Google already censors the web according to US laws and preferences. They're constantly taking down links to child pornography. They take down links to copyrighted content. They're even taking down links to revenge porn now.

While I agree with you in general that Google is... somewhat inconsistent in where it chooses to take it's stands, your first two examples are hardly limited to the US. Pretty much everywhere we'd regard as civilized has laws against child pornography and regarding copyrighted material.

I posted the exact same comment in reply to that actual blog post and predictably, the zealots are going nuts.
It probably makes me a bad person, because I knew that they'd get upset, and I knew that not one mind (there) would be changed. That's pretty much the definition of trolling.

...Frankly, part of the charm of the show was the sort of kludgy, clumsily-produced, backyard-BBC feel to it.
As much as I look forward to the show, it's not likely to succeed.

1) there's no flipping way any American audience will stand around. Holy shit, I've always been amazed at how desperate one would have to be to be on TV to stand in a crowd of people, mostly in the dark, for the hours and hours it would take them to shoot that show.*
* unless you're a hottie, in which case you'd clearly have been escorted to the front of the pack to stand innocuously in the background behind Clarkson & crew as they monologue. Usually, I can't be the only one to notice that?

2) I cannot *conceive* of them being able to do most of the stuff they did on location. The legal climate in the US simply won't allow half the crap they do as too dangerous to the stars, or the other half as too dangerous corporate exposure to outside lawsuits. Notice it's called Top Gear, not Safety Gear. Hell, I doubt US lawyers would allow them to put a star in a reasonably-priced car without wrapping them in bubble wrap, much less make the astonishingly-politically-incorrect comments for which Clarkson is famous.

Because none of these people ever thought of that before.
Ever.

Thank god they had random guy on the internet to save them from themselves, those silly smart people.

Global average maybe be 400ppm, but local concentration where I work, next to a very active runway, is ~600-700ppm.

Mexico City is famously known for its air pollution due to the fact its a very large city (one of largest in world), and located in a bowl with very little wind. this makes it ideal and popular for studying CO2 variance over the day/week/etc from city life. there's several papers on it. And they've found that early morning rush hour is when CO2 in the city peaks at ~435ppm. It then rises again in the evening but much smoother (not a spike) and lasts into the night before going back down to a low of ~375 around 2am. (makes sense, people are active once they get home, AC's are on, etc)

So I'm willing to bet the volcano anecdote someone told you is more than likely false.

"Windows 3.1 was so complicated that even a Boeing propulsion scientist couldn't figure out how to open a word processor."

All Slashdot submissions should be run through a fallacy checker prior to acceptance.

You're right. It's a mythical accusation with no basis in fact.

Reality calling on the phone for you.
It'd like you to return to it.

none of which are prevented by Voter ID laws.

all 31 of them

(I don't care how many sock puppets you have, you wont succeed in burying objective fact)

The statement "Businesses have not grown large enough to co-opt government, not by a long shot." is patently, provably, and ridiculously false in these United States of America.

It's saying Up is Down, or Black is White.
To say it with a straight face is a master feat of mummery.

To put is simply: it is more than mere BS. it is the purest essence of BS, having been distilled and refined several times to increase its potency to nearly 200 proof.

To say otherwise is a blatant denial of reality, which sadly is the typical gist of your comments.
And pointing it out is not trolling or flamebait.

and......

so far......

I'm not hating it. Holy shit - I'm not hating it! I have been able to find my way around, the whack-a-mole Windows 8 system controls are gone, and I haven't had to go to the internet once to find out how to do something, also a W8 SOP.

But I set up and used some programs I expected might have trouble, and did a remote cotrol session across the country training a person, and it all worked. I'll note that there are a few things yet I'm really concerned about, like the update process, and Wi-fi sense.

And lest anyone call me a shill, I'm an old school Microsoft basher.

But I could actually use this damn thing. sheesh, I need a beer now, I'm all shook up....

According to the article, many gas stations will close once 10% of cars are electric, to the point of inconvenience.

Bullshit. I drove a vehicle with one of the most damn inconvenient fuels out there: Propane. In my province, 0.2% of vehicles run on Propane. In my city are alone (population: ~500,000), there's still 4 fueling stations and I'm never more than 15 km away from one.

Apples and oranges - you have [propane] fueling stations because they piggyback on the infrastructure that distributes propane for other uses. Gasoline infrastructure is unique to gasoline powered cars - and when the demand on that infrastructure drops, eventually even still active stations will find it hard to obtain stocks as the infrastructure starts to shut down.

Ridiculous. Yet another "world changing vision" brought to you by an entitled, elitist cadre of the Bay Area who fail to understand that the rest of the world doesn't live like they do.

The opening premise "well, a lot of people adopted smartphones rapidly, so they'll adopt this too" already smells like snake oil: people adopted smartphones because they were BETTER in almost every conceivable way to the previous generation of phones.*
*would they have done so, if one had to charge the phone for 12 minutes for every 1 you talked? I doubt it.

Let me debunk the list of putative "improvements" individually: (I apologize to /. users for the stupid format characters, but /. still doesn't understand pasted quotes/apostrophes.)

