A number of years ago I was at a friend's house and he wanted to play Uno but he couldn't be cause his dog got into the deck and many of the cards were damaged.
I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the jokers.
So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.
In fact, Uno exists because one family liked playing Crazy Eights but got tired arguing about the rules, so they started writing the rules on the cards and eventually made new cards: https://www.museumofplay.org/toys/uno/
That's interesting. I always assumed that UNO was a branded version of a very similar game we used to play as kids with a regular deck of cards (e.g. 7 is draw 2, Jack allows you to pick a color). The game is called Tschau Sepp and very commonly played in Switzerland. I just assumed other countries had their own version of it, and that UNO derived from it.
As with other commenters, we used to play a game similar to what is now Uno with a standard deck, we call it "pesten" (bullying), but the wiki page says it's similar to the US Crazy Eights, and internationally it's known as Mau-Mau [0].
I am having some friends over next week for dinner and we'll probably play some games afterwards. There are a ton of other games listed on the site and I am sure there are some fun ones here!
These "doctors" should be barred from practicing medicine. I am not a lawyer, but it would seem that this practice also borders on criminal negligence.
> Having the weight of an MD behind a decision can be powerful, but lawyers and judges who’ve handled these sorts of cases say it can be misleading. Although doctors ultimately determine whether to cut off insurance coverage for a particular treatment, those decisions are generally not considered the practice of medicine and therefore cannot be challenged in a malpractice lawsuit. The doctors advising insurance companies can’t be individually sued on medical grounds, even if something goes wrong after the denial. As a result, their names are cited in lawsuits filed against the insurers, but they are not defendants in suits brought by people denied insurance.
That's a very different scenario than a doctor who is being paid to provide an expert opinion on the medical necessity of care. That obviously should be considered practicing medicine with all the normal liability.
These insurance doctors are not really evaluating case particulars. They are not second-guessing the diagnosis, they are looking at whether the proposed treatment is the "standard of care" for the diagnosis, and that customary less expensive/invasive treatments have been exhausted. Medicare and any other potential "single payer" government plan would do this also because sadly fraud by clinicians does exist.
For example when I had an injury I had to do 6 weeks of physical therapy (without improvement) before they would authorize an MRI scan and then surgery.
This is all just semantics. Arguably, the arbiter of what is "medically necessary" is practicing medicine. They have chosen to intercede in your care, and they should be liable for the decisions that they make leading to your health outcomes.
The legal system could just as easily have seen that the determination of which procedures are "medically necessary" is indeed part of medicine itself. It's a miracle of delusion and corruption that it went the other way.
If you were designing a legal system you probably wouldn't want for profit insurance companies to decide who gets to determine if a patient needs treatment, due to the obvious conflict of interest.
But that doesn't mean applying the same "malpractice" framework to the people deciding what's covered under the program is necessarily the right approach either.
We're fine with insurance companies sending adjusters out to inspect property damage or collision damage. We don't just expect them to pay for whatever the contractor or body shop says was necessary.
And if their adjustment conflicts with the body shop, but it turns out the body shop was right and I die as a result? Who gets that liability? That's what I'm talking about. You can make adjustments, but you are practicing medicine when you do so.
Unfortunately there are many examples of fraud on the part of practicing doctors. The insurance companies (whether private or government) can't just pay for whatever the doctors say they want to do.
Being an expert doesn't mean you are "practicing medicine". Suppose the medical standard is "you must examine the patient in person when creating a treatment plan."
We're going to apply that to some insurance job function operating outside standard medical practice how exactly?
It's not that I'm defending our medical system, it's just that applying "medical malpractice" concepts to the practice of financing of procedures seems to me to be a bit of a stretch.
A doctor at an insurance company isn't deciding the "final call" on anything. The patient can pay for it without insurance, insurance company management could say "ignore the doctor and pay for it", the patient's medical team could say "You can't afford the procedure and insurance won't pay for it, that's okay we'll do it for free!"
It's not that I'm arguing against some way of holding insurance companies accountable, I just don't think what doctors are doing there is practicing medicine.
If I hired a Hitman, if that fact were discovered I'd be prosecuted for murder or attempted murder, despite not pulling the trigger, despite not knowing if the intended target actually dies.
I don't think I can accept that people knowing or almost certainly knowing the outcome of their actions and taking those actions regardless should not responsible for the outcome under our legal system.
For a vast majority of people, and especially so with the sort of things that a) save lives and b) make the bean counters cringe, “won’t pay” is the same as “won’t get”.
These are licensed doctors (required!) being paid to explicitly evaluate the case, though, to determine if treatment is "medically necessary". Seems like a deeply different scenario.
Denying care is the default state. It's the basis of the Hippocratic Oath, "First, do no harm." I.e. the determination of whether a treatment is beneficial is made by comparing it to doing nothing.
In these cases, a clinician has already decided that care is needed. It is a third party, who is not responsible for providing care, that is making the final determination. This has little to do with the Hippocratic Oath.
