Try this refutation.

tl;dr -- they counted the entire budget of any organization which spent even a dime on anything remotely anti-climate crisis. The true amount spent is probably (my guess) well under $100M.

It was intellectually dishonest to even release that study, and intellectually dishonest to tout it.

Exactly my thoughts. What need does this serve? Will it only be targeted at remote equipment (satellites, undersea rovers) which don't really need a phone or SIM card in the first place? Will accessible equipment still come with the write-once-read-mostly kind?

Anytime coercion enters the picture, along come its sibling corruption in every sense of the word.

If your scheme is not popular enough to stand on its own two legs -- if your arguments are not enough to win the day -- propping it up with compulsion is the only recourse left, and it reaps what it's worth.

Yes, let's set a standard, AND NEVER CHANGE IT.

Technology makes one leap into the future, and never changes again, so new standards are just capitalist hokum meant to deceive a gullible public and corrupt crony governments.

Why anyone ever let the government move away from the horsefull carriage standard, I do not know. Oh wait, that was after they'd already let the government approve the carriage, as if horses alone weren't good enough. Oh wait, that was after they'd already approved the walking standard. Oh wait, someone approved shoes and boots. And socks. And shoelaces, don't forget them, or velcro tabs, or slip-ons.

Yes, by all means, let's freeze standards to what YOU want, bub.

"Ministers" pretty much rules out .... only a few countries. Subby might want to include the country next time.

1. That's the first time anyone has ever tried a reverse ad hominem attack on me. Yay!

2. A one-sided conversation is not a conversation. Once commenced, a conversation is not under control of any single party to it. This is not a panel discussion and you are not the moderator of one. if you don't like the path the conversation taken -- if you now wish you had not made that first post -- too bad. Drop out if you want.

You have argued nothing except that you are butt hurt over being called out on your attempts to artificially limit the definition of corruption and cronyism. Your subsequent attempts to pretend you didn't start the topic and switch horses in mid-stream is interesting. I can only guess your first post embarrasses you so much you want to disown it.

If, instead, all you want to do now is argue about what degree of butt hurt you are, find a mirror. But if you want to argue about what crony corruption is, feel free to respond again. I'm sure slashdot's servers can withstand your efforts.

Your only limit on a conversation is refusal to take part. If you bring up corruption in a half-assed manner and I call you out and show how the problem is far wider than you are willing to admit, you don't get to call a foul on me for expanding the conversation. That's 3 year old behavior.

You especially don't get to try to limit the conversation to your original post on the one hand, and then widen it on the other hand by telling me to go read other comments of yours. That's admission that you wish to withdraw your original comment because it wasn't reflective of your rhoughts.

My opinions of you are necessarily as fact-free as your opinions of me. My facts showing the depth and breadth of crony corruption are sitting there waiting for you to answer with something other than "I was only talking about insurance since 2010" or more opinions on me, which apparently is ok for thee but not for me.

You say this thread is about the insurance industry, but only in 2010, apparently. You also say I should read all your other comments to see what kind of a person you are. You also say many other things, but you also say you say only one thing. You say I don't back up my arguments, but I did, and you don't answer those. But you want me to go read other comments you have made which have nothing to do with this.

Why don't you settle down to one single argument? Why do you insist I narrow my discussion down to insurance companies in 2010 while you also tell me to read your other comments, and while you wander all over the place and talk about everything except what I have said concerning your arguments?

You haven't done anything on this thread except (a) refuse to back up your bare assertions, (b) change the subject to your comment history when cornered, and (c) repeat the same bare assertions without backup.

Exactly what I have been saying about Washington and Wall St. Why you insist on singling out the insurance industry and claim they are distinct from Washington is a puzzle.

You're doing nothing of the sort. You're expecting me to blindly agree with you instead of thinking or requiring any proof, a typical statist attitude.

And the first cuss word comes from you! Who's in the frenzy here?

My argument is that differentiating Wall St and Washington is a distinction without a difference. Go back to your history. Look up Mayflower Compact. The indentured servants signed up for a Virginia destination, and threatened to free themselves when they were landed in Massachusetts instead. The Mayflower Compact was the fat cats' response to make sure there was some form of government at all times so they could maintain a facade of legality to keep the servants indentured even though the fat cats had broken their side of the contract.

