The government has always had the power to do this, but the people have always had the power to vote out anyone who passes such laws.
200 years ago, the federal government didn't think it had one quarter of the powers it has today. Such a strong federal government as we have today wasn't even envisioned by the federalists. Even if we can vote them out, this original structure was intended to prevent the tyranny of the majority that simple voting can't fix.
They knew that they weren't going to get everything perfectly right or clear, especially given that they weren't even all of the same mind on many of the issues covered by the Constitution
They were smart enough to add this thing called the amendment process. I personally agree that something like the individual mandate is necessary. Where I disagree with the liberals (and those conservatives) who see the Constitution as a "living document" to be radically changed by interpretation at will is that I think we need an amendment to implement it. It would be constitutional, even though a bit of a stretch, for the federal government to entice the states to do it. But, no, the feds just decided they could reach down through the prerogative of the states and of the people to mandate this.
Seriously, if the Founders made the amendment process so difficult and dependent on state agreement, did you think they intended for a simple majority of Congress, the President and five people in robes to be able to change it?
1 - Generally true, but this is mainly about design patents, not a very technical issue, more akin to trademark and copyright. If one looks like the other, and consumer confusion could result, there's likely infringement.
2 - This is big guy vs. big guy. One big guy thinks the other is copying. If you've seen Samsung phones and tablets before and after the iPhone and iPad, this is pretty obvious, down to the packaging and the design of the AC charger.
This injunction goes along very fair rules. Apple has to show the judge their potential harm if Samsung continues to copy, and Samsung has to show the judge their potential harm if their sales are stopped. In a patent case, Samsung raising serious questions of patent validity will also tip the balance in their favor. Samsung has apparently failed to do this for all of the patents.
In the end, the court found that Apple would suffer more harm from continued infringement than Samsung would suffer from a wrongful injunction. But to make sure Samsung doesn't get screwed, Apple has to post a bond covering any potential Samsung losses.
Bonds are set by the financial harm the defendant would suffer by the injunction. It makes no sense to have some minimum number, as harm could be well below that.
Let's say you have the reasonable potential to make $1 million on your widgets this year. Some guy gets an injunction, posts a bond, you win. You then show the court your losses, and that is paid out of the bond. Why have a billion dollar bond in cases such as this? You think to discourage such cases? Bonds are equitable, not punitive.
As far as I understand, the ACA doesn't *mandate* health care
And the bad guy in the Saw series didn't kill anyone, he just set up a situation where they'd die. If the federal government can use taxation powers to force you to do anything, then the federal government has no limit to its powers. This is in direct opposition to the structure of our government.
You only have to pay slight attention to SCOTUS goings-on to understand that the Constitution is nothing if not finely nuanced and very difficult to interpret in non-partisan ways.
Actually, it's the other way around. The Constitution is meant to be simple to read, and there is ample documentation from the Founders to refer to in case anything needs clarification.
Things become difficult when you want to do something that's not allowed or try to modify it without changing its words. Then you see the logical gymnastics. I'll use Scalia again -- he made no sense whatsoever in Raich when he tried to reconcile his support of the War on Drugs with the plain-language and intent of the Commerce Clause which, rationally, does not allow the federal government to regulate local non-commercial activities. Now he does a 180, trying to argue against this expansion of the Fed's power.
IOW, it's easy when you follow the Constitution. It's hard when you try to bend the Constitution to your ideology.
Federal government mandated health insurance is flat-out, no bullshit unconstitutional. This logic was as tortured as Scalia's in Gonzalez v. Raich. Seriously, no rational person who has read the Constitution and other founding documents can come to any other conclusion unless they have ulterior motives.
That's not to say that some type of universal healthcare isn't a good idea. It is. And to do that, the free-rider problem must be solved. The personal mandate is the only rational solution to that problem, so it must be implemented.
So if it's a good idea, how can I say it's unconstitutional? Because it is. Something isn't constitutional or unconstitutional based on whether it's a good idea. It is based on whether it's constitutional. This is a point most liberals miss. The legislature decides whether it's a good idea, the courts decide whether that good idea is constitutional. If it's not constitutional, you can amend the constitution to allow it. But no, that's too difficult, we prefer to just ignore that piece of shit scrap paper.
