An SUV does NOT fill the role of a pickup truck unless you don't actually need a pickup truck. You need a pickup when you are toting things that you do not want to carry in the interior of a vehicle like loose dirt, stone, certain bulky supplies, trash, etc. Messy stuff. Very bulky stuff. If you can put what you are likely to carry in an SUV then you don' t actually need a pickup. My wife has an SUV which we use for plowing and I have a pickup which we use for transporting bulky stuff. Significant overlap but the use cases are not identical.

An SUV can fill the role of a station wagon or minivan depending on the specific use case and number of people you need to transport. If you get up towards 7 with lots of gear then you need either a minivan or a full sized van. If you are just transporting up to 4/5 people with some gear then an SUV or station wagon can serve adequately.

I kind of laugh when I hear people say they "need" a minivan. Amazing how those of us who predate minivans somehow managed to survive. They're a great tool but hardly a necessity. The car my family had when I was growing up was a sports coupe. We took all the family trips and got all our gear in it too.

Why would you "need" a commuter vehicle? The cost of any commuter vehicle is going to hugely outstrip any fuel savings you might possible generate.

You think there is a lack of a willing and capable workforce in Detroit Metro? You could not be more wrong. There are reasonable reasons to pick places other than Metro Detroit to build a factory but the blight in Detroit City and perceived lack of a workforce is not among them. Honestly I can't think of many better places to build a factory if you really look at the evidence. The opportunity is definitely there. You might find cheaper labor elsewhere but you aren't going to find a more capable labor force anywhere for manufacturing.

You bet. There is more manufacturing and engineering talent in Detroit metro than all but a handful of places in the US. Did you forget that GM has their headquarters in downtown Detroit? Where do you think they get their people from? Do you think it is by accident that almost every single car supplier of consequence has engineering operations somewhere near Detroit? Michigan ranks 4th in the nation in high tech jobs. Metro Detroit is the second largest source of tech jobs of any metro area in the US. If you want manufacturing talent you could do a lot worse than Michigan.

So yeah, the locals will do just fine.

If you think that properly describes all of Detroit then you aren't wanted there and you clearly know little about the area. Downtown Detroit near the Renaissance Center has actually seen a pretty nice revival. Not to say the city overall doesn't have a long way to go (it very much does) but there are big parts of it that are nothing like the hell hole you are describing. Guys like Dan Gilbert are buying up all kinds of property and businesses are setting up shop left and right. It's a hell of an economic opportunity if your investment horizon is sufficiently long term. There are three major stadiums, a convention center, a university, three casinos, GM, outstanding restaurants, Whole Foods, and lots more all downtown. You really think Whole Foods is going to set up shop in the middle of a blighted, drug infested area? I just had a relative open up an upscale coffee shop in Downtown Detroit and another relative of mine has a fast casual restaurant at the Renaissance Center.

Furthermore it doesn't have to be in Detroit City. The Detroit Metro area is genuinely nice. I live in Oakland County which is immediately to the north of Detroit City and is one of the ten wealthiest counties in the entire US, has a AAA credit rating and is a genuinely nice place to live. Washtenaw and McComb counties are equally nice places. The University of Michigan as well as several other excellent local universities provides an outstanding local talent pool.

Learning and entertainment are not exclusive to each other. Not everything has to be a firehose of education. I come to slashdot for entertainment as well but if I never learned anything the entertainment value would vanish rapidly.

Exactly my point. There are lessons to be learned from obsolete tech and sometimes it turns out to be not as obsolete as we think. You can even have fun while you do it. But I don't really understand pointless nostalgia. Learn from the past but live in the present.

Thank $diety. The Previa was one of the ugliest vehicles this side of a Pontiak Aztek. I've never seen a minivan I thought was remotely pleasant to look at but the Previa was ugly above and beyond the call of duty. I'm kind of astonished nobody has seemingly even tried to make a minivan that is better looking.

You can buy a Ford E-Series van or Ford Transit van that will seat more than any minivan, tow more and is available for as little as $30,000. Only real downside is that the MPG kind of sucks.

If you learn things that is (almost) never a waste of time. I learn things here despite the signal to noise ratio at times. I see perspectives and debate about topics I do not find elsewhere. If you think slashdot is nothing but useless noise I would have to ask why you bother coming here unless you are trolling.

Personally I don't grok the appeal of playing around with loooong obsolete computer gear out of nostalgia but to each their own.

7 actually (Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan, Mazda, VW) though I think VW might contract the actual manufacturing to Chrysler.

A Jeep Grand Cherokee with the diesel option will get around 30mpg on the highway and seat up to 7. The current Dodge Grand Caravan gets 17 city, 25 highway which is roughly the same as a full sized pickup truck with a boosted V6 engine. There really is no excuse for minivans to not be able to get mpg over 30mpg appropriately configured.

It won't. It might not be sexy but as you point out there is nothing else out there with the capabilities of one. Sometimes practicality just rules the day.

I think the main problem with minivans is that the car companies have focused too much attention on SUVs and not progressed the category as much as they could have. Minivan gas mileage is better than big SUVs but what isn't? And it's not as good as it could be. I can get a big pickup with a 400HP engine that isn't much worse on gas mileage than your typical minivan. No way that should be possible. I have to believe there probably is a market for a hybrid powertrain minivan. Minivan handling is pathetic even by truck standards for the most part (except for Mazda's offering). They generally lack options like 4WD. They are used for hauling kids and stuff and yet they have cloth interiors that cannot be easily cleaned. I have a Nissan Xterra and I can literally hose out the interior of that car which I occasionally need to after toting my dogs or mountain bike around. I haven't been in a minivan used by kids that couldn't use a good hosing down. Minivan styling is horrendous. Nobody buys one because they think it looks nice.

