Very cool. I had always wondered how they accelerate those gigantic loads so slowly but surely, without burning-out transmission gear-boxes.

Now if only they carried on-board batteries for regenerative braking, then rail would be even more superior to any other land-based transportation system.

It is clear that you know nothing of engineering. The drive turns the wheels, which at point-of-contact constitute a lever-arm. Force that this lever-arm exerts on the road (making car accelerate) is precisely the definition of torque.

Pound-for-pound, a Nissan Leaf will beat my Jaguar off the line. . . but only for about 10 meters. The Leaf will never make it to 160 mph, although my Jaguar does. This is because a Leaf, as with any electric-motor car, has a linear power curve, delivering the same power at any speed – hence the higher the speed, the less torque it can apply. If you can do simple math, it is obvious.

As for "V8–lovin' rednecks": V8s just put out lots of HP (energy/time, as in Watts) — thus requiring a gearbox to optimize torque at a given speed. This is why drivers rev and 'pop the clutch' for torque at 0 mph (off-the-line). From an engineering standpoint, it requires an overly complex mechanical system for power transmission – gearbox and all.

You still do not understand the definition of torque. May I suggest Wikipedia?

I have the current version of MS Office. No choice in my profession.

But – WAY BACK in 2000, I created myriad keyboard shourtcuts and customized toolbar strips. The current version of Word is stupider than any predecessor — 15-year-old bugs have never been corrected, but they took away keyboard shortcuts everyone had adapted to using.

Well, with two hours of hacking, I banished the Ribbon, and made Word operate the exact same way as I've been used to for 15 years – same keystrokes, Styles, etc.. I did not have to re-learn how to do what I already knew how to do. Unless MS has some improvement on the level of Gutenberg's, they should please stop changing the way typical things are done!

This ability came from experience hex-editing EA games in the 1980's to make them actually playable.

I recommend any alternative: Mellel, OpenOffice, Corel WorPerfect, Nisus Writer Pro, LibreOffice, MachWrite, Pages, or any RTF or PT editor. I can even open & edit WordStar files from 1988!

Post-it, to cover the laptop's web-cam when not in use.

For acceleration, it is torque that matters.

Horsepower governs top-end speed.

This is why, as President of my condo-complex HOA Board (c.a. 100 units), I made sure that Verizon fiber was wired to every unit, just like Time Warner Cable had been years prior.

The result was real market competition. I switched. My bandwidth increased by about 15x (symmetric), with a reduction in price over the service TWC had formerly been (intermittently) providing.

I use the most current version of Office (not by choice).

If you know what you're doing, you can make it look and operate exactly the same as Office 2003.

Wouldn't that be a "Trespass to Chattels", due to their storing their stuff on your property, thus depriving you of use of said property? (That is, permanently, not in a browser cache.)

IANAL.

When I was an American in Germany, recovering from an injury, I told a friend that I took ibuprofen on a daily basis.

She said, "What? That's for animals!" Then continued, "In Germany we have a saying, 'ibuprofen makes old horses run fast.'"

I already solved it.

In your first response you make an unsupported claim.

Then you divert from that one to pose a typical Straw Man argument.

Where have all the good trolls gone?

Note, the announcement states that North American users are not able to opt into the Irish Terms of Service.

Moving servers doesn't address the real problem, even if NA could opt in to the Irish TOS.

DropBox indexes every file that is synced through their service. They are reading and cataloging everything that users sync via DropBox. But don't take my word for it — their CEO said so a year or two ago.

If the Dealer won't remove this from the car you are purchasing, just pu a piece of black electricians' tape.

Better yet, recall that YOU OWN THE VEHICLE. Simply remove the device(s).

Someone makes something great.

They are first-to-market.

Big Corp. buys them out, desiring only their IP.

All of the engineers who actually made the product (& company) valuable are fired.

Big Corp. squanders that first-to-market advantage to gain short-term profits.

Customers who've bought prior-generation products versions beg to have important improvements made to the line of tools.

Big Corp. ignores customer pleas while simply juicing the IP they bought, for every nickel they can get.

Big Corp. refuses to implement any improvements, new features, etc. because they can't. They fired the innovators and implementers to save on salary costs.

Yep, they essentially just find a ripe piece of fruit, and then juice it.

This is what small businesses in the US have been reduced to: fruit trees. Small companies take the risk of being inventive. When something proves to be valuable, it is bought-out, everyone fired, and the market for the product stagnates. I have been on both ends of this stick. I pleaded with a certain company, who sold a $650k tool, to make two minor engineering improvements that would essentially double the market for the device (it would be a tool for two markets, not just the one). These changes would have cost about $500 per tool. The end result? Well, since they had bought-out the small company that originally designed it, fired all the engineers and control-system programmers, the Big Corp. was literally incapable of implementing any improvements (or even bug-fixes) to the system. Recall that they fired all the engineers and programmers, and simply bought the IP and the market the small biz. had cornered.

To cap off this specific example — Another company that truly does innovate has, well, devised a tool that does "the thing" better, and costs 1/3 of what the Big Corp. is charging. They listened when I detailed to them engineering specs. for what customers needed in a next-gen tool. Well, the Big Corp. is about done juicing their piece of fruit, and this other company will soon take over the market . The Big Corp. made their millions, so they move on. I just hope that this "other company" isn't bought-out.

The sad result of this cycle is that American innovation in products is stagnated by Big Corps. that choose to simply juice innovative products, rather than actually improve them to grow the market. In the end, the customer & consumer lose. Oh, and the US as a whole.

Oh, also: Genius is simply raw potential. What someone does with that 'potential' is a different matter entirely.

As said long ago, "Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration." I am loathe to quote that weenie, Thomas A. Edison, but the idea of his quote is accurate. It is what you do with that potential that matters.