We have yet to find any. It's pretty rare right here in the solar system. You have to have a planet that has a stable orbit in just the right spot around its star, with the right chemical composition, and quite possibly may need something to cause tidal forces to mix the chemicals.
ok - we have 3 in the habitable zone, 1 of which holds life, in a single star system. We are 1 star out of at least 100B (Billion) in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and we can safely say that there are at least 100B galaxies out there, each with an average of 100B stars, more or less. So, stating that life is rare from a single star system with a total of 3 planets, 2 of which we have barely touched and a third we haven't even fully explored and are continuously finding new forms of life on just boggles the mind. It's like looking at one cell on your little toe and claiming there's no intelligence in the universe.
Evolution is a well tested theory that has so far held up exceptionally well, but evolution doesn't explain life's beginnings. If you know of any decent theories that explain its creation, I'd like to read about them.
Evolution explains the transitions/mutations of lifeforms over time, not the genesis of it.
I find it odd that so many believe without doubt that there is extraterrestrial life despite no indication that there is (note, I think there there probably is, considering how many planets there must be, but accept that this rock may possibly be the only one alive), yet are just as certain that God doesn't exist, despite witnesses to the contrary.
I find it odd that you believe that somehow you're special and that the magic mushroom exists, despite 0 evidence supporting either concept.
Of course you can - but someone has to provide them, meaning someone has to have compensation, and the only ones that have been successful are these "free" services so far that do invade your privacy so their creators can make money.
Only if you use it and fail to configure it. In general, you shouldn't use these "free" services unless you know what you're giving up. If you think that's too complicated for you to handle, then you've probably already answered whether you should be using the service in the first place.
There's at least 2K, 4K, 8K and 10K cameras out there - all higher resolution than what we know as HD. Very useful if you need to crop film and retain HD capabilities, for example.
I know that satellite uses H.264, or was, a while ago. AT&T Uverse and FIOS both use MP4 I'm pretty sure. Cable - no idea - their picture quality sucked so badly I dropped them years ago and every time I see them again, even on small screens, I cringe at the artifacts. I'd have to check my OTA feeds, but I do recall at least a few being MPEG2 last time around, and one was broadcasting in 720p while another multiplexed 5 channels and compressed their main HD channel severely as a result, giving distinct visible artifacts in the stream.
So I don't think your blanket statement holds water:)
10G isn't all that expensive, but it's not commodity by any means at this time. The prices are in the range of 100Mbps ethernet gear in the earlier part of the 90s, but honestly, other than geeks, I don't see most people needing it any time within the next 5 years. Note that's just about when 10G should hit upper end commodity prices, and be usable by the upper end of the masses if it maps to past trends.
Yeah, a click on TFA indicates this was streaming 8K video, which is roughly 16 times the resolution of 1080 (whether that's 1080i or 1080P is ambiguous).
The real story is that there's now a significantly large 10G internet connection. A side note - they're streaming 16X HD content, which is generally about 8GB for 2 hours compressed, or 4GB per hour, which is about (consults anachronistic pocket calculator) 9 Mbps for the HD stream or roughly 144Mbps for 16X that assuming the same compression efficiency and/or loss acceptance.
Not sure why 10G was needed, other than as a POC for the technology. 1Gbps should have been plenty.
Do what I do - default ringtone - silence. Default vibration - off. Add in your real known contacts, group them, and give them a ringtone - more than one if you prefer. Now remain blissfully uninterrupted by all those "unknowns" etc. They'll leave voicemail if they're important and not in your contact list. That takes care of being bothered by robo-call asshats and the like.
Next, delete your FB, Twitter, and other crap social accounts. Disconnect. You don't need them, and won't miss them, especially if your friends aren't tied to them either. Drop other apps that use any of these services, although since you're no longer connected, your targeted ads will quickly become rather random. (It's best to uninstall, clean, and reinstall such apps, as they do tend to have ID data in them, and FB especially is notorious for never deleting anything. You might want to even wipe the phone and start over)
After all this, you'll still be identifiable, but at least you won't be linked to accounts in other data mining company services. With the VPN option, you can even reduce some of this additional tracking, but, unless you root your phone and do a custom install, you'll never really be sure of exactly what's being kept.