Perhaps. Minivans are undeniably practical for many uses but they are hard to make sexy. Of course it doesn't help that they have ugly styling, bad fuel economy and handle like a river barge for the most part.

The problem is how to do that economically. There are all sorts of cool things you can do if money is no object. I think you'd have more luck with them if you started with solving the styling and fuel economy problems, then work your way to fixing the handling and then get into nifty features like what you describe. A minivan would seem to be the ideal place for a hybrid powertrain and I'm surprised there are basically no 4WD/AWD options out there.

That is the reason I have a folding tonneau cover on mine. Solves that problem for the majority of cases and even improves gas mileage slightly.

Not even remotely. 532,357 minivans were sold in the US in 2013.

Toyota, Honda, Kia, Mazda, Toyota, Nissan and VW all make and sell minivans. Chrysler, Toyota and Honda own about 90% of the market together between their 4 offerings.

Law enforcement is not entitled to a perfect success rate. If they have evidence that justifies searching an entire account then fine but I defy you to come up with more than a handful of cases where such a blanket search is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. We put limits on law enforcement because law enforcement has a LONG history of abusing power. The majority of the Bill of Rights is devoted to limiting the power of law enforcement. We put these limits in place knowing full well that the result will be that some guilty people go free because the alternative is to convict innocent people. The job of law enforcement is not supposed to be easy or convenient.

Strawman argument. The question is whether the warrant and the activities permitted are appropriately narrow to the circumstances. If they are then all is well. If the warrant allows a fishing expedition then it is an abuse of the judicial process. If the search criteria that can be justified is too narrow to result in information useful for a conviction then that is just too bad. If they don't have enough evidence to convince a (properly behaving) judge that a wider search is necessary then that is how the system is supposed to behave.

It's not a slippery slope problem. The problem is that there is relatively little guidance on what the rules and parameters regarding these sorts of searches should be because the technology of online accounts has advanced somewhat ahead of the law. Could be that the warrant issued was perfectly appropriate to the circumstances. However the justification was given that "investigators might miss something" which is alarmingly insufficient. Yes, they might miss something and unless they have evidence to justify a very broad search then they should have to use less invasive means even if that means they might miss something. Better that 100 guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongly convicted. Searching someone's entire Google account is a very invasive search and there had better be a very good reason to allow it.

It might not be any different. However even a warrant for a premises is not (supposed to be) without limits. If the information sought can be reasonably obtained through less intrusive means then it is supposed to be obtained through those alternative means. If the cops are interested in someones google account (or hard drive - same principle) because they have credible suspicion about information that may be contained there then a warrant is fine but only to the extent necessary to search for and safeguard the information sought.

Basically if the judge is saying that searching an entire account is appropriate merely because there is a chance investigators might miss something then there is a problem. The entire point of a getting judicial review prior to a search is so that searches do not become wider than absolutely necessary. Part of that is so that people don't become accused of crimes they otherwise would not have been under suspicion of. Giving carte-blanche to search someone's google account in many cases is opening up their entire life to a search so there had better be a damn good reason to permit a search that broad.

Depends on the business. For certain types of businesses, California is where the talent is located. Not to say you can't locate a successful company elsewhere (you can!) but there is a reason you find a lot of tech companies in California just like there is a reason you find a lot of manufacturing companies in Michigan, a lot of finance companies in New York, etc. Despite the problems California didn't become the economic powerhouse it did by random chance. It got there because it has the right combination of institutions, resources, talent and location.

Then I'm guessing you haven't opened a lot of businesses. There are certain businesses that make tremendous sense in California and others that make sense elsewhere. Unless you are going to get considerably more specific about what type of business you are planning to open then you are not making any sort of reasonable point.

It's ONE COMPANY and a relatively small one at that. Do you expect them to single handedly employ everyone looking for work? 6500 jobs is a LOT of jobs but way to try to diminish a good thing there Debbie Downer.

They still do. GM presently directly employs roughly 219,000 people. Last I checked that qualifies as "hundreds of thousands of people". GMs suppliers employ about 6 times that many people for products made by GM. (look it up - there is roughly 6 manufacturing workers in the supply chain for every one at a major auto maker) And furthermore there is is a multiplier effect whereby every $1 spent in manufacturing results in approximately $1.35 in additional economic activity which means more jobs. The death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.

The question isn't local versus remote. The question is narrowly tailored search versus fishing expedition. If they have enough evidence to justify a search of someone's entire account (or local hard drive) then it shouldn't be hard to convince a judge to issue a warrant with those search parameters. However warrants should be as as narrowly defined as possible based on the available evidence. If you suspect someone of burglary that likely does not constitute sufficient grounds to search their hard drive (or google account) for in its entirety unless to police have specific and credible evidence to the contrary. Warrants are supposed to have the minimum necessary search parameters.

I'm not familiar with the particulars of this case but I can think of plenty of circumstances where it would be quite inappropriate to search someone's entire account. There are also circumstances where it is perfectly appropriate but the warrant should not be that broad without damn good reason.

Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point? If the search criteria isn't sufficiently broad to catch someone then that means they don't have enough evidence to be conducting the search in the first place. Almost everyone can be found guilty of some illegal activity (however minor) if the search parameters are sufficiently broad.