So, your argument is that because a bad thing is probably going to happen eventually, we may as well just do it now?

I wonder if he's in any condition to ask if he wants to be transported to the US. If I volunteered to go try to cure people with Ebola, I think the last thing I'd want to do is bring a body-weight ebola culture back to a major US city.

And yes it is an excellent idea, because it gives the CDC a living "test tube" of the actual active Ebola virus, not a sample of infected blood collected, and shipped on ice.

Right, because it's absolutely impossible to ship a plane full of CDC scientists and equipment. Far, far, better to ship a live human body full of ebola over and to a densely populated area. What could possibly go wrong?

How do you plan to measure this, exactly? I get your point that the end goal is competent adults, not test performance per se, but I've firsthand seen how my own kids can fail to get a concept well enough, and that leads to not getting the next concept, and so on. If you're not good at addition, you won't be good at multiplication, and so on through high school and you're just HOSED when you need to be good at trigonometry.

Come on, people. Science works. Things that work are...testable. If you're advocating some educational strategy, but reject the notion that it's testable, you're rejecting basic science. If that describes you, kindly keep your hands off education policy.

I don't think it's corruption, necessarily. Some people are just rabidly pro-Apple. Some people don't (yet) get that technology isn't an education silver bullet. When you get people who think technology is a silver bullet AND love Apple products, you get things like this.

I don't mind dealing with computers. I don't mind dealing with people. I hate dealing with computers that pretend to be people. "Wait a minute while I look that up for you." (pretend typing noise) NOOOOOO thanks. If people want a more human experience, they're saying they want actual humans, not computers that pretend to be humans.

The point of having it is very simply that people screw up eventually. Drive long enough, and you'll make a serious mistake. Most of the time, you'll come through it with no harm. Occasionally, you'll wreck your car. Occasionally, you'll kill someone. The point is also saving time. I don't have enough of it. If I could claim back the hour of my day I spend driving, that'd be great. The point is removing an unpleasant task. I have family 6 hours away I'd like to see more, but 6 hours in a car is unpleasant. If I could get in the car about midnight and wake up in their driveway at 6am, that'd be fantastic. Don't tell me to take the bus/plane/train, either. That's either more unpleasant or lots more expensive.

Keep in mind, this whole idea is predicated on developing cars that drive better than you do. If that doesn't happen, none of the rest does. It seems like the people who get all bent out of shape over the idea think we're going to put automated cars on the road that are WORSE at driving than people are. Why would we ever do that?

I have family in Canada who aren't happy with the system there and had to come here (US) for treatment due to stupid long waits. I suspect health care is one of those things that works "fine" for the majority of people because the majority of people are "fine" and don't need it. A good friend of mine is permanently disabled and on Medicare, which works "fine" for her, too, aside from a month or so wait to get on it. After that, it appears that when she needs to go to a doctor, she does. When she needs meds, she gets them. When she needs to see specialists, she sees them.

If the US can't come up with an efficient-enough bureaucracy to make it work there, then it's really time to change how you guys do things.

Well, yeah, that's probably true, but even if we do, single payer still means no options. You're happy with your system now, but when it gets changed down the road and you're no longer happy with it, what are you going to do? I can switch plans at work once a year. If I want private insurance, I can pick up the phone and buy it. If I want to see any doctor, I can walk in and pay them. With single payer, what are you going to do? Change countries?

True, it doesn't, but it does delete the key which is used to encrypt everything. With no key, it's gibberish, indistinguishable from random data. Or so claims Apple, anyway. If you have better data, I'd be most interested to see it (and freely admit it's possible ANY vendor is lying about their security precautions).

Personally, I find it quite possible that Joe RandomUser would "delete" pictures, etc, and not know how to do a proper wipe. Heck, I had to look it up, but it took knowing that in general "delete" means "remove the pointer to". Casual users mostly don't know that.

Encryption that works now can be broken a year from now

Not remotely. If you find 256 bit AES broken in a year, let us know.

Exactly. There's one example where you say it works fine, and one where it's apparently pretty bad. Do you see why I don't want to take the crapshoot? It's hard to unwind. If people want to opt in, I don't have a problem with that, but don't compel everyone into the same boat and hope it actually floats. The VA is a concrete example that it might actually be worse.

Ice cream doesn't cause health issues. I eat ice cream. I also exercise 3-6 times a week. That won't stop politicians and their "sin taxes". Maybe your government is wonderful and all that tax money would go to make sick people well, but we mostly turn taxes into bureaucracy. I don't want more.

How's that working out at the VA these days?

That perfectly highlights the problem with having only one option. When that option is bad, you can't go somewhere else.

There's also absolutely nothing anywhere that keeps lawmakers from deciding that people who eat too much ice cream should be taxed on it, you know, to offset the increased healthcare costs they impose on "the system".

This'd be one of those false dichotomies they talk about. You can actually care about both of these. I don't want anybody reading my email or listening to my calls. I also want my property wired to the gills with sensors only I can read. If I choose to share that data with a company, I want a big red button marked "Forget everything you know about me.", and I want them audited to prove that they actually do it.

I'm not so naive as to think I'm going to get those things any time soon, but if enough people want them, ask for them, and don't buy stuff from companies that do otherwise, we'll get them eventually.

Eventually the sun will engulf the earth. Long before that I'll die. Before that, I'll change banks, credit cards, whatever. Encryption only has to work long enough, not forever.

Is that because of the distoration insurance causes, though? We don't have to buy cars through intermediaries and they aren't ridiculously jacked up. We don't buy groceries through intermediaries and they aren't ridiculously jacked up. I think part of the reason medical costs have gone nuts, and to a degree education costs, too, is because people are separated from actually paying them. Most people don't pay for their medical costs, they pay for their medical insurance, or rather just a part of it. People don't care what things cost, they care if it's covered by insurance or not. Your premise seems to be that without insurance you'd be paying 3x as much. Maybe competition would drive the price down to what the insurance companies pay.