Neilâ(TM)s periodic anti-Tesla (always) articles have gotten to you, but they donâ(TM)t reflect reality. He freely mixes years-old technology with the present without differentiation. In the era where the Tesla hit a truck, the determination was driver inattention. Every, and I mean every, automotive system that used radar would have crashed because all were programmed to ignore stationary objects in order not to brake at large, fixed structures like overpasses. So, drivers were told, before the system would activate, to pay attention. The video game issue is ridiculous. Any driver can eat, shave, drive 50 mph over the limit, etc., at any time without being scolded. The Tesla at least warns that only a passenger should activate the game and presents a button to attest to this. And, in reality, nobody does this.

The prior training before this limited beta release was based on simulation data and real-world data from only a few drivers. Thatâ(TM)s why it has been released now in this way - to begin the process of absorbing massive amounts of data. Itâ(TM)s a rough skeleton waiting to be fleshed out. Already, however, you can see how good the vision system is, tracking large numbers of rapidly moving cars in all directions. Frame rate is about 2100 HD frames per second in total, which needs to handle 8 cameras. This should be more than enough. The quality of the training will be key to how to ultimately behaves going forward, as machine learning is capable of learning poor habits and bad examples as well as good. In only a week, interventions have been reduced by a third. This is hardly noticeable in itself, because it still leaves countless intervention examples for people to dwell over. But, repeat the process and you have 99% improvement in short order.

Failure doesn't stem only from bad design. What happens if there's a slight clog in the 3D printer's extruder that creates a bubble or weak spot hidden within a part? A larger company engineers the manufacturing, not only the part, to be reliable, and does quality-control checks along the way as well. The equipment for such checks isn't practical for a consumer doing a one-off.

No, it has to do with Google putting restrictions on the use of map data, including not allowing turn-by-turn navigation. Apple knew that it couldn't have a core feature of its product permanently beholden to a competitor and the restrictions it might impose down the line. So, realizing that bringing maps in-house would not get any easier down the line, it decided to rip off the band-aid now. Every other smartphone platform has done the same. Microsoft uses its own maps. Nokia owns Navteq and Google we all know about.

iPhone didn't support 3rd party apps for its entire first year. In fact, Apple's argument was that web apps using exisiting HTML5 technology made more sense. But users kept complaining about the lack of support, spawning jailbreaking and the Cydia store. So, Apple introduced the App Store with the iPhone 3G. Sometimes the market speaks and it wanted native performance.

There are plenty of things that demonstrate that Steve Jobs was human and didn't have perfect taste. Approving the fake wooden iBooks bookcase. Bringing in swatches of Corinthian leather to meeting and insisting that the "Find My Friends" UI replicate the look. And this: http://www.cultofmac.com/163265/steve-jobs-wanted-to-dress-up-as-willy-wonka-provide-tour-of-apple-campus-for-millionth-imac-purchase/ In one article, Jolie O'Dell opined that Apple's use of a multicolored logo was an aesthetic gaffe marking the post-Jobs decline of Apple. Sounds good, except that Apple also used a flashy, multicolored logo at the original iPad unveiling. Misguided predictions like this are easy but usually short on research.

Newtons would also have been fine.

But they're not. There's no transfer of ownership. You get to choose if you want to take advantage of the huge exposure of the iBooks Store. If so, you use Apple's free tool to create an interactive book format that works there. If not, don't. In either case, you can take that same content and use another tool to format it for a different store without restriction. The only thing you can't do is have your cake and eat it, too: take Apple's free tool and use it to create content for a competing store. It's a restriction on the tool use, not on the fate of your content.

There are many, many software packages that restrict the use of their output. Look at the license of the Home & Student edition of Office 2010: you can't use the output for commercial purposes. Same with many packages that come in a free and for-pay version: the free version is non-commercial. The only difference here is that Apple hasn't (at least yet) offered a for-pay version without the restriction. Also consider that business tools are commonly used to restrict distribution as well. Amazon won't allow your book to be part of the Kindle Lending Library if you sell it elsewhere, and that's for the *content*. iBooks Author only restricts the the formatting of the content into a particular output format. There's nothing wrong with a company investing in producing a tool that didn't exist before and which creates interactive eBook output that can't be created easily elsewhere and which can't even be display with full fidelity elsewhere and deciding that it doesn't want to put this tool out there to the advantage of competing stores. Why would a for-profit company do such a thing?

First, Apple is only a case study in this story. The facts apply to just about all electronics products. Further, Apple doesn't boast about this. They audit the suppliers and factories that do work for them and publish their results, with goals for how to improve. They are now a member of the Fair Labor Association. Finally, the article doesn't say that US jobs are lost due to standard of living. Paying Chinese workers American wages would raise the cost of goods only about 25%, according to the article. The situation is far more grim than this. Rather, the U.S. no longer has the dense congregation of many places of manufacture that all tie together into a big supply chain web. The construction of manufacturing capacity sometimes begins even before a contract is actually awarded, just in case, and is subsidized by the government. Further, the U.S. lacks the numbers of workers with the engineering skill that these factories tend to employ: somewhat higher than high school but not a full four-year B.S. degree. We therefore can't easily mobilize and structure a sufficient (in both numbers and skillsets) labor force on short notice. The article states that China could amass the required talent for a job in 15 days that would take 9 *months* in the U.S.

Tesla is following its plan nicely. Knowing that developing the initial platform technology would be expensive, they started with a car that people are typically willing to pay a lot for: a high-performance roadster. Next, they are approximately halving that price while increasing the versatility to expand the potential market. There are many cars in the price range of the Model S that sell well to upper-middle-class customers, especially those that can serve as a primary vehicle such as this 5-door. The work on the Model S will ultimately allow Tesla to bring down the cost of the next model still further with a more mass-market vehicle. Each step furthers the technology and brings in revenue to fund the next step.

No more so than making assault illegal is a violation of your personal right to punch someone. Personal liberties stop where they infringe on the rights of others. Plus, noone is being held down at needle point, just being denied privileges that they can be replaced with private sources. When an individual forgoes a vaccine, they're increasing the chance that you and I will encounter and be infected with the disease (since vaccines aren't 100% effective and since prevention is a combination of reducing exposure and boosting immunity).

It makes far more sense for private industry to focus on where they can make money - transporting cargo such as satellites into orbit. That is, they become orbital trucks. This frees up NASA to work on visionary projects that aren't currently commercially viable: we the people funding, though tax dollars, the learning necessary for our long-term futures.

Stratolaunch: Launch from the stratosphere. Seems apropos to me!

How you do pay "a lot more" for an iPad? A 10.1" Galaxy Tab is the same price as the iPad as of this moment on a reasonable site such as Amazon.com. And that's without Apple's excellent customer support (phone and retail store), without the ability to extend the warranty an extra year and without the high resale value which reduces total cost of ownership considerably.