Health insurance is more fun if you treat it like a game

> look
You are in a twisty maze of insurance forms, third-party authorities, and provider networks, all alike.
> file claim
You fill out a claim form for your wrist therapy and drop it in the mail.
> wait
Time passes...
> wait
More time passes...
> wait
Weeks pass. Your claim returns in the mail, rejected, with a brief explanation at the bottom.
> read explanation
The words are English, but somehow meaningless. As far as you're concerned, it could be written in Sanskrit.
> call insurance company
Home, auto, life, or health?
> health
I don't know how to "health".
> call health insurance company
The phone at the other end is ringing.
> wait
Time passes...
A mechanical voice answers. It explains that all operators are currently helping other customers, and would you like to leave a message?
> leave message
What would you like to say in your message?
> leave name and number.
You leave a polite message with your name and phone number.
> wait
Time passes...
You get a call from your health insurance company.
> ask about rejected claim
Which one?
> ask about rejected claim for wrist therapy
The operator explains that since you are a new customer, they need an explanation from the doctor's office assuring that this was not a pre-existing condition. A copy was sent to the doctor's office and as soon as they receive a response they will provide a benefit on your claim. You thank the operator and hang up.
You have a headache.
> wait
Time passes...
> check mail
There is a bill from the doctor's office in your mailbox.
> open bill
They want a prodigious amount of money. There is a notice at the bottom saying that they have not received a response from your insurance company.
You have a headache. You can feel a vein throbbing in your right temple.
> call doctor's office
A mechanical voice answers explaining that it is 12:30 and everyone is at lunch.
> leave name and number
You leave a polite message with your name and phone number.
You have a headache. The tension in your neck is constricting the flow of blood to your brain.
> wait
Time passes...
You get a phone call from the doctor's office.
> which one?
Don't get pedantic with me!
> ask about bill
She says they haven't heard from your insurance company. Therefore the full amount due is your responsibility to pay.
> read explanation from rejected claim
She seems to understand the explanation, but she says that she hasn't received a copy.
> pound head on desk
You slam your head against the desk several times. You feel dizzy, but most of the pressure is gone for now.
> take claim to doctor's office
You get in your car and start driving to the doctor's office. Unfortunately you must have broken a blood vessel when you were beating your head on the desk. Halfway there, your vision goes red and your car careens off the road.
You have died.
You obtained $0 out of a possible $5000 in benefits. Would you like to play again?

The Digital Devil Made Me Do It

(Originally written December 4, 2003)

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

- H. L. Mencken

Most of what you can find on the Net about how to make a bomb is available somewhere in a library and, candidly, if your child is down in the basement making bombs, the Internet is probably not the biggest contributor to that problem.

- Larry Irving, Asst. Secretary, NTIA

Last night I was flipping channels on the TV and I saw the news headline "Video game inspired warehouse robbery?" I didn't bother to unmute the TV or stop changing channels because (a) I already know what they would have said and (2) it just pisses me off. I know that this isn't new - many media and subgenres of media have been blamed for many things over the years. The Beatles were blamed for Charles Manson. AC/DC was blamed for Richard Ramirez, Catcher in the Rye was considered subversive, etc. And in my generation, Quake is blamed for Columbine and Flight Simulator is blamed for the World Trade Center strike.

The thing that kills me about the whole phenomenon is that the news outlets display such a blatant bias about the angle of the stories. Violent criminals are morally adrift to begin with. Anything could inspire them to do anything, but only the magic combination of "video game inspires violent crime" becomes a headline item on the newswires. If the crime is "inspired" by something else, that motivation doesn't make it into the headline. When a group of white men pummel a lone Arab on the street you don't see the headline "War on Terror inspires hate crime." And why don't we ever see the headline "News report on violent crime inspires man to commit violent crime?" I'd love to see the interview with the defendant:

"I knew I wanted to lash out at the world but I wasn't sure how. Then I saw an MSNBC report on arson, and I knew that arson was my ticket to manifest aggression."

I wonder if that quote would make it past the newsroom editor?

Time passes...

Just a couple days later, I found this tidbit on CNN:

Issuing its eighth annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card, the [National Institute on Media and the Family] listed games parents should avoid for their children, led by "Manhunt."

