Hollywood accounting?

It depends, at least in the US. T-Mobile is moving towards a "bring whatever device you want" approach, and Google has started directly selling their Nexus phones to consumers. I think this will start to improve once most carriers standardize on LTE-only and the phones are a bit more universal than they are now. With the Qualcomm CDMA patents out of the way, the barrier to entry to the Verizon network goes away and their phones will drop in price and more vendors will want to sell for the Verizon market.

Actually it was private industry (Lockheed) that did that one.

No, they're just not elevated to positions of power. Wingnuts on the left are more often to be called out for their foolishness (e.g. Jenny McCarthy).

For small stuff, yes. But we're now in a world where software and hardware is complex. Even in an environment like Apple where they have tight control over the hardware, there's variations between operating systems and their hardware offering that make it difficult for a company to write a single app that does it all. Then look at the PC world where it's pretty much a free for all.

I've worked in support organizations for 15 years. In a commercial environment where you can afford the staff, having a tiered approach works best - you have a help desk to gather and refine the questions and answer the small stuff, then work your way up to the engineers that wrote the code. The tough part of that is having a skilled enough help desk to know when to skip the canned questions and just forward a request on once you have the right information.

For organizations without those resources, you need to rely on the user base to be the help desk. Give them as much concise information as possible and frame the bug submission so that any and all needed data is in the report. Then it's up to the developer to give good information back to the user.

As an example, I had a problem with my laptop's trackpad going wonky. Ubuntu made it really easy to compile information about my system and submit it as a bug report, then open it for me so I can add any additional text I wanted. The answer I got back asked me to try a different kernel, and included well-documented links and information on how to get and install it. Just saying something like "yeah, go grab something out of backports" doesn't help the user if they have no idea what you're talking about.

Way back when I worked for a company that sold serial port boards for Sun systems. One of our customers was CSC doing *something* for the NSA. We had a bit of a back-and-forth with them since the board had an on-board 8k buffer. They were concerned about data being stored there.

In all seriousness, I'm surprised companies like Iron Mountain don't have a system security group to certifiy a system is wiped when it's retired. Maybe they do, but it would be a good business opportunity in the era of SOX and HIPAA.

You mean I get to release my pent-up anger by destroying physical systems *and* get paid a boatload of money to do it? Where do I sign up?

Anecdotes don't prove your point. Even though there's an individual mandate in MA, small businesses haven't closed up shop.

Only if companies are short-sighted enough to think that having unhealthy employees is good for business. Many companies already offer health insurance, and I've worked for a variety of companies over the past 20 years and every single one did. When I'm able to take 1/2 day to go to the doctor's to get a cough checked out rather than hacking on my co-workers or taking 3 days off to nurse it, which is less expensive to the company?

I think it's an excuse. There should have been better teeth, but this was what could get passed. I'd like to see single payer as well, but until then we need to make sure that all Americans are healthy and have access to quality medical care.

No, they'll be at an advantage to their employees, who now have better health coverage, and they no longer have to worry about complying with the regulations - they're already compliant and don't have to scramble and pay exorbitant fees for consultants to tell them what to do. Lower cost for the employer (i.e. greater profit), healthier employees, win-win all around.

At best, the requirements for date of parts of Obamacare being required are being pushed back. It doesn't mean that companies can't implement them now, it just means that they have to implement it by date X. If the date were being moved from 2015 to 2013, that would be a problem.

This is a good thing for employers, not so much for employees outside MA, unless you work for a good company that already offers health insurance.

Take a look at almost every other major set of regulations that the government has put out (D or R) and see if any of it has rolled out on time. Take the cutover to HDTV: it took years to do and kept getting pushed back. The fact this is happening here is no surprise, and not an indication that it's going to cause prices to increase, jobs to be lost, or the dead rising from the grave.

Obamacare has been implemented in MA for many years as 'Romneycare'. He was a terrible governor of our great state, but this was one thing that was worth the effort.