I assume that you're comment is limited to just cars, not trucks.

I just bought a Silverado 1500, and it was a fantastic purchase, and easily the best option out there. Compared spec to spec with Toyota or others? For the price, Silverado was so far ahead it wasn't even a competition. The closest 2nd choice was the F-150, but I've owned one of those before and prefer the Chevy.

I don't know anything about the cars, but the trucks are amazing.

I'm one of the few who actually owned one of these, so I'll share the good and bad points from my experience. Please note, this is in regards to the SUR40 manufactured by Samsung, Microsoft's Surface SDK is broadly applicable to a wide range of touch devices. It's based on WPF, so if you like .Net and WPF you'll be right at home.

First, the good:
- The SDK is decent, and well thought out. It's designed in classic OOP fashion, so folks who are familiar with WPF and .Net will feel right at home. The touch and gesture interfaces are straight forward. For folks who prefer ECMA Script/functional style coding, the SDK might be frustrating. I ended up using Flex for the UI because the development time in WPF was just taking too long. I also tried HTML5 but multitouch just isn't there yet for desktop browsers. The only one who's doing it is Mozilla, and the W3C spec isn't nearly complete, so Mozilla has their own implementation, but it's already deprecated. Flash player has excellent multitouch support, so I went with that.
- Pixel Sense. The way that the SUR40 recognizes input is unique in the market. Instead of one of the standard implementations like SAW, IR, Projective Capacitance, Camera, etc... the SUR40 uses what they sub "Pixel Sense" technology. Essentially this is a distributed grid of tiny IR cameras. The resolution is amazing, you can actually use this thing as a scanner by placing a piece of paper on it and capturing the raw image. Of course, with OCR, this opens up all sorts of interesting applications.
- Solidly built. The whole unit was solid and well presented. It looks very nice and would be appropriate in any sort of showroom setting.
- Price. While it seems expensive (and is!) it is actually very fairly priced in the market. Other competing offerings are significantly more expensive and have fewer capabilities. This is not a consumer device, this is a business device, and competes well with similar offerings from other companies for example: these are typical. Unless you're going to develop your own hardware platform with integrated CPU (which I ended up doing), the price is actually not bad.

The bad:
- Lighting. I can't stress this point enough. If you're not running this thing in a dark cave, it won't work. Not "decreased performance" like the marketing material says, it simply will not function. Even in a room with curtains closed and blinds drawn, this unit was completely non-functional during the day. This ruled it out as an option for my application, but if you're going to be in very tightly controlled lighting environments, then this still might be a decent option for you.
- Integrated computer. The specs on the integrated computer are frankly embarrassing for Samsung and Microsoft. The unit is terribly underpowered. For a table that's designed to be graphics heavy, this is a severe limitation. A $500 mini-ITX Core i5 based solution (which I ended up going with) is about 3-4 times faster and more powerful than the crappy CPU in this thing, and as far as I know there's no way to upgrade it. This is a huge disappointment, and there's really no reason for it. Microsoft could have thrown intel's i5 based mini-ITX in this and blown the doors down with performance. For the price you're paying for this table, there's no excuse for the underpowered hardware.
- Weight. Be aware, this is not light. Two strong people will be required to move it around. This makes it difficult to use for travelling tradeshows.
- The legs. This annoyed me quite a bit. The legs (which are NOT included with the table) cost over $800 and must be ordered separately. And no, there's no reason for them to be that expensive, there's nothing magical about them. They are just basic metal legs. This aggravated me to no end.

At the end of the day, the unit cost me over 9k (with shipping and tax) and it ended up going back. The marketing material is misleading when it talks about lighting conditions, there should be a big red banner across the front of the page saying "Will absolutely not function at all under normal lighting conditions". Combined with the terrible CPU specs, the SUR40 was entirely unsuited for my particular application.

It's a shame, because under the right circumstances, this device could be truly incredible. It seemed to me like they came up with a really neat technology with Pixel Sense, but only realized late in the game that they wouldn't be able to work around the lighting issues. At this point, my guess is that they were so heavily invested that they had to release it to market regardless. I understand the reasons behind why the unit is so light sensitive, my main gripe is that this limitation isn't clearly communicated by the marketing materials. The device could be used successfully for certain applications, but it is absolutely not usable generically. I suspect the RMA rate on these is pretty high because of this.

Not the libertarians.

Where to even start? The thing that baffles me about a post like this, is how you and I, presumably, are two fairly intelligent, thoughtful people. How is it possible that our entire view of reality can be so divergent, and that we can both clearly be so passionate about our worldview?

I respect rich people, I want to be one. I work very, very hard to make that happen. I take risks, save every penny and scrap together enough so that I can launch a product I'm developing for my business. I work 12 to 16 hours a day, and if it pays off, if my product is a success, I'll be able to hire people to build and grow my business.

If it fails, I'll take my lumps, then start over scrimping and saving, and try again. I will continue to do this until I succeed.

But if I do succeed - if my hard work pays off, then to you, I'm a leech?

Wild.

And by using emotionally charged phrases like "climate change deniers" you feed into it.

