For the same reason everyone forks open source projects once the bulk of the work is done. No one wants to deal with fixing all the bugs and doing the hard stuff, they want to play with flashy new things and get all the fame for the new features.

Absolutely true, but in the US at least, corruption exists in any police force of appreciable size such that I would not generally trust any police force in this country. Many police OFFICERS are great people. One of my best friends is a cop, he's a great guy. I still would not trust his department as a whole. FWIW, the largest infractions I've ever committed is downloading a few songs and speeding on occasion. I'm not a criminal in any real sense of the word.

So, the guys at WordPress sell drugs now? Good to know.

You don't?

Obviously you're not a Republican.

...The Vietnam Conflict could have been won, without much doubt. However doing so would have been prohibitively expensive both in cost of lives and financially, as well as requiring an entirely different approach to fighting it. The way it was handled, it had a near 0 chance of success.

Your example would be more pungent with Windows ME as an example. Windows XP, while far from perfect, is not that bad, and certainly shows some hyperbole in your comparison to jail/death.

Teachers unions are pretty effective at what they do. Generally speaking, most 60 year old women are not very threatening, and I've not seen most of their picketers equipped with weapons.

And honestly... the wiring isn't that difficult. An engine is a low-tech thing, with lots of simple sensors/controls.

The real changes will be when everything goes electric. Even then, it's just a big radio control car speed control. It has firmware and it can and will be hacked/modified/upgraded.

It's amazing how many Luddites there are on a tech site, when it comes to cars (not meaning you).

From a GM (or subsidiary) dealership? Beyond that, there are aftermarket tools to work on them already, those didn't randomly stop existing when Saab folded. Due to current US regulations, all of the troubleshooting codes for systems diagnostics are already standard (relatively speaking) and published.

I would much rather work on a modern car than a classic. In fact, my hobby is retrofitting modern components into classic cars, including ECUs. The concepts on this ballot are important because the manufacturers would like to completely lock us out of the ECU, THAT would be an issue. As is, as long as they ECU can be talked to, and we can have basic access to it, it's not particularly difficult to work on a modern car (and they self-diagnose far better than classics).

If you really need to control an engine and don't have access to the original ECU for some reason, replacing it with an aftermarket ECU is not difficult, it just requires (very basic) coding knowledge. The basic guts of an ICE haven't changed much, and even variable valve timing and direct injection are not particularly complex concepts to tune. The fact that the skill set to work on modern engines is different than classic engines doesn't mean that they are worse or harder to work on, it just means you need different skills. This is like people saying that computers suck to work on now that they aren't full of tubes, that's only true if you only know how to work on tubes.

Lots. Most codes are required to be published to allow following of standards, it's just a matter of knowing where to find them (a critical skill if you wish to run a company who makes tools for this).

My eBay scanner + Torque app on my phone can read some of the BCM and other system codes, and it's a 5 dollar app on Android. Snap-On and Matco tools can do much, much more and are not prohibitively expensive if you are speaking from the shop standpoint vs. home hobbyist. It's worth noting that most things utilize CANbus now also.

You've added a great deal of drama to the subject without reason. The tools that allow basic changes and in-depth diagnostics are available from major automotive tool manufacturers, it's not some secret underground group. It is also illegal for a manufacturer to void the warranty on the vehicle if they cannot conclusively prove that the modification in fact caused the under-warranty failure. You are free to imagine whatever you wish, but you are incorrect in your understanding of the subject.

Really? A good friend just finished customizing the programming on a 2013 Ford F-150 Ecoboost, and I have modified the software in my 2008 Corvette computer several times (kinda necessary when the engine/computer no longer live in a Corvette).

There is much talk about this every time a new ECU comes out, but it is still (with very few exceptions) not the case yet. Every new ECU promises to be "locked" and unable to be edited, every new ECU is then cracked for modifications directly afterwards.

Not to mention the fact that you can hook up a little bluetooth dongle from eBay (15 dollars) to your Android phone with a 5 dollar app and read all fault codes/statuses from the ECU directly. If anything, modern cars are EASIER to work on that old carb'd stuff. The only downside is that you can't just stare at it and guess, you actually need to learn what to do. Of course, that always should have been the case anyway.

Perhaps on statewide averages. My wife is a Kindergarten teacher and makes 22k a year, with no benefits. That's with a Bachelor's and certifications in 3 separate states as well as multiple subjects. And she's quite good too, her students from last year averaged 2nd-3rd grade reading level at the start of their first grade year.

So move to another school you say? We've tried, no luck for 5 years running getting in anywhere else. Pretty sad that she earns less than 1/3 of my salary with a 4 year degree and multiple certifications when I have no degree and no (current) certifications.

FWIW, we live in a city of 300k people, in Indiana, with a decently stable local economy (as stable economies go in the US right now, anyway).