12 years? Try 75. Take a look at the New Deal provisions which were being struck down left and right until FDR threatened to pack the court with as many justices as necessary to get the majority he wanted.

It's been nearly all downhill from there. There were isolated cases of executives ignoring the Constitution before (and getting away with it), but it wasn't until the 1930s that it really became systemic.

Well, the rest of it is crap, as is giving you half the bonus, but the taxes are just reality and it's hard to see why the company would intentionally misdirect the cash to your 401K. It's not like they get any benefit from doing that.

My experience at IBM was that I got paid promptly and in full -- though taxes took a big bite, much of which I got back on my tax return. I expect the same would be true of my current employer (Google), but I haven't yet managed to get a referral hired.

And victim. The only thing more prejudicial to justice than combining those roles is allowing the person who feels wronged and is out for vengeance to play all of them.

The point is that they're saying they're the ones who have been victimized by the evil "thieves" of their property. And it's an important point... while it's clearly a bad idea to allow one person/organization to act as judge, jury and executioner -- those roles are separated for very good reasons -- it's utterly ludicrous to allow the victim (or supposed victim), the entity with a personal interest and even a revenge motive, to play any of those roles.

What is that? mmap? Do you have a link?

Or maybe he's bought into the anti-nuclear hype. Sergei's a bright guy but smart people can have blinders like anyone else. Still, having more solutions is better, so if Google X can make this into a viable wind power approach, I think it's great. Though I hope someone does the research on next generation reactors and fuels, because we'll need that, too.

Or it could be that Google believes that everyone in the world should have access to information, with all of the benefits it brings, and is looking for ways to make that possible, in sustainable, self-funding ways.

Nah, couldn't be. We all know corporations are utterly incapable of doing anything beneficial for humanity.

Sure you can. Just put some teeth behind privacy policy violation. If a company says it will do one thing and does something else, penalize it. Defining appropriate (and scalable) penalties would require some thought; you need to make sure that it will hurt no matter how big the company is, and you also need to ensure that companies don't get slammed for the actions of one malicious or negligent employee, but that they do get smacked if there's evidence of a pattern of encouraging or even tolerating such employees. But I think that could be defined with some time and some thought.

Further, it would be a good idea to direct legislatively that the policies covering a given piece of information are the policies that were in place at the time the data was collected. No retroactive policy changes, not without specific, positive permission from users.

I think that approach would strike the right balance, assuring that individuals have the right to trade their personal information for services if they so choose, but ensuring that companies can't arbitrarily change the deal.

Ammunition is readily available in Switzerland, including for the military calibers. They no longer issue the sealed ammunition package to be kept with the rifle, but that's no obstacle. Actually, if you go to a government-sponsored gun range you can buy ammunition with a government subsidy, and without any paperwork. Technically you're supposed to use fire all of the ammunition at the range, but no one checks. Or you can buy it at a gun store, where you'll have to do some paperwork which includes a background check, but it's not at all difficult.

I'm also expecting to see some hybrid designs that use cheap, readily-available steel parts that require little to no modification plus 3D-printed plastic components for the more intricate bits. With that approach, you can fashion something that has the strength to be safe but is considerably more sophisticated than could be constructed out of metal without the services of a good metal shop and significant gunsmithing skill.

Suppose, for example, that you used a steel pipe for a barrel and maybe a block of metal for a bolt face, then were able to print a reliable fully-automatic action and a high-capacity magazine. You could easily assemble the rough equivalent of a machine pistol. It would be less reliable, less durable, bigger and in many other ways not as good as a manufactured gun, but could be created at home with minimal skill and expense (other than the printer... but those are going to get much cheaper) and would be reasonably safe to operate.

You experience is very different from mine. I wonder if something is wrong with your car.

You say you get 4.9 mi/kwh -- with a 24 kwh battery that means you should get 118 miles on a full charge. If you're only getting 70 then your battery is only holding 14 kwh, 60% of its rated capacity.

Personally, I routinely get 120 miles out of a charge when I stay off the freeway and don't need climate control. Just yesterday, for example, I made an 80-mile round trip to the airport using just over half of the battery, driving on surface streets, averaging about 45 mph. The car says I averaged 5.4 mi/kwh which should get me nearly 130 miles.

I do agree that at 90 mph you're not going to get 70 miles. I didn't mean to imply that, though I can see that's a reasonable conclusion from what I wrote. One of these days I should test my range at 80 mph (freeway speed around here). Rarely do I drive more than a few miles on freeways, though, so it's not all that relevant to me.

Anyway, I think you've suffered some really serious battery degradation, and you should get it looked at.

I am, and gas costs made me decide to pay $30K for my Nissan LEAF.

I analyzed TCO (excluding maintenance costs, which are much lower for electrics, but I couldn't quantify that so I just ignored it) for about 20 different vehicles, including EVs, hybrids and pure ICE vehicles,. My model assumed that the new vehicle was going to be an additional vehicle, and that the other (gas-burning) vehicle would be available for trips beyond the range of the EV. I assumed very conservative ranges for the EVs, for example I estimated the LEAF's range at 60 miles (it's really more like 80-120, depending on conditions). Finally, I created a statistical model of my driving habits and calculated the total cost over 8 years.

The result was that the three EVs I looked at had the top three spots... they were the cheapest to drive overall, in spite of being by far the most expensive up front. Even better, thanks to tax credits the break-even point was at 2-3 years. Without the tax credits it was about 6 years. The vehicle immediately behind the EVs was the 18K Honda Insight hybrid, then a mix of other hybrids and more-efficient gas vehicles and finally a long tail of gas vehicles trailing the pack.

Of course, your driving patterns may be different, your electricity costs may be higher or gas prices lower (oh, I assumed that gas prices would continue increasing at the same rate they've increased over the last 8 years), etc., etc, etc., but I've walked several other people through applying my model to their situations and in every single case the EVs have been extremely competitive -- and usually the very cheapest.

In practice, what I've found -- for me -- is that my model was very conservative. In fact, the LEAF is even cheaper than I expected. Partly that's because I was able to get a better deal on the car than I had assumed, and partly it's because I do most of my charging at work, so my actual energy costs are dramatically lower than my model had anticipated.

Oh, and it's a very nice car, not a "tin can" that can't keep me as warm or cool as I like. It's a 3000-pound vehicle that accelerates 0-60 in 7.8 seconds, will do 90+ mph and can easily keep the cab at 60 degrees or 90 degrees or anywhere in between, regardless of outside temperature. It also has power everything, a nice stereo, GPS navigation, XM radio, bluetooth, backup camera, and computer or smartphone-based remote control... it's loaded. Of course, stomping on the gas pedal, driving 90 mph and blasting the heat (the AC doesn't use so much, plus it doesn't have to work against the heat generated by an ICE) will drop my range from 120 miles down to about 70 -- but my model only assumed a 60 mile range. It's a compact, but the alternatives I compared it against were also compacts.

EVs are very real, and very practical, today. And it's only going to get better. If Tesla can produce a $30K car with a 200-mile range, it'll be a huge hit with cost-conscious people, because that's enough range that for most people it can be a primary car -- no need for another ICE vehicle except on the rare long-distance trips, and it's cost-effective to rent for those.