With this they yet again blew the federal government's powers way beyond any thought of limitation that was designed into this system. Despite a system set up with a federal government with specific powers granted to it, we now have one that has no limits to its power. Romney, as a state governor, with his legislature was well within his powers to enact universal healthcare with a personal mandate. That's because he was in a state which has such powers.
As a parent, think about that. Others want to practice behavior modification on your children without your consent. Wouldn't you support those who would prevent teachers and administrators from doing that?
I guarantee you that "critical thinking skills" will NOT be applied to subjects dear to liberals. Conversely, if activist religious conservatives permeated the educational system, such skills wouldn't be applied to their sacred cows either.
It wasn't about humour, but ridicule to affect the election
Satire and parody done in order to affect the political process has a protected status going way back. Thomas Nast's cartoons against political figures were brought up as free speech precedent in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, and Hustler won.
It's a way environmentalists can get more attention. Take a species that may or may not be endangered, but isn't anywhere close to extinct. Subdivide by minor differences of no importance. Now you have lots of "species" (we'll leave out the "sub" part in the press releases) that are close to extinction.
Or even better, find a species that has a small subpopulation that is slightly different, declare it to be another species, and now it's endangered and you can wall-off huge areas of land from human use.
I like the idea of electric cars. You have to worry about the battery and electric motors. That's about it. No gasoline, fuel pumps, engine oil, transmission oil, air filters, oil filters, large cooling system, reciprocating parts that wear, etc. No engine system to have to repair some time down the road. In general, the extreme physical complexity of an internal combustion engine system is gone. This makes battery replacement comparatively trivial in the long run compared to the long-term maintenance of an internal combustion engine.
Then you have the hybrids, giving you the worst of both worlds -- an engine to take care of and fix, and a battery to replace eventually.
Everyone knows the packs last the life of the car, guaranteed like forever, and the cost of a pack is a bit less than your rounding error above.
Parent referenced 200,000 - 250,000 mile life of the car. Battery is warrantied for 100,000 miles, 150,000 miles in CA. Under this scenario, replacement on your own dime is a definite possibility. Replacement cost including labor is $3,000-$4,000. So if it dies, hope it dies just before your warranty ends or you're likely to have to pay for a new one yourself if you keep the car that long.
There are also a large group of people returning to college after decades of employment elsewhere
I did college seven years after high school.
If people were barred from an education simply because they weren't skilled in a subject that they didn't use and won't use in the future, that's pretty impractical and hardly fair.
I never said barred from education. I said in a government-pays system, the government shouldn't pay for it. Right now everybody goes to school, no matter how stupid, if they have the money. But if government is paying for everybody, then we have to have standards. We simply cannot afford millions of attempts to teach pings to sing each year. It would be a great example of government waste.
I agree with you that perhaps that person should not have been there, but they should be given a chance to rise and learn.
That chance was called high school. If he's not ready, he's welcome to do some studying on his own to get ready for college. Otherwise, under a government-pays system, we don't need to be spending our tax dollars rehashing high school material when there are plenty of people who are actually ready for college.
Perhaps something is lost on me. I think the sequence is primary education, secondary education, post-secondary education. You must have completed the requirements of your previous one and be ready for the rigors of the upcoming one before advancing. If you haven't done so, then you don't need to be advancing. Is there something wrong with that, or should we be advancing people who aren't ready, and will only degrade the education of those who are?
Most people understand that a higher education is their best option for improving their lot in life.
The problem is, many of them aren't cut out for college but still think they deserve to go. In my first year of college I knew a guy taking a college math class that consisted of what I remembered from 8th grade, and he actually had to study to pass. Uh, wrong. He didn't belong in college, period. Such a class shouldn't exist in a college. If you can't hang with college-level math (as in more advanced than high school) then you don't belong in college.
Most systems, such as Germany, that guarantee free college also screen the kids during primary schooling. You don't have the intelligence and work ethic, you don't go to college on the state's dime, vocational school for you.
It reminds me of the Heinlein quote, "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." Plus, it takes singing lesson slots from people who can actually sing.
Actually, it does. For the most part, the Democrats are the ones who take money from and kowtow to the MAFIAA, and the entertainment industry in general. The Republicans have other corporate owners.
These assholes choose their party based on odds of getting elected, not personal believes.
