Operdiva

Mortgage Protection – easing your biggest concerns Mortgage Protection – easing your biggest concerns. OK, now you have a lovely new home and with it comes a lovely new mortgage. With the average mortgage advance standing at around £150,000 it's a long-term commitment to repay a lot of money. The repayments also take a fair slice out of your monthly income. What could go wrong with these financial arrangements and can you hedge your bets by insuring against the risks? After all you have a family to protect. Most people would identify 5 main areas of concern, all of which boil down to your ability to maintain the mortgage repayments: <ul> <li>Interest rates might increase and make the monthly repayments unaffordable </li> <li>You might loose your job </li> <li>You might be forced to take time off work through illness or accident </li> <li>You may become permanently unable to work through accident or very serious illnes...

I had a few other language choices that I was kicking around when planning this book. Although there are acolytes out there for Delphi, VB, and even C#, the only languages I seriously considered were C++, Java, and C. Java is designed by Sun Microsystems and an inherently object-oriented language, with some high-level language features like garbage collection. C is about as low level as programming gets without dipping into assembly. It has very few if any high-level constructs and doesn't abstract anything away from the programmer. C++ is an interesting language because it essentially sits directly between the functionality of the other two languages. C++ supports COM better than C does (this is more thoroughly discussed in Chapter 1). Also, class systems and operator overloading generally make code easier to read (although, of course, any good thing can and will be abused). Java, although very cool, is an interpreted language. Every year this seems to be less important: JIT...

For those of you who have never used it, OpenGL is another graphics API. Silicon Graphics designed it in the early '90s for use on their high-end graphics workstations. It has been ported to countless platforms and operating systems. Outside of the games industry in areas like simulation and academic research, OpenGL is the de facto standard for doing computer graphics. It is a simple, elegant, and fast API. Check out http://www.opengl.org for more information. But it isn't perfect. First of all, OpenGL has a large amount of functionality in it. Making the interface so simple requires that the implementation take care of a lot of ugly details to make sure everything works correctly. Because of the way drivers are implemented, each company that makes a 3D card has to support the entire OpenGL feature set in order to have a fully compliant OpenGL driver. These drivers are extremely difficult to implement correctly, and the performance on equal hardware can vary wildly based on dr...

If autonomy were to be seen as an absolute right to decide for oneself the consequence would be the risk of chaos with the vulnerable left to the mercy of the strong. Furthermore, if conceived as a right then it is logically impossible for it to be absolute. If A decided to exercise his or her autonomy by locking B inside a room this would interfere with B’s autonomy and B could not be said to have a right to autonomy unless A is restrained from exercising his or her right in this way. Thus, ignoring the problem of ability, any right to autonomy cannot be the freedom to do what one wants. That trite example suggests that any right to autonomy must be limited by having regard to the autonomy of others. It might be suggested that A has the right to do what he or she wants providing it does not prevent B from doing what he or she wants. This formulation, however, would be overly restrictive and would paralyse much of our life. It may be reasonable if resources were plentiful and...

Autonomy has both intrinsic and instrumental value. The intrinsic value of autonomy arises from its relationship with rationality and its necessity for agency, moral personhood and the ascription of moral responsibility. As O’Neill recognised, ‘ethics can be addressed only to those who can reason, deliberate and act; . . . [such] debates must take agency . . . seriously’.62 If I am to be held responsible for both the good and bad things I do, then I must have sufficient agency to be counted as the author of those acts, which demands that I have chosen to do the act for my own reasons, irrespective of the existence of possible alternatives.63 This in turn requires that I am an autonomous individual. If I shot someone because a more physically powerful person forced the gun in my hand and squeezed my finger on the trigger I would not be held responsible for the death. Similarly, if I had been brainwashed or hypnotised into shooting someone I would not be held responsible. The import...

The nature of autonomy In the introduction I suggested that consent is predicated on autonomy. If one considers the role consent plays, which I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 4, the connection with autonomy seems apparent. It has not, however, gone unchallenged and I will address this later in the chapter.1 Starting with the etymological derivation of autonomy, which comes from the Greek and means self-rule, both senses of consent – as a waiver of a right and as a negotiated agreement – depend on the patient’s autonomy, at least in the sense of autonomy as self-determination. Consent raises issues of liberty, power, control and responsibility; all of which are also relevant to the importance of autonomy.2 Because of this connection, it is essential to explore autonomy in some detail. This will allow the attributes of consent to be given more substance, which is a necessary part of determining the moral and legal duties that consent imposes on the healthcare professional....