So perhaps your view is a bit too local...
Because the rest of the world sees your medical system when we watch movies like John Q or hear Cutner tell Taub "when you have millions of people thousands of dollars in debt because of medical expenses, it's only a matter of time before one of them does something inexcusable" and books like "The Rainmaker".
The reality is - that in large parts of the US - that's exactly how it works. The doctors want to do a procedure - they call your insurance company to find out if it's pre-approved. If it's not pre-approved, they have to submit a claim and motivation - and if the insurance company turns it down (which they routinely do for all claims over a certain amount, some have been claimed at as low as 5000 dollars) then the procedure doesn't HAPPEN.

Now up there I just cited the fiction that gives us this view of the US as a system where doctors hands are tied and they have to watch their patients die because of greedy insurance companies.
I always take Michael Moore with a (small but not non-existent) piece of salt, but Sicko tells the same story...

In fact, up until this discussion with you - I have never heard a different story, from anybody, ever.

You say you live in a Rural part of the US. Rural communities tend to be small and very caring of one another, that's not a US thing, it's a global thing - the same is found in rural South Africa.
But the vast majority of American's (and people all over the world) don't live in rural areas, they live in big urban cities. I've lived in my appartment (which I own) for three years now - I know the name of one of my 50-something neighbours and I've had two conversations with her - ever.
That's the (sad) reality of citylife. Most people don't HAVE the kind of communities you describe to rely on. If doctors acted like you suggest - even in a city like Cape Town, the doctor would be bankrupt because people wouldn't be able to pay and nobody but their relatives would help and they aren't likely to be able to help that much either.

Either way - I have never favored fully socialized healthcare, I even agree with you that everything does have a price and Doctors put in massive time and money to become doctors and deserve to be rewarded for it.
What I do favor is universal health care. That means - anybody, and everybody can get any life-saving treatment - always.

It's a big enough burden on hospitals just to keep the E.R. doors open so they can treat accident victims and people with heart attacks. There is no way they can do something that takes months of preparation and costs more than 200 thousand US dollars (like say bone-marrow transplants) unless they can be sure of getting paid - the hospital that donates that to one patient is doing a massive disservice to all the others.

I would prefer to see a system here where the richest of the rich and go to the same hospitals as the poorest of the poor - by seeing our state hospitals improve so nobody needs private ones anymore, and the doctors are BETTER paid than the private doctors now. I want to see my nation grow to where we have near zero unemployment, and we all pay taxes - if we can do this with the taxes of only one fifth of the people... imagine what we could do if we had 80% of us paying into that fund ?

But honestly - I couldn't care less HOW the healthcare system works, I don't care what ideology drives it. I care about results.
I want to live in a country where every aids-orphan is guaranteed his anti-retrovirals. I want to live in a country where every sick old lady is guaranteed her pain meds - even in this day where many of them haven't seen their children in decades and live on a pittance of a pension. Where a leukemia patient can worry ONLY about finding a donor, not about finding money to pay for care.

I would really love to live in a world where cities are as caring and community orientated as rural towns are... but that is probably never going to happen. So we have to find other ways to care for the weakest in our society. The sick, the disenfranchised and the suffering.
I don't think the healthcare reform bill is meant to help the good folk of New England, but how about the poor folk of Harlem and South Central ? Do you really think the system works for them like it does for you ? Surely you're not that naive... I've been in South Central, walked in it's streets with my white skin and all without fear ... and I saw horrors - not the kind you expect from watching cops. I saw the kind I expect to see in Zimbabwe.
The difference is, the healthcare system in Zimbabwe has an excuse - a corrupt tyrant who destroyed the economy. The healthcare system in LA has no excuse for being bad enough to let those things happen.
I actually suggest you watch Sicko. Sure it's got a dose of propaganda, if you prefer ignore all the bits about other countries - but look at how your system is treating the majority of your own fellow countrymen.