This. I've seen way too many people sit at work for 12 hours but only work for 6. I'd much rather work a solid 8 hours then go home, relax, rest up, and do it again the next day.
I only wish some (err...many) managers would see the light on this, instead of merely "visually punching the clock" on their employees as to whether they were there before said manager got to work, and that they were there after they left. This happens often in my experience, and I tend not to work for those managers long, as they have absolutely no appreciation for productivity, only perceived face time.
Apparently not a shill - you're going to be downmodded troll for daring to speak ill of MS's new product and slamming their inept moron of a CEO in the process by some true shill. The truth hurts. The only reason to buy Win8 anything is because it's not Apple or Google. That's like buying a Yugo because it's not Japanese or German.
I'm not sure I agree with the future path of Windows, because should they choose that route, apparently they're going to be following an ever smaller market, and being a public company and all, that's not acceptable. They'll probably fire Ballmer and get some "new" blood in there, but at this point they've probably pissed off any dev worth working with, who have all jumped ship, so how are they going to pull a rabbit out of the hat this time around? Not that it cannot be done, but so far they've shown exactly 0 capability of doing so, or even the vision to believe something like that is possible.
The fault is clearly with the perpetrator. Hopefully ANonymous got the right one, or they'll be guilty of the same thing that he's accused of as his life is probably close to over at the moment.
First, Win 8 is already a massive failure - the negative mindshare alone is virtually impossible to overcome if it was a good product, and even Windows fans don't think much of it. When your biggest (paid for) stumpers even coach all positive statements with "but....", I think you can safely say that your product will fail. Vista will look like a roaring success next to Win8. It also won't go anywhere with tablets or phones. Why? First - the price of the hardware will be close to Apple's. Pretty much any sane person being given a choice between an Apple product and an MS Win8 product will choose the Apple product. There's no reason to choose MS at all, no apps, no price cut, no service, etc.
Speaking of apps, MS completely screwed up there. They created a walled garden that makes Apple's look wide open, with a row of pebbles posing as a wall. MS should have looked to Google on this one, Android wouldn't be where it is today had Google tightened down Android in the same way. Developers and manufacturers would have turned away en masse from such a system. Again, by comparison, Google is wide open, and Apple is much less restrictive. Not enticing at all.
As for Ballmer - he doesn't care, he's doing this for kicks. He long ago cashed out enough stock that he probably can't run out of money unless he literally gives it away. After a while, you just can't buy enough stuff to use up the rest of your hoard unless you just go flat-out stupid. I doubt he'll do anything good with it, not even pretend good like Gates.
+ Managed Security Monitoring: Monitoring a firewall for suspicious traffic requires a lot of speciality knowledge and bespoke analysis scripts to filter out innocuous traffic and leave the suspicious stuff to human experts for investigation. This specialty function is probably best done by specialized companies who do that as their core business. Of course, the firewall must be a completely separate, independent device sitting between the potential targets of an attack and the general internet. A Raspberry PI-class of computer could probably do the job for home users.
Actually, your firewall and IDS should be separate, ideally, and the IDS is on a special port on a switch configured to receive all traffic on your LAN. That way it can monitor all traffic for unusual activity. HTTP traffic to a web server - no problem. HTTP traffic to an FTP server from an internal workstation? Red Flag.
The Sidekick was a great device when it came out. What happened to Palm?
The retina display may barely be an innovation in manufacturing, it's merely evolutionary in terms of displays, as it's merely higher density existing tech cells. Apple using one in a phone might also be evolutionary. Being able to integrate all of the features and capabilities into a seamless whole? That pretty much has to be seen as innovation since so many others have failed at doing so. Once its done, however, it's easy to copy - witness Samsung.
