Slashdot Mirror

The BMW 340i has an EPA rated city range of 336 miles (16 gallons, 21 MPG), the Tesla Model 3 LR has a range of 310 (according to Tesla.

The BMW 340i can be refueled in under 10 minutes, the Tesla Model 3 takes a bit longer.

The corporate mindset is diametrically opposed to the concept of ownership. This applies to computers, phones, game consoles, books, John Deere Tractors, and cars. Hey corporations, I bought this thing and can do anything that I damn well please with it.

If you shove a some contract in front of me that tries to strip my rights, I walk. You just lost yourself a customer and sale for life.

If you sue your customers for restoring functionality to their game consoles, you can expect a boycott of your products for life.

If you tell your customers that they have to have their oil changed at the dealership or else violate the DMCA, screw you. May everyone who learns of your crap stop doing business with you.

We're not just talking about the corporate nameplates. We are talking about the executives behind this treachery. It's time to start making a list.

Vehicle sales have similar weirdness. There are some legal/regulatory terms of what constitutes a "light truck" versus a "car" and so on. Not to mention that the term "station wagon" became a death sentence for a vehicle. So you end up with a PT Cruiser being a truck for fuel efficiency standards but as a car for others. Subaru markets their Outback as a SUV, but it's really a wagon, or as they call it, a Crossover/SUV, and it's also a "truck", but never, ever a "wagon" ... which calls up memories of giant domestic precursors of minivans that stylish people want to avoid.

Nowadays you have the laptops, convertible laptops, tablets designed to replace your laptop, tablets that are nearly laptops, etc. There's some really nice thinking going on out there in the laptop space. My wife went from a traditional laptop to a HP Spectre and is really enjoying the convertible aspect of the thing and the touch screen. Sure she doesn't use the touch screen much in laptop mode, but when she's watching videos she uses it all the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.subaru.com/vehicles...
http://www.thecarconnection.co...

Three pedals? I'm pretty sure this car comes with two pedals and and nice selection of gear settings. http://images.thecarconnection...

FYI, Kia got burned for doing that a couple of years back, especially on their 2012 Soul models.

They tried to play it off as "human error", but that 2-6 mpg 'error' cost Kia $300 million in fines (and in not-insubstantial checks written to a lot of Soul owners, my wife being the recipient of one of them).

Sorry, messed up on editing - quote tags disappeared.

1) If i could guarantee 150 miles per day at 70mph minimum (speed limit is 70), that would cover my commute.

You're in luck, the model S has that range. Specifically, it has 225 miles@75mph.

Rear ended: The Model S has TWO batteries, a tiny 12V one for accessories, and the big lithium-ion one that's over 7k 18650 cells. However, the big battery is unlikely to be hit, given it's location. The body of a model S is basically a skateboard with the battery attached to the bottom of the board between the wheels.

On safety: highest marks.

Destination: How far away is it, and does it have electricity at all? I was thinking that you camp on the weekends or something.

Plug: Right now most Tesla owners have a garage they can pull into.
Thieves: I might be mean, but I would laugh heartily when any metal stealing thieves manage to electrocute themselves.
Breaking in: Home security system. Smith & Wesson is popular, but I went with the cheaper but more modern CZ. Slap a home monitoring sticker on your door/window, it should dissude most.

On electricity: Tesla pays for the electricity, with the cost for the superchargers built into the price of the vehicle, much like how many dealers are bundling the first 2 years of oil changes and routine maintenance with their vehicles.

Electricity not being cheap: If you don't mind, where are you, and what's your electric company? Industrial/Commerical users normally see quite a break in price. As for third parties, it's a mix of things:
1. If they install a supercharger station Tesla pays them.
2. If they install something else, they're allowed to charge.
3. Loss leader to attract the normally wealthier than normal EV owners
4. Electricity isn't actually that expensive

Prankster kid: The charger for the tesla locks into the port when connected. You need your proximity key to unlock it. If they're bringing tools to cut the cord, well, electrocution awaits and they could just disassemble your car as is.

Charge time: It all depends on the station. 150 miles ~ 50 kwh; With a dedicated 30A charger, you're looking at about 7 hours to reach full again. 50A or higher would be faster, of course.

Cheapness: Look into 'off-peak' electricity. You're still looking at $15/day in gasoline(30mpg vehicle) vs $5 of electricity.

That being said, I agree that cost is the single biggest reason to NOT get a Tesla today.

I don't doubt that such methods are routinely practised by corporations in other areas. For instance: United Launch Alliance creating a stealth PR campaign against the upstart SpaceX, as exhibited by this hopelessly biased hit piece; or established auto companies creating a stealth PR campaign against the upstart Tesla or other electric cars as exhibited in the overemphasis of Tesla battery fires; or the propagation of the myth that the hybrid Toyota Prius is worse for the environment than a Hummer (I heard that one repeated from an engineering professor friend of mine recently). The biggest one of all is the continued campaign against the entire field of climate science in order to prevent action on climate change, action that would with certainty reduce the revenues and power of fossil fuel companies.

The MPAA was inept in allowing this email to surface. Most other companies who engage in such corrupt actions would not allow such incriminating evidence to surface, or even to exist. Seeing this email lifts the veil on the behaviour of one organization. But it seems to me that such behaviour is likely widespread. I am of the opinion that what can be done by corporations will be done, if it increases their overall profits and power. If a corporation can pay for newspaper articles to increase their power (and get away with it), then they will. If they can pay posters to write messages on Disqus (or on Slashdot for that matter), then they will. If they can purchase powerful politicians, either by direct payment or by offering of employment after the politician leaves office, then they will. This is not paranoia. It is an hypothesis that is supported both by logic and by evidence. If they can do that which benefits them, then they will.

Load up a bunch on a truck and then use smaller vehicles to transport them out to the various sites. If they were built at different sizes, perhaps for a size for an EV freight-hauling vehicle, then those would likely be larger generators and maybe could handle powering a small store, a nursing home, etc... That might be a good bonus.

If you're 'loading them up on a trailer' to take to an emergency site, you're better off just taking cage-style generators. The stores, nursing homes, and such should already have them. It's one of the reasons I'm against anti-gouging laws. If a store spends the money to have generation systems so it can stay in business even with the power outage, it should be able to raise it's prices to cover the generators*, overtime/hazard pay for employees, etc...

I expect it to be expensive (even if artificially and no I do not suspect the market to correct it with any great speed) and something that is not included on lower-end models.

It's about a $3k option. So no, it's not going to be on the cheapest trailers, but it's not 'that' expensive. Especially if U-haul figures out that it saves them money.

Then you get systems like the ford auto-backup. Which IS a vehicle mounted option.

Also, these are people traveling. They are not just people moving. Comparing them to a rental such as U-Haul is intellectually deceiving if not intellectually dishonest.

I'm not comparing people traveling to U-Haul. I'm saying that I see the most common trailer case to be that the trailer is rented, the car is owned, because the people are using the trailer for 1-2% of their driving needs, and don't need the trailer around taking up space and still requiring maintenance when they don't need it.

If they're such an edge case like you, that they'd more or less constantly have the trailer on their vehicle, it's time to ditch the trailer and just buy a hybrid in the first place. Do not mistake me for a 'single solution' type of person, though I will get into the 'weeds' when concentrating on a single topic. Once you remove the people who never go that far(I used to drive from ND to NE to visit my parents. Now that the trip would be from AK to FL, I fly), those that do it relaxed enough that supercharger stations would keep up with them(my parents), those that do it constantly enough that they just buy a hybrid in the first place, etc... There's not a lot of trailers left.

This does not discount the idea of a trailer, it is simply another line of thinking that I have been mulling over since first pondering the trailer idea.

I pondered it myself, but kept hitting a wall at the steering issue. Except for backing, a trailer changing steering less than hanging the weight off the vehicle. Plus, I got 600 pounds by looking up the weight of a 22kW generator. Add in fuel, wiring, etc...

So you're looking at needing a way to lift said attachment to place onto the vehicle - which would not be easy, and moving it around without wheels is a pain. I can move my much larger trailer by hand if necessary when it's unloaded, 600 pounds on wheels is relatively easy.

Some early hybrid designs were to feature a removable motor/secondary battery/storage area, but you run into weight/storage issues there - do you want a motor taking up your trunk space when you're going on a long trip?

As for an example trailer consider this article about one in development. 22kW - right on the money! Barely visible out the rear-view mirror, but yes, wider than I expected.

*which, even discounting purchase costs, fuel costs for the electricity to run the store are going to be substantially higher during the outage.

And that requirement will cause more accidents, as people will panic and take manual control in situations that the car could have handled. But traffic laws are about revenue generation, not safety. After all, when the two conflict, safety loses.

"I've always been concerned about people who can't see the negative side of all the "green", modern technologies today."

And I've found such people exist primarily in the imaginations of the people who complain about them.(I'll concede there may be some exceptions, see Einstein and the limits of human stupidity) Look, anyone with grey cells knows that windmills don't magically spring up from the ground, they have to be manufactured, and manufacturing creates pollution, especially in countries that find it inconvenient to regulate it. The question isn't "are windmills perfect?", it's "Do windmills have a smaller carbon/environmental footprint than using coal to create the same amount of power?" The consensus seems to be yes, they do.

As for the Prius, its environmental impact has been debated to death and yes, it is greener than your pickup.

Finally, "green" and "modern technologies" aren't equivalent. I'm pretty sure the president of Exxon Mobil owns a cell phone, and just as sure he couldn't give two farts about being green. The fact that tech creates pollution is not a blanket indictment of green tech. I do agree that replacing your phone every two years is wasteful, it would be nice if phone carriers provided an incentive to keep your old phone instead of the 2-year churn. They may be getting there, when my two years with AT&T was up I got a new contract that gave me a break for using my old phone.

Even dedicated Scion iQ fans are unlikely to see the little electric iQ version; that's because it will only be offered to fleets that can use a very short-distance electric car. Its EPA-rated range of just 38 miles isn't likely to appeal to many buyers, so Toyota's zero-emission "compliance car" will instead be the Toyota RAV4 EV with a range of 103 miles from its Tesla-engineered electric powertrain.

Dat downforce...

Repair? Tesla themselves, free of charge in many cases. They'll even come get the car for you if needed, most dealerships won't do that.
Regular maintenance? *What* regular maintenance? Les Schwab or your preferred local alternative can rotate the tires and check the brakes for you. Not much else is needed... no oil, no spark plugs, no transmission (in the conventional sense), etc.

Most folks not into the electric/hybrid ownership thang just don't get this - the dividends for a hybrid (and doubly so for a pure electric) are in the small things - great acceleration "curves", quieter cabin, keyless entry, reduced maintenance, no transmission changes ever, oil changes that always came back clean even when I do them yearly, etc etc. And the Tesla takes it to a whole new level.

It's not the MPG that sold me on the Prius 10 years ago (and that I still drive daily with 50+mpg), it the fact that it felt like spaceship when it "booted" and all the other things that no other car at the time could do. The new Telsa faux-mercial exemplifies this: http://www.thecarconnection.co...

See also: http://www.thecarconnection.co...

Either you or the engineers at BMW, Daimler-Benz, Audi, and Cadillac are ignorant on this subject, which seems most likely?

Indeed, this image from TFA nicely demonstrates what a retard this guy is: http://images.thecarconnection...

Actually I did, And I traced it to the source.

The first link http://www.thecarconnection.co... got all its information from the second link.

The first link states "another Tesla Model S has burst into flames -- this time, while parked".
However his cited source makes no such statement. He added that part all by himself.

Just looking at the pictures you can tell it wasn't the car that was burning. It was something else in the garage.

That's true, but has anyone bothered to do it yet? Cars have had electronic throttles for quite a few years now, and I haven't heard of that feature.

Toyota? See: Smart Stop Technology.

Nissan too. And Ford, Hyundai, BMW, etc....

Actually, after the Toyota scandal, I'd be surprised if it wasn't standard on all cars with electronic throttle.

This "killer" firmware must have a subroutine that detects the age of the driver and then invokes the bug. link The Toyota sudden acceleration "problem" is yet another media/lawyer driven hoax. Toyota only recalled only due to political pressure during the mass hysteria.

Tire pressure is a safety and emissions issue. A big safety issue. Where I'm at, Ontario, any MIL code is a fail, any code. http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1076372_tire-pressure-at-fault-in-5-percent-of-accidents-study (note in the last section, bad weather effect amplified by poorly infalted tires) http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2012/05/14/study-finds-low-pressure-factor-in-many-crashes/ http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/maintain.shtml And of course, proper inflation gives the best mileage. This applies to *any* vehicle. A slow leak in the mountains is no fun. Even in the city, a slow tire leak can ruin your day. That's the point of your sensor, avoiding the hell of changing your tire on the side of the highway.