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/fun.games/12/09/warning.videogames.reut/index.html

Taken independently, that sentence is just ridiculous on its face. Then consider that the sentence is part of a "news item" from a major reporter and we're approaching ludicrous speed. Why is it ludicrous? Because, why would a parent buy a game for their child called "Manhunt" and not be concerned about the content? Never mind that the box for Manhunt has an ESRB "M" stamped on it, the NAME ALONE should be the tipoff! Allow me to create a parallel example:

Issuing its eighth annual MediaWise Video Game Report Card, the institute listed games parents should avoid for their children, led by "Orgy."

See what I mean? If I substitute sex for violence does it become more apparent? Do we need "institutes" issuing "report cards" advising parents not to do obviously dumb shit? Is this the world we live in? God help us all.

I have nothing against having watchdog groups monitor the video game industry per se. If one of these groups were to find, for example, that companies are using thirteen-year-old kids in focus groups testing M rated games, that would be great work. Go team. But instead they're wasting their time cranking out self-important obvious crap, and overlooking the notion that if parents don't read the box title and don't read the ESRB label, they're not going to read the institute's report either.

I want to found an institute that issues the annual "Report Card for Physical Safety" advising parents not to "shoot selves in the head" and not to "leap bodily into open flames."

Heroes

(Originally written July 27, 2000)

My son, almost 4 years old, has developed an interest in Batman and Spiderman. He's starting to have heroes. I think that's neat. I started thinking about my childhood heroes - Batman and Spiderman being two of them - and then I started to wonder about people who for some reason maybe didn't have heroes as children. My first thought from there was those teenagers who shot up their schools. Did those kids have heroes?

See, I was exposed to violent media as a child. Lots of violent media, probably way too much violent media. That's why I don't buy the argument that video violence drives these kids. If that were true, I'd be hiding in Canada right now with a 12 body count on my record. So what made me different? Why didn't I snap?

Let's see. I was exposed to video violence, I hated high school, I thought there were plenty of people there who deserved to "be taken down a notch." But I never did it. Never even considered it. I think the difference was, I also had heroes from an early age. Even though my heroes were "action heroes" and sometimes did their own violent acts, there was always a code of conduct driving the heroes, determining when it was time for them to use violent force.

I don't consider myself a hero, but I have always considered myself one of the good guys because I admired my heroes and wanted to emulate them. My heroes gave me a belief that even in dark times, the good guys win in the end. My heroes gave me hope.

The good guys don't inflict themselves on the innocent. Even the not-so-innocent ones that torment the hero. There was a scene that ended up being cut from Star Wars, where Luke's "friends" at Toshi Station were mean as shit to him. He did not blow them away. The good guys only use deadly force when the bad guys use it first. Even the heroes with a "black streak" in them, like Han Solo or Batman, still answer to a code of morality. Han Solo is a particularly good example because his moral code became stronger as the story went on, until at the end he's volunteering to sacrifice himself for something other than a profit motive.

(As an aside, I was really irritated when Star Wars Special Edition changed the film so that Greedo shot first. Even as a kid, I knew Han Solo's life was on the line and he had reason to shoot first.)

So, did those Columbine kids have heroes? I'd like to know, but I would guess they didn't. They obviously felt unhappy and tormented, and without heroes to anchor them to the good guys and give them hope, they did whatever they felt they wanted, or needed. They didn't have the tools to withstand and control the darkness inside us - yeah, all of us - and ultimately it got them.

Make sure your kids have heroes. Make sure you have heroes. Be one of the good guys.

Outsourcing, or, This Time It Will Work For Sure!

Oh man, those first four hundred bites of dirt were not so good. Maybe the next one will be better.

- Stinkoman

I just got back from meeting with a buddy who was telling me how his organization is getting ready to outsource tens of thousands of internal email accounts to Google ... or maybe MSN, they haven't decided yet. We spent a fair amount of time and beer discussing why this is a bad idea, mainly because of privacy, accountability, control, and responsiveness. But it doesn't matter. The people making the decision are blinded by the bottom line and can't perceive the hidden costs.

