I did. I admit it. I enjoyed "The Stand" miniseries, long after I read (and enjoyed) the book. What I did not enjoy was the re-released book with 400 more pages. Most of the material cut for the original book was stuff that should have been cut.

The savings is supposed to come from less people freeloading on the system (by not having insurance and getting free ER care when they get sick). Whether that savings actually is realized or not, who knows. As an independent, I'm constantly surprised by Republicans And Libertarians suggesting that the current system (pre Affordable Care Act) which encourages the young and working poor to freeload on the system. Where did the "personal responsibility" crowd disappear to?

If he didn't have health insurance before, than you were already subsidizing *all* of his medical costs (because uninsured people use emergency rooms and insured people end up footing the bill). Now, with ACA, you may be subsidizing *less* of his medical costs.

Most large organizations these days have at least some familiarity with what Linux is, even if they don't make much use of it. If they ask what kernel you are using, you say 3.11 (as in three point eleven or three eleven). They're not going to ask "What is it's nickname?" They just want the version number.

And why did I capitalize modem, when it isn't an acronym? Or should it be MoDem?

I also learned to program (in Basic) on a remote system using a Teletype 33 ASR with acoustic-coupled MODEM. Where are my billions of dollars? Sigh ...

You and I know that there's nothing really new here. But the business types who don't understand how the technology works think that it is all new .. and they need new (e.g. young) developers to understand the new (i.e. variations on the old) technologies.

I'm pretty sure that if you do some research, you'll find that the Irish famine was made worse by the fact that the Irish were governed by a stable English parliamentary democracy instead of a stable Irish parliamentary democracy. The Irish did not have complete self-determination and were not allowed to try all remedies available to counter a famine.

So let me get this straight... Your comparison is between an organization that protected and moved its employees from one location to another and allowed them continued contact with children [the Catholic Church] to an organization which removes those employees from contact with children immediately (sometimes without actual proof of abuse) [the New York City Schools]. I think your evidence is actually against your point.

Well, the government does have to approve permits for new power plants and arrange for right-of-way for power-lines and transformer stations (and probably should be checking the output of coal-fired plants). I think the government's hope is that, as population density increases, that the average person's usage drops -- so they can avoid costly upgrades.

Unless your goal is to improve the technology to the point where it does become cost-effective. These types of investments are common to governments all over the world -- and are not new to the United States. It is not a sign that we are living under a repressive socialist government (at least not a repressive socialist government that started in January of 2009),

Now whether this project is a good investment or not ...

Is it too early to start calling them SCOracle?

So he's like Mark Buehrle?