You made an excellent point. It made me realize that economically tying the motherboard and the CPU will necessitate less choice.

Right now if there are X motherboards and Y CPUs compatible with those motherboards, a seller needs to stock X + Y items to provide buyers all possible combinations. In the new system if the same degree of flexibility is to be offered a seller would have to stock X * Y items.

There is no way that will happen. We will get less choice if this change becomes a reality unless as others point out someone offers CPU's soldered to something that's socketable that would then be put into a motherboard with a socket (assuming that this is possible and there aren't signal integrity reasons that are forcing Intel to solder the chip to the motherboard).

I'd be interested to know where the proof is that the increase in healthcare costs since AHCAA was passed are due to the act and not just the normal ridiculous growth in healthcare costs.

That said, clearly the provision that denies insurers the ability to deny coverage based on previously existing conditions is going to increase costs because those are individuals are known to have conditions that are going to cost the insurance company something. I guess the provision allowing children to stay on their parents plans might raise costs if the premium for dependents is less and/or the dependent is more likely to need healthcare.

On the savings side, however, there is a percentage of the population that could be paying at least some portion of their healthcare costs instead of waiting until things get so dire that they can't pay for hospitalization and declaring bankruptcy after the fact. Those costs get passed on to the majority of the population that does have insurance by the healthcare providers. There is some evidence from studies involving state run medicaid that having health insurance does in fact reduce the incidence of larger issues, so if that carries forward with AHCAA there will be some savings there too.

Clearly if things pan out in the increased cost or reduced cost category remains to be seen. There are good arguments for both cases. This act will help get people insured. That's a good thing. Insurance is just one part of the overall cost equation. More will probably also need to be done about constraining the cost of the healthcare itself of which the uninsured are just one small part.

To add more detail to the AC's response.

AES is based on a subsitution-permutation network.
DKIM is based on the RSA signature algorithm which relies on the difficulty of factoring large integers.
Elliptic curve public key cryptography is based on the difficulty of solving a discrete logarithm problem.

The difference in the size of keys between one type of algorithm or another is an expression of the difficulty in solving the underlying problem. Factoring a large integer of X bits (RSA) is relatively easy compared to working through the substitutions and permuations of X bits of AES.

The link below provides a guideline for comparing the key sizes of AES, EC, RSA/DH.
http://www.nsa.gov/business/programs/elliptic_curve.shtml

I like how you left off the "Not to be confused with Windows RT." from immediately before the text you quoted from the article.

Here's another wiki for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_RT

"Windows RT (formerly known as Windows on ARM) will be a version of the Windows 8 operating system for ARM devices such as tablets. It will officially only run software available through the Windows Store or included in Windows RT. Among the applications included with Windows RT"

As others have pointed out all over, what you're suggesting isn't feasible. What is feasible is that the sensor acts like a secure key store. When a finger is swiped that matches an enrolled finger, the sensor releases a key associated with that enrollment.

What else could we be spending our money on? Projects like the James Webb Space Telescope or sending to humans to Mars would have certain benefits to humanity while spending money on SETI is likely to be a waste of money. If there were plenty of money to go around then I would have no problem spending the relatively meager 2 million USD on it. However, with things like they are, let's shelve SETI and direct our resources elsewhere.

Is there life on other planets in the galaxy? Probably.
Is there intelligent life on other planets in the galaxy? Maybe. There will be a lot more planets with only bacteria than there are planets with sentient beings.
Will we be able to detect planets with intelligent life? Even less likely.
If we find intelligent life then what? Presumably we're going to try to engage in a dialog. Is that really a good idea at this point in human development?

Your statement assumes infinite resources not finite resources. Steps 2 and 3 require energy which is not available in infinite quantities.

A limited amount of work can be done at any time. Work is limited by the number of people and machines available to do the work, the rate at which those entities can utilize energy, and the rate at which energy can be collected or extracted.

This is my problem with item 3. If it costs more to improve something than people are willing to pay, then you can not increase wealth by doing it. So there are practical limits on improvement.

Furthermore your item 4 is false. Wealth implies value, but something can be improved or better without being more valued. For example, a weapon capable of killing 10 billion people that costs twice as much to make as a weapon that kills 9 billion people. Producing such a weapon is not going to make you more wealthy because it is unnecessary even though it is improved. You should talk about value not improvement.

Buying stock rarely benefits the company the stock represents directly because the stocks are usually purchased from third parties. Strong demand in a stock will increase its market capitalization which will lead to the company having more power to borrow or to generate income through the sale of newly issued stock (at the detriment of current stock holders), but that ability to increase cash on hand is only useful if used. Many companies are already sitting on record hordes of cash but can't find useful ways to spend it.

The people who benefit most from the purchase and sale of stock are disproportionately people who already have so much money that they don't have to worry about how much money their teenage daughter is spending on Lady Ga Ga albums.

The person that wrote that post can't get basic facts about stars right. I wouldn't trust them to interpret anything he or she heard correctly.

From the original article "So the really lucky folks (for whom Betelgeuse is only visible at night) will get 24 hour days, everybody else will get at least some time with two suns in the sky." Here's the deal. A given star isn't visible at night to one person and visible during the day to another. Now if a star is visible to people at the same longitude can depend on their latitudes. If the Earth is between Betelgeuse and the Sun, then it's visible at night to everyone who can see it from their latitude. In that case everyone is going to have longer days. It might turn out to not be full daylight for 24 hours depending on the angles. We could get brighter days and shorter nights.

My guess is either the person is making it up, or their lack of basic astronomical knowledge led to them misunderstanding something that was being said about when Betelgeuse dies.

I have an old HP inkjet printer/scanner/copier that will not scan without ink. That was the last HP printer I will ever buy.