Talk:The Internets
From Wikiality
truthiness is not just any old thing, and factiness is not always taboo, especially when preferable to randomness. Stephen is incredibly computer literate, and well-known to be an an old Usenet user. He would therefore endorse the truthy version which states that the Usenets was invented in the Research Triangle - as it was. I assure you, this area is gay enough and eggheaded enough to stand in for the two less truthy substitutes you would put in its place. --thisniss 06:55, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
- "Losers" like Stephen? Nice. We've been looking for his old Usenet posts to put up, that will be funny. Thanks for the vote of confidence in my editing. :) --thisniss 07:02, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
I am seeing that we have an "edit conflict" so I will also go on and respond to your comments below!
[edit] Everyone Knows
The internets wasn't invented in some inconsiquential place such as lesser carolina. Everyone knows the hippies in California and Massachusetts were behind the whole thing.
FOX News has confirmed this truthy tidbit.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 06:52, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
- The place is not inconsequential. Many of Stephen's guests have come from here, and it has been mentioned on the show. Fox News is a good source, but The Report and Stephen are better. --thisniss 06:55, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
- It is inconsequential. Everyone knows this. Stephen is from South Carolina. This other place--that doesn't matter--is home to few of Stephen's guests. To ignore liberals and hippies contribution to the spread of information and facts (like Wikip*dia) is to ignore the very basis of truthiness.
- You should be ashamed to want to disseminate such randomness.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 07:01, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
- If you had been paying attention to Thomas Schaller's nailing, you would know that the Research Triangle isn't "really" part of North Carolina precisely because it is the haven of liberals and hippies. To say that something originated in the Research Triangle is tantamount to saying it was born from the Satanish, Pelosi-sanctified Gay Marriage of a Scientists and a Fosse-fied tap dancer. Research + Triangle does not equal North Carolina.
- 2 I have removed all reference to place of origin for the USENETs in order to avoid contention on this point. Obviously, we agree on the key point: liberals, hippies, and nerds colluded to bring us the USENETs. They are evil. They should be ridiculed. Where they did this does not need to be part of the article if the truthiness of it cannot be truthfully determined with ease. The article reads well enough without locating a "where". --thisniss 15:09, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
- I feel the best compromise is not to ignore the limp wrist of both The People's Republic of San Francisco (where, as any homeschooled child knows is where Nancy Pelosi was hatched) and Taxachusetts (home of MIT).
- It is one thing to want to promote your own area (didn't someone once say "write what you know"?) but it is another to try to force connections to your preferred place while ignoring the obvious input from others. I'm not so much confused by your ignoring Berkeley, but how can you explain mentioning anything to do with science and computers without mentioning MIT?
- Also, everyone knows hippies are from San Francisco to say otherwise is just making stuff up.--WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 16:20, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] External Links
I removed the "extra" external links on this page (the other tubes tubes section) since they are on our links page, and the "installation" link, since we've already covered that ground ourselves. I did this because it seems truthier without those links to me - I mean, we've already said there are 3 + 3 useful sites, so why then do we keep adding more? What is this, some kind of Internets page? Anyway, put 'em back if you need to. --thisniss 13:49, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
Could someone check my Port Authories link in the three useful websites section. I can't remimber exactly where he went last night, but I put what felt truthy. --Fuzzy 1459 CST, 10 AUG 06
- Pretty certain that was the site. BTW, when he whipped out the laptop, for a second did you think he was going to go here? I was a little terrified he was going to (would've tanked our server for sure) ComebackShane 14:06, 10 August 2006 (PDT)
- I was kinda hoping; but I really thought that wikipedia was in for another beating. --Fuzzy 1611 CST, 10 AUG 06
[edit] Another Internets?
