Assume that is the steering wheel of society and you will be able to accurately predict EVERY twist and turn in politics or economics.

Thusly: the Government does not think about the people. It only cares about the rich. Because of Social Darwinism, which in their world is the core of EVERYTHING.

I guess you're the only person who read the story of the tortoise and the hare.

I despise university shells. Give me internet access and Linux/FreeBSD on my own machine with the proper apps for a given class and I'm off to the races. Of course sometimes you need apps that are only available on their systems. Argh. That's when I wish there was a GPL version of Citrix or something like that.

Aw rats, you beat me to it.

Yeah, it's not like those secret unlock codes haven't been broken before. (HD DVD/Blu-Ray, anyone?)

Not in this economy it's not. I imagine plenty of PhD's are seriously underemployed right now.

I don't necessarily believe a pool can cause damage to neighbors by leaking... never heard of such.

But that doesn't make pixelpusher's comment a TROLL.

If you believe the comment is over-rated then moderate it that way. "Troll"? I think not.

You'll eat those words upon the next release of the Crytek engine...

We farm the processing of a great deal of data to low-wage countries that don't even like us. To be managed by guys whose entire year's pay is the same as what you're paid for a week. Which means they are very easy to bribe. Oh and they also think we Americans are evil lazy shits who deserve the pain and suffering we get.

What I am saying is that a disastrous data breach involving millions of Americans' financial or medical data will happen more likely overseas than it will happen anywhere in the U.S. And when it hits you, you will have absolutely zero recourse. Of course, someone could show I'm wrong by explaining to us how the FBI can manage to arrest an identity thief in Bangalore...

So not only are we unable to agree on disaster planning, but the entire system is DESIGNED to provide fertile ground for a disaster.

It's a 4 page bill that basically proposes to extend Medicare benefits to everyone from age 0 to age 64 with a simple 'buy-in.' You buy in at cost and you're covered.

That means no Cigna Corporation sitting around denying you a liver transplant - which cost at least one girl her life.

Spread the word. This bill got 50 sponsors in 2 days.
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h4789/show
http://www.open.salon.com/blog/brinna_nanda/2010/03/10/a_public_option_we_can_all_love_hr_4789

I was thinking about exploring those 'darknets' but child porn? I don't even want my browser pre-caching its way into those websites much less directly stumble onto one. At least I was warned. Anyone foolish enough to go there can't expect to feel like a victim if they get caught in a dragnet for showing up on a bad site's web access log.

Even when used as glorified typewriters, laptops can turn students into witless stenographers, typing a lecture verbatim without listening or understanding.

Wait a second... when you're wearing your hand out scrambling to get hastily spoken lecture comments and uber complex differential equations on paper, you're spending exactly how many brain cycles actually listening or understanding?

I did a hell of a lot better getting my master's by having my tablet RECORD what s/he was saying, while watching and comprehending without having to worry about the huge distraction of taking so many notes. Of course I still wrote down stuff, but with the tablet I was also not killing trees while doing so.

Some believe that it's an individual's responsibility to budget and take care of themselves, and not the government. And not from my paycheck. I've managed to find jobs that had insurance for 30 years, and turned down jobs that didn't. My choice. I resent that I might be taxed more to pay for medical procedures for some of my friends that could afford health insurance, but have simply chosen not to so they can have nicer cars or homes. Granted, not everyone is in that position, but I sure know a lot of people that are.

So if you're a child from a poor family who has health insurance and you need a liver transplant and the health insurance company refuses to cover it and you die, is it your fault?

And you wonder why the entire civilized world treats America's private payer health care system like the plague?

I do not like having my computers phone home to anywhere.

It's not so much that my computers deal with mission critical information, it's that I deal with personal information on these machines and I have strict router-based control over what IP's are acceptable to go out to. (Which means employees can't browse the web at random.

I can imagine that medical offices with ten times MORE mission critical issues than I have, are really going to be sweating over this.

Do you realize how fast we threw factories up to fight World War II? It wasn't a year but it sure was incredibly fast. And we certainly didn't pay them peanuts (adjusted for inflation) like someone like you would try to now.