Drone are actually at this day, used to kill people in other part of the world. They were not back in then 1980's. Furthermore with the incisingly militarisation of the police in the USA, the two fears are : 1) it will make it very easy to itnroduce massive "eye in the sky" surveillance everywhere in the US 2) that the drone will not stay "passive civilian like" but acquiere first strike capabilities on US soil too.

And seeing the evolution of the no knock raid, and the surveillance society the US is building, either toward the inside or the outside (NSA), I don't think this is that an ungrounded fear.

OSX is as old as XP and still going strong.

Talking about washing machines: mine will be twenty years old next year. It's still as good as new. Miele, there is no better one.

My father always had Simcas in the 1970s. Those cars were so bad that people who were born in the 1980s probably can't even imagine it. It was normal for those cars to be totally rusted through in places after three years. Still, they were very popular at the time.

Those things were almost indestructible. We had one at work that had printed about ten times more than was possible according to its manual before it was replaced.

Has been serving me well.

You must be very hard on your mice.
I have a Logitech trackball that has served me well for almost twenty years now. I hope it will never break because they're not on sale anymore. They have been for a very long time though.

Same here. Mine is a cheap Chinese one I bought 30 years ago and is still working fine.

But those cars are all developed and built in Europe.

You prove my point. You preferred all those cars over American cars. American cars are just not as well put together as European and Japanese cars. That's why you hardly see any American cars in Europe.

Here in Europe we are see to a much higher build quality of cars than Americans are. The Tesla S is one of the few American cars that Europeans want to drive because it's so well put together.

Yeah, but how often do you purchase a brand new luxury car? Anyone who does that is essentially flushing $10,000+ dollars down the drain the instant they drive their car off the lot. What's a few thousand here or there after that?

This is a guy running Mercedes, so that's his point of reference.

You forgot to mention that 40 years after manufacturing the pieces still do their job just as well as when they just came out of the box. That is truly amazing.

Very good point. And while we're ranting about modern society, let's expand your point a bit. Together with patience, thinking also went out the door for most people. Everybody bases their opinions on what they 'feel' these days, without bothering to think their feelings through or looking at things from different angles. Even scientific facts are considered just opinions by many. It's hard to get young people to think about certain things, especially when those things are outside their world and the things they are interested in. And when they finally get their brains in gear they are distracted by their phones beeping all the time announcing new tweets and Whatsapp messages and whatnot.