Regarding the iPad design: there have been concepts of a small handheld notebook like video device since the 50s. Just because someone "wishes" it, or writes of it in a book or has it in a movie or show does not make it real. Or will you argue that should a warp drive ever be invented, that's it's merely a copy of a concept in Star Trek?
As for citing the iPhone and iPad as innovative designs for 2007 and 2010 respectively, just exactly how fast must a company come out with another new product to be considered to continue innovating? After all, it's only been a little over 2 years. (Hint: most companies would sell off their entire families to have a product half as innovative and successful as either one of these 2 products, or the iPod or iPod touch before them)
You're correct - this years announcements were a disappointment to the mac folks. Yes, I expected a reduction in the line, possibly more to come. If you think about it, a Mac Pro is an anachronism when you can plop down 4 minis in a tower and use them as a grid with far more bandwidth than a mac pro can deliver for less money. But, I'm sure when this comes about you'll call it evolutionary, since gee - grid computing is so 1960s, completely ignoring that this is grid computing in a $600 package that uses less than 40w and is a pluggable system with virtually no management overhead.
That last one is a guess, but based on what I'm seeing, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple head that way - after all, FCPX is already 80% of the way there. Thunderbolt provides the last necessary piece. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
Yep, you're right - looking at the various wonderful Lilienthal brothers "planes" one can see that obviously the only thing missing was an engine. </sarcasm>
I'm not sure MS gets a penny out of the iPad other than from it's 150M arm-twisted investment. I know that Apple has various patents on the touch features, from technical to design to look and feel.
But - I'm not arguing the patent systems (in)validity here.
It's a nice history. I see lots of attempts at tablet PCs, including Apple's own Newton. After all, since the iPad is "the" tablet today, owns the lion's share of the tablet market due to Apple's innovative design, and the fact that Apple was roundly criticized on the announcement of the iPad, including lots of jokes, some were even funny, but you don't hear any of those any more. Oh, what tablet did the iPad replace again?
So, I repeat, who did they copy? Or are you going to say that the Wright brothers merely copied other (failed) attempts at creating a flying machine?
The problem is, Apple isn't innovating any more, and their patents aren't for actual products, they're for concepts that should be considered obvious by anybody in the industry.
Yep, everyone went with touch screens instead of keypads prior to the iPhone. Everyone had a nice "big" at that time screen. Yep, everyone. I mean, let's not be revisionist, the iPhone hit the streets 5 years ago. Patents are good for 20 years. Anyone copying any tech patented in the iPhone should be sued, it's Apple's fiduciary responsibility, if nothing less. BTW, where are the retina screens for anyone else, other than Samsung, who also happens to manufacture the screens for Apple?
All they have left to them are incremental updates for existing products, and anybody with their ear to the ground in technology can predict these updates before they announce them... was *anybody* surprised that the big upgrade for the iPhone 5 was a higher resolution screen and LTE radio, or that the iPad 3 was a higher resolution screen and more processing power?
Nope, nor the new CPU in the iPhone that doubles the processing power, exceeding the performance of all other current phones on the market by 30%? A CPU designed by Apple? Nope, they're certainly not innovating.
And if you're able to predict what's next, and you happen to be a company that's competing against them, then it's pretty easy to come up with the next version before they do, and Apple ends up caught with their pants down, as has been done with the market for 7" tablets. The end result? Apple's trying to sue everybody to prevent them from competing, because, as a company, they stopped really innovating years ago.
Yep, you've certainly made your valid point there - Apparently Apple has 0 innovation in them over the past 5 years (when was the iPad released again and who did they copy?)
It's been a long while since anybody came up with something that was really *new* that wasn't just a more efficient way to do what we were already doing.
Do you have the slightest clue what innovation is, and what patents are about?
Even the main drivers for the smartphone market, which Apple claims to have invented (we'll pretend Palm, Sony, and Blackberry didn't already have smartphones), had been done 10 years before the iPhone it the market... downloadable apps by Palm, and mobile e-mail/calendar by Ericcson (digital PCS).