So that's why Scott Brown campaigned for "Teddy Kennedy's seat" as a Republican. That seat was a sure fire Democrat win. It had been Democrat for over 60 years, and so solidly Democrat that Teddy killed a girl in the late 60s and still got re-elected.
I got burned by HTC. The phone I bought was always way behind on Android versions, and never even got an official upgrade to Froyo, although the guys on Cyanogen had Froyo running on it with no problems.
Across the board, Android phone makers have a horrible history of supporting their phones with the latest OS. Apple looks positively angelic in this respect.
I purchased it with the stated promise of the company that it would be upgraded. I actually looked for that official statement before making the decision to buy.
I guess the hope part is hoping that a company would keep its word. But given that its word got me to buy their product, and they broke their word, isn't that fraud?
This could be fun. Small claims court, here I come!
By your numbers they obviously didn't want you to be able to get booze at competitive prices. It's still the government's fault you're paying too much, not the private market.
But, please, at least let North Carolina go private. They have state monopolies run by individual counties, and when I was there the selection sucked. They apparently have a limit on the number of different things that can be stocked. And of course prices are very high, acting as a sin tax to fund the counties. So, even if the price doesn't go down during privatization because the government laid extra taxes, at least private retailers would stock what the customers want, instead of what bureaucrats feel like stocking.
And there's no other option there. It is a felony to mail order booze, and even if you go to another state and bring some back, there's a very low limit.
He was a LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC senator from Connecticut for 30 years. He is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
He was also buddy-buddy with the big bankers, taking loads of their money, in the years leading up to the recent crash while he was Chair of the Senate Banking Committee.
He flat-out lied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in no danger in order to avoid them being more heavily regulated, all the while taking money from them. He pushed through legislation favorable to Countrywide Financial while accepting favorable loan terms from them as part of a "VIP" program. He even got Clinton to pardon a big-shot bank executive convicted of insider trading, and in return he got a sweat deal on some property through a friend of the felon.
And to top it off, this liberal Democrat who gets paid $1.5 million a year to lobby for the MAFIAA SWORE he would never take the revolving door to being a lobbyist.
USB is a feature that a small number of people want?
No, a full-size USB port is a feature a small number of people want on a thin tablet. The iPad has USB functionality, but built into a slimmer multi-function port.
Obviously, tablets are not coming with MIDI input any time soon
Yes, I know, they're all deficient. All tablets should come with all the ports anyone could possibly need so that nobody has to carry a huge adapter around with him.
To avoid admitting that leaving out the USB port is a deficiency, whether Apple does it or Samsung does it?
Because it's not a deficiency. It's a feature that you and a small number of other people want, a feature that if implemented would compromise the size and design of the hardware (sorry, a full size USB port just isn't fitting on the iPad or other slim tablets).
nearly every interesting piece of electronics I own has a USB port.
I guess congratulations are in order?
. It is a requirement that my tablet have one too.
For you, fine, but that doesn't necessarily make it less useful for anyone else. Most cars today come with a cup holder whether people need it or not. A while back I bought a car without a cup holder. I didn't care. It was not a requirement for me.
Just one of many examples: midi in. No I don't want another dongle, it's enough of a mess as it is.
Good, let's throw MIDI in. And VGA too, that's still everywhere. While we're at it, we need a full-size DVI port, an HDMI port and RCA and component cable jacks. This tablet's going to be huge by the time we're done.
Or we can put one slim multi-function port on the bottom, and you can buy a dongle for whatever kind of specific connection YOU, but not everybody, want to make.
Blacks voted for Obama over 95%, some of them famously stating they voted for him only because he is black.
Also, black voter turnout was higher than usual, setting records in many categories, just because he's black. Black turnout took its biggest jump in decades. Meanwhile, white voter turnout in 2008 was actually lower, taking its biggest decline in decades. Some whites may have been making racist statements about Obama, but fewer of them were voting.
Look at hard numbers, not what comes up in Google. It catches the word "nigger" in relation to Obama as being a racist against him? Samuel L. Jackson recently used that word quite a bit when talking about the fact that he voted for Obama only because Obama is black.
USB is not a ubiquitous need for a tablet. Sure, some people may need it for certain situations, but for the most part it is not necessary for a tablet. I know many iPad owners, and not one of them has felt the need to buy the USB/flash adapter. Apple also tends to go with the concept of one storage source on iDevices, contrary to the confusion and trouble that Android provides with balancing your data between internal storage and SD cards (oh crap, I installed that app on the OTHER SD card).
