"How much would we have to pay 'the Patent Holder' for licensing of their shitty little patent?"
"$50 million a year, sir."
"What's contract killers going for on Silk Road?"
"$15k/head"
"How many patent holders?"
"Six are listed." ...
"let's save ourselves over $49 million bucks. Fire up Tor."

That post has entirely too many baseless assumptions in it to justify Obamacare.

I don't particularly follow the news on this subject that closely, and I certainly don't align with either major party.

What I do follow are my finances, and the fact that when I went back to school in 2011, just after this was passed, I could afford insurance. Even though the coverage wasn't the best, my employer also kicked $100 a month into a health savings account to handle the high deductible. This was actually a very effective system, as it also allowed him to help out with routine dental and vision without providing specific coverage. Now, I've got my degree, a better paying job, and the costs have risen to where I cannot find affordable insurance. I'm better off paying out of pocket and paying the penalty.

Affordable Care Act my arse.

One my clients is a medical supply company. About 80% of their business is medicaid. To send in the claims, they still have to do it via a modem. They still can't do it over the internet. Every friday afternoon they submit their claims by connecting the computer to a phone line and dialing out. I know it's starting to become a problem to find a modem. In fact they just ordered 15 external USB modems back in the summer as backups as the state says it will be at least 2015 before they can file electronically via the internet as they had to scrap their initial plans to make them ACA complaint.

2009 just called. They want their blatant lies back.

Unfortunately, what we're seeing is a preview of what I expect with Obamacare.

Windows already has that, using a fancy filesystem API which was implemented by something called "Samba."

You're correct, it is a petition and not a demand. My point was a more broad one, as you've noted, an observation reinforced by the particular incident in question.

That's one theory, but in practice, when you start small, they won't even pay attention to what you're serving up. And if it does well in the marketplace of ideas (and if you can get people to actually pay attention to your ideas and hopefully tell a few friends), then hopefully you can also find a way to increase what you can "afford".

Exactly my point. And these days, the market is more open than you'd think for new soapboxes, thanks to technology which frees us to publish to anyone in the world...if they care to come listen.

I think the real trick is to get people to actually want to hear what you are saying. If PSY's "Gangnam Style" can take the world by storm, it's not too farfetched to believe that a message people want to show their friends can do the same. If you have to get people to listen by delivering your message in an elevator lying beneath a pelvic thrusting "lewd dance" or while having a dance-off with a guy in a cheesy yellow suit, so be it.

Most people on soap-boxes have no idea how to sell their ideas, even if they're amazing ideas.

Wait, the market for news? That's not a market anymore. It's a genre.

I agree on both the overuse of "Orwellian" and the appropriateness here. I think we can safely say Godwin's Law is pretty much invalidated at this point as well when discussing the federal government.

No, I heard the project got re-homed and is being actively developed, somewhere in Russia.

How can one exercise freedom of speech when in 21st century nearly all speech is digital, over this or that walled garden?

You had to exercise your freedom to put yourself into the walled garden. By default, everyone's speech starts out free and they do things to put limitations on themselves. Don't do that. Or reverse your earlier decision to stop being free.

Even if you're required to use Facebook for work or something like that, it's not like anybody makes you use Facebook for your own actual speech.

It takes a lot of work and inconvenience to keep yourself from being free. Just don't go to all that extra trouble, and you ought to be fine.

is anyone else as tired as I am of the government getting around the legislative branch by going through unaccountable agencies issuing "regulations" with the force of law? We have a constitution to prevent this nonsense.

Separation of powers. Good stuff.