For all intents and purposes, Apple did invent the smartphone market as it stand today. Otherwise, wouldn't Blackberry, Sony, and Palm all own the market?
Like the other guy, I could grab my detailed records, but that would involved digging. Needless to say - 2 vehicles, even when brand new, $1800/year full coverage. Cost of vehicles new - roughly $80K. 2 drivers (yes yes, married/. poster - gasp!).
The math is simple, even 10 years of full coverage (if it didn't go down with the value of the cars, and it did) that would work out to $18K, which is still a fraction of their combined value today, and that is not considering that collision and comprehensive is a small fraction of that total, less than 25% for both, IIRC. I looked at dropping collision last year, under the misconception that collision was "expensive", looked at its savings vs the cost of the vehicles and basically went "why bother"? I will note I don't have an exact number handy, it could be 18%, it could be 25%, or even 28%, if you bare boned your insurance coverage. For the small incremental savings vs potential losses, it falls into the "who cares" pile for me.
Buying a car that you can replace, thus saving the value of full coverage may work for you. In my case, full coverage is less than 20% of my insurance bill, and the cars are worth far more than 10 years of insurance payments (the full payments, not just the 20% full coverage addition). Then again, I haven't filed a claim in at least 10 years with my insurance, although the 3 that hit me were filed against, naturally, one for over 15K when everything was considered. Insurance is that thing you hope you never use, but are darn glad is there when you need it.
So that covers things you can replace. Health insurance is different. Do you let someone die? If not, someone has to pay. The current system answer "no" to the first question, and shoves the payment onto the remaining insured and some to the taxpayers, which is radically unfair. Since the answer isn't going to change, Ron Paul not withstanding, the only way to make it fair is to have everyone pay into the pot, ie, universal coverage.
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We have yet to find any. It's pretty rare right here in the solar system. You have to have a planet that has a stable orbit in just the right spot around its star, with the right chemical composition, and quite possibly may need something to cause tidal forces to mix the chemicals.
ok - we have 3 in the habitable zone, 1 of which holds life, in a single star system. We are 1 star out of at least 100B (Billion) in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and we can safely say that there are at least 100B galaxies out there, each with an average of 100B stars, more or less. So, stating that life is rare from a single star system with a total of 3 planets, 2 of which we have barely touched and a third we haven't even fully explored and are continuously finding new forms of life on just boggles the mind. It's like looking at one cell on your little toe and claiming there's no intelligence in the universe.
Evolution is a well tested theory that has so far held up exceptionally well, but evolution doesn't explain life's beginnings. If you know of any decent theories that explain its creation, I'd like to read about them.
Evolution explains the transitions/mutations of lifeforms over time, not the genesis of it.
I find it odd that so many believe without doubt that there is extraterrestrial life despite no indication that there is (note, I think there there probably is, considering how many planets there must be, but accept that this rock may possibly be the only one alive), yet are just as certain that God doesn't exist, despite witnesses to the contrary.
I find it odd that you believe that somehow you're special and that the magic mushroom exists, despite 0 evidence supporting either concept.
Of course you can - but someone has to provide them, meaning someone has to have compensation, and the only ones that have been successful are these "free" services so far that do invade your privacy so their creators can make money.
Only if you use it and fail to configure it. In general, you shouldn't use these "free" services unless you know what you're giving up. If you think that's too complicated for you to handle, then you've probably already answered whether you should be using the service in the first place.
There's at least 2K, 4K, 8K and 10K cameras out there - all higher resolution than what we know as HD. Very useful if you need to crop film and retain HD capabilities, for example.
I know that satellite uses H.264, or was, a while ago. AT&T Uverse and FIOS both use MP4 I'm pretty sure. Cable - no idea - their picture quality sucked so badly I dropped them years ago and every time I see them again, even on small screens, I cringe at the artifacts. I'd have to check my OTA feeds, but I do recall at least a few being MPEG2 last time around, and one was broadcasting in 720p while another multiplexed 5 channels and compressed their main HD channel severely as a result, giving distinct visible artifacts in the stream.
