The Heritage Foundation proposal did include an individual mandate, but that's like saying your bedroom ceiling is based on the Sistine Chapel because they both are covered in paint. The Heritage proposal was for minimal, catastrophic insurance, what used to be called "major medical." That's the sort of insurance people used to be able to buy for maybe $50/month. But the ACA larded everything up with countless mandates (birth control, etc.), so that even minimal insurance is now expensive. And then, in one of many ironies, deductibles are now so high that many people avoid going to the doctor. Remember when the ACA was needed to ban "junk insurance policies," which were defined as policies with high deductibles? Down the memory hole!

I said years ago, before this monstrosity came online, that it would not work as claimed, and in fact might never work. I believe that prediction still holds. They've stopped talking about the problems with the backend, but AFAIK they have not yet fixed them, and are still doing things manually or with estimates. It will also be interesting this tax season, when millions of people find that their tax bill is higher than they thought it would be, thanks to the ACA.

Oh, how I hate this simplistic meme about how "blue" cities support the "red" suburbs and rural areas. One thing that it ignores is that a great deal of the wealth generated in cities is created by people who live (and vote) in suburbs and rural areas. it's called "commuting."

Or try this thought experiment: cities stop "distributing their wealth" to the suburbs and rural areas, and the suburbs and rural areas stop distributing their wealth to the cities... as well as "their" food, water, oil, gas, and electricity. Now who needs who more?

Thank you for having dealt with all the other more pressing problems, domestic and foreign, so that now you have extra time for these folks! I'm sure they'll have lots of informed, trenchant, challenging questions for you, the answers to which will be informative and enlightening. It'll be the adversarial press speaking truth to power!

I agree that "too thin" is an issue. I'd be happy if Apple stopped making iPhones thinner and instead used the space for more battery.

I'm not sure you're right about technological advances, though. While I'm not obsessed with the latest and greatest, I think it's impressive and meaningful that phones are getting to have near desktop-level processors, excellent cameras, etc. But I find it hard to image that Google will be able to create modules 1) with more impressive specs than an iPhone 6, and 2) be able to sell them at a competitive price.

This has all the earmarks of another sounds-cool-at-first Google project that won't amount to much in the end.

Modularity sounds like a good idea, but in practice, in cellphones, I don't think it'll work. In objects of that size every millimeter counts, and modularity takes up quite a bit of space at that scale, because each part needs to be enclosed, securely attach to the others, etc. The trade-offs will mean you'll be able to pick one or two things (e.g. speed, battery life, extra features, etc.) but not all at the same time. And the prices won't be good, because manufacturer(s) will not have economies of scale: it'll be hard to compete with Apple and Samsung making millions and tens of millions of identical units.

We already know something about long-term exposure, based on observing career truck drivers: diesel fumes don't cause weight loss.

"Nobody"? Even in the enterprise?

The rest of your comment misses my point: Perhaps in theory, OS X is "just an vulnerable," and maybe the OS X market share means malware authors don't bother. But whatever the causes, in the real world today, the results are undeniable: less malware on Macs.

Except, as the AC said, it doesn't presently work under OS X. I've been reading for 20+ years how "Macs are just as vulnerable as Windows," and yet, somehow, that malware parity never seems to happen. Sure, every now and then there's a headline about Mac malware, but when you read the article it's either a theoretical vulnerability or, at worst, something that happened to a handful of people. You can claim it's because malware authors don't want to bother with Macs or whatever, but the end result is the same: Windows users are always dealing with more malware than Mac users, and, I'll bet, always will. So the modded-down-to-oblivion poster above is not wrong: getting a Mac would have prevented this attack, and many others.

Tim Ferriss talks about this in The 4-Hour Body. It's one reason competitive swimmers are in such good shape: it's not just the exercise itself, it's being in water that's much colder than body temperature. One of Ferriss's weight-loss tips involves using ice-packs.

Heck, never mind the name, this is the beginning of the plot of more zombie movies than I can count.

Thanks for the info. However, Joomla is up to version 3.x now, and I'm pretty sure the restrictions you saw in 1.5 no longer apply. E.g., core Joomla allows grouping users and defining their permissions.

Seriously, though: aren't WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal the three free open source CMSs? I think Joomla is far more powerful than WordPress in many ways, avoids at least some of the failings of WordPress listed by the OP, and is easier to use than Drupal. I'd like to hear what you and others have to say about the three of them.

No love for Joomla?