No major wars in the past 70 years? Wtf have you been smoking? We've been in a proxy war with Russia since basically the end of WWII. We've invaded practically every country in the middle east, South America and most of Asia. Millions of people are dead. Basically the entire middle east is at war with us in one way or another as we speak. The only difference between now and WWII is the iron grip our leaders now have on the message our media feeds us. We are in the middle of a world war right now, and have been this entire time.

After memorial day I read an article about how Obama was celebrating the first memorial day without "boots on the ground" in 7 years or something. Meanwhile we've got special forces in every country in the middle east, bombers flying daily missions, drones bombing weddings. Just how gullible are we?!?!

I spun it around twice... meh?
My realtor has a camera that can pretty much do that... It's cooler looking than my kitchen but still, seems like a lot of effort.

Being made out of nature, doesn't make it good for nature.

That's typically because many IT departments rarely add value to what other departments are trying to accomplish. A good IT department's role is to facilitate and support the activities of other departments. Their job should be to ask "how can I help you accomplish your tasks?" The problem is that too many IT departments think their primary task is to control the network and IT resources without much regard paid to what other departments are trying to accomplish with those resources. IT too often thinks of itself as an end rather than a means. So it should surprise no one that many departments in many companies regard IT as a barrier to be worked around rather than a partner ready and willing to help.

The singularities (they are not blackholes) have a diameter smaller than the width of the nucleus of an atom. So, even if they were created, survived more than a trillionth of a second without evaporating, or any of the other improbabilities that come along with this... the statistical likelihood of them colliding with any particle at all is basically 0. If it were possible, every star in the universe would have collapsed into a black hole seconds after forming.

When they building a accelerator around the event horizon of a blackhole and start testing stuff that hasn't happened since the birth of the universe, let me know. I'll worry then.

It's fairly simple and done in just about every other industry. The insurance companies will come up with standards. Then 3rd party "Security experts" will pop up offering certification. "We're Security level blackwatch plaid certified! We get a $20k discount on our policy!" etc... Microsoft finds a bug and doesn't patch it? It's hard for your local bank to sue them... but the entire insurance industry?

This is a good thing.

You missed the meeting he had with the NSA the day he took officer where they showed him their file on him.

A free society can not exist in conjunction with a government that has unfettered power. That's what the NSA has done, unchained itself from the restrictions of the constitution. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If the NSA isn't blackmailing the president, they will eventually. It is quite literally inevitable.

The difference here is, who's driving the car. And can the owner claim that he had a reasonable expectation that the car would include such a basic safety feature. The equivalent would be to design a car that didn't have breaks at all and claim that's an extended feature or something... that's perfectly safe if you never go over 5mph and only drive in a farm field right?

An auto-driving car, should also auto-break. The driver would reasonable expect that, and there's no easy way for the drive to know that it wouldn't... especially when the car CAN do it if you pay them more money.

I think that the thousands of scam artists that are out there right now frantically trying to find cheap deals on these Volvos will quickly get Volvo to make the feature standard soon as Volvo ends up paying for their retirement.

Did Apple already fix this? I immediately tried to crash every phone of every coworker who has an iPhone within earshot of me and it didn't work. Much to my disappointment. I'm now having to save face by harassing them with Pictures of Steve Job's license plateless car parked in multiple handicapped spots.

Not really. If I've got a pickup I use for hauling dirt at work in sketchy neighborhoods I'm going to want a pretty minimal feature set. No point in having a fancy touch screen or satellite radio. If you are buying a car for your mom you might not want that 400HP turbocharged engine but you might want it for yourself along with that fancy rear spoiler wing. Different people have different needs and wants. Similarly many features cost significant cash and adding them can often put the cost of the vehicle out of reach for those of lesser means even if they desire.

I think you may not fully understand the economics at work. My apologies if what I'm about to outline is already known to you. I'm a certified accountant and have done some of this work in my day job. This is an over-simplification but more features = more cost to the manufacturer = higher price to customer.

Margins are usually higher with more features but every vehicle has a minimum required profit margin which is typically called a hurdle rate by finance folks. As a general practice the auto maker won't make the car unless they can get at least the hurdle rate margin for it. (the exact rate is arbitrarily chosen but is indexed for the risk of the investment) They also have fixed costs (tooling, assembly lines, salaries, engineering costs, etc) that they need to recoup and which don't change whether they sell 1 vehicle or 1 million vehicles. If they only sell fully pimped out vehicles they are leaving profit on the table because they will have to amortize those fixed costs over fewer vehicles. Even though the might make less margin on the less optioned out vehicle, their unit costs will fall because they sell more of them and can spread their fixed costs over more vehicles.

It's more complex than this but companies maximize profit when when marginal revenue = marginal cost. That is the additional revenue gained from selling one more car just equals the additional cost of selling that one more car. By offering vehicles with fewer options at a lower price point they push out to the point where marginal cost hockey sticks up from over production and increases profit to the manufacturer. Wikipedia has a good article on what is going on.

Has nothing to do with cars being (or not) works of art. People don't (usually) demand that their car be truly unique but they do demand that they be personalized to a significant degree. People choose different paint colors, different engines, different wheels, etc. Car customization is a multi-billion dollar industry both at the OEM and aftermarket levels. I work in the industry and I can assure you that people do not want exactly the same vehicle as the next guy and many are willing to pay to get it. Companies that do not accommodate this to some degree are leaving money on the table. The US manufacturers tend to offer more options and the Japanese less with the Europeans somewhere in between. Even Tesla offers several power trains, trim packages and other options - roughly on par with what you see from the Japanese automakers for certain vehicles.

Really? I know quite a few and am married to one and many of them are quite good at business. Many are terrible and/or disinterested but your brush is a little to broad. If doctors in general were terrible at business in general then they would lose money and there is very little evidence of that occurring on a widespread basis.

Ahh, so you only see the problem cases but lack the larger perspective of seeing all the things that happen correctly.

Ahh, I see you are confusing what the doctor does (administer medicine and oversee the business) with what their accounting staff does. Doctors typically have a large staff to administer a rather ludicrously large paperwork burden. The fact that some payments get lost between the cracks should surprise no one. I'm an accountant (among other things) and I can assure you that it is not terrible difficult in a busy organization for a payment to get mishandled. I also have worked in healthcare systems and doctors offices and have a pretty good appreciation for what goes on there. It's not nearly as easy as you seem to think it is.

Sounds like you have never tried to run a business yourself. Might give it a go before you start throwing stones at others.

That's what they said about lawyers and politicians, and look what happened.

But this wasn't even an "attack" they used the form as it was intended to be used and just guessed at the inputs. That's like putting a combination lock on your safe that only has 1 digit, setting it to "1" then, after your customers Jewelry is stolen claiming there's nothing to can do to stop a determined Global criminal organizations that employ master safe crackers.

It's rather simple so let me break it down for you. 1) Not everybody wants, needs or can afford every feature. 2) Automakers can sell more cars if they offer them at a range of prices. 3) People like to customize their vehicles because having something a little unique is valued. 4) If people weren't willing to pay extra for options then they would quickly not be offered. 5) Bundling options keeps complexity down to a manageable level and if done right improves profits for the manufacturer.

If people start gravitating with their dollars towards that business model then that is what will happen. I think it is unlikely but stranger things have happened. However remember that you are talking about a $100,000 luxury car so the rules are quite a bit different than for the market for a minivan or pickup that costs 1/3 of the price of the Tesla.