So I don't think your blanket statement holds water :)
10G isn't all that expensive, but it's not commodity by any means at this time. The prices are in the range of 100Mbps ethernet gear in the earlier part of the 90s, but honestly, other than geeks, I don't see most people needing it any time within the next 5 years. Note that's just about when 10G should hit upper end commodity prices, and be usable by the upper end of the masses if it maps to past trends.
Yeah, a click on TFA indicates this was streaming 8K video, which is roughly 16 times the resolution of 1080 (whether that's 1080i or 1080P is ambiguous).
The real story is that there's now a significantly large 10G internet connection. A side note - they're streaming 16X HD content, which is generally about 8GB for 2 hours compressed, or 4GB per hour, which is about (consults anachronistic pocket calculator) 9 Mbps for the HD stream or roughly 144Mbps for 16X that assuming the same compression efficiency and/or loss acceptance.
Not sure why 10G was needed, other than as a POC for the technology. 1Gbps should have been plenty.
Do what I do - default ringtone - silence. Default vibration - off. Add in your real known contacts, group them, and give them a ringtone - more than one if you prefer. Now remain blissfully uninterrupted by all those "unknowns" etc. They'll leave voicemail if they're important and not in your contact list. That takes care of being bothered by robo-call asshats and the like.
Next, delete your FB, Twitter, and other crap social accounts. Disconnect. You don't need them, and won't miss them, especially if your friends aren't tied to them either. Drop other apps that use any of these services, although since you're no longer connected, your targeted ads will quickly become rather random. (It's best to uninstall, clean, and reinstall such apps, as they do tend to have ID data in them, and FB especially is notorious for never deleting anything. You might want to even wipe the phone and start over)
After all this, you'll still be identifiable, but at least you won't be linked to accounts in other data mining company services. With the VPN option, you can even reduce some of this additional tracking, but, unless you root your phone and do a custom install, you'll never really be sure of exactly what's being kept.
You actually pay attention the to the tags?
or have no idea how to manage their time.
This. I've seen way too many people sit at work for 12 hours but only work for 6. I'd much rather work a solid 8 hours then go home, relax, rest up, and do it again the next day.
I only wish some (err...many) managers would see the light on this, instead of merely "visually punching the clock" on their employees as to whether they were there before said manager got to work, and that they were there after they left. This happens often in my experience, and I tend not to work for those managers long, as they have absolutely no appreciation for productivity, only perceived face time.
Parent was modded informative? Really?
Ummm, yes?
Apparently not a shill - you're going to be downmodded troll for daring to speak ill of MS's new product and slamming their inept moron of a CEO in the process by some true shill. The truth hurts. The only reason to buy Win8 anything is because it's not Apple or Google. That's like buying a Yugo because it's not Japanese or German.
I'm not sure I agree with the future path of Windows, because should they choose that route, apparently they're going to be following an ever smaller market, and being a public company and all, that's not acceptable. They'll probably fire Ballmer and get some "new" blood in there, but at this point they've probably pissed off any dev worth working with, who have all jumped ship, so how are they going to pull a rabbit out of the hat this time around? Not that it cannot be done, but so far they've shown exactly 0 capability of doing so, or even the vision to believe something like that is possible.
The fault is clearly with the perpetrator. Hopefully ANonymous got the right one, or they'll be guilty of the same thing that he's accused of as his life is probably close to over at the moment.
