Arsehole Puckering Up! :P :P :P

Still trucking along on a Phenom II X6 1045T... 6x2.8 GHz or 3x3.2 GHz still seems like a lot. I can't remember the last time I was CPU-bound. I have to spend more than a hundred bucks on a GPU, I guess.

I've used my Nexus 7 that way, and it works reasonably well. The biggest problem, as always, is that apps that are optimized for the small displays of most mobile devices simply don't work that well on larger screens. I have used it quite frequently with a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard and RDP software to work on our terminal services server, and there really isn't any noticeable difference between that and a PC remoting in. It's rather a special case, to be sure.

That's out of nowhere to you, but the computer is going to be able to see in the dark far outside the range of your headlights. Its headlights are going to be a convenience to other drivers, and an IR source for its night vision — which will have automatic gain control far outside the range of your pupils. It'll also likely have radar and lidar so even if it can't see the cow, it'll know it's there.

For a moment. Then someone will invent a better fuel cap for robots to grasp, and then there will be a brief flurry in gas cap retrofit work.

What if they give you a single thing, but that thing is actually better than all the options that you have today that you can realistically afford (now and for the foreseeable future)?

This "they fought for freedom" thing... you know, when e.g. Americans volunteered to "fight for freedom" in WW2, a hundred thousand of their fellow citizens were in concentration camps simply on account of their ethnicity, and it wasn't exactly secret knowledge - and popular sentiment was largely in favor of that. So it was part of the "freedom" that they fought for. Somehow, I don't think that they would have been outraged by the Patriot Act.

(Note, I'm not saying that it's a good thing - but don't seek moral approval in history when it's largely retconned.)

It's not just this single issue. It's any number of things. The media latches onto a headlline of it's choosing and wont let go of it. Anything that contradicts the "narrative" is suppressed. The entire news media is a farce (and not just game journalism).

I've seen state ratings that have flatly contradicted my own personal first hand experience.

Plus the "price" of American healthcare is potentially a very misleading thing as others (and myself) have already indicated.

The OP was about lack of transparency in billing and quickly got hijacked by eurotrash trying to repeat the same tired media narrative about socialized medicine and American healthcare. This kind of stupidity is how we end up with "reform" legislation that doesn't address the relevant crap.

People that are genuinely poor have a public option to fall back on.

People that are not genuinely poor are merely confronted with services that are as expensive as the consumer products they willingly indulge in without ever considering the implications.

In other words, you have to go to a lot of bother that really shouldn't occur to begin with. ALL billing artifacts should make sense BY DEFAULT. It should not require extra special diligence on the part of a patient (or any other sort of customer) to get a real bill or see what the real costs are.

The fact that this is not the norm is directly attributable to the "someone else will pay for it" mentality.

Have you actually read it yourself beyond the title? It doesn't permit the US government from granting anyone titles of nobility. It doesn't prevent anyone from holding or claiming such a title on other grounds.

I suspect that you're confusing it with the Titles of Nobility amendment, which went further by stripping citizenship from anyone who would accept a title from a foreign country (so even under it self-claimed titles wouldn't count) - but that amendment was never ratified and is not standing law. Some people claim that it "has actually been ratified", and hence is part of the Constitution "that the government doesn't want you to know about" - usually this is claimed by fringe right-wingers, the type of guys to the right of the Tea Party.

I'm pretty sure that the drug that I am on currently isn't allowed by the NHS because it's too expensive. Although it's not just the UK. Our own "public options" have similar problems where expensive treatments aren't covered either.

I'm not sure which numbers you're looking at. In October 2013, USA exported 7.7 million bpd per day, while importing 7.6 million bpd. That's net export.

Specifically, I am referring to a return to federalism, with the vast majority of citizens' government coming from the state and local levels. You know, the way this system was intended to work.