At one time, there was a proposal that postal service would ensure every citizen in the USA would receive permanent free-for-life email address at @usps.us or whatever domain would make sense.

Was a good idea.....free very basic level email (no frills)...the modern equivalent of the original postal service goal of ensuring a minimum ability for people to communicate within the country.

Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo should have been focusing on enhanced premium email services just like FedEx and UPS do for overnight, business level, and important packages.

I'm fine with that translating to internet service and/or healthcare too.

Let USPS provide a simple 1Mbps service per household sufficient for 2-5 people to browse the web, read email, and download files....perhaps 2-3 Mbps for houses with several students or the elderly/very poor. It wouldn't be fast, and probably would have qos rules that moderately throttled video and high traffic apps...but I'm fine with ensuring every house, no matter what, has access to a very minimum level of access.

On the other hand, I think government should ensure businesses can compete by not allowing monopolies to strangle new startups and new inventions, but otherwise...I'd like the government to have as little to do with the internet as possible. Certainly not censorship or defining hate speech or deciding winners and losers for premium services.

Similarly for health care.....let the government provide a very basic level of care...but with some usage pricing like we do for postal mail. Just getting annual checkups, the occasional labs and generic meds...cost should be close to zero. Need some not that expensive meds on a regular basis to stay alive....government shouldn't absorb the entire cost, but it should give a good discount so that 60% of population wouldn't be spending very much at all.

Now the remaining 40% of the population and the very sick or elderly...or those who want first class care....there should be lots of competition for their business, the government should ensure that no one is screwing everyone else over to raise prices or restrict supply/put others out of business and that the care meets a minimum level of professionalism/safety....but otherwise....the government should be out of it. It shouldn't be giving tax breaks for employer sponsored plans. Government employees shouldn't be treated any better than any other citizen, unless they are truly critical to the ongoing operation of the government. Everyone in the USA should be able to shop for the same plans regardless of which state they are in...perhaps states could add additional riders specific to their states which might increase costs, but competition needs to be vigourous and at a national level and the government shouldn't be that involved.

Competition and fair rules and keeping the size of gov small is the only solution for healthcare that will keep costs down over the long term while ensuring politicians don't become the masters who lives or dies based on which minimum benefits are law or who contributed what to whose re-election campaign.

If all you care about is convenience and price, gmail is the best bet.

However, gmail has a few weak points:
- Governments and corporations assume you are using it, if you become a target, first thing they do is sue or force google to give them a copy of all your email. You may not find out about it until after the fact. Basically, using gmail/google means you are OK with the surveillance state being able to grab all the details about your digital life whenever it wants.
- Hackers assume that getting access to email is the best path in social networking and they have put together an extensive trick list focusing on gmail since everyone uses it. And, if they gain access, are you sure you would know about it or even if google found out about it, that they would tell you? It's in google's interest that everyone forget about the security of their cloud data.
- Gmail gets coordinated with all the other info that google knows about you and google sells info about you to their customers or targets ads for you on behalf of customers. Frankly, even without email, I think google knows enough already.
- Gmail imap is _wierd_ and google will probably shut it down in favor of some google only protocol if they ever can.
- Google is no longer a _good_ company, as it has become bigger, it has started to act more like a Monopoly and that combined with its ownership of android is pushing us more towards a closed internet. I honestly don't want to support Google's growth anymore.

Another option is office 365:
- Microsoft has its issues, but it realizes it really needs to compete in the cloud space.
- Microsoft email integrates well if you have a mobile hardware device like a Surface Pro/Surface Book.
- Exchange sync for contacts/calendar/groupware is hard to compete with.

That said, MS has its own security issues....so the best solution is likely hosting your own email....and for those who don't have the time to be constantly updating, find a good mail software suite that does get updated automatically and which has a good security history. Zimbra might be a good example - there are many others.

Smaller companies designed for a large percentage of their critical employees being offsite can work great. This also has the advantage of being very contractor friendly...however, expectations have to be set and in person meetings should be used when possible to build better teamwork. This system works better for older employees.

On the other hand, I've seen that the bigger the business, the more difficult it is to sustain a telecommuting culture. At the very least, you end up with a system where those who are onsite tend to slowly be promoted and replace those who are offsite. Employees that are junior and needing mentoring also benefit more from being onsite. And, unless management really pushes a telecommuting culture, or has a firm policy that every works x% onsite/y% offsite - being offsite is just too risky for long term career growth of senior staff.

