Siderea

Well, my mind is blown. *hugs Mac fiercely*

The Windows 8 user interface is not backward compatible with earlier versions of Windows. Windows users who upgrade to 8 will have a not-inconsiderable learning curve to operate their machines.

Note that Win8 is strongly optimized for touch-screen devices (and I see a lot about it which seems to be optimized for small touch screen devices) and draws heavily from the iPad and from Android for its inspiration.

If you are a Windows user, I particularly highly recommend you watch the demo video (embedded at the above link) so you can see it in action -- and be the first kid on your block to discover how to turn your Win8 computer on and off (no, not joking).

To editorialize for a moment: I can't be the only Mac user looking at this thing and thinking, "Migod, they've put the design ethos of iOS on top of the architecture ethos of Mac OS 6."

ETA: I got this compliments of Metafilter, which has some inspired commentary, one of my favorite of which observed, "How can anyone be surprised by this? Windows OS consumer versions are on the same release pattern as Star Trek movies; every other one sucks."

ETA2: Also, can I just say how pleased I am to pick up the vocabulary word "skeuomorphism"? It's a concept I've had for a long time, and I'm glad to have a word with which to decry it.

I saw "Snow White and the Huntsman" tonight. It was okay.

0) You should totally see it on the big screen because it's a very touching movie. No, not emotionally. I mean, I have never seen a flick so luxuriantly, lavishly tactile. If there's an Oscar for Textures, this is a shoe-in.

1) Kristen Stewart can't act. It would have helped if they had given her lines. In some cases at all. What's the opposite of "witty repartee"? You know, where someone says something cheeky, and you just stand there wishing you had a snappy comeback? That. She seemed to have quite a bit of that. Maybe they were expecting her to emote or something, and gave up? Or just failed to finish her script? Unfortunate.

2) Fortunately Charlize Theron is also in this movie. In addition to mostly carrying the thing, she actually did something that's quite an accomplishment: she made the villain both totally gorgeous and totally bad-ass in that "all shall love me and despair" sort of way, while making the character repellant and unsympathetic.

3) I've heard commenters say things prior the opening that casting Kristen Stewart as "the fairest one" against Charlize Theron was asking too much suspension of disbelief, because of how much more beautiful Theron is than Stewart. That, it turns out, was an absolutely deliberate choice. The movie establishes it explicitly early on that Snow White's beauty is more "inner", and then throughout almost the whole the movie, any conventional physical beauty Stewart might bring to the role is pointedly undermined by coating her with grime, (see "Textures" above) and then contrasted by constant cuts to the Evil Queen, who is the one clean, conventionally beautiful person left alive. By the end of the movie, the film has managed to bring the audience along to the point of seeing the super-human beauty of the Evil Queen as uncanny in the bad sense. That is quite the accomplishment, too.

4) Gothic Fitted Dress sighting! Whoo!

5) Spoilers: Does Snow White get rescued by the prince? Revived by a kiss of true love? How is the Evil Queen defeated?

6) I kinda feel like the screenwriters knew what they wanted to acheive, but were unclear on how to go about doing that. It was not the most compelling of stories. But I don't begrudge the theater my $10.

I just got off the phone with MBHP ((800) 495-0086). There's no obvious place to get provider applications on their website, so I called. There's no obvious place on the phone tree to ask about applying, either: the trick I used which worked was to pretend I was an already-enrolled provider to get to a person, who then was surprisingly prepared for my statement, "I'm not an MBHP provider[*] and am interested in learning more about becoming one."

[* Technically incorrect. I see MBHP patients all the time -- under my clinic's enrollment. I get their [REDACTED] PCC newsletter in my mail box every so often.]

The way you approach enrolling is that you write a "Letter of Intent" where you tell them for whom you will be fighting licensure level, "site demographics", foreign languages, specialties, PCC or PCP affiliations, and a copy of your resume "in month slash year format". You then either mail it to their High Street office or email it to the appropriate secret email address which I now have. I also have the name of the Manager of Contract Development and Provider Relations, to whom all this should be addressed.

I am, of course, happy to share the details with any of my fellow MA LMHCs, out of band.

Now, this is where it gets interesting: I'm not strongly interested in getting in bed with MBHP. This means I have very little to lose in my dealings with them. I'm not concerned with pissing them off by being insufficiently deferrent/desperate. This puts me in an interesting position.

When I asked the nice woman on the phone if there were any documents which would explain to me the contractual requirements MBHP has for its providers or its offered compensation, "so that I can make an informed decision whether to apply to be a provider with MBHP", I clearly had just gone Way Off Script, and she didn't have any answer for that.

As is, I gather, usual for insurance companies, you can't find out what they'll pay you (or what you'll be contractually obligated to do for them if you accept their money) until after you've gone through a heroic application process and they'd deigned to admit you (if indeed they do).

You're supposed to be desperate enough not to care.

The nice woman told me to address my questions to the email address, so I guess I will. Though it might be better to do this in print.

https://www.masspartnership.com/provider/pdf/CredentialingCriteriaAppendixA04192012forweb.pdf

Several licensure levels qualify individuals to serve members, either in private practice, group practice, or in organization providers settings (clinics, agencies, and/or hospitals), as distinguished from those who may practice in organizational providers only. The licensure levels that belong to this classification are as follows:

[...]

Licensed Mental Health Counselors

[...]

Profession-specific credentialing criteria

All network practitioners must meet the general credentialing criteria listed above. In addition to these general criteria, all network practitioners must meet each of the profession-specific criteria listed below that pertain to their specific profession.

[...]

Licensed Mental Health Counselors (LMHC)
1. Master's degree in mental health filed (including, but not restricted to, counseling, family therapy, psychology, etc.) from an accredited college or university
2. Current, valid, unrestricted licensure or certification to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC).

