I do know someone who will have a multi-day bipolar episode if he uses marijuana, however that never occurred until after being triggered by heavy mushroom usage. I can't say that marijuana didn't contribute to that trigger but I would never deny someone else access to something that helps them because of it either way. Especially when you could probably replace the word 'marijuana' with 'cake' in research such as this and come to the same conclusion.

I'm with this guy - Interrupt based system. Some calculations just have to happen or an engine goes boom.

Hopefully your car wont be playing its own game of angry birds while streaming music on the engine control computer anyway.

What about people who like to take their road car to a sanctioned race course? How do you propose this limit be removed for that activity at no cost to them?

And what if, some crazy day, you needed to be able to outrun someone who is coming after you? Someone tried to park across the road in front of me once. After going around them they got out of their car and started running at mine. Had I not [had the ability to] run a red light in the middle of the night [after assessing it was perfectly safe to do so] would my property or life have been in danger? Sure felt like it at the time. Who pays to re-program the devices when a state raises it's speed or does not have the proper sensors to tell your car its maximum speed? What happens (who gets sued) when a sensor "misses" and someone is stuck driving down the highway at 15mph while traffic barrels down on them at 70mph?

The answers are so simple and full of ~common sense~ until somebody realizes we don't live in a perfect world.

Burning pump gas causes buildup no matter how perfect the air / fuel mixture is. There are byproducts of burning things. Look in any engine, even that running a very tight AFR and you will see buildup. That said, its currently impossible to build an engine that runs perfect AFR at all times anyway, so that argument is pointless. This is even less possible in positive pressure engines (turbocharger, supercharger... like most companies are moving toward) that require richer AFR for proper combustion without detonation.

One nice thing about Ethanol / methanol is they have a cleaning effect toward carbon buildups on the surfaces they contact... often acting like running a cleaner into your intake.

In any case, Iridium plugs are ~$12/ea and since that stuff likely came from a meteorite, it won't be around forever (might outlast the ICE though). Even though they may be rated for 100,000 miles, I wouldn't run them that long. In any high power / envelope pushing motor I wouldn't run them for more than 15,000 miles. Cut that by 1/5th for copper plugs. Feel free to double or triple that for your standard Camry.

Sure, your oil might lubricate stuff for 100,000 miles, but would you use it for that long? Spark plugs move out of gap, get carbon and metal buildup, increase their resistance from wear, and can basically completely change how a spark is firing based on charge/dwell time of the coil over a few thousand miles.

Moving to something that was more efficient, more consistent, provided for a more consistent ignition, and kept increasing our envelope of efficiency could definitely be worth it.

I just wonder... can you push start a car with these? :)

For all of you congestion-mongers out there (sorry, when high speed internet has been available I've never experienced congestion related problems outside my point of contact).... why don't they just charge everyone a flat rate for unlimited transfer, then give you the option to pay more if you don't want to be congested (if the network calls for it)? That seems to solve everyone's problems. I'd gladly drop something off the $70/mo for 60Mb service and get put in queue 3 of 5... especially if that guaranteed me 1mb of unqueued service for requests and gaming. Can't we all just get along?!

....and for some reason you think that ATT, comcast, or COX would have any desire to give you the pros without the cons? I guess the strange thing to me is that I think the majority of people are paying for non-guaranteed 6Mb connections from comcast at $45/mo and not really using them. I'd love to get my parents on a $15/mo plan that got them that service, but I guarantee the ISPs will do everything they can to keep from making less money off of someone, no matter how reasonable their internet usage is.

So wait... conversation view which has been around since office 2003 still sucks worse than gmail? Thats really the only improvement I see here. Please spaghetti monster, give my company the strength to go gdocs!