I'm all for privacy, but it's your own responsibility to protect your privacy. If you don't want your communications broadcast to the entire neighborhood, then take the steps necessary to set up encryption on your broadcasting device. There was a time when setting up encryption was difficult, but now it is a breeze and there is simply no excuse for not doing it. The instructions on most wireless routers even highly recommend encryption, so not setting it up is willful negligence on the user's part.

Whenever two established giants in different industries require collaboration to bring a new product to market, there is always going to be power struggles and dick-waving. In this case, it is exacerbated by Google's eagerness to go right into full-blown autonomous cars instead of the incremental approach that the car companies want. This make sense since all of the responsibility of any issues that arise in this technology will be placed squarely on the shoulders of the auto makers. In any event, I think Tesla would make a better partner since they're a bolder company who isn't afraid to jump in with both feet.

This is hilarious. You cite the "free market" when referring to a copyrighted work. The very copyright that protects this work is a government-granted monopoly allowing entities to create artificial scarcity. In a free market, there would be no government interference, the monopoly would not exist, and we wouldn't have all of the nonsense we're currently debating. I'm not saying abolishing copyrights is the way to go, but copyrighted works do NOT fall under the umbrella of the free market.

I used to be extremely excited for fuel cell vehicles about 10 years ago. Then I learned that they don't perform well in cold weather, are very dangerous during impact, hydrogen is not easy or cheap to make, and most importantly of all, you still have to go out of your way every so many miles to find a damn station to fill up. Compare that to electric cars which require less maintenance, are safer, work better in the cold (albeit with slightly degraded performance), already have established channels for generating and distributing energy, and allow me to leave my garage fully recharged every day. At this point, electric cars have a big competitive edge and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

People always come back with this argument, which is why I qualified it with IPO. And could you or someone else please explain how later public offerings don't dilute the ownership of the company amongst the existing shareholders?

If only there was an organization who could work with SpaceX towards this goal. This organization would have to be goal-driven rather than profit-driven. Years ago, that would have been NASA, but we had to gut their funding because they're not as essential as blowing up people of other religions on the other side of the planet nor do NASA's endeavors bring back a big enough return on investment.

The whole thing is really a shame. If we hadn't already gone to the moon and attempted to do so today, the mission would get no support. Everyone would be asking why we were doing it and what would we be getting for our money. Looking back, those missions created over 400,000 jobs in engineering and created advances in propulsion, computer software and hardware, materials and mechanical engineering, insulation, navigation, etc. The discoveries made during this period set up the U.S. for decades of prosperity greater than anyone imagined before the mission. Now we're stuck in a society where nobody wants to do anything unless there will be some kind of return almost immediately. Keep challenging people's notions of our limits and fighting against the mindsets of small-minded short-term investors, Elon. You've already proven them wrong with Tesla Motors and if anyone can get us to Mars at this point, it's you.

You hit the nail on the head. An IPO is a one-time fundraiser that requires permanently surrendering control of your company to a bunch of greedy, short-sighted psychopaths who are only concerned with doing whatever it takes to pump up the stock price, even if it means sabotaging the long-term viability of the company. It's beyond time to start exploring new methods of investing.

May I suggest the new name to be the Washington Indians? Their mascot could be a man from India in a business suit wearing a Native American headdress.

At this point, I think it's safe to say that we're in another tech bubble. But at least we can have fun seeing which bubble bursts first (HFT, medical, student loan, or tech).

As a shareholder, I fully welcome this move. This shows that Tesla is so confident that they will continue to dominate the electric car industry that they don't even have to stop others from trying. That kind of confidence goes a long way to securing business deals with companies who might otherwise hesitate to jump into bed with a company that is still relatively new in a market that is only just starting to emerge.

Where have you been? Everything is a matter of national security!

Now they just need to get a FISA warrant rubber-stamped or use parallel construction to make sure that the evidence is admissable.

I can confirm this. I had FIOS (75 MBps) and there were points where I couldn't even get YouTube videos to load at 240p. I found many complaints of other FIOS users, especially in the Northeast, with similar issues. Some users claimed that they could restore the speed by using a VPN or a different DNS server. I felt that I shouldn't have to do that, so I accepted an offer to switch to the other evil ISP empire. My new 25 MBps connection loads YouTube videos much faster than Verizon's 75 MBps connection.

After a public offering of new shares, what value does the stock market really add for that company? Sure, there are some things it helps with such as an approximate value that can be used for acquisitions, but once a company offers a set of shares on the market and collects the money from the buyer, those shares are essentially chips with the corporate logo to be bought and sold among gamblers in the world's biggest casino. At that point, those shares do little to create actual value in the real world.

If I am going to pay for a service or product, the company that provides that service or product had better officially support my platform. I realize Linux has a very small marketshare, but Netflix has already gotten their software to run on other flavors of Linux that run on phones, tablets, and game consoles. If they would just get it working for one or more major Linux distributions, then they would have themselves a new loyal customer. But I'm not going to give them money to run their software on an unsupported platform that could break at any point in a new software release.