Hmm. So I assume they're going to fine the cellphone companies for every person they have not given a cellphone to?

Oh, wait. You're only important if you pay. The rest can DIAF.

What was I thinking.

I was thinking the very same thing. It would be nice if there was some sort of tech (which didn't invade privacy) could inhibit phone use in a moving vehicle. Problem is "what about passengers?" Too many others would be caught in such a net. I don't know what the answer should be. But I have been seeing it more and more often these days. I'm a "good driver." I don't actually use my phone while driving. Do I wish I could? YES! I just don't have the talent others seem to have. (My sons can text on an iPhone in their frikken pockets!) I know my limits and I observe them. I wish I could say the same for others. And that woman I saw yesterday putting on makeup on her way to work (or wherever)...? GEEZ!!!!

My understanding is that you do lose some to thermal cracking, internal steam in improperly dried tablets, and that sort of thing; but that is basically the reason why we have a (comparatively) massive canon of fertile crescent cuneiform, despite its creators being among the oldest in the known history of written language, and living in a pretty rough neighborhood where getting sacked and burned was a common occurrence. I'm not even sure that we have enough subject matter experts to read them all.

It is quite vexing; but I suspect that 'people looking down in surprise when their signal suddenly cuts out' are even less useful for driving than are people chattering like idiots.

No?

True, though if you were trying to load a program onto the nuclear-control-widget, you might be able to get away with a read-only disk.

Will nothing please you whiners? The Adobe Exploit Runtime offers simultaneous support across Windows, OSX, and Linux for a cutting edge vulnerability, and do we hear even a whisper of credit?

No. I meant grain other than corn.

I'll say one thing for clay tablets: few other formats just shrug when somebody burns your civilization to the ground...

Fighting with the old drives probably isn't a pleasant business; but I wonder how difficult DIY-ing really antique floppy disks would be?

We still manufacturer magnetic thin films on flexible media, for the last few 3.5 inch floppies and other purposes, and I'd imagine that you could get away with putting a very low resolution magnetic pattern on film capable of a much finer one (though not the reverse), so if you could convince a maker of magnetic medium for floppy or tape storage to sell you some film in whatever larger size the finished product is cut down from, you might need little more than the ability to cut in a neat circle and then fold together the outer case.

I wouldn't depend on it for archival purposes; but it wouldn't surprise me if it would work.

Good thing it isn't a price control, then.

I wouldn't be entirely sanguine about the future of watches in the 'just a basic quartz oscillator; but dressed up to the 50-100 range' sector; but why would the $2 expendables and the $$$ pointlessly-mechanical-man-jewelry sector worry? The former will always be cheaper than watches with additional parts, and the latter 'should' have been wiped out by superior quartz oscillator technology; but obviously wasn't.

What I'm saying is, if they cut their relatively clean protein with an equivalent amount of crap, maybe it would be about the same price. If that's what you want to eat, then great.

Here's what they have to do: First, they have to get the taste right. So far, they've completely missed the mark on everything I've tried, and I've tried everything I could get my hands on. Second, they have to get the "mouth feel" right. That seems to be easier -- I've downed a few veggie burgers that felt right -- but that first point... gah. Third, they have to get it to look right. Again, sometimes they get pretty close. But they need 1+2+3, not some subset. Once they get there, it has to be affordable, and IMHO, that's going to mean subsidizing it initially. Otherwise, not enough people will try it, mass production doesn't happen, it stays expensive and gets minimal distribution, end of product.

I've more confidence in the lab-grown meat idea as a good final solution. No animal suffering, but it's actually meat. If they can make it work. So far, after years of trying, they don't appear to be that close. I donate money to this particular cause and have for years, but it is moving slower than I thought it would. I think we just don't know enough about biology, frankly.

I'd rather eat veggies, and mostly, I do. I have a gluten allergy that only allows me to eat anything with gluten about once a week while dosing myself with allergy pills. More often or without allergy pill support and the symptoms (myriad) get nasty, and quickly, too.

Between that and trying to limit my meat intake, my options are considerably more narrow than I'd like. Worse, before we figured the gluten thing out, my favorite foods were pasta and breads... pizza... spaghetti... sigh. :(

The idea of feeding corn to a cow is a pretty new one borne out of the rise of industrial farming.

And it's really funny as can be, since grain-fed cattle taste far better than corn-fed cattle. Reminds me of the whole ethanol-for-fuel thing. Some genius (seriously) with an interest in the corn industry comes up with an idea, and the public suffers endlessly for it.

Oh, well.

Before the ACA, insurance premium increases were just insurance premium increases. About a few years ago they were "due to expectations about the ACA" and now after the ACA and henceforth they will be "due to the ACA we will have to ask you for more money we are totally sorry about this and it's out of our hands."

No. You've missed a very important part of the ACA. If the insurance company makes over 20% margin beyond actual healthcare costs, they have to refund it to the customers. Last year, the first time that was in effect, the refunds totaled over 1.1 billion dollars. Again, the days of them increasing premiums for no good reason other than profit, and the days of them making massive margins by fooling people, are over. Over.

Here's a reference for you:

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/...

The ACA just requires a policy to cover some basics -- and there were a lot of policies that were junk. Insurance companies are canceling people so they can make money and not be forced to give you a decent policy -- that's all there is to it.

No, that's NOT all there is to it. That's just incorrect rhetoric, and wherever you got it from, you should stop going there. I can tell you, flat out, that my insurance policy under the ACA is *excellent*, and it is both affordable and available to anyone who selects the tier I did. Many will receive subsidies, making the effective cost much less than it is for me, too.

There's a ton of misinformation circulating about the ACA; you've unquestionably been victim of some of it. I would strongly advise you to backtrack and find out what the source was, and then write it off your list of places to find truths.

There's no question the ACA is a done deal and isn't going away; it's doing great things for a huge number of people and it is now politically impossible to disrupt it. The disinformation machine has outright failed. Time to get with what's actually happening. And hey -- the ACA isn't perfect by any means. You could be helping to improve it, instead of wasting your time complaining about things that simply aren't true. One good example of this are the state legislatures that refused the medicaid supplement. Those legislators should lose their jobs. Yesterday. And of course the people doing the online system need their feet held to the fire with as much bad publicity as can be thrown at them -- knowing what they did with the online stuff, I wouldn't ask those idiots to attempt to program fizzbuzz.