Apple tends to not use or to ditch things that are unnecessary for most or on their way out (floppies, optical drives in notebooks, legacy serial ports, VGA, etc.), and the industry tends to follow. If you need one of these things that will not be used by 90+% of users, get an adapter. Apple doesn't need to make the hardware larger, heavier and more complex to suit the small minority.
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200 years ago, the federal government didn't think it had one quarter of the powers it has today. Such a strong federal government as we have today wasn't even envisioned by the federalists. Even if we can vote them out, this original structure was intended to prevent the tyranny of the majority that simple voting can't fix.
They were smart enough to add this thing called the amendment process. I personally agree that something like the individual mandate is necessary. Where I disagree with the liberals (and those conservatives) who see the Constitution as a "living document" to be radically changed by interpretation at will is that I think we need an amendment to implement it. It would be constitutional, even though a bit of a stretch, for the federal government to entice the states to do it. But, no, the feds just decided they could reach down through the prerogative of the states and of the people to mandate this.
Seriously, if the Founders made the amendment process so difficult and dependent on state agreement, did you think they intended for a simple majority of Congress, the President and five people in robes to be able to change it?
This case is quite a bit different.
1 - Generally true, but this is mainly about design patents, not a very technical issue, more akin to trademark and copyright. If one looks like the other, and consumer confusion could result, there's likely infringement.
2 - This is big guy vs. big guy. One big guy thinks the other is copying. If you've seen Samsung phones and tablets before and after the iPhone and iPad, this is pretty obvious, down to the packaging and the design of the AC charger.
This injunction goes along very fair rules. Apple has to show the judge their potential harm if Samsung continues to copy, and Samsung has to show the judge their potential harm if their sales are stopped. In a patent case, Samsung raising serious questions of patent validity will also tip the balance in their favor. Samsung has apparently failed to do this for all of the patents.
In the end, the court found that Apple would suffer more harm from continued infringement than Samsung would suffer from a wrongful injunction. But to make sure Samsung doesn't get screwed, Apple has to post a bond covering any potential Samsung losses.
How much more fair can this be?
Bonds are set by the financial harm the defendant would suffer by the injunction. It makes no sense to have some minimum number, as harm could be well below that.
Let's say you have the reasonable potential to make $1 million on your widgets this year. Some guy gets an injunction, posts a bond, you win. You then show the court your losses, and that is paid out of the bond. Why have a billion dollar bond in cases such as this? You think to discourage such cases? Bonds are equitable, not punitive.
And the bad guy in the Saw series didn't kill anyone, he just set up a situation where they'd die. If the federal government can use taxation powers to force you to do anything, then the federal government has no limit to its powers. This is in direct opposition to the structure of our government.
Actually, it's the other way around. The Constitution is meant to be simple to read, and there is ample documentation from the Founders to refer to in case anything needs clarification.
Things become difficult when you want to do something that's not allowed or try to modify it without changing its words. Then you see the logical gymnastics. I'll use Scalia again -- he made no sense whatsoever in Raich when he tried to reconcile his support of the War on Drugs with the plain-language and intent of the Commerce Clause which, rationally, does not allow the federal government to regulate local non-commercial activities. Now he does a 180, trying to argue against this expansion of the Fed's power.
IOW, it's easy when you follow the Constitution. It's hard when you try to bend the Constitution to your ideology.
Federal government mandated health insurance is flat-out, no bullshit unconstitutional. This logic was as tortured as Scalia's in Gonzalez v. Raich. Seriously, no rational person who has read the Constitution and other founding documents can come to any other conclusion unless they have ulterior motives.
That's not to say that some type of universal healthcare isn't a good idea. It is. And to do that, the free-rider problem must be solved. The personal mandate is the only rational solution to that problem, so it must be implemented.
So if it's a good idea, how can I say it's unconstitutional? Because it is. Something isn't constitutional or unconstitutional based on whether it's a good idea. It is based on whether it's constitutional. This is a point most liberals miss. The legislature decides whether it's a good idea, the courts decide whether that good idea is constitutional. If it's not constitutional, you can amend the constitution to allow it. But no, that's too difficult, we prefer to just ignore that piece of shit scrap paper.