First, Win 8 is already a massive failure - the negative mindshare alone is virtually impossible to overcome if it was a good product, and even Windows fans don't think much of it. When your biggest (paid for) stumpers even coach all positive statements with "but....", I think you can safely say that your product will fail. Vista will look like a roaring success next to Win8. It also won't go anywhere with tablets or phones. Why? First - the price of the hardware will be close to Apple's. Pretty much any sane person being given a choice between an Apple product and an MS Win8 product will choose the Apple product. There's no reason to choose MS at all, no apps, no price cut, no service, etc. Speaking of apps, MS completely screwed up there. They created a walled garden that makes Apple's look wide open, with a row of pebbles posing as a wall. MS should have looked to Google on this one, Android wouldn't be where it is today had Google tightened down Android in the same way. Developers and manufacturers would have turned away en masse from such a system. Again, by comparison, Google is wide open, and Apple is much less restrictive. Not enticing at all. As for Ballmer - he doesn't care, he's doing this for kicks. He long ago cashed out enough stock that he probably can't run out of money unless he literally gives it away. After a while, you just can't buy enough stuff to use up the rest of your hoard unless you just go flat-out stupid. I doubt he'll do anything good with it, not even pretend good like Gates.
+ Managed Security Monitoring: Monitoring a firewall for suspicious traffic requires a lot of speciality knowledge and bespoke analysis scripts to filter out innocuous traffic and leave the suspicious stuff to human experts for investigation. This specialty function is probably best done by specialized companies who do that as their core business. Of course, the firewall must be a completely separate, independent device sitting between the potential targets of an attack and the general internet. A Raspberry PI-class of computer could probably do the job for home users.
Actually, your firewall and IDS should be separate, ideally, and the IDS is on a special port on a switch configured to receive all traffic on your LAN. That way it can monitor all traffic for unusual activity. HTTP traffic to a web server - no problem. HTTP traffic to an FTP server from an internal workstation? Red Flag.
I'd rather see "die....Facebook". sigh.....
You wanted to argue? Yet you didn't.
The Sidekick was a great device when it came out. What happened to Palm?
The retina display may barely be an innovation in manufacturing, it's merely evolutionary in terms of displays, as it's merely higher density existing tech cells. Apple using one in a phone might also be evolutionary. Being able to integrate all of the features and capabilities into a seamless whole? That pretty much has to be seen as innovation since so many others have failed at doing so. Once its done, however, it's easy to copy - witness Samsung.
Regarding the iPad design: there have been concepts of a small handheld notebook like video device since the 50s. Just because someone "wishes" it, or writes of it in a book or has it in a movie or show does not make it real. Or will you argue that should a warp drive ever be invented, that's it's merely a copy of a concept in Star Trek?
As for citing the iPhone and iPad as innovative designs for 2007 and 2010 respectively, just exactly how fast must a company come out with another new product to be considered to continue innovating? After all, it's only been a little over 2 years. (Hint: most companies would sell off their entire families to have a product half as innovative and successful as either one of these 2 products, or the iPod or iPod touch before them)
You're correct - this years announcements were a disappointment to the mac folks. Yes, I expected a reduction in the line, possibly more to come. If you think about it, a Mac Pro is an anachronism when you can plop down 4 minis in a tower and use them as a grid with far more bandwidth than a mac pro can deliver for less money. But, I'm sure when this comes about you'll call it evolutionary, since gee - grid computing is so 1960s, completely ignoring that this is grid computing in a $600 package that uses less than 40w and is a pluggable system with virtually no management overhead.
That last one is a guess, but based on what I'm seeing, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple head that way - after all, FCPX is already 80% of the way there. Thunderbolt provides the last necessary piece. It wouldn't surprise me at all.
Yep, you're right - looking at the various wonderful Lilienthal brothers "planes" one can see that obviously the only thing missing was an engine. </sarcasm>
You're an idiot - prior companies did market and patent their ideas, but their execution ranged from terrible to catastrophic.
I'm not sure MS gets a penny out of the iPad other than from it's 150M arm-twisted investment. I know that Apple has various patents on the touch features, from technical to design to look and feel.
But - I'm not arguing the patent systems (in)validity here.
It's a nice history. I see lots of attempts at tablet PCs, including Apple's own Newton. After all, since the iPad is "the" tablet today, owns the lion's share of the tablet market due to Apple's innovative design, and the fact that Apple was roundly criticized on the announcement of the iPad, including lots of jokes, some were even funny, but you don't hear any of those any more. Oh, what tablet did the iPad replace again?