Oh - and for the record, everything you said about American cultural history can be just as easily said of Afrikaans cultural history. My people, the great freedom seekers ended, who fought against despotic British rule just like your ancestor, ended up inventing appartheid and rationalizing it as the only way to protect that freedom.
Our history is a tool to learn from, it's not an excuse for our mistakes. My culture and yours are incredibly alike (after Middle America, the Afrikaans community in South Africa is probably the last places on earth where educated people are still creationists). Like you we started out as Dutch colonists who were usurped by British rule. Like you we fought back our freedom, over and over and over we had to fight. We only really became self-ruling in 1961... and then we became despots ourselves... just like you.
But we realized where we were going, and we gave up the power voluntarily. We handed it over to a democratic vote and stepped back when we saw what our plan was leading to. America it seems, has yet to learn that lesson. Fighting for a noble cause like your ancestors did, is a complete waste of time if you end up becoming exactly what you fought against - and you have. America has toppled countless democratic governments in the last century - to replace them with dictators because those democratic governments held policies that served their own interests rather than America's (Nicaragua, Brazil, Panama, Iraq in the 80's... the list goes on). The rest of the world doesn't just dislike Americans... we fear America. We fear the imperialistic empire you are turning into.
As long as I, in my little city on the Southern tip of Africa HAS to care who you elect as president, because his choices could destroy my life... don't expect me not to like it.

Nah, "think of the children" is.

You can do anything as long as you're doing it "for the children". Going after child porn is simply one specific example.

Display electronics? Either you lived in Europe or had a eurospec urquattro. US cars received analog gauges, Europe got the talking digital dashboard (that usually broke). Ironically the AC compressor was pretty much the only part of those cars Made in the USA. The hoses usually leaked all the freon out after a few years.

They're the ones using it.
They did create some very good games, but I'm not buying anything with SecuROM in it, no matter how good the game. Now they want to add 'needs permanent net access'? If I wasn't already blocking them on my shopping list, I'd be doing it now...l

Even besides contract killing, there are other forms of contract crime. Could I pay neighborhood kids a pittance to shoplift for me? Are protection rackets and blackmail now legal? Organized crime is a lot like a business that happens to be engaged in illegal services. What happens when the guy with the money all of a sudden bears no legal responsibility for the crimes from which he profits?

This is a poor example. It has been Apple's policy forever to not acknowledge their intent before they are ready to present it. While Jobs scorned people for suggesting video iPod, he's been working on iPod and deals with movie companies. While he pushed Safari as the "iPhone platform", his team has been working on the iPhone SDK and documentation. While Jobs openly mocked the Kindle, he's already been working on the Apple tablet for over an year.

If one can't see past these basics of marketing at Apple, I wonder why would I trust the rest of the analysis in this article :P

I'm pretty sure my office is less than 30dB when I'm alone and not typing, and when there isn't a car going past outside. I can hear people typing in the next room, or the hard drive going "click" under the desk. It's an excellent environment for concentrating :-)

It's no secret that the Patent Office is badly understaffed. That's not a systemic flaw (at least in the patent system), it's a flaw in public priorities and government spending.

While it's true that a lower workload would result in more time per application, there are two major problems with the presentation of this point on Slashdot:

1. "Novel" and "Non-obvious" are grossly mischaracterized and misunderstood by the overwhelming majority of posters, with the particular point being what portions of the application must demonstrate these two elements and what the requirements for each are. The abstract, summary, or title will often state the invention in fairly "obvious" terms--by design. The actual invention is disclosed in the claims and the specification, and most of the patent stories around here gloss past that part for ad revenue and cheap laughs. Many patents presented here actually deal with the existing art in the specification.

2. It is not the function of a patent examiner to conclude that the patent works. There is no way to have a fully versed office, conversant in all applicable technologies and methods, nor is there any conclusive way to search and fulfill a negative proposition (that there is no disqualifying art in existence). It is the job of competitors and interested parties to pursue litigation, and more importantly, it is the job of the applicant to conduct an exhaustive search and certify that the patent application contains patentable material.

By design, it is litigation that primarily handles this problem.

Doubtful. The entire legal system of the United States is predicated on extremely low bars to entry--a measured and intentional response to the court practices of England.

This as a matter of course includes having only minimal checks against frivolous lawsuits and it includes a full awareness of potential for abuse. It was decided, as part of the Framers' systemic design, that putting up with abuse was the cost for freedom. After all, part of freedom is living with people who make choices you don't like.

Finally, given that the very early development of the patent system involved (and to this day involves) a high priority placed on free assignment, that is, the ability to sell wholesale patented inventions, assign royalties to any party, and generally deal freely with the invention, patent trolls existed from day one. Anyone can buy a patent outright and then milk the competition.

Patent trolls have become more sophisticated and more prevalent, and their job is much easier with the Internet exposing targets for them that in, say, 1813, they'd never have heard of, but the patent system grants exclusive rights to patent holders on, among others, the manufacturing and use of the patented device or process.

