There seems to be a disconnect with "businesses" that make their living primarily off of a government license or special status. As we saw when they dissected the banking crisis, many "financial" businesses are quasi-governmental in nature and as such should have much less latitude to declare themselves "purely private" entities with freedom of choice.

Having said that, I do not believe that banks should have any latitude to deny service to anyone who is not causing a direct problem for the bank. (i.e. breaking laws that involve the bank, refusing info required to meet regulation, abusive to the staff, etc.) Most businesses operate this way - it's only when you get self-righteous employees involved that start to treat the business like they own the whole thing that you get nonsense like this. It is not the bank's place to discipline a business for conduct that is neither illegal nor causes problems for the bank.

Consumers squeeze corps, corps squeeze consumers - agreed

Corps have industry trade groups and lobbyists, consumers have (in the USA) representatives and senators.

When it comes down to it, people decide what's ok and what's not. Corps are not people, consumers are. (except when it comes to campaign financing)

Having minimum standards sucks from the supply side, but their absence is much more damaging on the demand side. To use your analogy - ways to make flights cheaper would include doing away with seatbelts and emergency exits (the seals are a maintenance issue). Nobody uses them anyway. Also, would you even notice if aircraft inspections were reduced? The average consumer wouldn't either.

Or it would be an effective way to encourage people to go Android.....

It's the 80's all over again......

That's one good thing about the human brain - the designer doesn't claim DMCA protections on it. However, there's also no warranty - oh, and you only thought that Microsoft was tight lipped about their APIs.

One problem with this whole thing is that if the luggage owner doesn't know there is contraband in it, they will act differently than someone who knows what they're carrying.

Observing "suspicious behavior" is a big part of picking this stuff out.

I think this should be enough to invalidate their test unless they were intentionally isolating the behavior observation methods out.

BBV8s will likely be replaced by supercharged small block v8s in sports cars and diesel engines in trucks. At least until battery technology is developed to get 300 miles per 5 minute charge time with a $30k price point and a 100k mile lifespan. Electric motors are superior technology to the internal combustion engine - it's powering them that's the problem.

Look at the electric sports cars that are coming out - the Karma and Roadster have some decent performance characteristics. On the other side, there are a lot of industrial machines that use electric already for large amounts of power such as fork lifts, locomotives - even the Navy's ships. In all cases, the delivery of electricity to the motor is the difficult part.