So, I repeat, who did they copy? Or are you going to say that the Wright brothers merely copied other (failed) attempts at creating a flying machine?
I pay about $900/year for full coverage of a $40K new car near a major metro area. You're getting ripped off.
The problem is, Apple isn't innovating any more, and their patents aren't for actual products, they're for concepts that should be considered obvious by anybody in the industry.
Yep, everyone went with touch screens instead of keypads prior to the iPhone. Everyone had a nice "big" at that time screen. Yep, everyone. I mean, let's not be revisionist, the iPhone hit the streets 5 years ago. Patents are good for 20 years. Anyone copying any tech patented in the iPhone should be sued, it's Apple's fiduciary responsibility, if nothing less. BTW, where are the retina screens for anyone else, other than Samsung, who also happens to manufacture the screens for Apple?
All they have left to them are incremental updates for existing products, and anybody with their ear to the ground in technology can predict these updates before they announce them... was *anybody* surprised that the big upgrade for the iPhone 5 was a higher resolution screen and LTE radio, or that the iPad 3 was a higher resolution screen and more processing power?
Nope, nor the new CPU in the iPhone that doubles the processing power, exceeding the performance of all other current phones on the market by 30%? A CPU designed by Apple? Nope, they're certainly not innovating.
And if you're able to predict what's next, and you happen to be a company that's competing against them, then it's pretty easy to come up with the next version before they do, and Apple ends up caught with their pants down, as has been done with the market for 7" tablets. The end result? Apple's trying to sue everybody to prevent them from competing, because, as a company, they stopped really innovating years ago.
Yep, you've certainly made your valid point there - Apparently Apple has 0 innovation in them over the past 5 years (when was the iPad released again and who did they copy?)
It's been a long while since anybody came up with something that was really *new* that wasn't just a more efficient way to do what we were already doing.
Do you have the slightest clue what innovation is, and what patents are about?
Even the main drivers for the smartphone market, which Apple claims to have invented (we'll pretend Palm, Sony, and Blackberry didn't already have smartphones), had been done 10 years before the iPhone it the market... downloadable apps by Palm, and mobile e-mail/calendar by Ericcson (digital PCS).
For all intents and purposes, Apple did invent the smartphone market as it stand today. Otherwise, wouldn't Blackberry, Sony, and Palm all own the market?
Like the other guy, I could grab my detailed records, but that would involved digging. Needless to say - 2 vehicles, even when brand new, $1800/year full coverage. Cost of vehicles new - roughly $80K. 2 drivers (yes yes, married /. poster - gasp!).
The math is simple, even 10 years of full coverage (if it didn't go down with the value of the cars, and it did) that would work out to $18K, which is still a fraction of their combined value today, and that is not considering that collision and comprehensive is a small fraction of that total, less than 25% for both, IIRC. I looked at dropping collision last year, under the misconception that collision was "expensive", looked at its savings vs the cost of the vehicles and basically went "why bother"? I will note I don't have an exact number handy, it could be 18%, it could be 25%, or even 28%, if you bare boned your insurance coverage. For the small incremental savings vs potential losses, it falls into the "who cares" pile for me.
Buying a car that you can replace, thus saving the value of full coverage may work for you. In my case, full coverage is less than 20% of my insurance bill, and the cars are worth far more than 10 years of insurance payments (the full payments, not just the 20% full coverage addition). Then again, I haven't filed a claim in at least 10 years with my insurance, although the 3 that hit me were filed against, naturally, one for over 15K when everything was considered. Insurance is that thing you hope you never use, but are darn glad is there when you need it.
So that covers things you can replace. Health insurance is different. Do you let someone die? If not, someone has to pay. The current system answer "no" to the first question, and shoves the payment onto the remaining insured and some to the taxpayers, which is radically unfair. Since the answer isn't going to change, Ron Paul not withstanding, the only way to make it fair is to have everyone pay into the pot, ie, universal coverage.