You are logically correct. However, you would never get real people to go along with such a system because people quickly go illogical when their own lives, or the lives of loved ones are on the line. We are much more likely to have a healthcare system paid for by a preset percentage of the economy, the size of which will be quite large.

[citation needed]

I've googled, and I can't find the data to which you are referring. Perhaps you are incorrect?

I learned at 3 years old that "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Apparently the Thai king never did, what a retard.

I take that to mean, "not since 7th grade." Sounds like your upper lip isn't very stiff?

And if they had 80 of these devices, that's only 1 continuous year. If they had ~80k they could do the entire population in a single 8 hour day. Never underestimate the ability of the government to waste money invading our privacy.

Doh! You're right, I was wrong.

I may be an asshole, but you I think you did your math incorrectly. You should have divided 955 people per square mile by 2.59 sq km per sq mile. That gives 368 people per square kilometer. I didn't check your numbers, only your units.

Iceland is tiny, and their economy is small. Whether you live close to 300k people or not doesn't change it.

I feel quite badly for iceland, they are suffering under a significant economic downturn affected by just a few banker types. However, even if/when the entire country goes to Open Source, Microsoft won't even notice the 20k annual licences or so that go with them. Only 300k people live in Iceland. More people live within 10 miles of me, and just about everyone else reading this. They just don't matter in the global scheme of things.

WM has complete configurability for all sounds. Want it to play an mp3 every time it registers a click? Not a problem. I've set my text alert to be only vibrate, even when the phone has sounds enabled, but it's quite loud with some of the built in alarm sounds. Of course, your mileage may vary due to carrier lockdown. *cough verizon

You're just wrong on that, and if you don't know it, it's only because you're too stubborn to think about it.

You can't buy a smartphone (eg, a phone/pda combo) without getting a wired or wireless headset so that you can operate the PDA while taking a call.

You seem to have some intelligent points to make. However, I can't decipher them. I'm not trying to be a pedant, but can you take a second and try to rework your post to make it more clear? In particular, can you elaborate on your point about ebay not encrypting passwords?

I applaud Netflix for their efforts to support more system configurations. However, it enrages me that they still do not support closed caption or subtitles on their system. The data is already collected in an easy to use format, it is literally 150 KB per movie, they merely need to support it! They are cutting off 10% of their audience, for seemingly no other reason than that they don't give a damn about the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community.