George Washington and friends bought 200,000 acres in the Ohio Valley, a questionable deal with unsettled colony borders and agreements with the Indians, and then used their votes in the Virginia Legislature to give their deal some also questionable legal cover.

Later, as President and commander-in-chief, he led the army which put down the Whhiskey Rebellion of small farmers who couldn't manage to pay the whiskey tax. Was it a coincidence that Washington was a successful large scale whiskey farmer?

The revolution itself was co-opted by the merchants, sheriffs, judges, and other entrenched interests.

Not a single insurance company in the lot, not even John Hancock yet, but plenty of crony corruption. This corruption has been going on since the beginning of time. Your focus on the insurance companies in 2010, and your insistence that government is pure and should crack down on the insurance companies, is laughable.

Why read other comments when I'm responding to this one? Why do you try to change the subject by misdirection, then revert to the same argument I've already responded to?

You say the insurance industry has owned Washington, the third time you've said there's a distinction between the two. I respond again that there is no difference, that they are the same players. Google for "regulatory capture". Look at the list of high level government officials since the Constitution was adopted. As I said before, pretending they are different players is willful ignorance.

I've provided plenty of ways for you to refute me. You have provided none to buttress your claim, or to refute mine. Someone is stalling here, dodging the questions with repeated assertions without backing.

The same ignorance and naivete, and unsurprisingly, the same as Occupy Wall Street. They correctly identified Wall Street corruption but incorrectly laid all the blame on Wall Street and expected the government to rescue them, as if they were two distinct players.

Anybody who thinks Wall Street and Washington are distinct is willfully blind. You write as if industry players is Wall St alone. Look at all the cabinet secretaries, all the major appointed politicians, the Fed bankers -- Wall Street insiders, the lot of them.

There isn't even a revolving door between the regulated and the regulators. They are one and the same. To arbitrarily lay the blame on the name on one side of the badges while ignoring the other side is pathetic.

You are truly ignorant and naive if you think we had a market based system prior to ObamaCare.

Yes, but it's amazing how many uncached sites show up.

I signed up with Wild Blue about ten years ago; they were bought out a year or two ago (by Exide?) but I haven't noticed any change in service. I am very happy with them as far as doing the best any sat connection can do. So here are the caveats:

1. Ping time is routinely 1.5 seconds, sometimes as fast as 1.3. Don't think I've ever seen faster.

2. Speed of light time is 1/2 second; up, down, up, down; 4 x 36K km = 144 kn = 1/2 second. Whoever said .27 forgot about the round trip. I assume the sats and ground stations buffer like crazy to maximize bandwidth usage.

3. The ONLY time I have problems is when snow piles up on the dish. Gusts of 60 mph (100 kph) or so have never bothered it, but it's on a good solid tower. Snowstorms themselves are no problem, not the heaviest (4 feet in a day several times). There's an electrical heater on the back side of the dish made up of that tape you wrap around pipes; when power goes out and it's running without that, I have to brush the snow off every few hours, but that is the ONLY time I have had problems. They are rock solid otherwise.

4. Power outage is a nuisance. I have a standby generator but it takes 30 seconds to kick in, and I ought to have the modem and dish on a UPS, but I don't so sometimes I have to manually kick power to get reconnected.

5. Speed is 512Kbps up, 3Mbps down. Bandwidth isn't the killer, it's the latency. Ask the com root server who ibm.com is. Ask ibm.com who www.ibm.com is. Ask www.ibm.com for index.html. Find the css, ask ibm.com who css.ibm.com is. And so on, all at 1.5 seconds each. It's pretty frustrating sometimes. Some web sites are very unfriendly for slow latency connections.

I wish it were cheaper ($80 / month), but it's that or unreliable AT&T dialup.

Their elitiest arrogance shows in many ways. Two which particularly annoy me and come to mind at the moment are there position that they get to decide when pages are vanity pages or otherwise trivial and irrelevant, and the really frustrating cookies which expire too soon. Usually my only edits are typoes and afew obvious errors, but it requires a fresh login too often, especially since I browse wikipedia from several different computers, so the likelihood of a cookie expiring increases all that much more.

The editors should stick to resolving head bashing disputes and reversion battles, not substituting their elitist expertise against crowd sourced opinionson what articles are worth chucking out for having no links or for not following some arbitrary standard format.