Guys, this is HUGE. Poor people in MA can see master's level therapists in private practice. (If, you know, master's level therapists sign up with MBHP.)

There are a huge number of patients on MassHealth (Medicaid) who want treatment and have MBHP insurance and are stuck on waiting lists, and a huge number of master's level therapists in private practice who are going hungry for want of patients. Until now, MBHP (MassHealth's Behavioral Health plan) wouldn't add LMHCs, LICSWs or LMHC to its panel. The only way for master's level clinicians to see MBHP patients has been through a Dept of Mental Health certified clinic or other medical facility, and pretty much only junior clinicians tolerate that. Consequently, poor folks on MassHealth were effectively not allowed to see more senior counselors.

That just changed.

Of course, this is all theoretical unless they post the freaking provider application. But perhaps that is discoverable.

Also, there's a real question of which therapists in private practice are inclined to put up with MBHP and its rules. I'm not sure I interested in putting my head in that noose. But I'm not sure I'm not, either.

I guess I never posted this, though I thought I had. I was just reminded of it by tripping over the preview for the forthcoming movie (The Imposter, out in the US July 13th) that is based on the case.

The article The Chameleon by David Grann, published in the New Yorker in 2008, is one of the best thrillers I've ever read, and has one of the very best plot twists I've ever encountered.

It's non-fiction.

I remember reading it, and thinking, "Holy crap, why isn't this a movie?" And, well, now it is, though they've made a straight-up documentary, where I was anticipating a dramaticization.

The whole article is available for free, and I highly, highly recommend it. Absolutely delicious reading. It's long and unfolds a bit slowly, but that's all necessary and perfect; plan on settling in with the beverage of your choice some evening soon for an unforgetable read.

From MetroWeekly:

BREAKING: DOMA's Federal Definition of Marriage Unconstitutional, Federal Appeals Court Rules
Posted by Chris Geidner |
May 31, 2012 10:45 AM | Permalink

Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act -- the federal definition of "marriage" and "spouse" -- is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled today. The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. United States, is the first instance of a federal appellate court striking down any portion of the 1996 law.

Writing that "Supreme Court review of DOMA is highly likely," the appeals court has stayed, or put on hold, the implementation of its decision pending any appeal.

Judge Michael Boudin, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, wrote for the court: "[M]any Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."

More at MetroWeekly article.
The decision itself.

Dear All Tech Support Desks Ever,

No, I don't know how I do it, either. There are people who can't help probing for holes, but I'm not one of them. There are people who can't stand to talk to levels 1 and 2 tech support, but I'm not one of them. It's just that if there's going to be some weird-ass bug, some grand synchronicity, some freaky edge case, I'm going to be the one to walk blithely right into.

So you might as well just directly route my tickets to level 3 from the get-go. They're going to wind up there, anyway.

I'm sorry about your server. Let me know when it's back up, okay?

Apologetically,
Siderea

As some of you know, I've been agonizing about the upgrade path for my cell phone (a much loved Motorola Razr) and my Palm T|X (aka my exocortex, h/t alexx_kay). The two options for someone like me who requires a deep ecology of applications have been the iPhone and Android devices, both of which I hate -- the iPhone because There's An App For That And It Sucks also the damn onscreen keyboard, and Android because I don't want my stuff in Google's cloud. So I've been clinging to my increasingly antiquated hardware desperately hoping a viable third option to come rescue me.

Lo! There may be an option. I just learned about Tizen. Tizen is a Linux-based open source operating system for phones, tablets, and other appliances. It's being put together by a consortium of hardware manufactures, most notably Intel, Samsung, and Sprint Nextel. Asus and Acer are also onboard. It is the direct descendent of Nokia's Maemo by way of MeeGo, Intel's Moblin, and Samsung Linux Platform OS (SLP). It run apps written in HTML5 and WAC.

And it is believed that it will be able to run Android apps, thus bootstrapping its app ecology with Google's.

The "first annual" Tizen Developer Conference was held last weekend. At it, a developer prototype phone was premiered. It's a clunker, from a hardware perspective, but the point is to give the developers something to play with. "The Phone is powered by a 1.2 Ghz dual core A9 chip, comes with 1 GB of RAM and has a large HD-Super-AMOLED screen with 1280720 Pixels. Featurewise it could be compared to the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but without the thin body, and with no signs of Google whatsoever."

So I think maybe I'm going to continue holding out in the hopes this goes somewhere, and that I can someday get a smartphone I don't hate. And, heck, that maybe I could code for, in my copious spare time.

Right now, it's barely more than vaporware, but I'm guardedly optimistic. It seems that there are lots of industry players who are canny enough to see that letting Google own the operating system for their phones is not the path of enlightenment, and see Tizen as an opportunity to break away from el Goog.

ETA: I'm surprised this is the first I've heard of this, and I only discovered it by chance, digging into some pretty obscure stuff (the history of phone operating systems). It seems to me that one of the things we laypeople can do to help is to get word out -- you know, foment some buzz and start increasing demand for the product. Obviously at this point we don't know if there will ever actually be a phone or if it will be any good. But should something make it to market, it will be the johnny-come-lately entrant to a pretty entrenched market. The market will be like "Tizen? What's that and why do we care?" I don't think Samsung or anybody else is going to run ads on TV, "ANDROID, NOW WITHOUT THAT NASTY GOOGLE RESIDUE!" -- word of mouth is going to have to do that for them.

Yes, I know the calendar says "May" and its muggy and warm, but this was about the 7th day in a row in which the morning was seriously gray and overcast. If you use a lightbox through the winter to treat light-sensitive depression, I suggest that now would be an excellent time to implement your late-autumn treatment protocol.

Via nancylebov: