Sony

There's your biggest con, right there.

Find another song, click on "Buy", and I have to type in my password again.

Jesus wept.

It's not the ripping software, it's the digital recording function, i.e. the ability to write to disk.

Here's what the court said in the RIAA v Diamond Multimedia case: (internal citations removed)

Unlike digital audio tape machines, for example, whose primary purpose is to make digital audio copied recordings, the primary purpose of a computer is to run various programs and to record the data necessary to run those programs and perform various tasks. The legislative history is consistent with this interpretation of the Act's provisions, stating that "the typical personal computer would not fall within the definition of 'digital audio recording device,'" because a personal computer's "recording function is designed and marketed primarily for the recording of data and computer programs." Another portion of the Senate Report states that "[i]f the 'primary purpose' of the recording function is to make objects other than digital audio copied recordings, then the machine or device is not a 'digital audio recording device,' even if the machine or device is technically capable of making such recordings."

So it really depends on what else the car's ability to write to disk is both primarily used for, and what it is primarily marketed for. The latter is probably worse for them; even if the car happens to be writing map or diagnostic information to disk, probably ripping CDs is what is mainly being advertised.

The technology that we developed was from the 60's. And then USSR and America did treaties that forbade just that. So, no, we really do not have any. OTOH, China does not have treaties forbidding them, and refuse to enter into any that will.

What the fuck are these so-called "benefits" of a "15 minute open purchase window" that are so obvious and intuitive?

Forget about "the children". Who is so badly damaged as a person that they feel that it's currently just too hard to buy stuff online?

You know, I'm starting to think those kooks over at Adbusters might be on to something. We are one fucked-up society, and it looks like the marketing/industrial complex is in large part to blame.

BINGO!

Reading this thread, SOMEBODY had to mention this. I use the "use buffer (can be range) as stdin to command and replace with results" feature of vim EVERY SINGLE DAY. It is one of the most amazing and productive features I can't believe it isn't more well known.

And once you've started getting nice snippets of "buffer code", the power grows by typing <CTL-f> at the colon ":" prompt and finding recently used commands. Amazing and powerful stuff. (Set your remembered vim commands to >1000 for long term buffer-command goodness!)

I don't know of any other editors that do this

How can a patent not be disclosed to the public, unless it's some kind of national security thing? Here's one of the patents listed:

System and Method for Selecting a Tab Within a Tabbed Browser

Oh, this makes my head hurt. No wonder Samsung is telling Microsoft where they can stick their patents.

It really is amazing that with only 2 models, that they will be producing roughly 50K instances each year of high-end $80-90k vehicles. And that is with less than 1/5 of the world actually having the ability to buy these.
Compare that to say porsche. Last year, they sold 165K cars. 2 of these are similar to what Tesla has/will have: the Cayennes, which is similar to Model X and their panamera which is similar to Model S.
While the Cayennes has grown each year to just under 20K unit, the Panermera grew each year to 7.7K in 2012, but dropped more than 20% just last year to 5.5K. Very likely, the Model X will destroy the Cayennes and other wanna-be POSs sales quicker than what Model S did.
And I am sure that Tesla is putting a bite on other makers as well.

What it comes to, is that the longer that the other makers avoid doing pure inexpensive electric cars, the faster their sales will drop each year. As it is, Toyota, Honda, BMW, and Audi are looking to bet big on H2 Fuel cells. Worst idea going. By the time that they finally adjust, they will each have lost large amounts of their volume similar to what is SpaceX is doing to ULA, Russia, and Airbus.

The trouble is acting on that knowledge today...

This is David Cameron we are talking about. His previous Big Bold Project involved attempting to build the great firewall of Britain to save the children from internet porn. He isn't one of those people who know how to size up a task...

Actually, if you look at the I3, it has the interior of a $20K car. Worst yet, with it being electric, it should have spectacular performance, and yet, it drives like any other POS car out there. IOW, just like a ford and any BMW that costs under 100K.

well, no. It really is overvalued at this point. Even Musk has said so. With this was a mature company, it would be around 50/share at this point. So being some 5x over, is just crazy.
I think that a correction WILL occur, but it will probably never drop to 50. In fact, I am betting that it will hit 150 again (without a split) but no lower.

And it is not just R*D that is costing them. It is building out showrooms and supercharger network. That is huge.

You need to go study some history to realize that it is very sane to compare the 2.

The problem with what you are saying is that if our comms and spy sats are taken out, AND somebody launches quickly from the ocean, then it is possible to destroy a nation, even America.

And China's work is headed in that direction. As I said elsewhere, back in the original cold war, American and Russian leaders did NOT want nuke war, and in fact, put limits on what our nations could do to prevent making first strike winnable.
But China refuses those changes. Worst yet, they have a massive spying going on over here which is letting them know exactly what we have, and how to take it out.

No, China is to be feared because they will in fact, cause a nuke war if they continue on this path.