Let me plug that into my computer here. *crunch crunch* Ah here's the answer: 42.

What, and add 5+ more boot options? :) Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, Mandriva, Gentoo... I could go on...

You just totally lost me. I don't watch Fox News, but comparing them to child molesters is a very far stretch. Yes, I said very. It's because you went from intelligent conversation to utter ignorance and, yes, lies in one post. Again, I have no use for Fox News, but I respect their right to cover news events. The Obama administration's attempt to exclude Fox News, arguably the most viewed news source on cable TV, was politically incorrect any way you look at it. If you can't take criticism, you don't belong in politics, and you damn sure don't belong running an entire nation. Take Iran's president for example. Or China's administration. Or any country's leadership which protects political gain at the expense of the citizens' rights.

Man, that would have really sucked since doctors usually only take a handful of medicare patients since it only pays 80%. Actually, I'm curious if the "public option" is going to be like this. I'm on medicare, and if I can instead hop on with a public option where I'm able to actually choose a doctor, that's much better.

The free market mindset is slightly unfair to people struggling to live. Most people would be willing to spend their life savings just to get healthy again. That shouldn't be the case. An illness should not destroy you, and we as a civilized society should recognize that.

Free market works well in supply and demand scenarios, but with health care one person's greed is another person's misery, or worse, death.

That is after all Milton Friedman's own argument in favor of capitalism, that people are generally greedy, and nothing can stop that. People do what they'll do to not just survive, but to thrive. Yes, some people go way overboard, even crossing the line of legality, but if we are to remain free, we have to accept this aspect of human nature -- this greed. And if we're going to insure that people have a fair chance at their biggest life event -- their illness -- we can't risk leaving them to fend for themselves in a capitalistic system. This is why people say that fair health care should be as much a right as free speech.

You just compared us humans with dogs.

When the people fear their government, it is said to be tyranny. When government fears the people, it is said to be liberty.

That said, I'm in favor of a single payer system, one which even covers dental. But this notion that I'm a servant to my government is going overboard. I won't give up my freedom that was won fair and square in such a manner. I'm not my government's pet. I'm my country's law abiding citizen, and liberty is afoot.

For as long as I've read /. there has been news about health, whether that be some health related tech, a new life saving procedure, or some new finding in biology.

Slashdot is not just a news site. That's its primary motivation. Its secondary existence is the discussion, and for some that's their primary reason for returning to /.. There's a sense of quality to the discussion on this forum thanks to the system in place.

Long distance phone rates would sky rocket.

You can't play flash games in Linux? Interesting. *ducks*

Well, I'm not an expert. It may work that way here. What you describe resembles what legislation I've read.

When you're reading the bill you're basically required to cross reference other amendments in law. This is the whole reason why lawmakers generally refuse to read bills. With some sort of revision control, one could just roll back the history to see what changed, and even more important, see what hasn't changed that relates to the proposed legislation.

Personally I think any current revision system would have to be modified in a large part to accommodate the legislature system, but it's quite doable, and would fix a large problem that has gone on for too long -- that lawmakers don't read the bills.

As if our federal government was in a reasonable position to fund a bullet train project for California, or any other state for that matter.

This all reminds me of Obama's "Ask me questions" website. At the top of all questions was "Lightrails and Bullet Trains" -- as if that was the most popular topic, above marijuana legalization, and even above single payer health care. I wrote Obama an email suggesting that he concern himself over those other topics, rather than looking at America as if it were his toy train set. The chance of him reading that, however, is quite low.

Google will just claim that it's still in beta.

Well, I think the argument is not that the laws are similar particularly, but rather a "barrier between the accessed article and the hyperlinked site... must be bridged, not by the publisher, but by the reader." If the website only hosts a hyperlink pointing to copyrighted material, than it should by no means constitute copyright infringement. Or so this decision implies by stating that "Mr. Newton's use of a hyperlink to the openpolitics and usgovernetics sites where the impugned articles are found did not amount to publication by him of the hyperlinked articles." It only implies that, however, if "publication" of an article and "make available" copyrighted material can be deemed similar. I think we can both agree that the mechanism of a URL remains similar in both scenarios.

I agree, keeping old organisms alive will just dumb us down. On the other hand, if we kill everything off, we'll be all the smarter! Genius.