See you at CEIC

Hello Readers,
                        Looks like I'll be speaking at CEIC Tuesday afternoon 2:00pm on "Anti Anti Forensics". If you've enjoyed the blog/books/tweets I hope you'll come as we get into how I go about detecting and sometimes overcoming wiping/system cleaners in a hands on lab.

Head of Lobbying Firm with Health Care Clients Walks Through Revolving Door into Executive Branch

A Washington Post op-ed described the latest case of a revolving door frequent flier, or perhaps frequent revolver, with health care connections. I will try to piece it together chronologically.

The story revolves around one Steven Ricchetti. His earlier career trajectory was:

Blue Cross Blue Shield, then the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, then the Clinton White House, then lobbying, then back to the Clinton White House, then more lobbying, this time starting Ricchetti Inc. with his brother, Jeff. (A call seeking comment from Ricchetti Inc. wasn’t returned.)

Most recently, he "was tapped to be counselor to Vice President [Joseph] Biden."

His recent clients were"Fannie Mae, General Motors, the American Hospital Association, and Eli Lilly," obviously includeingtwo prominent health care organizations.

Previously he had represented

AT&T, Reed Elsevier, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Siemens, Sirius XM, Amgen, Boston Scientific, America’s Health Insurance Plans, eBay, Dow Chemical, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, among others, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Cumulatively, they paid Ricchetti and his firms millions.

Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Sanofi-Aventis, Amgen, and Boston Scientific are obviously "pure" health care corporations. Reed Elsevier has a publishing subsidiary with important medical titles. Siemens Healthcare is an important part of that company. The links above are to our relevant posts about these firms, some of which describe various ethically questionable behavior.

Note that Mr Ricchetti's appointment apparently circumvented the President's previous statement that "lobbyists 'will not run my White House.'" He

achieved this feat — getting around the ban on lobbyists serving in the administration — by using one of Washington’s most-honored traditions: the loophole. Just as Obama won the presidency, Ricchetti de-registered as a lobbyist for his various clients. But he remained president of the lobbying firm that continued to work for many of those same clients, as well as a few more, such as the American Bankers Association.

While Mr Ricchetti is no doubt an intelligent and hard-working man, could not someone who was not so strongly financially tied to the leadership of some of the US' most ppowerful health care corporations be found who was well-qualified for this position?

Pending the answer to that question, which I do not expect to receive, this story becomes our latest example of the coziness between political and government leadership on one hand, and the leadership of large health care organizations, and those they choose as representatives.

We have seen all sorts of permutations of revolving door stories involving people with strong ties to the largest health care organizations. The implication is that both health care's private sector and the government functions meant to provide or regulate health care do not operate at arms' length, and in fact seem to be run by a group of insiders who overlap both, and may be more attuned to their self-interest and patients' and the public's health.

Health policy in the US has become an insiders' game. Unless it is redirected to reflect patients' and the public's health, facilitated by the knowledge of unbiased clinical and policy experts rather than corporate public relations, expect our efforts at health care reform to just increase health care dysfunction.

Physicians, public health advocates, whatever unbiased health policy experts remain must educate the public about how health policy has been turned into a corporate sandbox. We must try to somehow activate the public to call for health care policy of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Mengenal Kualitas Film

Unik Informatika - Hallo gan...suka menonton film? tentu rata-rata jawabannya iya kan? suka nonton yang di boskop atau nunggu 2 bulan lalu download di internet?

dua-duanya tidak salah menurut saya, jika anda seorang pendownload di internet, tahukah anda tentang pembagian kualitas-kualitas film yang akan anda download?

jika tidak, anda masuk ke daerah yang benar dan tidak melenceng setengah derajat pun, karena saya akan membahas secara detail tentang kualitas film yang akan anda download.

berikut adalah pembagian kualitas dan definisi dari berbaga macam hal tersebut, mari menyimak.

1. DVDRip.

ini adalah kualitas yang sama dengan DVD original nya, kualtas gambar dan suara yang dimiliki oleh file ini sangatlah baik, persis asli, namanya saja salinan file yang asli.

resolusi pada kebiasaan adalah 720x480 atau 720x576.

