Yes. Ugly policy decisions is exactly what I was going for, in fact. It's not as simple as "ugh, stupid anti-vaxxers, we need to mandate vaccines" as some seem to think it is. There are some of us who are cool with vaccines ... the ones that make sense. And leery about spending the money (government) and risk (yes, the rather small but real, especially with new-ish and thus much less understood vaccines, it seems) for the ones that don't.

And of course, there's the question of the efficacy of the different types (e.g., acellular pertussis) and the different schedules and whether it's good to throw them into kids all at once or spread them out and .... etc. Doctors don't seem to agree completely (not with vaccination in general, but when, how many, which ones, etc.), countries don't agree, studies don't agree, yet we expect the government to mandate something... that seems iffy to me.

Whoever chooses wields an awful lot of power. Including monetarily. I'm sure the vaccine makers would have input on which ones and how often. :) Good thing we don't let corporations influence political decisions.

I think you missed the point. How is it I am doing anyone harm by not being vaccinated for something I am not going to spread since it's an STD and I only have sex with one other person?

So at what point does the liability stop? If I allow my kids to play on sleds or go skiing and they get hurt or killed or maimed ... should I go to jail for child endangerment for allowing them to be in such danger?

I am NOT arguing that all vaccines are junk and we should all not vaccinate. I AM arguing that we need to think through the ramifications of this pretty seriously. It's not exactly a slippery *slope* argument as much as .... an ice rink argument. I am not saying that "if we mandate vaccines, we're going to mandate carrots and spinach next" as though one is worse than the other... I'm saying that it doesn't make sense to mandate vaccines in because of child endangerment if we don't also start curbing all these other dangerous behaviors that kid's do. Like playing in the dirt, riding horses, riding bikes, taking walks where there may be drunk drivers without putting them in helmets ... or whatever.

Furthermore, WHAT vaccines? And how often? I got one MMR vaccine I believe, but it's since been raised to two. Ought I to be mandated to get another one? What about the flu vaccine? What about STDs which I highly doubt my 8 month old will be contracting anytime soon?

Things like MMR and Polio make sense (though I am still unsure about mandating), but I don't know about some of the others... so I am leery about having random people in D.C. choosing these things for me based on who knows what.

I'm trying to be good and avoid the vaccine manufacturer profit arguments.

Because we thought it was a good idea to protect vaccine makers from lawsuits and replace those lawsuits with a government program.

I'm not sure that was really a good idea. I'm not saying it doesn't help, but protecting for-profit (and very profitable) companies from lawsuits seems ... well, a bit odd, shall we say.

Ok... so if it's an STD and I am one of those monogamous types, could you explain the benefit to me or others for me getting it?

I'm not anti-vaccine, though I am anti-vaccine-if-the-risk-of-the-vaccine-is-greater-than-the-benefit. And no, I don't think autism comes from vaccines, etc.

So, you don't indent code? Or if you do, at what point is the indent meaningless (how many spaces/tabs) ... ? No spaces after semicolons? Or before/after braces? Or ...

Readability should count as meaningful. It helps. And the compiler strips it out anyways, right, so ultimately it doesn't matter, just like comments, except in helping understand the code.

I may be misunderstanding something completely in what you said... but I don't get why you would say it should be removed. Maybe in javascript for network performance reasons or something, but you should just minify or something in that case, because of variable and function name length and all that...

Man. I'm going to have to write out a Liszt so when I actually do go browser Chopin, I can remember all these.

Ok, so I have a question. I personally take this view as well: the government should own the infrastructure and allow free competition. Basically, it's like a road, and we can all compete with each other's shipping business.

The technical side, that I don't get ... is - is that actually possible? For example, say my neighbor wants to use FiberInternet2U and I want to use SpeedMAX as our ISPs. Is that relatively easily technically feasible?

My question comes mostly simply out of what I think is my understanding about phone lines. If we were talking about DSL, the phone lines all go to some central office somewhere (that pesky CO that you have to be within X thousand feet of ... with no load coils inbetween ...). In order to have two separate phone companies provide my neighbor and me service, wouldn't they have to be routed two different ways once they get to the CO ... or something?

You pretty much outlined exactly what I think *should* be the way it works, so I'm curious if you know how it technically could.

Oh, and also, force honest advertising, no more "up to" speeds :P and put any relevant data caps in the not-small-print.

There's still some orchards I think, but small. And there is a fair amount of ag south of SV... but nothing compared to what it used to be. That said, the water issues first started back in the early 20th century when the crops and orchards changed to high-water-use crops like prunes. The area must have sure looked beautiful before sprawl + oak trees cut + orchards removed :)

Stupid, inane post simply to say ... thanks, that is an excellent comic that you linked to with an excellent point.

I'm not so sure about that. OSX is already on what, 10.7 or something like that? I doubt most people would fall for Windows 10 vs. OSX 10.7 [insert cat name here]. That STILL looks like Windows is behind, so it'd be failed marketing if it was a marketing gimmick.

I'm pretty cynical when it comes to tech companies, but I don't think Microsoft's marketing is quite that stupid nor their dev teams quite that stupid.

IMO, they probably wanted to bump the kernel number ... and decided to bump it to match the version. Maybe they actually want Windows 10 to use the Windows 10 kernel. Maybe they want OS version and kernel version to actually match/make sense/be in sync, and are using this as a good time to do it (versus the OS patch that was 8.1).

I have worked on software (as both tester and developer) that went from 1.9 to 1.10.

There's no way it's marketing. Marketing does not care about the kernel version. Seriously, most people who use Windows have absolutely no idea what a kernel even is, let alone what version their Windows kernel is. And the people who do know what the kernel is and what the kernel version is are not going to be interested in marketing anyways.

You really have to watch out for those sheep and their computational needs. They've been demanding more processing power for years now. :)

They *sent* the password? Which means they actually store it in a way that they have access to the password itself (and not just a hash or whatever of it)?