Huh? I've lived rurally most of my life. None of the people I live near, or myself, are under any illusion of police being here within the half hour, and I can't imagine how we ever would be. Fortunately our rural fire brigade (bless those good men and women) have first aid & CPR training which makes a difference, but actual policing is done by things that go 'woof' and things that go 'bang'.

"at any employer."

That is why you're not having a problem. If you have employer-provided healthcare, you don't have to worry about preexisting conditions. And now, under Albatrosscare, you don't have to worry about them on the private insurance market either.

Somebody will manage to explain to me why this is bad someday, I suppose, but I sure haven't figured it out yet.

Please tell me you don't think that's a good idea...

By inserting the step of "declaring bankruptcy", it magically changes from "fraud" to "a viable business model".

No, but it is the function of health insurance companies to spread cost (risk) across a large pool. That's sort of what the word "insurance" means...

...or we could spread the (assumedly small) risk that any particular person would contract Nuclear Cancer or whatever, and everybody pays a small fraction of the price proportional to their share of the risk pool.

Gosh, what would that be called?

Oh, you thought any of that was going to stop? You're adorable.

No, the only things that are going to stop are the ones Republicans don't like.

Go home. You're drunk.

No.

Not application backwards compatibility. Apple does not control that.

I'm talking about upgrading handsets to new OSes. Who does better than Apple?

"A lot of small publishing/design houses got burned in the transition from OS9 to OSX."

Kay. From my perspective as a user, it was pretty awesome.

Why is this so important to you? Seriously. Why do you care?

Good point. And, for my money, I prefer Apple's approach to Android's. We may get to the point where screens are high enough resolution I don't care about pixel accuracy, but we're not there quite yet.

Isn't it cool that there are several competing options in the market? I think that's a win, don't you?

Which is the phone manufacturer that has a better record of backwards OS compatibility than Apple?

I'm curious.

"it means China and other countries not covered improve their own standard of living (by emitting GHGs like there's no tomorrow) at our expense"

What do you propose to do about that?