Technically, the FCC opens a case whenever a complaint is filed.

In any case, I have no sympathy. Angry millenial democrat bots have been filing complaints or resorting to violence for anything that offends their tender beliefs (see Berkeley).

Much of the fake news/hate speech that fans these ignorant fanatics comes from Colbert and gang.....the ones who masqueraded biased propaganda in the form of comedy for long enough to mislead a generation.

The good news is that most of their viewers will eventually get educated and change their views...likely at or before their 40's.

Unsure of the pricing Surface Laptop versus Pro 4 on higher end models, at launch the SP4 i7/16GB/512GB was around $2,700 and the similarly configured Surface Laptop seems to be around $2,100.... Unless one is getting the performance base, there isn't much advantage to the dedicated GPU in upgrading to a SB - the intel IRIS pro gpu in the SP4 is relatively fast....not sure about the new builtin GPU of the surface laptop (i7 variant).

Yes, I suspect those who have had experiences with the SP4 didn't try out the higher end models. The i7/16GB RAM/512GB SSD is certainly the sweet spot, and the i7 has a much much faster built in gpu. I use mine as my primary PC, having thrown away the desktop model that I had used for 20+ years. Instead of needing a separate tablet for entertainment, phone for mobile communication, desktop computer for main work, and laptop for travel/meeting customers -- I now can get by with a single device. The skype + office 365 e5 subscription generally replaces my cell phone. I've purchased a third party 5 yr warranty on the pro 4.

There isn't much need to upgrade, but when I do - what I'll look for is:
- LTE builtin
- 2TB SSD
- Faster builtin GPU, don't see the need to ever buy another nvidia card....no I can't play the latest games, but the pro 4 gpu plays the games I care about fine at excellent resolution and frame rates and it's very fast for the business apps and videos I normally encounter at 1080P, which is more than enough for the 13" screen.
- Longer battery life, the current one lasts 3-5 hours which is acceptable....but ideally I want to see 8-12hrs.

Someone is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

- The Surface Line is more about making windows trendy and sexy in an era of iPads and multifunction laptops.....The surface line has pushed other manufacturers that sell windows machines to innovate and deploy more modern products (even Asus has been experimenting with combining tablet display technology and form factor with windows, Dell has been investing more in their small tablet line).

- Since the whole point of the surface line is to cater to Microsoft's affluent customers and push the state of windows mobile computers, it is more important that Microsoft deliver new products well and perfectly than to delivery frequently. The last several refreshes of the line have gone well....the Surface Studio, Pro 4, and book have all done their job....if there is any complaints, it is that Microsoft pushed releasing the hardware before all the bugs were worked out or before newer hardware could be slimmed down enough in size. And, the book has already gotten a modest boost with the recent performance base release.

So what if sales for the current quarter are trending down as a result of Microsoft taking longer to release a Surface pro 5 or book 2? Isn't waiting until they can deliver properly what we want them to do?

Unless there is a drastic change, I think the era of 7-9% stock market average returns is over. The GDP of the USA has been declining on average over the last 40-50 years....2% growth used to be horrible, now it is just average.

Even John Bogle who founded Vanguard is suggesting only 6% returns before inflation over the next 10 years....so perhaps 3-4% return after inflation - and that is for an ideal diversified portfolio.

I've started to include more international stocks and real estate in my portfolio...but who knows how that will end up long term.

There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the constitution. There is just a provision blocking the creation of a government run church, e.g. the founders didn't want a Church of the USA and in the same amendment, another provision preventing the government from interfering with citizens practicing religion.....afterall, many of the original colonists left Europe/England because of state run churches like the Church of England forced people to become members or prohibited the practice of other religions. These colonists were still very supportive of government and the church working in tandem, and religious values being imposed via law, and expected prayer to happen at school. They just wanted to be able to choose the religion and not have forced membership or have government interfere with their religion.

The fact that most American Citizens believe the constitution meant something completely different is more a result of who controls the instruction at public schools than the actual truth.

