What? Obama's new wonder-plan is what TOOK AWAY our low deductible plan and forced us, for more money, to buy one that will cost us thousands more each year in premiums, and ten thousand more a year in deductibles. The people you're defending - Obama, Pelosi, Reid - forced us to buy a high deductible plan with fewer benefits, minus the doctor we'd used for years, and more. Obama didn't "outlaw" bad, expensive coverage, he just forced us into that exact situation. Thanks for shilling for him, though - it's nice to see that BS so transparently on display for all to see.

I used to have affordable insurance for my wife and I. The ACA killed it. Were forced to go to a new plan that:

1) Has much higher monthly premiums (we went from roughly $230/month to about $500/month)

2) Has a hugely higher deductible (we went from $2,500 a year to about $12,000 a year). This means that we are much, much farther out of pocket every year, especially if we actually need medical care beyond one or two simple visits annually.

3) We are past any risk of pregnancy. None the less, we are being forced to pay for elaborate maternity care that we cannot possibly use.

4) The new plan forced us to give up the doctor we've been using for 15 years unless we want to pay cash for that in a way that doesn't help with our deductible.

5) The two best local hospitals are no longer available to us unless we want to pay retail for their use, and get no benefit against our deductible.

Prior to this "affordable" new act, we had no need to change insurance, doctors, hospitals or anything else for well over 10 years.

Because of how the math is working out, we're told to expect that next year's premiums will go up by another 45-55%. Thanks, Mr. Obamacare Cheerleader, if you're one of the people who helped to empower the people who snuck this 100% partisan monstrosity through congress on Pelosi's "deeming" technique. Thanks a lot.

So you are ALSO saying that the information presented is incorrect ... that the people at HHS had NO idea that the site wasn't full of holes in terms of security and functionality. That the "cherry-picked" emails that show the administration knew the site was a train wreck are referring to something else, because the site wasn't a train wreck when it went live. Right? I see. So if that's incorrect, then what you're saying is that the administration did NOT know that the site was a train wreck. Which makes them stupefyingly incompetent.

So your idea of "nothing to see here" is either:

1) The administration knew exactly what a train wreck the thing was, but lied about it. Or...

2) The administration, at every level, was so foolish and incompetent that it had no idea whether or not the system was useless, and in lacking any sort of knowledge one way or the other, just assumed it was fine.

So what you're saying is that: 1) The administration didn't knowingly force people to use a badly designed, insecure web site that wasn't ready for prime time. That's just something the administration's critics made up, out of context. 2) The administration has fixed all of the security concerns, and that the whole platform is now working as they promised it would, and that anyone saying otherwise is lying and spinning the glorious real facts on the ground. I see.

No. It means that the spirit of Teddy Rosevelt needs to come along and whack them with a really big stick so that they can't abuse everyone and distort the market.

Bragging that your pet brand can act like an abusive monopoly is nothing to be proud of. It's blatantly anti-social.

> While iTunes could stand improvement, of course, it is still oly about a million times better than anything else. At least a million.

You're so funny.

Quit swimming in the kool-aid.

Google won the search wars because it ignored what content providers thought should be top of the listings (but let them buy ads), and put what search USERS should be top of the listings. That's how it got where it is and why it's stayed where it is. That's why there are entire businesses based around trying to get your site to the top of Google without getting chucked off their listings - because it's not as easy as just asking, or paying, or tricking Google.

Hence, if ".buy" suddenly starts getting to tops of listings where you have no reason or interest of it being there, then Google will suffer - as well as ".buy"

Decent search made domain names obsolete. I don't even know the domain of many of my favourite sites, but I know an exact Google search that will list them in the top 10 if I ever need them (e.g. I lose my bookmarks). That's why I don't get why people still are buying anything more than a single, relevant domain for themselves.

Seriously, what difference do you get in search rankings if you search from a mobile? Google knows you're on mobile. You can search for mobile terms. Now how many of those results are actually of ".mobi" sites?

TLD's and domain names are money-grabs. They only have any effect on "dumb" search engines that are already selling your entire front page to the highest bidder.

The difference is that when you make someone who starts up a business pay all of the country's taxes, they're forced to simply pass that along to consumers as higher prices. The consumers pay the taxes regardless, always. Businesses can't exist without people buying their goods and services.

> I suspect they just want to know how many customers they have, not specifically who they are.

Nonsense.

I am sure that Netflix is more than willing to BRAG about how many Canadian customers it has, or how many customers it has in ANY country.

Way different kettle of fish than actual subscriber info.

...and both of those look like they need to be broken out into a number of distinct questions. Every comma and "or" muddles the resulting data.

Although I've been part of the phone survey racket. So I know all about how these things can be distorted to suit the agenda of the company paying for the study.

No. It's a recurring problem in these discussions because radical feminists will redefine terms. So it's hard to know at any one time whose definition you are dealing with. Are you dealing with something sane or are you dealing with something that's been "trumped up" in order to push an agenda?

You can't trust any random study to be free from such biases.

Then you end up with the basic magnitude problems that occur when dire claims fail to meet basic sanity with respect to numeracy.

If you're actually numerate, some of these claims are just incredible on their face.

I don't think most of the people pushing them fully understand the implications.

Yes. That was Dawkins that rightfully noted that you lot are complaining about 1st world non-problems.

You will take a situation that's not the least bit sinister and distort it until seems to be something entirely else.

That's why no one can trust any stories like these.

Radical feminists have hijacked the debate and the language.

Women are more likely to be the subject of a sexual advance because men are expected to initiate courtship. Differing social expectations and indoctrination will dictate that women find any advances more objectionable then would men regardless of the level of genuine menace the represent.

There was some feminazi that went on a tear because some guy had the audacity to hit on her. Then she whined when the corresponding community luminaries pointed out that she was being a hysterical idiot. The whole situation was portrayed as proof that "X community is mysoginistic".

It was all a load of mindless victimology.

There can be a wide gap between how a bunch of extremist crusaders define a term and how the rest of us define it.

These DRM laden video formats aren't any less crapulent on Windows. Unfortunately they aren't just used for video but also for basic site navigation. So you get a pervasive level of crapulence even with Windows.

It's not just a Linux problem.

Windows users perhaps just suffer from a certain level of "muggle numbness".