It occurred to me that this whole "Web 2.0 software as a service" outsourcing craze is remarkably similar to the labor outsourcing craze that hit during the last decade. The people holding the purse strings so desperately wanted to assume that they could outsource their unskilled labor and everything would continue to work exactly as it did in house... they'd just pay less. It's unskilled labor, what difference does it make who does it, right? They should know better, there's no free lunch! When you outsource, you're sacrificing layers of control and adding layers of complexity. And because of that, sometimes the end result is toy trains painted with lead.

Programming, the creation of new software, has already been through this. Now with Web 2.0, technology infrastructure is next on the auction block. Internal corporate email isn't a profit center, so let's outsource it! But the result is going to be the same.

Does it make a difference that the outsourcing is going to be domestic this time? No, not really. In the Internet world of SMTP hops and server logs, the number of hops, and the number of administrative layers, matters more than geography.

UPDATE: And now in 2012, the circle is complete: http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2012/12/the-insourcing-boom/309166/

Open source people shouldn't pirate closed source - you're not helping yourselves

A few years ago, at the height of my free software beliefs [1], I was having lunch with a co-worker who was also a free software proponent. He had a cache of license keys for some Microsoft software, and he was sharing them freely with anyone who asked.

"Man, don't do that," I said.

"Why?" he asked. "Screw Microsoft. We want them to lose, right?"

"Yeah, but you're not really helping free software. When you distribute closed source software for zero dollars, you're undercutting one of the advantages of free software."

"Maybe," he allowed, "but that's not what free software is really about. You're talking about free beer and I'm talking about free speech."

"I agree with that," I said, "but that distinction is lost on most people who aren't programmers. Even though we know it hinders them to own a car with the hood welded shut, they just don't see it. So when I talk to some guy's mom about free software[2] I try to use the free beer angle as the lead-in. I say 'you can get all these great programs for free' and she says 'I already get my stuff for free. My son put Windows on my computer for me.' Even when Redhat sells their Linux in boxes at the bookstore[3] they're charging way less than what Microsoft charges. But if everyone is pirating Windows and giving it away, that competitive angle is destroyed."

He said he'd think about it, but I'm pretty sure he went on pirating stuff.

 [1] A belief which reached its peak, and has since declined.

 [2] Yeah, I really used to do that. Sigh.

 [3] Yeah, they really used to do that.

babble + log

This is exactly the problem I have with the "blogging uber alles" crowd. They talk about conversations -- and spend all of their time lecturing. you think Scoble actually spent any time figuring out what was going on? No, he took a sound byte he could play with and started babbling. That's conversation?

- Chuqui 3.0

Sing it brotha! Sing it to the mounTAINS!

They should do a show where a family has to live like it's 1895

When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.

- Steve Jobs

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.

- Dick Cavett

I hate reality tv. If you're watching reality tv and you wonder "how can these people be so dumb/selfish/cruel?", keep in mind that you're not seeing a random cross-section of society. The show's producers have kicked over every damp rock and rotten barrel they could find to locate people who will (a) do anything for money and (2) form a volatile mix of conflicting personalities. And that's just the beginning. TV audiences are finally starting to twig on to the fact that reality tv isn't real.

You may find it depressing to see the dregs of our society being rewarded for being horrible people. You may find it depressing to think about the heartless tv producers who seek these people out, throw them together, and stir them up, like a bloodless form of dog fighting. But the part that depresses me is that we, the collective we, we who watch television, keep watching the dogs night after night. TV producers don't make reality shows because they like them, they make reality shows because they have piles and piles of statistical reports telling them that's where the money is. The average American tv viewer, as measured by the Nielsen system, craves this stuff. We don't turn away in disgust. We don't say "I refuse to reward these people for being cruel to each other. I refuse to reward the producers for creating this crap." Instead we eat it up and ask for more. Why, WHY is there a Flavor of Love 2? Because people watched the first one. We live in a culture where enough people watched Flavor of Love to warrant the creation of a sequel. That's depressing.

If the television medium were a Hollywood starlet, reality shows would be her fake boobs. They kinda sorta look real, everybody knows they're really not real, but everyone keeps looking at them anyway.