Thursday, December 20, 2007

Surprise! Study: Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves

I've been using Canon single-ink cartridges for several years, and the nice thing about the Canon cartridges is that they are clear; You can visually confirm they are empty. So I ignore the low ink warnings, which do start up many, many pages before the out-of-ink message flashes. And when that message comes up, I can see that the particular color is, in fact, empty.
Crisis? What Crisis: Malpractice Rebate for Md. Set at $84 Million

Maryland's Republican Governor in 2004 called the legislature into a special session to push through the subsidy, based on hysterical premium increases and threats that doctors would have to stop working in the state. Overreaction? History suggests exactly that.

Note that Maryland's Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society planned to pay two-thirds of the rebate to the state and one-third to the physician shareholders of Medical Mutual, despite the fact that the surplus funds were generated by a taxpayer-financed subsidy. While the new Maryland Insurance Commissioner has mandated that all the rebate go to the state, guess who remains screwed: you guessed it, the taxpayers who had to pay it out in the first place.

I'm glad I don't live in Maryland any more.