It's not always a pain. If the OEM has a good relationship with the supplier, the OEM will usually take the recommendation from the supplier's validation engineer on what testing needs to be redone--depending on the change, it can be a full DV/PV, a limited subset of testing, or no testing at all. What I've learned in the auto industry is the supplier needs to be upfront about any changes... otherwise they risk RAINING FIRE AND VENGEANCE FROM AN ANGRY GOD. With this ignition-switch issue, expect in the forecast black skies and fire.

Yes, it should. Higher loss in the event of fraud, and a $1.59 purchase usually isn't even going to get checked against card balances, to keep the network traffic down.

I can search billions of webpages in milliseconds. I can stream HD video. Advertisers can bid on showing me ads in realtime on the web. I'm not convinced that they can't check that $1.59 purchase against my account balance, every time I swipe my card.

Quite a lot of stress, actually. The camera needs to survive the heat and cold, direct sunlight (depending on mounting), road vibration, rain, salt mist, car washes, and more. Electronics that need to survive outside are going to be more expensive than your standard consumer stuff, that gets... relatively well taken care of. AND, I'll bet you expect the lifetime of your vehicle to be much longer than your cell phone.

Which is an obvious joke...seen a cheap cell phone in the last 10 years? Basic camera lenses and lcd screens are commodity items, and vehicles are already wired to the general vicinity for backup lights that come on when you go into reverse. So you can lop a zero off of the NHTSB's price tag.

Because your cell phone has to deal with the same environmental stresses that your vehicle does? I seriously doubt that any consumer-grade cell phone could make it through any OEM's EMC or environmental validation spec.

PS: I guess this isn't too expensive. By 2018 screens will be standard instead of analog instruments (they're cheaper!) and cameras will cost $0.10.

Unlikely. I work for a supplier that designs and manufactures backup cameras. The cost for the camera will go down, but not that far, and not that fast. Automotive electronics are going to be more expensive than your standard consumer gear because of the beating your vehicle takes... it has to survive the vibration on the road, the hot summer, the cold winter, it needs to be water tight and needs to work for the lifetime of the vehicle. Additionally, the integration into each vehicle is not insignificant. Each vehicle has a different network infrastructure and different geometry (which is important for doing things like dynamic guidelines and lens distortion correction). Ten cents is not within two orders of magnitude of whats on the market today.. but I guess, if someone can figure out how to do it in the auto industry, props to them.

That, and Midtown. Detroit Institute of Arts (and the other museums), Wayne State, close to Ford Field, Comerica Park, and the new stadium for the Wings.

It's not intentional of course, but Blackberry's failure will do more for productivity in Washington DC and to bring the people living in the Beltway bubble back down to earth than all the NGOs, PACs, and citizen action groups combined.

I like to dream, too.

What exactly does "separate" mean? Modern cars have multiple CAN and LIN (and FlexRay and Ethernet) networks, but they are bridged by modules that gateway specific messages/signals from one network to the other. Your entertainment system probably reacts to the state of your vehicle (are some functions not available when in drive? Going above some speed? Doors open?). Separate very likely does not mean "air gapped" like you'd mean in a high security computer network.

That said, I'm not totally convinced by any of the hacks I've seen that there is reason for panic. The one I saw where they were able to control remotely required physical access to an ECU to reflash firmware. Give me physical access to any of your electronics, and I'll make it bend to my will.

Right. Go watch a sitcom from the early 90s (when I was a kid). Now when I see one of those I think... "WTF were people wearing?"

LabView for the Macintosh shipped in 1986, and not only still exists but has a very solid niche in some circles. LabView is such a pure visual IDE that there are not visible lines of code as such; it is all wiring diagrams.

My day job is writing LabVIEW for measurement and automation tasks... I'd chime in that LabVIEW does have text code now in the form of formula nodes and MathScript nodes (which uses Matlab). These are really useful for more complicated math expressions... the wiring gets pretty nasty as your math gets more complex.

This might not be the GPs problem, but in my office, the reason for not upgrading is tied to expensive hardware that doesn't support the newer version of Windows or has known issues on everything except one configuration of Windows and PC.

We're an engineering company, so a lot of the issues have to do with compatibility with hardware that is custom or rare... so, our experience may not be typical.

Think of the ISBN as the primary key for looking up a specific book on ... just about anywhere.

If you want to buy your textbooks before the first day of class (which you do), you need to be able to look it up and verify you're getting the book that you want. There's always the asshole professor that assigns reading from a book on the first day of class, and you wouldn't have the time to buy it from Amazon, get it shipped, and do your homework before it would be due. Your only other option is to mooch off your classmates, which I wholeheartedly endorse.

Just to reiterate what others have said... the campus bookstore is always a gigantic fucking ripoff. Don't deal with them unless you absolutely have to. Use the internet. Buy/borrow from people who have already taken the class. Ask around if you even need to buy the book.

I am not aware that enforcing uniform patterns for floor tile installation has a measurable impact on energy usage.

So whats the optimal floor tile installation for the learning environment? Of all the things that could be so much better with the American education system, I think the tile and physical building parts are... minimal.

I don't work for Sprint, but it already exists. They have two unlimited plans (one is unlimited voice and everything, the other is 450 anytime voice minutes and unlimited everything else). I've had service with them for a few years now, and have been generally happy with it. I'd like to pay less for service but I don't think I'm going to do any better on another carrier with the amount of data I use.

If there is competition around your area, they seem to ignore the caps. We have Comcast, WOW, and AT&T U-Verse available in the area. I got Comcast when I moved in (sadly, WOW is not available in my building, but is available down the block). I've blown past their cap multiple times, and haven't heard a thing from them. Something tells me that doesn't happen in markets with less competition.