With this they yet again blew the federal government's powers way beyond any thought of limitation that was designed into this system. Despite a system set up with a federal government with specific powers granted to it, we now have one that has no limits to its power. Romney, as a state governor, with his legislature was well within his powers to enact universal healthcare with a personal mandate. That's because he was in a state which has such powers.
As a parent, think about that. Others want to practice behavior modification on your children without your consent. Wouldn't you support those who would prevent teachers and administrators from doing that?
I guarantee you that "critical thinking skills" will NOT be applied to subjects dear to liberals. Conversely, if activist religious conservatives permeated the educational system, such skills wouldn't be applied to their sacred cows either.
Satire and parody done in order to affect the political process has a protected status going way back. Thomas Nast's cartoons against political figures were brought up as free speech precedent in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, and Hustler won.
That's what he said around 2000 when a site called gwbush.com was making fun of him. He sent a C&D and got the FEC involved.
It's a way environmentalists can get more attention. Take a species that may or may not be endangered, but isn't anywhere close to extinct. Subdivide by minor differences of no importance. Now you have lots of "species" (we'll leave out the "sub" part in the press releases) that are close to extinction.
Or even better, find a species that has a small subpopulation that is slightly different, declare it to be another species, and now it's endangered and you can wall-off huge areas of land from human use.
Say electric cars become popular.
I like the idea of electric cars. You have to worry about the battery and electric motors. That's about it. No gasoline, fuel pumps, engine oil, transmission oil, air filters, oil filters, large cooling system, reciprocating parts that wear, etc. No engine system to have to repair some time down the road. In general, the extreme physical complexity of an internal combustion engine system is gone. This makes battery replacement comparatively trivial in the long run compared to the long-term maintenance of an internal combustion engine.
Then you have the hybrids, giving you the worst of both worlds -- an engine to take care of and fix, and a battery to replace eventually.
Parent referenced 200,000 - 250,000 mile life of the car. Battery is warrantied for 100,000 miles, 150,000 miles in CA. Under this scenario, replacement on your own dime is a definite possibility. Replacement cost including labor is $3,000-$4,000. So if it dies, hope it dies just before your warranty ends or you're likely to have to pay for a new one yourself if you keep the car that long.
Does that count the couple battery replacements the Prius will likely need during that lifetime?
I did college seven years after high school.
I never said barred from education. I said in a government-pays system, the government shouldn't pay for it. Right now everybody goes to school, no matter how stupid, if they have the money. But if government is paying for everybody, then we have to have standards. We simply cannot afford millions of attempts to teach pings to sing each year. It would be a great example of government waste.
That chance was called high school. If he's not ready, he's welcome to do some studying on his own to get ready for college. Otherwise, under a government-pays system, we don't need to be spending our tax dollars rehashing high school material when there are plenty of people who are actually ready for college.
Perhaps something is lost on me. I think the sequence is primary education, secondary education, post-secondary education. You must have completed the requirements of your previous one and be ready for the rigors of the upcoming one before advancing. If you haven't done so, then you don't need to be advancing. Is there something wrong with that, or should we be advancing people who aren't ready, and will only degrade the education of those who are?
The problem is, many of them aren't cut out for college but still think they deserve to go. In my first year of college I knew a guy taking a college math class that consisted of what I remembered from 8th grade, and he actually had to study to pass. Uh, wrong. He didn't belong in college, period. Such a class shouldn't exist in a college. If you can't hang with college-level math (as in more advanced than high school) then you don't belong in college.
Most systems, such as Germany, that guarantee free college also screen the kids during primary schooling. You don't have the intelligence and work ethic, you don't go to college on the state's dime, vocational school for you.
It reminds me of the Heinlein quote, "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." Plus, it takes singing lesson slots from people who can actually sing.
Actually, it does. For the most part, the Democrats are the ones who take money from and kowtow to the MAFIAA, and the entertainment industry in general. The Republicans have other corporate owners.
So that's why Scott Brown campaigned for "Teddy Kennedy's seat" as a Republican. That seat was a sure fire Democrat win. It had been Democrat for over 60 years, and so solidly Democrat that Teddy killed a girl in the late 60s and still got re-elected.
