I didn't say it wasn't scummy. I said that the scam described by the parent poster has nothing in common with this situation.

The other companies won a few rounds of the lawsuits based on that, and I want to say Rambus was actually found to have committed fraud at one point. But Rambus won enough rounds of lawsuits to keep bringing in money.

This particular debacle started in 1990. In 2000, Rambus filed lawsuits against every memory manufacturer in a much larger debacle. That's the debacle that dominated Slashdot for months and contributed to a huge influx of users.

I remember back in 2000 when Rambus was the most hated company on Slashdot. Everyone hated Microsoft, but at least acknowledged that they were producing products. Rambus was just a dirty parasite.

Except there was nothing unsolicited about this incident. The customers initiated the transaction by ordering a game. The company screwed up filling those orders. It has no relation to the "scummy business practice" example you provide.

...you love me..
BLAM!

The only situation where it matters at all is if the car is sitting unplugged for weeks on end. That doesn't happen very often.

One of my favorite features of my Nissan Leaf is that I can turn the air conditioning or heater on from a phone app. I can also check the state of the batteries and the time remaining until it fully charges. So even in standby, electric cars are doing a decent amount of stuff.

Not true. Stock Android 4.3 has that functionality. It's just buried under a lot of menu choices.

You seriously looked at that list and described the prices as "in the $1-$2 range"? There's 8 cars under $1 and 4 cars between $1 and $1.32. Of those 4 listed over a dollar, only the Model S is still for sale.

Plugging and unplugging my car is faster and far less of a hassle than plugging in my phone.

That's not really a transaction that you set up on one day's notice.

"Hey. I heard that you were a terrorist and I just wanted to give you a call and offer you some radioactive material that I happened to get my hands on. So is that something you would be interested in?"

That's true, but this topic has nothing to do with antitrust rules.

The government is the only thing enforcing net neutrality. In a truly free market, these private companies could enact any rules they wanted. This situation is complicated by extraordinarily high barriers to entry. It's not a monopoly, but there are few enough players that there is little consumer choice between those players.

That's not a particularly difficult problem. An autonomous electric car could drop you off at the front door of your destination, then drive to a relatively distant parking lot where it can recharge using an automatic (robotic) charging station. Shortly before you're ready to leave, your would alert the car using your phone and it would pick you up at the front door.

Google.

Where are these official rules that determine what's allowed and what's cheating?