT
I'm more worried about my own nasty government's desire to censor the internet. They wants us to play Canadian made/designed games...for example. They're just getting rolling up here...Communist Canada....who'd a thunk? There's hope though...perhaps we can still remove Trudeau via the election process. But, seeing Communist China apparently rigged the election to get him in TWICE, we're a little dubious that we can...
Let's get real.
Pointing fingers at various persons, be it stooges, good at heart folks or the major behind the scenes movers and shakers. Everything is offshoots of a multi-stemmed trillion dollar profit making machine that could not care less about individuals. Money first, foremost and always and everything else is byplay. From ascetics in caves to the greatest power brokers like Xi, none are significant in and of themselves. Only how they affect the bottom line profits and losses.
So pointing a finger at someone like Trudeau is nothing more than naive posturing. He's bumped up profits somewhere and his successor will be selected but the collectives maneuvering as to who will bump the profits even higher or reduce the losses a little more. People like Trump are a gold mine. A huge following and he is an ultra predictable wind up toy. Move the money into operations and ventures that he will cater to and watch the bottom lines steadily climb. He is a high risk, but a potential high gain. No different than playing the stock markets. Ideologies never enter into the picture. Only $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ Biden? Old school money and status quo. Low risk but minimal profits. Xi, rock solid hard line with a super solid track record assuring steady profits into the foreseeable future. The bribes and kickbacks are predictable and full steam ahead for the worlds number one financial and industrial powerhouse. Same same with every major politician. Puppets for the money game. The ones with significant ethics and morality don't stand a chance. Just examine when Ralph Nader ran for president. Zero predictable profits. Less than 1% of the vote.
Censor the internet? You mean channel the major traffic to the profit making web sites? Doesn't matter if Trudeau, Gandhi or Stalin, that is where the money is so suck it up. You can be assured of full bandwidth to Amazon and similar.
|
|
|
Post by jgf on Apr 10, 2023 17:29:55 GMT
......This rig is just for Steam games in particular. So they can snoop to their heart's content. There's nothing else on it.... This accomplishes nothing. By continuing to purchase their products you are still financially supporting their objectionable marketing paradigm.
|
|
|
Post by dogonporch on Apr 10, 2023 17:44:09 GMT
......This rig is just for Steam games in particular. So they can snoop to their heart's content. There's nothing else on it.... This accomplishes nothing. By continuing to purchase their products you are still financially supporting their objectionable marketing paradigm.
I'd very much like the clock to be set back to...oh...1999 or so. But, it's not going to happen.
Meanwhile, I enjoy what I have before they take it all away.
|
|
|
Post by dogonporch on Apr 10, 2023 17:46:38 GMT
My peeve of late has been this New Game = New Computer way of thinking designers have. Take War of the Worlds for example. You'll need the latest everything for it to work as intended. Most folks don't have $5000 to dish-out on a bleeding edge gaming rig.
|
|
|
Post by jgf on Apr 14, 2023 2:39:28 GMT
My peeve of late has been this New Game = New Computer way of thinking designers have. Take War of the Worlds for example. You'll need the latest everything for it to work as intended. Most folks don't have $5000 to dish-out on a bleeding edge gaming rig. Actually I see it as the other way around. To be analogous, you have a car that you like, it looks good, performs well, is reasonably economical; but you think "if this just had another fifty horsepower it would really be a nice car". Well, a couple of years later it's announced the new model will have a more powerful engine, so you trade in your old car for the new one, and while it is a nice car you soon notice its performance is no better than the old one - same acceleration, same braking, same handling ...but worse gas mileage. But you enjoy your new car. And a couple of years later there's another new engine, with much more power, so you buy it ....and experience the same situation - same performance, worse fuel mileage. Repeat every few years, eventually you have a car with 300hp more than the first one, the same performance, but horrible fuel mileage. What happened? Every time they offered a better engine, they added more weight to the car, so that extra 300hp is having to move 800lbs more. It's the same with computers. Every time we get faster CPUs, more and faster RAM, faster mobos, larger and faster storage ....every blasted software developer around thinks he must now "update" his program to make use of all that extra computing power; so it takes just as long for your computer to do something but requires four times the power to do it. And yes, costs of new systems are ridiculous; I get email notices of vid cards that on sale cost more than my first XP computer, including monitor. And when I hear of gaming rigs with 1800W power supplies (that's as much as a large electric space heater), or people paying $500 for a "gaming" mouse .... I can hear P.T. Barnum laughing. What happened to "green" or "Energy Star" ratings, every other electronic device in our lives does more with less energy than its equivalent did forty years ago ....except computers; my first Windoze system used a 350W supply, that probably wouldn't even run an average CPU today.
