It doesn't matter. Nobody has any intention of doing that. When a company pollutes an area, often its' biggest supporters are the people living in that area. They're just happy to have jobs. And if this ever get to disastrous levels, what are the odds that reparations will be paid to those who lost everything? What are the odds that this will be paid for by taxes/fines on the people who benefited most from causing the problem?

Or would it make such development worthwhile? Alternate energies and new technologies have an uphill climb because they are having to fight against a well-established system with infrastructure and political clout on their side. If we had a reasonable system in place to require people to reduce emissions, then people would adopt newer technologies, the businesses that supply those technologies would grow, and they would have more money to research cheaper, more efficient production.

That is a problem. It's hard for us to tell some third world country "now that we got ours, the rules are changing"

Funny, but a better analogy would be:

Scientists: A global disaster may be looming. We can stop it, but we'll need to reduce our CO2 emissions. If we start now, it may mean driving smaller cars, planting more trees, and finding small ways to reduce our carbon footprint.

Exxon: bullshit! There's no global warming.

GMC: Introducing the new GMC ShitKicker! It's 2 megatons of bad ass! Just imagine yourself driving this thing down the freeway, confederate flags flapping in the wind...That'll show those hippies.

The people: I like shiny big trucks. Can you add three DVD players and a built-in vibrator?

=====
40 years later
=====
Scientists: We need to reduce our CO2 emissions.

Exxon: It'll need sacrifices. Higher fuel prices. Higher cost of manufactured goods, and fewer cheap imports. You'll need to travel less, buy a smaller car. A lot of you'll be laid off because industry thrives on cheap energy. You'll have to stop eating so much meat. But it's the only way to prevent disaster...Er... Lets just do nothing and chance it.

The People: We're going to go with the second guy.

FTFY.

Why wait? even if they don't triple, I'm pretty sure the GOP will spend the next ten years blaming every rate increase, no matter the size or cause, on ObamaCare.

From http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/8168.pdf. (Note that FPL is "federal poverty level").

138% FPL - Medicaid
* No premiums
* Cost sharing limited to nominal amounts for most services

139%250% FPL - Exchange
* Sliding scale tax credits limit premium costs to 38.05% of income.
* Sliding scale costsharing credits

251%400% FPL - Exchange
* Sliding scale tax credits limit premium costs to 8.059.5% of income.
* No cost sharing credits

And most importantly, you also need a way to clean up the system so that any one of us can prove at any time that we can pay our bills. If I get carried into a hospital, right now, it could be a heart attack that will cost someone $50,000, or it could be something incredibly small that will cost a few hundred. Even if my bank statement says I have the money, right now, I can't prove any checks will clear. Maybe I just bought a total stranger a new Tesla roadster and the check hasn't cleared yet. If I don't have $50,000 in on-hand, then what are the odds of a banking institution approving a quickie loan initiated by a stranger, knowing that many of these loans are from people at risk of dying or losing their jobs? How much interest would such an institution have to charge to make that model profitable?

And, if I have insurance, I still don't know if I can pay my bill. I may be unconscious and unable to tell what my policy is. Or maybe I know exactly what my policy is, but they'll weasel their way out of paying, leaving me back at square one.

The medical industry hasn't been "free market" for a long time, and for good reason.

Windows: Made for people who don't know what the hell they're doing, by people who don't know what the hell they're doing.

This is a practice called "bundling". To use a car analogy, let's say you have a monopoly on cars. One day, you realize the people are having car radios installed, and you decide to enter that market. So, you build the cheapest, crappiest car radio you can, and you say "it now comes standard in every car! Also, we're raising our prices.". This is illegal. It is a use of one monopoly to try to harm competition in another market. It's what Microsoft got sued for with Internet Explorer*, and it's exactly what Comcast is doing (except that they are trying to force a preexisting product on their customers). They're not giving anything away for free. They just added the two bills together.

* The IE case being dismissed because MS said that their new web browser was a part of the operating system that couldn't be removed. Going back to the car analogy, they placed a landmine under the radio and said "I'm sorry, we can't remove this, or the whole thing will blow up"

I think AC's point is that you can patent the technology that makes the device work, but you can't patent the user interface. If the "owners" of Star Trek decide to patent the "look and feel" of the LCARS user interface, then that's their right. They just can't patent the Warp drive.

Voyager? The show where Tom Paris is the resident bad boy? The show with a space Indian who is one stereotype short of starting a casino? The show that devoted an entire season to answering trekkie questions? (What happens if the Enterprise goes above warp 9? Well, let's see! People de-evolve into lizards! That's what happens). The show where the captain dresses like someone's grandma, but is lusted after by half the galaxy? The only thing good about Janeway is that she looks like someone who is respected her for her mind.

The show had the most brilliant premise, one that guaranteed conflict between the Maquis and Federation crew. They didn't even have a real doctor. Imagine how gritty that show could have been. They could have made Battlestar Galactica look like, well Voyager, by comparison.

So, yeah, Enterprise is slightly better.

DS9 seemed like Trek's attempt to copy Babylon 5. Many Trek fans hated DS9, because it was so different from the other shows. I consider it my favorite series, but, if you don't like it, you may want to give TNG or TOS a try.

That is without a doubt my favorite episode.

So, it's a wall in the same sense that a firewall is a wall, meaning "not really".

Yes, they made tablet PCs, and Windows tablets sucked. Not trying to troll here, but the problem with Windows phones, tablets, and PDAs has been that the user interface has always been Windows, scaled down to a small fraction of your screen size, with an on-screen keyboard that you have to peck at with a stylus.

Apple's great innovation wasn't in hardware, or the idea "lets put something on that hardware", but in the fact that they came up with a simple user interface that doesn't require a stylus. Not a fanboy, but I did have a winmo 6 phone. I then got a droid 2, which I still have and love. No, it's not an apple product, but you can still see Apple's influence in the user interface.

Angels can't get past a gate and a wall? Are they Mongolian?