agreed. Why would we just assume that a government entity isnt breaking any laws. That wasnt a safe assumption years ago, and now that we have proof many times over, then I am not going to jump to a conclusion of who placed the mics. We only know that the information was found.

I always mess up some mundane piece of the quote :)

does anyone even bother paying for a soda then ?

i might also. I would say something like " please stop" . No need to escalate to a night in jail for quite some time .

if you get up to 1.81 jiggawatts, then you can choose your own time period

that is why you search for " non-nuclear EMP but I am not a terrorist"

my point is they didnt want it to. Windows worked, but the entire office suite that is the lock in that microsoft loves didnt really release. Why should they compete with two teams and two code bases, when they can just make all consumers believe that all ARM is just less functional. The cost of an "RT failure" is less than years of having your product compete with itself.

I think they did it on purpose. Coke released a clear product, not to compete with a successful pepsi clear product, but to dilute the market, then fail, and cause the playing field to go back to the original status quo. Microsoft is highly interested in all consumers staying in the x86 market. When ARM started looking interesting to normal people, MS had to do something to protect its turf. Competing fairly would be hard and expensive, and kill off the current cash cows. Burying the new trend by placing a bad taste in the mouth of people who dont know which part of a technology stack to blame can get years of bad publicity for the up and comers.

so why isnt someone attaching handles to these bin liners? Cheaper, same size...

I use my grocery bags for trash also, as I dont like having large trash cans holding large amounts of trash. The bags are free in the states, and I buy a box of large trash bags about once every 5-7 years i think. The cloth bags seem like a good idea, but it is just more stuff to keep track of, especially when you have to leave the bags at the front desk then ask for them back when you are ready to leave. Then they are a potential disease spread if not cleaned and maintained.

I have family in Austria, and shopping there involves using the stores discarded cardboard boxes to bring things home. That makes a ton of sense.

people from the third world have a different definition of poor working environments.

unfortunately, the common occurrence is that refusing permission becomes probable cause. They can state that there were suspicious movements when asked, and just sit with the argument that people would allow a search if there is nothing to hide. It would be nice if everyone with nothing to hide refused permissions, raised suspicion of the searcher, and then had the search prove that there was no justification, but unfortunately most people dont have time to deal with that crap, and the easy out is to just comply.

I have refused any Sony product for years because of their warranty process. If you think you have a claim, you ship the product to a certified center. There are few of them, and you cannot become one. If they find that the issue is warranty, they fix or replace, then ship it back. If they find nothing wrong, they ship it back and you pay both ways. I had DOA laptops that came back as " unable to recreate" . It wouldnt boot, at all. This was at about a 10% rate. Also, if it failed in use, the hard drive of this model was under the keyboard, and we had very proprietary stuff on it. If we removed the drive, the warranty was void. I had to build in a > 10% failure rate to the budget so we could just pile up the failures and cannibalize for parts.

I dont know if it has improved, but the cost of their stuff isnt worth the risk for me to find out.

I intentionally did not state my opinion, so I don't know how you are accusing me of being against single payer. Lumping me in to a large group and insulting that entire group is a cute way to make people not want to take your thoughts seriously. My statement was to keep the conversation on a topic of the GPs thoughts of redefining the entire concept of insurance, or what it is to be insured. I was trying this to avoid the name calling that political disagreements create.

as the least centralized authority is the individual, it seems you are either trying to outlaw insurance companies, or legalize and new form of robbery. It is hard to distinguish your policy from pure individual responsibility for payment and possibly replace any insurance with a line of credit.

Im not saying your wrong, but I am saying that you are not discussing insurance.

yikes. I guess I dont have to deal with that often enough to really consider it in my plans. Im in Atlanta, and it may get cold enough 3 or 4 times a year that we have to let the water slowly drip to avoid freezing pipes. If there is no heat, then maybe 2 or 3 taps will be set to drip to make sure nothing freezes. Im not naive enough to think that this strategy will survive in places that actually get cold