|
|
|
Post by Sniffles on Apr 14, 2023 6:29:39 GMT
dogonporch jgf Take into account the computers the developer uses to make the games. Just about every game out there gives a list of the hardware from best performance to worst. It's quite safe to say the developers used the best. If you don't have an equivalent their computers, chances are your program won't run on the highest setting levels. What Squishy said about horse racing is an excellent analogy. If you don't have a certain breed whatever, sure it can run in the race but never take first place. You pureblood excellent ancestry quarter-horse comes in dead last in the half mile run. Same with programs. The developers build and run the game on a 48 inch wide screen without lag at 4000+ DPI. Take my newest game. Immortals Fenyx Rising. Sorry kiddo, your wet dream you couldn't afford back in 2015, top of the line I7 processor, 16 GB of memory and a GTX 1650 video card with 4 GB memory... well, looks just as good as the developers... At 800 x 600, a quarter second lag every 5 seconds and always crashes at the first major cutscene. If you want good or better performance with that game, your CPU, motherboard and graphics card starts at $1000. You want what the developers used to make and test the game, the graphics card alone is $1500 to $3000.
Imagine my delight when I boosted my computer up as high as it would go then plugged the game in and started it to get the trinket:. "Your graphics has been set to very low." And nope, not good enough. I can play for about an hour until I get to that cutscene. I can't set the graphics low enough.
Or take the computer I'm on now. State of the art in 2010. I can have two Youtube videos open with one playing at 480 and the other paused. Three open with two paused and black screen every few seconds as the memory goes fishing unless I set the one playing to 360p or better, 240p.
|
|
|
Post by jgf on Apr 14, 2023 19:06:50 GMT
... Take into account the computers the developer uses to make the games. ... And those devs should take into account the computers most of their potential customers are using. Stop developing software to impress other developers and produce software the general public can use now ...not five years from now when they can afford a system that will run that now "obsolete" software. Again with the auto analogy. There will always be Ferraris and Bentleys, but 99% of us will never own one; we get along fine with Fords and Toyotas. But to a software developer the are only "Ferraris and Bentleys".
|
|
|
Post by Sniffles on Apr 24, 2023 13:58:00 GMT
Back on track, Windoze 10 is installed. And a big thanks to folks from several quarters on how to castrate and hog tie the POS. And next once I know it isn't going to pee on my parade and only do what I tell it I'll be installing Skyrim SE. Cortana, Edge and Onedrive took forever to disable! Dear Bill Gates, If I want icons and menus the size of garage doors I'll send you a note...... tied to a flaming poison arrow fired through your front window.
And no, it doesn't boot any faster or run any better than Win 7. But it's memory works are a bit better and my video card doesn't drop frames any more.
|
|
|
Post by Aatrnasyn on Apr 27, 2023 10:38:03 GMT
Which version of Skyrim will you load, Skyrim LE 1.5.97, Skyrim SE 1.6.353, or 1.6.640, or use Downgrade Patcher Best of Both, so then you have all of SSE and all of AE? I'm running 1.6.353
|
|
|
Post by Sniffles on Apr 27, 2023 15:33:07 GMT
Which version of Skyrim will you load, Skyrim LE 1.5.97, Skyrim SE 1.6.353, or 1.6.640, or use Downgrade Patcher Best of Both, so then you have all of SSE and all of AE? I'm running 1.6.353 Release Date : 11/2021. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Upgrade v1.6.318.0.8. Is this good or bad or what? It was all I could get my hands on.
On other notes. Win 10 is in and beaten into submission and I reloaded and revisited Fallout 3 which works nicely. FO 4 old install still works without problems.
|
|
|
Post by Aatrnasyn on Apr 27, 2023 21:29:09 GMT
|
|
|
Post by OldRPMDaddy on Apr 27, 2023 21:31:06 GMT
Send us some FO screenies?
|
|