The irony is that this topic is nerd related, because most of the issues involved are actuarial in nature.

Sadly, thinking one is a nerd doesn't mean they apply any analysis or thought to issues that affect their life.

Well, that would be socialism then, wouldn't it?

What makes the "Congressional-grade" insurance programs such a sweet deal to policyholders is that they are not paying a penny for it. You have to make someone pay for "free" insurance to 47 million uninsured...

While on one hand, I'd disagree that the insurance approach is "mathematically-broken", it certainly will not tangibly "fix" the real problem with US health care/insurance; its too inefficient compared to most foreign countries' systems. More people will be covered under "Obamacare", per capita health treatment costs will not increase more than what was projected before PPACA, and eventually most Republican states will adopt Medicaid expansion and health insurance exchanges, and the "increases" will go down for them, (or the unlikely event that US will elect a Republican controlled house, senate, & POTUS and "repeal" the PPACA). And then, after 2030, the health care costs will be bankrupting the US taxpayers, and the politicians will finally have to fix the system (again).

You live in a Republican run state. Boo hoo. If they had accepted the Medicaid expansion, and ran a health exchange, your premium wouldn't have doubled, and you would have gotten tax rebates to offset the premium (unless you're rich). Look on the bright side; if that premium increase is the insurance company trying to loot you, they will have to return whatever is over their 20% profit, regardless of what state you live in. In any case, blame your state politicians for paying for my (NY) health care.

Excuse me, are you stupid enough to actually believe that ERs provide chemotherapy treatment for cancer walk-ins? ERs cannot turn away patients who need "immediate" care to prevent imminent death (gunshot wound, bleeding to death, etc.), but they're not required to "cure" the patient of their health ailment, even if it will eventually be fatal if not "properly" treated.

I don't see how this is possible, because I'm pretty sure the PPACA originated in the House (it got voted on and passed first). The Senate put up a different version, and it got resolved in the reconciliation committee, and the final law passed both houses.

While on the surface, it may seem like this, the implications are much more serious (for Key Siever).

Linus is the final word in what gets incorporated into the linux kernel. If you can't submit updates to the kernel, you cease to exist in the kernel developer community. Siever is the lead developer for systemd. If systemd needs a kernel modification, and it can't get it approved, that whole project sits dead in the water, until some competing project replaces it. Siever is paid for his development work by Red Hat; we'll see for how much longer.

Pretty ironic, considering NASA safety reviews couldn't prevent either a Challenger or Columbia operational failure.

The point of exploring the stars isn't reducing/managing surplus population or broadening humanity's knowledge. Its to ensure the existence of the human species even from planetary or galactic disaster. Right now, we cannot perpetuate a sufficient number of mating pairs in a non-earthlike biome indefinitely. Earth and humans die in the first nuclear war, sufficiently large asteroid sized impacts, local supernova or intractable pollution.

1) Brandon Eich wasn't executed.
2) Mozilla ensures its financial existence, while Salem Puritanism ceased to be considered a credible religious doctrine.

No, this is a capitalist culture. You exploit the gullible.

The overhead in $15K is not overhead; a huge chunk of it is taxes & the "payroll end" of taxes. If anything, the overhead is a little low.

Yup. And it costs that Ph.D absolutely nothing to make generalizations using data which may be utterly invalid today, post 2006.

I believe the truth is somewhere between four results. Some people will go to college, and become financially successful. Some people today will try to complete their college degrees, in exchange for indentured servitude (to student debt) for most of their working lives. Some people won't go to college, strike it out on their own, and not be financially successful. A few people will skip college, strike it out on their own, and become financially successful. There is no real middle strategy; its just a matter of which choice you will make, and you will have to live with the result. My feeling is that you make the choice that best fits yourself, and have a strategy when it doesn't work out.

The only thing I'm pretty certain about: If you're poor, and can't get a subsidized ride into a very good four year college, you are definitely opting to be a wage slave if you take on a lot of student debt. Very few poor kids are going to take on debt in a profession like doctor or lawyer, and work his way out in his lifetime.

1) There are a lot of detractors of Gnome 3. Everyone is not happy with it.

2) What you don't grasp is what I admire about Canonical/Shuttleworth. What kept Linux (or Ubuntu) from dominating the desktop was an inferior GUI experience to Apple/Windows (and unequal driver support). You could chose Gnome or KDE, both too flawed and two unmotivated to compete for the general (dumb) consumer market, give up and go with some form of LXDE(?), or do what Canonical did. Canonical wanted to go after what it saw was the future, and instead of unsuccessfully negotiating with Gnome & KDE designer councils to implement what Canonical wanted, Canonical took its future into its own hands. Computing hardware was moving to tablets, phones & gear, not desktops, and they wanted a GUI that could bridge both worlds. That's why they went to Unity, and given the problems producing a compositor competitive with DirectX, they went to Wayland, then Mir.

3) Every megalomanic in Unixland operates like a bloodthirsty Bolshevik, and thinks Canonical owes them a living for failure or half a loaf.