The holder of that exclusive right is free to exercise it. Once again, we come full circle to "freedom means dealing with the disagreeable choices of others."

None of that is to say that there aren't reforms that can alleviate some of the burdens of today's troll industries, but the patent troll will never be eradicated without interfering significantly with legitimate patent applicants and holders. (Then of course, there's also the argument that patent trolls actually perform a useful service and respond to market forces--but that's a topic for another time.)

The moose test is not a crash test. It tests the car's ability to make an evasive maneuver (for instance, with a moose in the middle of the road) and then get back on track again. See the wiki.

Well, if you want to go that far, to Athlon and GF256 days, Intel had their share of problems too... (unstable P3 Coppermines just above 1GHz mark? Flaky motherboards with Rambus chipset & bridge?)

That said, yes, many chipsets for AMD had problems - but you could always find something solid. SiS chipsets which you don't seem to even remember were particularly impressive - perhaps slightly slower than Via, Nv or ATI alternatives, but absolutelly rock-solid and troublefree, on par with Intel (for example, when you wanted to use demanding PCI card for editing video, it was either Intel chipset or...SiS; I had also quite explosive combination of Radeon 8500, Aureal Vortex 2 and bt878 TV card...no issues at all). Only problem with SiS - largely ignored, hard to find and often (but not always!) on low-end motherboards. Or ULi ones at some point (K7 days)...killed by Nv. Lately it's becoming good though, with AMD offering their own whole "platform".

BTW, Intel wasn't so impressive until very recently when it comes to power usage. Yes, their CPUs were better...but you have to look system-wide. And Intel chipsets were made on old processes, rather power-hungry. AMD ones use few Watts for quite some time. Of course that should change now, with Core i5. But when you look at Top500 Green Supercomputer list - if there's x86 chip present, it's usually AMD.

If you teach your kids to emulate the most corrupt douchebags right from the start, may I suggest that you also teach your kids that drinking and driving or abusing prescription drugs are cool?

Rehahahaha... you're not American are you? Prisons aren't for rehabilitation, silly Eurotwit. You throw scum there to rot for an imaginary "fair" term, after which they will immediately commit another petty crime for which you apply maximized and trivially compound sentences to keep them there for eternity. They leave knowing only how to commit further crime and live in a prison, and also blackmarked and not able to get a job.

I'm sorry to hear it hit you all so hard. My roomate and I were diagnosed after a trip to Bakersfield. We didn't take any medication or anything (meaning no sore throat serum and what not). My roomate threw up solid for a weekend. I had to stop jogging for a week and a half because my trachea was swollen. Other than that, we did just fine. Actually, once I started jogging again my lung capacity actually get better, faster because I was still pushing myself with a partially swollen air pipe. I am not saying that the swine flu was some conspiracy, but from my experience, it really was overblown.

Although I do have some advice if you care to take it. If you notice that your recovery times from diseases are long (as in six weeks), try eating an apple every day. I know that sounds cliche but it really is a huge vitamin C boost for your immune system, not to mention delicious. Seriously, I munch apples regularly and it definitely helps you feel better quicker.

Money is a lot easier to move around and it can be use to buy what the aid organization needs and in the quantity/packaging that they want to make shipping easier.

Compare food packaged for direct consumer use and food packaged for commercial use. Now if Joe Six pack is going to donate food, is he going to donate a drum of industrial pudding or would he be likely to send a couple of snack packs of pudding? If you were an aid agency which one would you prefer to have to deal with? Or would you prefer to just go an buy what you know you'll need.

Yes... and no.

The code and doc that others can read and understand, yes, that is tremendously important, and will always be neglected in Dilbert's (and our) world of rushed deadlines, short staffing, and lazy coworkers. If it works, ship it yesterday, oh, and after it's shipped, why isn't the next thing finished yet?

Accurate code and doc requires tremendous attention to detail, if you're talking about API level, you need docs that say what the functions and their parameters do, and functions that properly implement that. Rigorous attention to detail is just the beginning - extensive testing, documentation of big picture connections to related parts of the API, and keeping up with the "cutting edge" of efficiency, feature completeness, etc.

Most of my coworkers don't have the attention span to complete anything significant at this level of rigor, and the ones who do are pushed by management to "be more productive" rather than make something that actually works 100% correctly.