Maybe it's just me, but I've come to group most workers into three categories:
- Manipulators - Those good at generating images, focusing attention, turning strangers into friends, and figuring out exactly what others want. These are the perfect sales, marketing, and investor relations workers. Given that sales, marketing, and investor relations are so critical to future business projects and the ability of companies to survive....they're who you generally find as CEO's.
- Planners - Those who can concentrate and focus on the bigger long term picture, discerning truth from advertising, and who can imagine new solutions for existing problems, and deal with very sophisticated technical projects. These make good engineers and who you may find creating new business startups. Much of the slashdot audience would probably categorize themselves into this group. However, at a certain point, most businesses find that they can't grow enough revenue, attract enough new investors, or keep employees happy with these people in charge. So, they end up hiring the manipulators into the top jobs.
- Followers - For whatever reason, there are a lot of people who don't really care so much about their job or what it accomplishes, as long as they can feel good about themselves and have good friends and a life outside of work. These people would refuse any major leadership role if offered. Work is just a way for them to accomplish other things. You'll find a lot of high end service people in this category - doctors, etc.

As I've watched American prosperity and society change over the last 30-40 years, I've come to believe the following are the cause of the economic stagnation/depression that just gets worse each decade:

- Americans went gung ho into promoting cultural and ethnic diversity wiping away the uniformity of the 50's/60's replacing it with gigantic mess where no one talks to each other any more because they have nothing in common. Many recent research studies suggest that culturally/ethnically diverse societies find it much more difficult to unify or agree on common values or solutions to national problems. Is diversity good? Yes.... Was it in the long run good for America, maybe not.

- Education became politicized and focused on test scores and indoctrinating rather than teaching thinking and self sufficiency, partly this is a result of the widespread adoption of public schools and the removal of educational choice for families...local communities used to determine educational standards and parents used to have the primary responsibility for teaching their kids, not lowest common denominator schools that politicians manipulate the educational standards to ensure future generations will be one gigantic monolothic low paid workforce that can't provide for itself and yet will continue to vote for the polticians ruining the education of their kids.

- Lawyers -- there is a reason everyone hates them, but 40-50 years ago there were much fewer of them....legal crap everywhere began to spread in the 80's and now nearly anyone in power has a law degree, a degree which trains them to think not as engineers/doers but in terms of win/lose where one's only responsibility is to take care of oneself and his/her client.

- population growth -- yes, there are many states in the country that are underpopulated...but the areas where everyone wants to live are vastly overcrowded and the resources/environment are suffering greatly....it's not healthy for the mind or body...constant stress and overworking. Back when things were much more rural and there was a smaller population, people naturally cooperated with each other more.

- Public Debt -- whatever you think about the threat of future fiscal collapse, every $ removed from the economy for debt or interest payments is one less $ that goes into the broader economy to stimulate business or invest in infrastructure. We're on collapsing spiral here on way or another.

So, short of everyone suddenly deciding to handle all these big issues much differently than we have the last 40 years, I don't have much hope of any significant improvement. Technology and productivity increases help...but we've been relying on them for too long and if the pace of technological improvement slows down - our economy will get much worse.

Yes, Republicans will allow individuals to sign contracts that allow ISP's to rape their privacy - believing that people should pretty much be able to do what they want as long as they are willing to pay the consequences.

Democrats on the hand, want everyone except for the rich to be able to avoid all negative consequences -- afterall they can always find someone other than themselves to blame, and democrats are sure happy to rape anyone except the poor or illegals for anything that makes them feel good. They even get a thrill out of making nuns pay for medical insurance that covers abortions.

They both suck, but I know which one is worse.

I homeschool my kids. I also vaccinate them.

I couldn't care less what requirements public education has, here or elsewhere. Just don't make me pay twice to educate my kids and stop letting local politicians be selfish bastards about public resources. The local park won't let a group of homeschooling parents setup a PE program w/o paying a $500/year annual fee for park permit....yet the public school kids get to throw everyone off part of the park during school hours.

Maybe I'm just not keeping up, but Western Digital seems to have been on a downward path for quite a long time....I'm not sure why they are still in business.

Back in the early 90's, WD drives were OK, but seagate had a better reputation for anything important. Since then, they seem to have just languished - acquiring other companies products. Their enterprise/datacenter drives aren't that bad, but seagate still seems to rule the roost. On the consumer end, quality control has been quite hit or miss and despite their making ever larger drives at cheaper prices, I would never trust their drives with anything important.

As for SSD's, their competition has really been for the last several years between intel vs samsung versus 3rd parties (kingston/seagate/etc). Does WD sell a lot of SSD's comparatively?

The Kindle DX was awesome....Whoever discontinued it in order to promote Amazon's tablets instead made a huge mistake - A high end modern Kindle DX could easily justify a very high price. My DX lasted 4+ years in which time I read a few thousand books...but eventually the keys stopped working (I even used crazy glue for a bit to keep it working).