We've all heard terrible stories about pancreatic cancer. Only 9% live beyond five years. I'm around three years in and I look to be in that tiny group. In 2019 pancreatic cancer is incurable. Only a 1930s procedure called Whipple Surgery (there was a Dr. Whipple) has any power and only 1/3 of patients medically qualify and 1/3 of those get my result. Anyway, I've been through anything you can think of medically. I've acquired an army of doctors. Because I'm old I have federally funded Medicare. The entire cost to me to get fixed was $0. I paid for some drugs and parking. That's it. One of my biggest concerns was that every doctor and technician knew what everyone else knew. I take over a dozen pills a day (fewer now than before) and have a catheter port in my chest (I'm not USB compatible) which has been used over 30 times. My physicians are on three different medical records systems. That meant my wife and I became our own fourth system! If there was a place for me to sign so my doctors were unencumbered by HIPAA I would have signed in a minute. In order to protect my privacy this law makes it more difficult for my doctors.

I'm reading Slashdot. I must me somewhat geeky. Got my ham license in 1967 and enjoyed working Morse Code (Hams refer to it as "cw" for continuous wave, a description of its unmodulated carrier).

One summer eve a few friends and I went from our apartments in Queens to the Village. As we walked down St. Marks Place music played from the various record stores on the block. And then I heard it.

The song, "Miss Morse" by Pearls Before Swine is reasonably banal.

Oh Dear, Miss Morse

I want you

Oh yes, I do

I want you

It's when they got to the chorus I stopped in my tracks. I knew I was the only one on St. Marks Place who knew what I knew!

Chorus:

Dit Dit Dah Dit

Dit Dit Dah

Dah Dit Dah Dit

Dah Dit Dah

By the way, 1967 was also the year I took my first and last computer class. I still actively program and work from home because I developed the code that lets me be on TV 1,500 miles from the studio.

Everybody loves them and for most of the kids too young for candy it is the first treat they get - and even the six month old kids being hauled around in the wagon love them.

Nuh uh - I ROT-13ed everything and they can't see nuttin'

And the USSR which didn't have a free market did so well. And Haiti. And Venezuela. And Greece. What you are intentionally ignoring is that a free market does not guarantee a steady increase, just a faster and greater increase. There will always be downturns - our entire economic mess can be traced back to one man: Greenspan. Appointed by the first Bush, Greenspan was calling the shots during the Clinton years. Rather than allow the market to take a natural correction and crash Clinton's popularity he cut interest rates when he should have let them stand pat. The economy burned more brightly but then faced an even worse collapse so the rates had to be cut again. The exact same thing happened at Yellowstone - if the government had just let the natural fires clean out the dead wood every few years instead of attacking every spark in the forest we wouldn't have had the soil-sterilizing fire storms of the late 80s. If Greenspan had let the economy cull the wounded gazelles in the mix we would have had 6-12 months of general unpleasantness and then would have gotten over it. Instead he spent a decade providing kiln-dried fuel for an economic firestorm, took a fat pension from the government and retired. The free market works, but only in the same way that the weather works. In the long-term it is best for everybody who isn't doing something stupid like planting pineapple in Idaho but sometimes one farm will get more rain than another.

But they aren't taking that $0.01 from you, they're taking it from somebody who thinks that it is a good deal. And it is his penny. You have no right to tell him what he can or can't do with that penny - buy a gumball, squish it on the train tracks, throw it into a fountain or yes, even buy a share of stock that traded for a penny less 20 minutes earlier. It is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!!!!! It does not destabilize the economy, it drives the economy. Such a novel concept - people able to buy what they want and accept responsibility for their purchases. This is called economic freedom - if you object to people being allowed to buy and sell what they want then there is a long list of nations where you are free to surrender your liberty.

Why? How? By what authority? The free market is better than anything else - unless you like a system where they say "ok... we'll protect the little guys by setting up a tier system. If your portfolio $5,000,000,000 then you have to wait six seconds. Everybody in the middle, 1 month."

In for 1.

Anybody who thinks that vaccines cause autism in 100% of the cases is wrong. Anybody who thinks that the argument is that autism is *ONLY* caused by vaccines is wrong. You clearly fall into the 2nd camp. In 2007 the federal "vaccine court" found that the MMR vaccination *DID* cause autism in a child by the name of Bailey Banks in that the vaccine caused an inflammation of the brain that led to PPD-NOS. In 2008 this same court found that in the instance of patient Hannah Poling the vaccine caused "autism-like" symptoms by aggravating a pre-existing condition. (Autism-like? If it quacks...) In the vast majority of cases the vaccine is safe - the numbers don't lie. HOWEVER the vaccine appears to be safe if and only if the child is neurotypical and, as there is no incentive, nobody is working on determining just how atypical one must be and in what manner before the vaccines are unsafe. The prevailing attitude is "sit down, shut up, you cannot decide what risks are acceptable for your child, we don't care if it is safe in this particular instance and if it turns out to destroy your family's life then oh well." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr-and-david-kirby/vaccine-court-autism-deba_b_169673.html

No more than Lexmark had a monopoly on laser printers: the question is whether or not you are allowed to force a specific brand of products/consumables. The courts are very clear - it was illegal for AT&T to force their customers to use only AT&T phones. It would be illegal for Ford to require you to use only Shell gasoline under penalty of warranty cancellation. It would be illegal for Petsmart to sell you a kitten only on the condition that you never buy food from any other source or for Dell to sell you a computer and specify that you may only use Sony brand CD/DVD blanks. Microsoft does not have a monopoly among game players, but they are about to have a monopoly within XBox users.

See United States v IBM, 1936, USSC ruled that it was a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for IBM to require the use of IBM brand punch cards in their machines. Exact same thing here.

If google blocked search engine and gmail from iPhone users - or Macs - any guesses what the AT&T/Apple reaction would be?

According to their city atty this was the greatest, bestest decision for the city ever. He's obviously clueless. Fire him.

Do something about Verizon saying "you may not use a smart phone without paying $30/month above and beyond your voice plan for data even if you don't want to use our data network". The phones have WiFi - that's what I want. Period. I don't want data. I want a smart phone and I don't want to sure the web using your network. That should be my right to choose.

Unless interstellar travel is nothing but a single "duh" moment away - maybe we're just missing something that will make everything simple and easy to understand. Like pipes or the wonderbra.