It's also how first responders deal with feeling responsible if someone dies on them. They did more than nothing, so their presence improved the odds even if the result was the same.
I'm guessing it's some thin veneer of bullshit like "well, the patient can still pay $500k directly out of pocket, so we're not technically interfering with the care, just the payments!"
I second Alibre, I am using the pro version. I bought it in 2012, and I can't remember if I've paid for upgrades to keep it current since then.
I used it to design an injection mold and I am still using it for 3d printing projects. It's a capable program and on-par with SolidWorks or Inventor for basic modeling.
I haven't tried OnShape yet, but if I didn't have Alibre I'd probably look into that or another web-based program for new hobby projects. I like the idea of perpetual licenses but it's only perpetual for as long as it runs on your operating system.
I just can't get into the web based ones...I don't know why but they all seem slow and clunky to me. One thing I didn't like about alibre is the lack of Linux (or Mac) version, as I plan on ditching MS once my win10 box is unusable - I have no interest in that new AI crap MS is adding.
I had a special notebook I used to take to the Monday sales meetings at my previous jobs job. A good chunk of the meeting was often taken up with reviewing department/sales updates which were by and large the same as the previous week.
This notebook was filled with cartoons and illustrations representing what occurred during the meeting and it looked like I was diligently taking notes. Definitely helped me focus and stay tuned-in to what was going on in the meeting.
Since you can't find another vendor, it might be time to bring on software consulting practice that specializes in this area or at least doing something similar.
If you can find a firm that is capable of doing the work, then you can figure out how you will maintain the software. You'd have to determine whether it would be better to engage that firm for the maintenance or hire someone. Possibly a combination of both. This could be done while the software is being built.
Large software projects are more likely to take longer than estimated and go over budget, so be sure to factor this in to your calculations.
As a paraglider pilot (unpowered), I will say that the technical aspects of flying the aircraft are only a small part of what's involved in a flight - as you point out.
It's a bad idea to get pilots in the air with less training. People can't safely pilot cars in two dimensions.
Making the avionics easier to use and more affordable sounds like the actual winning product.
The way we see it isn't less training, but training focused on the most important parts of flying: decision making and risk management. Given the current track record for accidents, they almost always culminate in the pilot failing to control the airplane, whether due to directly stalling or being distracted by another issue and then stalling. By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode, pilots can spend more of their minimum 40 hours on decision making and risk management training, rather than on stick and rudder training. Then when in the air, they put more of their mental load on ADM. We are just breaking down the barrier that stops people from even getting there in the first place.
> By eliminating loss of control as a failure mode
I think this is a flawed view of the problem, even with an industry-grade FCS to work with. If you're in the air, you should know how to break out of a stall, belly-land in an emergency, or route around turbulence as it crops up. These things happen, and preventing someone from doing a loop-de-loop won't eliminate a category of failure-modes.
This is something I very much wish would be a reality one day, but you'll be kicking yourself with every incident report that blames bad piloting. One can only hope that they wouldn't risk their own life trusting an untrained pilot.
Most accidents occur because the pilot makes a bad decision somewhere and a chain of events leads to an accident (in GA--commercial is a completely different beast). Our hope is to break that chain by making it as easy as possible for the pilot to continue flying the airplane and bring it safely to the ground in a high-stress emergency.
Even when the tools are available, pilots need the training to know to use them. How many NTSB accident reports include non instrument rated pilots getting disoriented in IMC despite having an autopilot with a "level" function? If your system can keep them out of this kind of trouble without them even having to take action, it will save lives.
> they almost always culminate in the pilot failing to control the airplane
"failing to control the airplane" is a little like saying everyone dies of heart failure. Yes their heart stopped - but why!?
The real cause is somewhat earlier. Why was a normally competent pilot in a situation where they no longer adequately controlled the aircraft?
Improve avionics - great. Improve situational awareness - really helpful. Handling should be way down the list - it becomes quite intuitive very quickly.
A lot of the existing training system from the FAA and others all emphasize aeronautical decision making and single-pilot resource management. It's the core thing that we are taught when we learn to fly.
Also, under the upcoming MOSAIC regulations, such airplanes will be LSAs and flyable with a sport pilot license.
> Making the avionics easier to use and more affordable sounds like the actual winning product.
Garmin is the clear leader in the certified avionics class for general aviation aircraft these days. If you somehow manage to capture a part of their market, you win big time.
I worked for a manufacturing company that rolled out 5S. It seemed to make a lot of sense on the shop floor, but the executives had us doing the same thing the same way in engineering.
All the math, software, and mechanical folks had to "5S their work area". Our manager gave us rolls of tape and a label printer so we could mark off where everything on our desk was supposed to be put away. The instructions we were handed showed marking off staplers and tape dispensers for desk jobs. It really was absurd!
They furloughed everyone in the company a few weeks later and I decided it really wasn't the place for me.
I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the jokers.
So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.