2. DVDScr.

kualitas fle ini tidak jauh beda dengan DVDRip karena DVDScr adalah duplikat dari promo DVD yang dibuat sebagai ajang promosi sebuah film, dan akan keluar sebelum DVD originalnya resmi diluncurkan, karena memang sebagai promosi.

kekurangan dari bagian ini adalah adanya tulisan-tulisan yang akan mengganggu kita dalam menikmati film tersebut yang akan ada di setiap bagian dalam alur cerita film dalam file yang berkualitas DVDScr.

3. VCD.

ini adalah kualitas yang rendah karena diperuntukkan supaya file bisa dikompres ke dalam ukuran yang lebih kecil, supaya proses upload dan download tidak berlangsung lama.

4. Bluray/HD.

ini adalah kualitas terbaik karena beresolusi 1920x1080 atau 1280x720, resiko yang harus dihadapi sang penonton adalah mereka harus mempunyai PC yang lebih canggih karena file ini membutuhkan media yang canggih untuk bisa menikmatinya,

karena kalau tidak penonton akan terus menggerutu karena film yang ditonton yang hanya nerdurasi 2 jam akan menjadi 3 jam karena, film akan patah-patah.

5. R5.

kualitasnya tidak jauh beda dengan DVDRip, gambar yang dihasilkan bagus tetapi dari segi suaranya lumayan jelek.

6. CAM.

ini merupakan kualitas video yang sangat jelek, mengapa?

karena ini adalah sebuah rekaman asli dari kamera digital, langsung di bioskop dan terkadang semua adegan ikut terekam termasuk orang yang lalu lalang terekam juga, karena belum terjadi proses pengeditan.

7. TS.

kualitasnya tidak jauh beda dengan CAM, namun kualitas gambar lebih baik, karena telah dilabel ulang.

8. mHD.

kualitas hampir sama dengan HD, tetapi ukuran lebih kecil dan beresolusi 1280x5xx.

9. Workprint.

ini merupakan file yang belum diedit kesemuanya, biasanya terdapat adegan yang hilang sehingga tidak nyambung antara satu adegan dengan adegan yang lain.

sekian, para maniak film...

lihat ini sebelum anda terburu-buru mendownload film, sebelum anda kecewa dengan kualitas film nya.

terima kasih...:D

Happy Monday!

So yesterday we arrived at our beachfront resort.  It's been three years since we were last here -- somehow "transfers" aren't working well for us this trip because the first problem was that our taxi dropped us off at the wrong resort.  We tell everyone the name of the sister resort next door because there are like a zillion resorts with "Royal" in the name, but they dropped us off at the one on the opposite side.   Oh well.  When we finally got settled I think the hustle and bustle of the whole trip really hit and both of us were really tired.  

On Saturday we went to Mercado 28 in downtown which reminded me how much I hate being a tourista!  I have little patience for those trying to take advantage of me.  We looked at some jewelry in one store and the guy quoted us like $350 for like 3 silver pieces.  I mean c'mon man!  I was looking for a butterfly pendant and finally found one for around $35.  Y'all will see it at AHS.  We also did the 3 cheap T's for $10 thing and I did find a lovely beach dress for $8.  Then off to WalMart to get a couple SF drink mixes.   I don't know that I've ever seen motorcycles in a WalMart before.  

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Why We Get Fat ... Lessons from Obese Humans & Cafeteria Rats

Vacation bump!  Original Post Date:  3/9/11

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One of the more interesting things (to me) to come out of the "cafeteria rat study" is what the composition of the diet eventually chosen by the rats came out to be.  I'm just going to focus on the SC (standard chow) and CAF (SC + human snack foods) diets in this post.

To recap, the SC had a composition F/C/P of 10/64/26.  When offered this chow along with a rotating selection of three human snack foods from the following list, the rats only ate 15% of their diet as chow (the wording of this is unclear, but their total consumption is ultimately what's important).  The composition of the diet they ended up eating?  CAF was F/C/P of 44/46/10  (note: I've detected slight discrepancies in the numbers here that involve a 1-2% swing in either direction) .  One might think the rodies were only offered fatty snacks, but this is not the case as can be seen in the table below:

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