Funny, my definition of "superior" would be a language that gets the job done, and is readily and cheaply available.

And then went on to make it one of the finest languages the world has ever seen, without being held back by the Java standards folks.

I, for one, am quite glad this happened. It allowed Microsoft to do some wild things with a statically typed language which have never been seen before (linq, etc...) and they're the ones really pushing the limits and blurring the lines between static and dynamic languages.

Meanwhile, Java still doesn't have anonymous functions or closures. Java 7 came out last year and the biggest language enhancement? You can use strings in a switch.

Microsoft is worthy of criticism on several fronts, but what they've done with C# deserves respect.

The problems with this are so enormous and obvious, I'm surprised you're in business at all.

I'm a business owner too - and I understand a simple concept: my business is only as good as the people in it. I would rather close my doors than pay a person one penny less than what they are worth - this is basic common sense on so many levels, that it is difficult for me to understand how anyone can fail to see it, but I'll try to explain:

1) My success depends on the success of those who work for me, whether contractor, employee or vendor. If they fail, I fail. Short changing them doesn't help anyone.

2) Good developers know what they are worth. If they are getting short changed, they'll leave. Do the basic math! How much does it cost to go through the hiring process? How much to you have to pay headhunters, or time spent scraping resumes on Dice? How much do you have to pay in salary before the new guy comes up to speed (assuming you can even find a decent person, which is hard, hard)? How much have your project timelines been impacted by losing a key person? What you've described is business insanity, and pretty much a recipe for "how to fail in business".

3) If you treat people like a commodity, they'll act like a commodity. Why would someone give you their best work when you're treating them like a replaceable cog? Now start to factor in the costs of mediocre/shoddy development, bugs, customer dissatisfaction...

You say "Welcome to profitable business" but it is clear to me that you're just guessing, from what you've said I'm pretty sure you've never actually run a business, if you had, you'd know that you just can't treat people like that, or you would have been driven out of business long ago.

I wish that every person who supports these sorts of arguments (I hesitantly label "liberal") would read this and really learn from it: The Broken Window Parable

It's especially amusing that you're making the (arrogant) assumption that I'm religious.

I don't think you're being fair. Not every person who believes in religion is a blind-faither who thinks that Jeezus Chriist personally intervened in their life to give them the big $20 payoff for their scratch-off lottery ticket.

There are very intelligent and reasonable arguments for the existence of a power, designer or creator aside from the strict "protein soup" theory of evolution. Granted, your facebook poster thanking the "Lord" for saving cousin Fred may not be considering those issues, but that doesn't mean they haven't in the past, and it is a mistake to take such a cavalier approach to dismissing an entire system of belief.

In fact, there's compelling evidence to support that fact that civilization could have never occurred without religion, and sneering at a system of belief and life that helps people deal with crisis and provides moral and behavioral guidelines to those in need is condescending at best, and arrogant and mean-spirited at worst.

One of the things I dislike the most when I read the modern-day comments on Slashdot is the haughty elitism that's so common in the +5 modded posts. Like there's this implicit belief that everyone who doesn't think the way the you do must therefore be a dullard, redneck, or worse: Republican.

If it helps some poor family member who's loved one has just suffered a major medical crisis to publicly thank "The Lord" for his continued existence, then by all means, thank "The Lord". Or light a scented candle. Or dance naked under the moonlight. Who cares?

One day, I suspect you'll be harshly confronted by your own arrogance, and become deeply ashamed. It is on that day, sir, that you'll become an adult.

Why aren't IEC reactors based on Farnsworth's designs taken more seriously? From what I understand, IEC's have been more effective at producing fusion, and they are cheap to build. People even build them in the garage. From everything I've read, no one really takes the "fusor" seriously in the fusion science realm, and it's considered a dead line of inquiry. I've never understood why.

Depends on when. If Superman had fscked with Spidey when he had his Captain Universe mojo (post Acts of Vengance, prior to battle with Tri-Sentinel) Superman would have gotten his butt kicked back to krypton.

This is such a common fallacy - it frustrates me every time I see it. Let's conduct a very simple logical experiment:

I'm a business owner. If a kid walks by and smashes out my front window, I need to have the window replaced.

This causes me to call the window shop, who then call their supply chain, and pay their employees all the way down the line. Great economic growth, right? I'm adding to the economy, right?

So under that thinking, we'd be helping the economy if my window got smashed out every week. Hell, even better, smash them all out, every day. Then my neighbor's windows too! Pretty soon, we'll have a roaring economy, right?

Do you see the fallacy here? The error in your thinking?

Spending tax money on an economy does not add to the system, it detracts from it, the same way smashing a window out does. True, you may see local fluctuations in certain sectors (the window repair businesses) but overall, you're detracting from the system.

Tax and spend is the same concept, only on a much greater scale. You're detracting from the economy in total, to provide for local "appearance" of growth.

You can argue whether welfare is a necessary program, and that's a good debate to have. Please don't fall for the absurd notion that it is somehow good for the economy. It's not. It's a terrible burden on everyone, including the recipient.

Bravo, sir. Well said.