I'm sure that's partly true, but I would bet it's more due to the fact that cars last longer than they used to.

This.

When I was a kid (40 years ago or so), my dad would replace the car every three or four years, after it got to about 75K miles. Car I'm driving now is north of 130K, and still going strong. I'm expecting it to hit 200K before I have to even think hard about replacing it....

I'm sure glad that your monthly car payments give you freedom from those who espouse walking and bicycling.

Haven't made a car payment in a decade. It's actually possible to live without buying a new car every few years....

They can recharge when they load, when the driver stops for breaks, overnight at truck stops, and when the truck is being unloaded.

Current charge times make "recharge when the driver stops for breaks" impossible.

And frankly, current ranges on EV's make them pretty much useless for trucks. Who really wants to stop for a couple hours a couple times a day?

Buying an XBox would still be redundant hardware, for the most part (excluding exclusive games). Also, at least for me, my office computer and my gaming PC aren't really redundant. For my office/productivity use, I'm content with an older computer with an integrated graphics chipset. It's not a gaming PC, but it's fast enough to open web pages.

I'm not sure I understand why this would make steam machines useless. The main value of a steam machine, as I see it, is that it allows you to have the convenience of a console in what is essentially a generic gaming PC. That is, it has a controller and a GUI aimed at connecting it to a TV and not using a keyboard or mouse, but it's not a locked-down console. It's just generic hardware that will play all of your PC games, and those games don't become obsolete and unplayable when you upgrade to the next generation.

The article says:

So what they're saying is, if you have a PC running Steam (which is really all a "Steam Machine" is) and an XBox One, then it's kind of the same as having a Steam Machine. Yes, it is... because you're starting with the scenario where you have a Steam machine. It's like saying, "There's no reason to buy a car, since if I already own a car and I buy a bicycle, it's like owning a car!"

Look, you shouldn't assume that I want an XBox. I can get a PC with better graphics and avoid being locked into Microsoft's ecosystem. I can install game mods, my games don't all go unnecessarily obsolete with every new generation of PC, Steam often has very good sales, Steam doesn't make me pay a monthly subscription for online services, and I can use that PC for other things if I like. To me, the only thing that would want me to buy a console at this point is if there were an exclusive game that I really wanted to play, and I've found that I can live without it. I don't want an XBox, so it doesn't make sense to me to say, "If you buy a Steam machine and an XBox, then it's like having a Steam machine!" I'll just buy a Steam machine, thank you, even if it's not a branded "Steam Machine".

we'll never know the truth about the long-term health effects of eating GMO foods until if and when a pattern emerges.

It should, perhaps, be noted that if we were to keep the stuff in the lab until we'd tested it thoroughly for 1000 years, we STILL would "never know the truth about the long-term health effects of eating GMO foods until if and when a pattern emerges".

Or anything else, either. Patterns are what we use to decide that something is real or imaginary.

Luckily, you're on a news site where I'm sure this fact has been reported many times.

Opinion. Not fact.

Note that if NSA is doing its job properly, you'll never hear about its successes. So it could be 99.9% successful and fail 0.1% of the time, and you'd still hear about nothing but its failures in the news.

Likewise, of course, for 0.1% success and 99.9% failure.

Which is why any information about the NSA's functionality is an opinion. Even if it's promulgated by Congress, President, NSA head, whatever (since all of them have reasons to lie about it - if you KNOW it's doing it's job well, telling everyone it's not is a GOOD thing, not a bad thing)...

Bullshit. I repeat: I was speaking of POLITICIANS, not of parties.

That's the third time I've said basically the same thing. Has it sunk in yet?

The only reason I used the word "butthurt" is because that's the way you've acted.

It must have been relatively recent, then. Even so, I repeat that I doubt the "usual rules" apply here.

Having said that, FAA would seem the logical organization, given that its mandate is about interstate commerce.

Hi RMS!

There's been a huge amount of success with crowdfunding recently -- Kickstarter and Indigogo and so on.The most facile projects can get funded to the tune of millions. Meanwhile venerable old free software projects have been neglected. Has the FSF ever considered starting some crowdfunded projects?

I know people can donate cash to e.g. the FSF directly but it's a black box and hard to emotionally engage with that. Compare for example a specific project that could gain a lot of public momentum -- e.g. a Kickstarter project with a specific goal to increase Emacs' IDE capabilities by paying some extra developers to work on it full time. I'd happily donate some cash in that direction if someone were to launch such a project.

Surely worth an experiment at least? Please take my money :)

Plus, it is possible for people or property to be struck before it slows to terminal velocity.

Not if you're aiming at a drone more or less directly overhead. It'll slow down on the way up, and then accelerate back up to...terminal velocity on the way back down.

Is it my imagination or is the US government/society incapable of functioning without an imaginary boogeyman?

It's your imagination.

Admittedly, it's been pretty much true since WW2, and more or less true since WW1. But before that, the US spent a lot of time using the "ignore and be ignored" theory of nationhood.

Oddly enough, it was getting dragged into a European war that cured us of that notion....

Frankly, "his conviction" that they do this isn't really all that damning. Does he have any actual, you know, PROOF that this is true?

Disclaimer: I use AdBlock, and never see this stuff anyway....

That's hilarious. Data is data.

It doesn't matter where you apply your math or methodoloy, if you're doing them in an obviously incorrect way. A point which you keep seeming to miss. Scientists are not gods, they deal in the real world with real data just like so many others do.

You don't seem to know what irony means either, Mr. Coward. Do you think I am not (or never have been) a scientist? On what do you base that assumption?

Since it has been clearly explained to you many times that I am not any of those things, no they're not.

The only logical way to put those statements together is that you claim I am those things. It's not just an implication, or your final sentence would make no sense.

But making potentially damaging false claims about people in public, when you know (or reasonably should) that they are not true, is called libel. You know that, too.

So no, the tables aren't turned. They're right where they were before you made that ridiculous libelous comment. If anything, you have locked the tables firmly in place. That was a real dumbass thing to do.

I have to wonder why you keep doing it.