"It's more fun to drive, with smooth, transmission-less acceleration. For most of us it is the fastest car we have ever owned."
- Maybe it's more fun to drive. A vanishingly tiny % of people in this world buy cars primarily based on their "fun". Nobody gives a flying hoot about 'transmissionless' acceleration, nor does 'fastest' really matter in a world with speed limits.

"Itâ(TM)s quieter at all times and nearly silent at low speeds."
- I've never once heard someone buying a new car based on how quiet it is. Never. (OK, I *have* heard of motorheads not buying a car because it's not loud enough.) Considering some of the instant off/on tech in the newest cars, they're exactly as quiet as the Magical Tesla while idling, ie silent/off. And aside from older cars which will naturally phase out of the system, the bulk of noise from a highway is tires, not engines.

"It is always âoefullâ every morning one drives it and you never need to go to a gas station."
- Simply, completely, thoroughly wrong. Well, unless you sleep 3 days at a stretch.Further, I don't know about you, but I drive more than once just in the morning.
According to (https://www.cars.com/articles/2013/11/how-quickly-does-the-tesla-model-s-battery-charge/) the nominal charge for a non-special installation (ie a normal outlet) is FIVE MILES PER HOUR OF CHARGE. That's ridiculous - 60 hours to "fill the tank" to the full range, or (roughly) needing to charge 5x the driving duration.
The average commute in the US is 25 minutes. Assuming highway speeds, that's 25 miles. That means to stay 'level' in terms of range, the car will need to charge 5 hours for each leg of the commute. Go to visit a friend in a city 250 miles away? Sorry, we can't go to a movie, my car needs to charge *four hours* for us to get to the cinema and back.

"It has a user interface - including, notably, its navigation system - as superior to that of other cars as the iPhone was to earlier phones."
- I can't really refute iphone-zealotry, that's religion, not fact. It probably does have a better UI than most other firms, as they really made the most of the newest touch-screens and systems (and had no aesthetic legacy to maintain), but this is likely to be adopted relatively soon by other automakers. Nothing particularly special here, except indeed being a little ahead of the likely curve.

"It is connected to the Internet."
Christ. You know that you should really be paying attention to the road, right? 4g works well enough for map updates, which is really all the driver should care about. And personally I find the modern paradigm of everyone sitting in the car watching their own movies, playing their own games, reading their own narcissistic social media addiction reprehensible. We already suffer from an atomized society generally, you're saying it's laudable to encourage this? I have an alternative entertainment that is perfect for trips in the car with your kids or friends: "conversation".

"It continuously gets better with automatic updates and software improvements."
The Tesla is comparable to a fixed-hardware console. Ever bricked your Xbox360? In any case, electronic systems in petro-cars also get better with updates and software. Nothing new there at all.

"Itâ(TM)s more roomy and has a trunk in the front (the âoefrunkâ) AND a spacious back."
Now you're just trying to be silly. Who gives a crap where the trunk is? It has ample storage space, indeed. But then again, so does a minivan. By that logic, minivan sales should be skyrocketing?

"It comes with an app that allows you to manage the car from your phone.
It allows you to drive in the carpool lane and to sign up for a cheaper energy usage plan at home (obviously these incentives wonâ(TM)t last, but they will help get us to the tipping point described below)."
I tend to prefer sitting IN my car when 'managing' it, so the convenience of a smartphone app is moot (how secure is that, by the way?).

Setting all that aside, the Model S is $70,000. The current US new vehicle average purchase price (and let's remember that the US is pretty much the wealthiest country on the planet, ever) is $31k. As Car and Driver noted: "Logging 630 miles and conducting performance tests in this 70D required 14 plug connections versus three or four stops at the pump for the most fuel-thirsty luxury sedan driven the same distance. In exchange for the loss of convenience, you do reap substantial savings in operating costs. We spent less than $30 for the Teslaâ(TM)s electricity versus the $100 in premium gasoline a conventional luxury sedan would have consumed driving 630 miles."
FOURTEEN fill-up stops (they politely didn't mention how long those took) and an average upcharge of $40,000 ....to save $70? Woo.

Not to mention ongoing and - as far as I can see - unanswered concerns about performance, longevity, and resale PARTICULARLY in climates less benign than Palo Alto...ie everywhere. (I LOL'd at Tesla blogs talking about the bitter cold of below-freezing temps. I live in MN where winters routinely hit -40F. Ever try to turn on a flashlight left outside at that temp? Further, Car & Driver noted some troubling cooldown-demand in relatively mild warm conditions while driving aggressively as well.)

The Teslas service such a tiny, boutique market (you know, the 1%), it's hard to understand these bigger-picture items that will come to the fore when the market for them scales up to real numbers. (Tesla's monthly sales are in the 3k units range; real car sales are in the 600k (and light trucks/suvs, etc are around 800k). Tesla might as well be hand-building them for as fast as they're selling.

To suggest from this Pollyanna view that somehow electric cars are going to suddenly take off? Nah, it smells more like someone bought some Tesla stock recently and is hoping to generate enough buzz to unload it without taking a bath.

On it's own merits? It's a decent car, certainly, if you live in a benign climate and idle enough that you can live 'around' its charging-time demands. But no, I don't see consumers DEMANDING this at all.