That makes no sense. Public health care has nothing to do with an advanced IT system; up here in Canada we didn't have anything that can even share files between doctors until relatively recently (less than a decade). The public health care system works without it.

The GP's point is that given this sort of system in a private health care environment, abuse is not only probable, but inevitable.

Nice straw man YOU got there.

There's a difference between infanticide (i.e. killing someone) vs. designer babies (i.e. preventing a hypothetical person from existing). By your logic it's also abhorrent for people carrying genetically transmission illnesses to abstain from having children.

Except that information often has a very real *production* cost that needs to be recouped. People do need to, like, eat and stuff you know?

Hell, Epic is not even interested in solving exploits and network issues with their *latest* game. What are the odds they'll care about anything they released before?

Seriously. There are companies that do great post-sale game support (Infinity Ward, Bungie, Valve... etc), and then there are ones that seem to stop caring as soon as they slap the gold label on a disc.

Good luck. Even completely open specifications like CSS don't have uniform implementations across the board.

Blah blah blah. Yes, chargers are expensive, but there's no need to get into the "pennies to make" argument, because you simply haven't given anything to substantiate that argument.

I've worked in manufacturing, and for a while was in charge of plastics. Consumer-grade plastics are *really expensive* to mould, and that rubbery stuff that cables are made from? Even more so. So yeah, a charger might not be a bargain at $30 a pop, but it cost a lot more than "a few pennies" to make.

Trains are the new luxury Greyhounds, up here in Canada anyway. Okay, so no scantily-clad stewardesses or free booze, but you do get *massive* seats, tons of legroom, no real luggage limits, and on-board WiFi. It doesn't get much better than that.

Oh, and the air is at sea-pressure level, as opposed to 8000 feet like standard passenger craft.

I used to travel from Toronto to Ottawa by train. Easily the most pleasant moving vehicle I have ever been in.

But they *do*. It's called first class! I know people who *do* pamper themselves when flying to their vacations, and it's a wonderful way to fly - but it's not for everyone, or indeed even a large portion of the traveling public.

I think you're suggesting that the cost of first class be lowered - and perhaps it can, I'm certainly not privy to the finances of major airlines. I would like to point out, though, that most people I know only consider spending good money on *the vacation*, and not the means of getting there. I don't know about you guys in the US, but up here in Canada we have "vacation airlines" that service only popular vacation routes, and completely redefine "cattle class" (in the bad way). Consumers are clearly more about cheap than comfort, and unfortunately the airlines are giving them precisely what they want.

Not only that, we have advanced in ways invisible to the public. The type of engineering that took hundreds of engineers with slide rules months of work and calculations is now possible with a single engineer sitting at a workstation. The kinds of tests and analyses we can perform without even manufacturing a single physical prototype is immense and incredible.

Engineering, in general, is now cheaper to perform than ever. This has opened the door for smaller players to be competitive with the Big Boys, and this can only be a good thing. We are now able to go through so many more design iterations and optimizations than we ever have before.

Thank you. We will get science-fiction-like leaps in technology when the general public demands it. The 747 came about because we *needed* to move *a lot* of people around at once over very long distances. This has not changed. COnsumers have shown time and time again that they will not pay the extreme premium to get from Beijing to New York 3 hours sooner.

For curiosity's sake, which airlines in the US are known for these amenities? I was in the US last summer and flew with AA and NWA, both of which seemed... really run down.

And back in the "good old days" you *had* to pay first-class level money just to get on *any* plane.

How about the result of consumers winning out? I think people forget just how expensive air travel used to be - no wonder you were treated like a king. Free food, free drinks (some airlines even had free alcohol)...

The fact of the matter is that airline travel is a *lot* cheaper and more accessible to the average person than it used to be. This is a good thing. It also necessitates us changing our expectation from "floating sky-palace" to "flying Greyhound bus", which is a more appropriate modern analogy.

If you want the service of yonder years, you can still get it. In fact, you can still get it at approximately the same prices *you used to pay*.

I for one welcome the democratization of long-distance travel.