Well, so there is guaranteed access to free study materials. It doesn't mean that pay-as-you-go study materials won't also be available. I'm having a hard time finding a huge problem with there being free materials availble to everyone, and alternative materials available on the market. If the free materials suck, that is a problem, in that the population that can only afford the free materials is *still* at a disadvantage. But given Kahn's record, I don't see that happening. My daughter just went through SAT's this year, and used two different study guides because the material is presented differently and she connected better with one than the other.

What disadvantaged kids are more in need of is someone to tell them how important the SAT is, and to get them pointed at *any* study materials at all, and encourage them to use it. The conversations that I hear among helicopter parents here in the suburbs where I live now (people pay up to live where I do because of the schools) are light-years removed from the conversations I overheard as a kid, where for a good 1/4-1/3 of my contemporaries, their highest ambition in life was to have a dairy farm that milked more cows than their dad's farm did. My parents, fortunately, emphasized education. But for kids that don't come from that culture, they need to be, quite literally, led to and shown the study materials and benefits thereof.

At some point, why not? Verbal warning #1, verbal warning #2, written warning, written Corrective Action Plan with consequences up to and including termination, and for the *really* slow learners, termination.

At a manager, at some point you start thinking "Am I better off sinking more of my time into this clown, or with an open hiring req?" I've had a couple of occasions where the open hiring req was the more attractive option.

Interesting question. "Computers" as we think of them today, were built using vacuum tube logic at that time. I'm not sure when miniature tubes came into being, but I think they are post-war. Vacuum tubes have reliability problems, dislike vibration, generate a lot of waste heat, and consume huge amounts of power. Not really good choices for a fighter aircraft. In any case, if it were a vacuum tube computer, it would have been an analog computer, no doubt. But, recall that at the time, the term "computer" was used to refer to all different kinds of mechanical computers. Battleship targetting computers, for instance, were marvels of mechanical design and intricate gearworks. Perhaps there was some kind of analog computation done with a gear box.

Oh, yes, that will help. Not. The current generation of hardware will have a driver stack. Effectively meaning that PrimeSense-based projects are dead, because new generation hardware will have a closed stack. PrimeSense in open projects now has no future.

You are exactly correct. In California, all autos with 2 or more occupants (3 in a few places), or motorcycles can use the HOV lane. Zero-tailpipe-emmissions vehicles can get a sticker that gives single occupant access until 2019. There is another sticker with a quota cap (these are about 1/2 gone) for gas/electric vehicles that run on battery for some minimum number of miles before their engine starts. I think alternative fuels vehicles are also eligible for this one. This sticker also expires Jan 1, 2019. Hybrids like the Prius used to get a sticker, too, but no longer. See http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/c...

So, yes, a Tesla gets the HOV sticker, too. But if all you want to do is get to and from work as cheaply and quickly as possible, the Leaf is perfectly adequate. If you want more range, or want to impress your friends, then the Tesla is for you -- if you have the cash.

Actually, here in Sili Valley it is a good place for electric vehicles. I see multiple Leafs and Teslas on the road every day. We have that magic thing called "infrastructure" -- charging stations at shopping centers and employer parking lots are actually relatively plentiful compared to most places. Multiple Nissan and Tesla dealers within a few miles. Then, too, we have climate going for us -- not too cold in the winter, not too hot in the summer -- so you don't have cabin climate control eating into your battery range. Plus, the Leaf's battery pack does not have cooling lines running through it -- Leafs in hot places have had some issues where batteries go to an early grave because of poor temperature management. A Leaf outside of a mild climate is a questionable choice.

I just got back from a couple of days in Minnesota where i did two 200-mile days in a rental car, driving mostly in rural areas, with day-time high temperatures of -2F. A Leaf would have been completely unusable for that trip. A Tesla would have been a risky adventure, assuming I could have strung together enough charging stations, which would have required considerable logistical planning.

I think the "overpriced" ding on the Leaf is valid if you look at the full sticker, but there is a $7500 federal tax credit, and in California a $2500 state tax rebate that brings it down to where it does pencil out as an economy car.

Your comment regarding the Leaf as a student car makes me chuckle -- as a *parent* I kind of like the idea of an 80 mile range in a student car :) :)

The Tesla model S and the Nissan Leaf are two very different cars. We have friends that own both, and have been doing the numbers on getting a Leaf.

The Tesla is a no-compromise luxury car, at a luxury car price. Has good range. Can be your main sedan.

The Leaf is an unapologetic economy car, priced to be a good value (at least in California after various rebates.) It's a commute car -- you don't go on road trips to the mountains with it.

The Leaf can be driven single-occupant in the the high-occupancy-vehicle (commute) lane. My wife figures that could take 45 minutes a day off her commute. So... what is getting 4 hours of your life back every week worth to you?

As I see it, Tesla has nailed down one end of the market, and the Leaf has nailed down the other with something that is *not* just a street-legal golf cart, but a real car. Anybody else that wants to make an electric car either has to wiggle in between, or try to move the goal posts. And IMHO, both the Tesla and the Leaf do a good job of defending their respective goal posts.

