And how, exactly, does having the phone be 50% cheaper affect the cost of the plan?

Dan Aris

Most of the things you mention are Office incorporating a new technology into it, not being entirely rewritten to be based on the new technology. It's way, way easier (IMNSHO) to bolt something like the ribbon onto Office than it is to port Office to a completely different UI paradigm.

All that said, you're totally right about the rest: Microsoft should have ported Office to Metro, however much effort it took to do so. It's not, after all, as though they don't have resources to throw at such a project.

Dan Aris

To be fair (which isn't something I often am to Microsoft), Office has got to be one of the most godawful pieces of spaghetti-code nightmare that anyone has ever tried to port to anything.

I don't think the phrasing should be "not even" Office has been ported.

Dan Aris

I'm not sure why it would help to have my current cellphone be 50% cheaper.

I'd be quite happy if my next cellphone were 50% cheaper than my current one, but making my current one 50% cheaper would seem to just help everyone else who wants one...

Dan Aris

Why would I need headphones? I've got my own office now! ^_^

That said, I do listen to music more or less constantly, and most of the time I can't function nearly as well without it. There are certain times, though, when I'm trying to get my brain through some particularly convoluted chain of logic that I'll need to code, that the music, for whatever reason, suddenly becomes a distraction.

Dan Aris

"Put the gun down and we'll negotiate" is.

(And that's the great thing about arguments on the Internet: if you do come up with that snappy comeback hours later, you can actually reply with it ;-) )

Dan Aris

I know it's in vogue to blame everything on the individual, especially on the right, but you're getting bitten by reality's liberal bias here. There's lots and lots of stuff that individuals can't actually do to prevent corporations from polluting their environment in ways that have profound effects on their health.

Furthermore, the sooner we recognize that it is pretty much impossible that the marked upswing in obesity not only in people in the entire developed world (other countries do have some of the same problem, just to much lesser degrees), but also in laboratory animals in the US, could be caused entirely by a mysterious mass drop in personal responsibility over the past 40 years, the sooner we can actually start addressing the causes of the problem. You know, instead of just blaming the victim and hoping it will all go away.

Dan Aris

Right, and that I agreed with: it's better for those who can afford to buy extremely expensive, extremely high-quality health care.

For the rest of us, it's crap.

I don't think saying that "This system that we have is better for some people than the other systems, which show clearly better results on average for dramatically lower costs" is a particularly useful thing to do. It's like saying, "People like having more money," or, "Political systems that actively discourage corruption have less corruption."

Sure, it's true, but it's also painfully obvious, and not very helpful.

Dan Aris

And why does the rest of the developed world not have the same problem to the same degree?

It's not "high living." A vastly disproportionate share of the obese are from lower-income Americans, not the wealthy.

We're not victims of our own success: we're victims of, in part, the agribusiness lobby's success. (Though from what I've been seeing lately, recent studies suggest that only part of the obesity epidemic can be traced to changes in diet. Some of it is from environmental causes, too—but they're also, by and large, due to big companies trying to make/save an extra buck at everyone else's expense.)

Dan Aris

Yes, you're absolutely right. And that's what the Republicans were saying.

"Stop acting like fucking idiots and threatening our entire economy and way of life, and we'll be willing to negotiate" is more like what the Democrats were saying.

Again, this manufactured crisis was in no way a standard negotiating tactic or anything a reasonable person would have done, or even expected. Rather than negotiate in good faith, or even try to put together a compromise budget, the Republicans chose to hold first the civil service, then the entire economy hostage in hopes of blackmailing the Democrats into killing or weakening a piece of legislation that was already a huge compromise, which the Supreme Court found to be constitutional, and which the Republicans have been utterly and completely unable to repeal or reduce through any of the normal, proper legislative channels.

If you think Dave was unreasonable for not giving Rob any of his money, then you, like a truly disturbing number of Americans, have some serious problems with understanding the dangerous and unprecedented level of partisanship at work and what it actually means.

Dan Aris

That's a very simplistic—and somewhat wrongheaded—view of the way things actually happened.

Though it's not perfect, I liked this analogy I saw somewhere: Rob comes up to Dave and says, "Give me $100." Dave says no. Rob says, "All right, give me $50." Dave says no again. Rob says, "Come on, why can't you compromise with me?"

Suggesting that the Democrats should have "compromised" on this is little short of ludicrous. Holding first the civil service sector, then the entire economy hostage in an attempt to force through a measure that the Republicans want, but do not actually have the votes to achieve (even after they've tried dozens of times), is not a standard, or even sane, negotiating tactic. It is not "business as usual." The Democrats are not equally to blame for this as the Republicans.

I know we've been fed the idea for some time that the two sides of every issue are always equally valid, but you know what? That's total BS.

But, based on experience, you're probably just going to ignore and vilify me because I don't share your exact worldview.

Dan Aris

So...for the 1-5% who can afford platinum-level insurance plans, the US is the best healthcare system in the world!!!!!

But then there's the rest of us shlubs, who apparently just aren't worthy of being cared for.

(Here's a tip for you: the US, overall, has worse health care than other developed countries. For instance, the average life expectancy is about 1.3 years lower. And we pay vastly more. It is simply not possible for a system to both be worse for society as a whole, and better for all the individuals within that society.)

Dan Aris

No, that's really not true.

First of all, according to nonpartisan estimates, the ACA will reduce the deficit. But let's ignore that for the moment and assume that you're correct that it will raise the cost of government by a significant amount.

If that happens, how could we possibly solve such a problem? Could it be that we could...pass a law raising taxes? From their current historically low levels, particularly as a fraction of GDP? And particularly on the super-wealthy?

If I'm reading you right, what you're actually saying is that the ACA will cost money to implement, and cost money into the future as well. But you know what? Doing stuff for people costs money. Helping poor people costs money. Fixing the worst economic downturn and the worst economic inequalities in decades costs money. And I don't mean "costs money that we have to give to the super-wealthy, so they'll be even more super-wealthy." Trickle-down economics is a pretty solidly discredited theory by this point. Empirical evidence just doesn't bear it out.

And if you're one of the "all taxation is theft types," well, then, just screw you. You want to go live in a tax-free wilderness off the fruit of your own labour and no one else's, I suggest you up stakes and find some place in northern Canada without another soul for 50 miles in any direction, because anywhere in this country, you're already benefiting from the results of taxation. It was well over 100 years ago that Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr famously said, "I like taxes. With them, I buy civilization." And that's pretty much the way it works: If you want civilization, if you want to live as part of a society, particularly a modern society, you have no choice but to pay taxes to a central governing body of one sort or another. Because anything else is at least as much a theft from everyone else around you.

Dan Aris

While that sounds awesome, I think one must remember that, while I'm sure Apple could (and would) do that well, you would also be depending on all the authors of the apps to program all the separate interfaces, and do so well, and not just say, "Ah, who cares about the car interface? I'll never want to use an app in the car, so why would anyone else!"

Dan Aris

No...but I have heard the expression "race to the bottom", which I suspect is what you're going for. :-)

Dan Aris