My main issue is he's too anti-government, and wants to cut into the Department of Education, and is way too "pro-life".

I find myself wondering how much of his "pro-life" schtick is genuine, and how much is pandering in hopes of winning the primary. This is one instance where I hope it's pandering.

he was offered a 6 month sentence if he would plead guilty.

Oh yes, that's how it works today in Amerika! "We don't give a shit what you did, but YOU MUST BE GUILTY." All you fascists get a sexual thrill from that all-important admission of guilt. You just love how, once somebody gets in your clutches, you can fuck up their entire life by disenfranchising them, disarming them, and eliminating the possibility of them ever getting a decent job. And it's "only a six month sentence." Six months, my ass!

Six months is just as unjust as a goddamn death sentence when you've DONE NOTHING WRONG!

My prius cost me $6000 used. There were $3000 used models available, but they were all Gen 1 and didn't have their battery packs replaced.

LOL! You think I'm a right-wing nutjob? That's weird; I more often get accused of being exactly the opposite. In reality, I'm a moderate anti-authoritarian, and want both government and corporations to GTFO of my business.

Besides, you're a dumbass, since you apparently fail to understand that negligence is a completely separate, irrelevant issue that's already covered by existing laws. I would already be liable if I modified my car to be unsafe, and computers don't change that!

Go re-read that last sentence, and let it sink in. Then read it again. Got it? Good! Now you'll realize that the stunt these automakers are trying to pull has nothing whatsoever to do with actual safety, and everything to do with them trying to assert control over their customers' property, so that they can restrict customer choice and increase their own power and profits. Nothing more, nothing less.

That's what over-the-air updates are for.

No, there isn't a difference. You vastly underestimate the ability of an idiot to screw up a mechanical system. I mean, OK, a literal brick would be deliberate, but that was hyperbole. Something like an improperly-tensioned throttle cable or an improperly-bled brake system, on the other hand, is very likely to happen by accident.

The point is, claiming that "on a computer!!!" makes working on a car more dangerous is as bunk as claiming "on a computer!" makes an invention suddenly new again, or that "on a computer!" turns (e.g.) fraud into some kind of new and different crime.

Auto mechanics has always required knowledge, skill, and personal responsibility, and nothing has changed!

Sorry, you are wrong. You can be free or not. You can't guarantee safety, regardless of your degree of freedom.

Good point! I stand corrected. Let me amend my statement:

We have two choices: we can be free, or we can throw away our freedom pointlessly.

The ECU (engine control unity) has nothing to do with the infotainment unit.

That's what you think. In reality, in modern cars they're both hooked to a CAN bus with no security whatsoever, so misbehavior by the infotainment unit actually could plausibly screw up the ECU. Besides, even if they weren't automakers would use that as an excuse and un-technical bureaucrats wouldn't know the difference.

Sorry but I dont want to be driving down the road with some backyard genius who has "tweaked" their ECU and ABS in such a way as it disables the breaks and locks the throttle open.

Well then you'd better fucking quit driving, because any backyard genius has always been able to do that with a fucking brick on the pedal (or under it, as applicable)!

What part of "correct" did you not understand? I may not be able to stop my country from fucking up, but I don't have to like it!

I've had problems with nVidia drivers on occasion, but not those kinds of problems.

The most important thing to do is research a specific card (or at least chipset) before buying it, especially if it's come out recently. When I got my 240GT (two cards back) it was not well-supported. I had to load a beta driver to get it to work properly, and the driver substantially misreported its characteristics. It's safest to buy a card which has been out for a while, which is also a good way to save money so it's something of a win-win.

I usually try to call the graphics side ATI so that when say something like "fuck ..." it says ATI and not AMD, because I rather like AMD's processors. I'm still rocking a Phenom II X6 1045T and I'm very happy with its performance, considering I paid $120 for it quite a while back and have no plans to upgrade it anytime soon. Maybe another video card next year... I went from 450GT to 750Ti on the advice of Slashdot, and haven't regretted it.

their integrated graphics are still faster than intel's, and the CPUs are plenty fast. if you're actually coming up against the limitations of the GPU, you're probably not CPU-bound anyway.

Compared to intel, it's like they just fell off the turnip truck yesterday night.

I've seen some references to nvidia HDMI causing audio problems, and people blacklisting snd-hda-intel to make it go away. If your motherboard audio doesn't depend on that driver, it may be a viable solution. That's all I could really find while I was looking for a citation for the above claim before requesting a citation (in a sibling to your comment.)

As I've said elsewhere I have an original m-Audio Mobile Pre USB and it works great with my nVidia graphics, but that's just one device and that proves little.

yes, that's normal. it's the same for everyone else.

The only car I've ever had stolen was a 1986 IROC.

AMD drops support for old cards from their proprietary drivers with extreme prejudice. nVidia literally supports cards for years longer than AMD. nVidia also provides direct mobile driver downloads; AMD sometimes provides these, and sometimes hides them. AMD also took all their old architectural documentation down from their website, for a while there every search I made which led to a document on their site was 404ing. Fuck AMD sideways.