I hadn't heard much of it lately.

The other intesting thing is that before $4/gal oil Ford retooled to modernize and create options so they could move away from over reliance on SUVs. People at GM and Chrysler thought they were nuts. Then the recession hit and $4/gal gas. Of the big 3 they did not require a bail out.

I attribute it to being largely controlled by the Ford family which often produces motivated and capable execs. for the Company.

"If they were truly motivated by profits, they would make a safe product."

In the real world corporations and the rich have always been happy to trade lives for profits or quarterly bonuses; hence we have FTC, FDA, OSHA, MSHA, FRRC, EPA, as well as state level agencies. See also the recent BP oil spill, the Piper Alpha disaster, salmonella outbreaks, and a host of others.

What if the defect is deadly. Sure if I am dead I cannot buy the product but being dead is not a solution.

That depends on the person's ability to pay. As it is paying for the house either directly or via increased insurance costs may be enough punishment.

Yep. It's not much different that texting. You have to look away, read, and then touch a UI.

When you have Glassdoor, PayScale and others out there sharing reviews and salaries. A spreadsheet is the state of the art at Google? They just lost their cred with me.

Or anyone with huge medical bills.

Old joke: Q: have you heard of the British version of Breaking Bad? A man finds out he has cancer and gets 5 years of free excellent health care.

Or how's this grab you "Facebook Boffins Solve Education Problem!"

In which case it would've been "colourfully".

"What does this Facebook solotion do that couldn't be done on a piece of paper? "

Just a guess, spy ware.

At one charter school? How did they measure the impact on teachers' time? What impact did it have on students? Was there a controlled study which compensated for Socio-economic status, age, regional differences, etc.? Was there a longitude study which tracked student performance over time? Or is this just wishful thinking and huckstering?

How about "Facebook Engineers Have Solved Education's Worst Problem" as an alternative, or "One of Educations Worst Problems Solved at Facebook", or more colorfully "Facebook Engineers Slay Education Dragon!"

If you do not understand what is wrong with mixing singular with plural then there is no hope for you.

I have been on the receiving end of CA, CSC, IBM, and a host of smaller companies. They come in with promises spouting mumbo jumbo like "new economy", "webified", "whole new paradigm", "cloudified", "localized private cloud in a box", "XML", "webscale", "secret sauce", "Object Oriented", etc. and end up causing at least as many problems as they solve and then charge you for the privilege of fixing it.

They wear ceremonial garb (suits and ties in some cases, black t-shirts in others), often wave shine things around ("smart" phone, tablets, iWatches etc.) to show their geek cred. Ceremonial drugs are sometimes involved in the form of beer and martinis as well as ceremonial meals ("let's do lunch!").

So yeah, I see some parallels there.