"How can users protect themselves from sometimes life endangering software bugs?"

Amish buggies typically don't have software throttle failures. Run-away horses can be an issue.... and actually having to share the road with dipshit drivers who don't understand the number of slow moving vehicles (not just buggies) that there are out in farm country are a real danger.

Seriously, software has bugs. Mecanical throttle linkages can stick, too. Life has risks.

Actually 3 year long shelf-stability tests for consumer package food products are not uncommon. One of my college friends, a food technology major, got a summer internship at Nabisco -- what did they have all these foodie interns do? They got to do sampling on shelf stability tests :) Measure, observe, sniff, and.... taste. I asked her if there was ever anything she couldn't bring herself to taste. Answer: "Yes. I had already written 'Looks like dog vomit' and 'Smells like dog vomit' on the report form. I skipped the taste test on that one.'"

Ummmm.... no, Amazon stores your Amazon acount info. KS doesn't even store whole credit card numbers.

Part 15??? Ha ha ha..... hooooweeeee..... let me catch my breath......

You mean the part of the Code of Federal Regulations to keep unlicensed RF emitters from causing excessive harmful interference? You mean the part of the CFR's where manufacturers self-certify that they pass? You mean the part of the CFR's where even *if* the manufacturer sends out for certification, they only send a few sample "lab queen" units that have been carefully selected? And where they send it to a lab that has zero oversight requirements from the FCC? You mean the same part 15 where getting any enforcement attention *at* *all* from the FCC requires months of lobbying from someone with influenece?

The lax to non-existent enforcement standards around part 15 is why the entire spectrum from DC to daylight is becoming a cesspool. Part 15 is a cruel joke.

Yes, exactly. Practical compilers are always compelled to do extensions beyond the language spec, simply because people need to get work done. So if gcc and clang can agree on inter-operability of extensions, that is a huge help. It also is going to be influential in language spec committees when it comes time to drive some of those functions into the spec. Another area for fruitful collaboration that helps people get work done is to drive torward mix-and-match linking. Neither of the above require sharing code.

The vast majority of graphical pgramming languages do not scale well beyond toy problems. Scratch isn't so much a "connect the blocks" programming system, as a way to drag-and-drop traditional procedural-imperitive programming clauses. That doesn't sound too exciting, but it sure is nice to have an environment where it is simply impossible to make a syntax error. No more grief over semi-colons. I would love a Python code editor with a Scratch-like GUI.

For electronics projects, the schematics are the equivalent of source code. So... is software really open source if I tell you: "Here is a dead-tree print-out of the program in a proprieatry language that you can't compile on your hardware anyway. But you can feel free to read the code, translate it to your favorite language and punch it all in again." That is somewhat like giving me a .pdf of an Eagle schematic -- although I will grant you that a closed-source cripple-ware free-beer version of Eagle is available for small projects. It just seems silly to do that when two open source alternatives that are vastly more powerful than the free-beer closed source tool are available to anybody that can run a package manager without spilling their drink on the keyboard.

3D mechanical CAD is the far worse problem. First off, giving me an .stl file is like giving me a screen-shot of your gui as a .png file -- it hardly helps me work with your design. The other reason it is worse is that parametric modelling is just hard. Maybe not NP-complete hard, but NP-poke-yourself-in-the-eye-with-a-stick hard. I believe there is an openly-specified interchange file format -- which is by necessity so complex it is a huge effort to implement. Also, simply the nature of 3D modelling along the lines of SolidWorks or Inventor leads to gigantic programs.

Wow, somebody that wants to discuss the car, instead of the beta.

You raise an interesting point. The question is, when does that start to matter? Is it a problem if the electric motor is patent encumbered, but there are 7 other drop-in replacements you could use, and 27 adaptable replacements? After all, at some point we all post our Slashdot rants using computers built around a patent encumbered CPU built in a US$3Billion fab, not one built in our basements. (I've built CPU's from buckets of parts... it's a lot of work.)

Personally, I'm more concerned about the CAD files. Are they in a proprietary format? Are there open source CAD tools that can edit them? If not, it really isn't open source. For me, the tool chain matters hugely more than the components designed into the end unit. With the CAD files, you can redesign around parts you like better. I am astounded at the number of nominally open-source hardware projects that used closed-source cripple-ware CAD tools (ie: Eagle). At least two good open source alternatives to Eagle exists for ECAD: gEDA and KiCad. 3D mechanical cad, not so much, although I have hopes for FreeCAD.

I once had this debate on line with Lady Ada, calling Adafruit to task for not using open source ECAD tools. She said, and I quote directly and accurately: "Tools don't matter." Her myopia in this regard astounds me..

The only thing that makes her position defensible is that hardware designs have a much shorter life span than software designs. You can be very successful doing hardware having a short attention span, since the technology moves so fast. In fact, a short attention span probably helps minimize distractions. With software, you must take the long view or die -- how old is errno.h?