It seems good to read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy (or other articles on the topic). If the article is correct that 2.4% of new cars sold are hybrids (which sounds reasonable) then the base rate expectation for a "random person" buying a hybrid is low. If the probability of a previous owner of a hybrid buying one next time is 35%, that's still around 14 times the base rate expectation.

Now clearly, car buying habits are hardly monte carlo style distributions. There is a considerably greater "loyalty" to specific cars than just the random assignment of an available vehicle to a driver. Most of that is probably pretty closely tied with income and socio-economic status. Also, obviously occupational effects matter; and also regional ones do. But consistency in brand or style in repeated car purchases is most certainly far lower than 100%.

It is not at all clear from the evidence given whether hybrid-loyalty is greater or less than other types. For example, I *just* bought a Honda Insight (which seems a lot less common than Toyota Prius, despite what seem to be even more favorable reviews; name recognition does seem big here). Like literally days ago, so I'm probably not good evidence in any direction about next vehicle purchase. But prior to that (and still), my partner and I own an Audi A4--a brand that probably sells no more than 2.4% of cars in the US (i.e. the brand as a whole, not the specific model which must be lower still). Even if a hybrid were out of consideration and I could only consider a conventional gasoline engine, I think there's much less than 35% chance I'd choose an Audi for my next car. Not because I have any particular criticism of Audi, but just because there are lots of other choices, even given similar driving patterns and socio-economic status. I could buy a Saab, or Volvo, or Acura, or maybe on a bit pricier side a BMW, Mercedes, Lexis, or slightly downscale a Buick or Lincoln, or a VW which comes from the same factory even. All of these are pretty comparable, and brand loyalty might lean my decision slightly, but there's a long way to go between the base rate--even of only "semi-luxury sedans"--to get to 35% brand retention.

It *is* true that I find a few faults with the Kindle Fire in my early use of it. Most of these could indeed be fixed with software updates, and I think at least some of them *will* be. In part this is just that the Amazon Marketplace has much less than the Android Marketplace... I confess I have not tried side-loading applications, and am not sure how hard that would/will be.

* I'd really like a native GMail app like I have on my Android phone. The mobile website is kind of OK, but it completely depends on Wifi access, unlike the phone app which caches the latest emails.
* Possibly a really native Facebook app would be nicer than the webpage too, although the latest update to my Android phone FB app looks ever more similar to the web page anyway.
* Multi-user would definitely be nice, but I think this is unlikely to happen.
* I think the Words-to-Go app is really nice as a PDF reader (Acrobat is OK, but I don't like it as well in the Kindle/Android version). However, in a slightly annoying inconsistency in user interface, the latest Books/Documents/Apps/Webpage/Music/etc. all appear on the "top shelf" but getting to a PDF document (or the various other formats, mostly MS-Office related) requires the different (more desktop-like) process of launch-application/open-recent-file. The logical thing would be to let the documents read by applications like this get "top shelf" icons too. Possibly the same is true of the latest picture/video/whatever that I viewed in Gallery (which is also a launch-then-run procedure like a desktop).

I think I might prefer an external volume rocker like some users have said, and I'm not in love with the placement of the on/sleep/off button. But those are minor issues, and I don't *hate* either choice.

I am extremely happy with my Kindle Fire, far more than I would be with an iPad if someone had given me one for free. The form factor is right for the airplane and for reading in bed, much more useful for what I want it for than a 10" tablet would be.

It's true that exactly like the iPad, the iPhone, every Android phone, every other Android tablet, HP's ill fated WebOS tablet, most default OSX, Linux, and Windows installation with auto-login enabled, etc. that there is no privacy protection. It's a single user device, and anyone who sees the device can pretty easily determine what its user was doing on it recently (and in general). That is indeed perhaps a weakness, and I wouldn't mind having Android devices (especially tablets, but perhaps phones also) be multiuser (likewise for the iWhatever stuff).

During my most recent plane trip with my Kindle Fire, which unlike an iPad fits in my pocket, I:

* Read a variety of documents sent to the device from web pages using the Firefox Readability plugin
* Read some PDF documents
* Read (part of) some books that I purchased from Amazon
* Watched a video that I downloaded directly onto the device from a 3rd party website (in anticipation of flight)
* Listened to some music I had put locally onto the device
* Played a few moves of Words with Friends before takeoff
* Played Plants vs. Zombies while in flight
* Checked GMail and Facebook and Google+ quickly before takeoff (using Wifi connection to hotspot)

In every respect that I can see, not least including price, but even more so including Freedom, the Kindle Fire is a far better device than the iPad is.

I am extremely happy with my Kindle Fire, far more than I would be with an iPad if someone had given me one for free. The form factor is right for the airplane and for reading in bed, much more useful for what I want it for than a 10" tablet would be.

It's true that exactly like the iPad, the iPhone, every Android phone, every other Android tablet, HP's ill fated WebOS tablet, most default OSX, Linux, and Windows installation with auto-login enabled, etc. that there is no privacy protection. It's a single user device, and anyone who sees the device can pretty easily determine what its user was doing on it recently (and in general). That is indeed perhaps a weakness, and I wouldn't mind having Android devices (especially tablets, but perhaps phones also) be multiuser (likewise for the iWhatever stuff).