I got burned by HTC. The phone I bought was always way behind on Android versions, and never even got an official upgrade to Froyo, although the guys on Cyanogen had Froyo running on it with no problems.
Across the board, Android phone makers have a horrible history of supporting their phones with the latest OS. Apple looks positively angelic in this respect.
I purchased it with the stated promise of the company that it would be upgraded. I actually looked for that official statement before making the decision to buy.
I guess the hope part is hoping that a company would keep its word. But given that its word got me to buy their product, and they broke their word, isn't that fraud?
This could be fun. Small claims court, here I come!
By your numbers they obviously didn't want you to be able to get booze at competitive prices. It's still the government's fault you're paying too much, not the private market.
But, please, at least let North Carolina go private. They have state monopolies run by individual counties, and when I was there the selection sucked. They apparently have a limit on the number of different things that can be stocked. And of course prices are very high, acting as a sin tax to fund the counties. So, even if the price doesn't go down during privatization because the government laid extra taxes, at least private retailers would stock what the customers want, instead of what bureaucrats feel like stocking.
And there's no other option there. It is a felony to mail order booze, and even if you go to another state and bring some back, there's a very low limit.
He was a LIBERAL DEMOCRATIC senator from Connecticut for 30 years. He is a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
He was also buddy-buddy with the big bankers, taking loads of their money, in the years leading up to the recent crash while he was Chair of the Senate Banking Committee.
He flat-out lied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in no danger in order to avoid them being more heavily regulated, all the while taking money from them. He pushed through legislation favorable to Countrywide Financial while accepting favorable loan terms from them as part of a "VIP" program. He even got Clinton to pardon a big-shot bank executive convicted of insider trading, and in return he got a sweat deal on some property through a friend of the felon.
And to top it off, this liberal Democrat who gets paid $1.5 million a year to lobby for the MAFIAA SWORE he would never take the revolving door to being a lobbyist.
All this, and you're talking about conservatives?
No, a full-size USB port is a feature a small number of people want on a thin tablet. The iPad has USB functionality, but built into a slimmer multi-function port.
Yes, I know, they're all deficient. All tablets should come with all the ports anyone could possibly need so that nobody has to carry a huge adapter around with him.
Because it's not a deficiency. It's a feature that you and a small number of other people want, a feature that if implemented would compromise the size and design of the hardware (sorry, a full size USB port just isn't fitting on the iPad or other slim tablets).
I guess congratulations are in order?
For you, fine, but that doesn't necessarily make it less useful for anyone else. Most cars today come with a cup holder whether people need it or not. A while back I bought a car without a cup holder. I didn't care. It was not a requirement for me.
Good, let's throw MIDI in. And VGA too, that's still everywhere. While we're at it, we need a full-size DVI port, an HDMI port and RCA and component cable jacks. This tablet's going to be huge by the time we're done.
Or we can put one slim multi-function port on the bottom, and you can buy a dongle for whatever kind of specific connection YOU, but not everybody, want to make.
Blacks voted for Obama over 95%, some of them famously stating they voted for him only because he is black.
Also, black voter turnout was higher than usual, setting records in many categories, just because he's black. Black turnout took its biggest jump in decades. Meanwhile, white voter turnout in 2008 was actually lower, taking its biggest decline in decades. Some whites may have been making racist statements about Obama, but fewer of them were voting.
Look at hard numbers, not what comes up in Google. It catches the word "nigger" in relation to Obama as being a racist against him? Samuel L. Jackson recently used that word quite a bit when talking about the fact that he voted for Obama only because Obama is black.
USB is not a ubiquitous need for a tablet. Sure, some people may need it for certain situations, but for the most part it is not necessary for a tablet. I know many iPad owners, and not one of them has felt the need to buy the USB/flash adapter. Apple also tends to go with the concept of one storage source on iDevices, contrary to the confusion and trouble that Android provides with balancing your data between internal storage and SD cards (oh crap, I installed that app on the OTHER SD card).
Apple tends to not use or to ditch things that are unnecessary for most or on their way out (floppies, optical drives in notebooks, legacy serial ports, VGA, etc.), and the industry tends to follow. If you need one of these things that will not be used by 90+% of users, get an adapter. Apple doesn't need to make the hardware larger, heavier and more complex to suit the small minority.