Copyright 2006 Los Angeles Times
5 companies to launch electronic health files
The experiment is designed to let patients keep medical records in one place, reducing mistakes and costs.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar
ricardo.alonso-zaldivar@latimes.com
Times Staff Writer
December 7, 2006
WASHINGTON — Five major U.S. corporations have joined forces to create a "medical Internet" on which some 2.5 million people can compile their personal health records in one location, providing convenient access to everything from prescriptions and cholesterol readings to family medical histories.
The system, unveiled Wednesday, could reduce the chances of medical mistakes, improve treatment of chronic illnesses and eventually save billions of dollars by avoiding duplicative services, its designers say. Currently such information — often cumbersome paper records — is scattered among the files of a patient's doctors, pharmacists and other care providers, making it difficult to coordinate treatment.
If the experiment works, experts say, most of the country could follow suit in five to 10 years, though privacy advocates say stronger safeguards are needed.
Rising costs
The new venture reflects growing concern among businesses that healthcare costs of American workers — largely borne by their employers — may be unsustainable in the global economy.
Employers continue to pay most of America's $2 trillion annual bill for healthcare. Many corporate leaders have concluded that inefficiencies in the current system add to costs.
Indeed, the National Assn. of Manufacturers said Wednesday it would spearhead an effort to persuade other big companies to quickly adopt electronic records. And next week, major insurers plan to unveil a model medical record for computer systems that could be adopted nationwide.
The five companies in the consortium contributed $1.5 million each to create the system, called Dossia. The firms — Applied Materials, BP America, Intel, Pitney Bowes and Wal-Mart — contracted with an independent third party to design and operate it.
"It's not something that will be held by employers or by insurance companies," said Intel Chairman Craig R. Barrett.
The companies plan to start signing up employees by the middle of next year. Among them, they cover 2.5 million workers, family members and retirees. The system's operator — the nonprofit Omnimedix Institute of Portland, Ore. — hopes to open it to other companies soon after, for a modest per-employee fee.
The companies said the system could increase efficiency and — by giving patients detailed information — promote healthier behavior as well as more effective treatment, which could save money.
"The benefit of this system has to be in the hundreds of billions," said Michael J. Critelli, chairman and chief executive of Pitney Bowes.
Participation in Dossia will be voluntary. Patients will control who sees their information and what is released to doctors, the companies said.
Backers of electronic records say existing federal laws and regulations are enough to protect individuals.
"What Congress could do is use a light hand in further regulation of privacy," said J.D. Kleinke, executive director of Omnimedix. "There is tremendous risk if it is done in a draconian way."
But the wealth of sensitive personal information in Internet medical files would make them an attractive target for data thieves, and some privacy advocates say strict new federal protections are needed before the nation embraces electronic records. Legislation to set ground rules for such a system bogged down in Congress this year, and Democrats have promised to resurrect it with stronger safeguards for privacy. Some advocates are advising employees not to sign up for such programs until the government acts.
"We've got to have privacy first in order to get the benefits of health information technology," said Dr. Deborah C. Peel, a psychiatrist who heads the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation in Austin, Texas.
Among the protections Peel thinks should be spelled out is a right to sue over unauthorized disclosure.
Privacy laws
Existing federal laws do not give individuals the right to control who sees their medical information but instead defer to state laws, said Alison Knight, a lawyer with the advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center.
"The new Congress has a chance of putting in some better privacy safeguards," she said.
The Dossia system was built by technicians recruited from banking and financial companies, which have already set a high standard for security and accuracy, Kleinke said.
The electronic record would become an employee's lifelong property, traveling with the worker to a new job and, after retirement, the Medicare system.
Individuals could enter information into their personal record, but the system also could be configured to collect data automatically from pharmacies, doctor's offices, hospitals, insurers and other electronic sources in the healthcare system. Documents could also be scanned in, and Dossia could accommodate X-rays and other visual records.
Before going to a medical appointment, a patient would log on to Dossia and view information on current health issues, medications, allergies and test results.
The individual would select what information to include in a report for the doctor. More information on the system is available at dossia.org.