During my most recent plane trip with my Kindle Fire, which unlike an iPad fits in my pocket, I:

* Read a variety of documents sent to the device from web pages using the Firefox Readability plugin
* Read some PDF documents
* Read (part of) some books that I purchased from Amazon
* Watched a video that I downloaded directly onto the device from a 3rd party website (in anticipation of flight)
* Listened to some music I had put locally onto the device
* Played a few moves of Words with Friends before takeoff
* Played Plants vs. Zombies while in flight
* Checked GMail and Facebook and Google+ quickly before takeoff (using Wifi connection to hotspot)

In every respect that I can see, not least including price, but even more so including Freedom, the Kindle Fire is a far better device than the iPad is.

I can actually see a reasonable discovery purpose in looking at the contents of FB pages, and that is mentioned in the article. For example, if the parties have made comments about how responsible they might be in a custodial role (something suggested in article), that could be germane.

But FB isn't really a walled garden anymore. Now there is a quite good "export my data" functionality within it. A reasonable judge's order would simply be for exchange of that downloaded data, which will contain all the relevant background that might exist with past posts. Obviously, this is contingent on parties not deleting old posts first, but other posters have already noted how doing that would be spoilation of evidence (and if parties would do that, they could equally do so with a live account after passwords were shared).

I do recognize that the article mentioned "dating sites" too. Those sites may still be walled gardens, and may well not provide easy data export capabilities. For those, the only way to look at relevant posts/emails/profiles/etc. might indeed be password sharing. Of course, who knows what general data policies those sites have--i.e. are messages automatically deleted after N days, and archives inaccessible to users? Access to password may or may not reveal the full history of site usage.

I would put it in exactly the opposite way. A GUI is an efficient way of doing a small number of specialized tasks. For more general requirements, a (good) CLI always wins... and wins by many orders of magnitude. That said, editing graphics and videos is absolutely one area where a GUI often wins. That's mostly because our interaction and understanding of those data formats is inherently visual, and most work with them is interactive. There's usually no systematic or programmatic way to describe what we want done... and in fact, what we want emerges out of interactions with the data.

On the other hand, for things that can be systematized--even on an ad hoc basis--a CLI might be hundreds or thousands of times easier. I preview pictures like everyone. I also often, for example, look for data and patterns in files. To do that, I can do things like (off the cuff):

        % find /home -name *.csv | grep "Date: 2011-1[01]" | cut -d, -f1,6 > interesting.data

If I happen to have a thousand files in various directories that match the name pattern, and many of them have records for dates in Oct-Nov 2011 with a field I care about, what exactly might I do in a GUI?! Spend hours and hours hunting for the files, opening each, copying the data, etc? I could, but that would suck. Or I could also certainly write a *program* in some language other than bash to walk the directories, open the files, etc. But that's much less interactive and more clumsy than just doing it with one command (albeit, some other programming languages let you express something similar with little more text than the bash line... however, those are still matters of typing the write text, not of clicking on icons and dragging a mouse around).

Now clearly for some frequently repeated tasks, makers of applications and operating systems add in special menus and toolbars to do complex tasks like the above line. But those menus, dialogs, etc. always wind up being less flexible than the command-line and missing future uses that are easy to express with commonplace command-line simple tools (like find, grep, cut, etc).

Most of the comments below--and to a large degree the source article--seem to implicitly assume that all discussion of programming languages happens on Stack Overflow. There probably is some difference in the average experience level of programmer of various languages. But it's also almost certainly the case that OTHER websites also discuss programming languages. For example, someone interested in finding a solution to Python puzzle might well go to the Python Cookbook (http://code.activestate.com/recipes/langs/python/) rather than Stack Overflow. Similarly, to varying degrees, for all the other languages mentioned (with various sites appropriate to each). All this really amounts to is that "Stack Overflow is a good place to find info on languages X, Y, Z; but not so good for A, B, C" ... and this effect is somewhat self-reinforcing, as users of the "underrepresented languages" look elsewhere for help.

The mere distribution of specialization on various websites says nothing at all about the quality, difficulty, breadth of use, or much anything else about the languages themselves.

Aaaghh!

Python is, of course, a STRONGLY typed language (not untyped). It is also DYNAMICALLY typed rather than STATICALLY. But these issues are orthogonal, and languages exist in every quadrant of the type system grid implied.

Well... at 46 yo, I've learned probably about a dozen new programming languages since I was a spry 40 yo. OK, a number of those I've "learned" relatively superficially... I wish I had more opportunities to get my hands dirtier on a daily basis with all the languages I've only played with a little in the last few years, but I get paid quite a bit to do relatively few things.

Actually, over the last few years, I've *written* at least two languages. Not quite programming languages, but one markup language and one, well "annotated grammar description" I guess you'd call it. Yes, I know that NIH syndrome is a bad thing, but there's a reason why I wrote what I did (trust me). On the shelves near me I have books on about a dozen PLs that I either haven't worked with at all, or have touched passingly; it wouldn't be true to say I'm actively reading all of those books, but I certainly glance at them.

Seriously? WTF?

I'm not sure any review really merits the front page, but surely if one must appear it could be from an actual news site.... perhaps even from a technology-oriented site.