The two notable things (other than the quality of teaching) about his class: infinite time is given to take exams (exams started at 7pm and a teaching assistant would stay until the last student left - the record during my tenure was 5:00am, or so I heard) and he provide free Tosci's ice cream during the exam.

During the Bose factory tours, he showed off Project Sound a decade before it was revealed to the press. And inevitably a student would challenge some of the concepts the Bose company popularized (direct/reflecting, lack of tone controls, etc) and Dr. Bose would gently, but convincingly slap down the student using a blizzard of engineering arguments (rumor has it that Ken Kantor was the only student that could successfully go toe-to-toe with Dr. Bose).

RIP Dr. Bose.

I'm not going to argue with you on how intelligent or unintelligent Dr. Bose was (undoubtedly he was pretty smart).

Unfortunately, the products of his company are overpriced shite.

Bose makes marketing agreements with their retail partners. Notice how Bose has its own exclusive section in any retail electronics store? That's because it's so good, right? Nope, that's because it's part of the agreement Bose reaches with the big box stores like Best Buy in order to limit the customers' ability to compare other equipment with Bose. Bose understood early on that a combination of clever marketing and a slick exterior form-factor would allow the company to charge significantly more than their competitors in the home-theater market.

The two notable things (other than the quality of teaching) about his class: infinite time is given to take exams (exams started at 7pm and a teaching assistant would stay until the last student left - the record during my tenure was 5:00am, or so I heard) and he provide free Tosci's ice cream during the exam.

During the Bose factory tours, he showed off Project Sound a decade before it was revealed to the press. And inevitably a student would challenge some of the concepts the Bose company popularized (direct/reflecting, lack of tone controls, etc) and Dr. Bose would gently, but convincingly slap down the student using a blizzard of engineering arguments (rumor has it that Ken Kantor was the only student that could successfully go toe-to-toe with Dr. Bose).

RIP Dr. Bose.

Genesis vs S-Class - here's a picture for the visual comparison: http://www.thecarconnection.com/car-compare-results/hyundai_genesis_2010-vs-mercedes-benz_s-class_2010. You can also search sonata and cls550.

They have also mimicked BMW, Jaguar. (Obviously in different cars - or I'd assumed it was obvious anyway...) I'm also assuming you don't need me to google every one for you ;)

my (next) car already has this: a split screen view so the driver can see the satnav while the passenger can watch movies or TV (with headphone support to avoid distraction)

Speaking of golf, I wish this requirement would get car manufacturers to implement golf ball surfacing on their vehicles. Of course, as the actual tests to measure MPG involve a car at rest, surfacing updates are likely not going to become standard.

According to this, in Sept 2011,

Acura - 10k sold
BMW - 25k sold

http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1066815_september-2011-car-sales-the-needle-creeps-higher

For one thing, the individual in the street can themselves be seen. Being in a public place is a two-way deal, and if you're going around peering in through people's windows, you're going to attract unwelcome attention.

Have you ever seen a Google Street View car?

That's wrong. Canadians are keeping their cars longer than ever before, because they are more durable. They don't make them like they used to is right - we make them a lot better nowadays. I remember reading a Statistics Canada based piece in The Globe and Mail (cannot relocate), but I found these studies just googling it now.

http://www.autonorth.ca/home/2008/7/30/canadians-keeping-cars-longer.html
http://www.therecord.com/news/business/article/623911--canadians-keeping-cars-longer
http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1057594_will-auto-sales-stay-lower-because-better-cars-last-longer

For the record though: over-30 inches and you're in the 400+ USD range so it isn't the cheapest answer.

For the record: for a TV sitting across the living room to be of the same viewing area of a 30" screen right in front of you, you're talking at least a 50 inch LCD TV. Most of which are still around a thousand dollars, and all of which are well over $400....so you were saying?

Most people own TVs independently of the console vs. PC.

And if you ask console gamers why they bought a high def TV, what would the answer be? Sure, they might say sports and movies but also....games. But okay, let's say "most people" own TV's independent of playing console games.

However, speaking of "bursting bubbles", you can make the same argument for computers - "most people" have PC's in their home, independent of playing computer games. And for the cost of a couple controllers for a console, you can buy a cheap dedicated graphics card that will do as good or better in that PC as anything an Xbox 360 or PS3 can do. If the base cost of a TV can be written off for console gaming "because most people have a TV", the base cost of a basic PC can be written off "because most people have a PC". The supposed cost advantage of consoles: thoroughly re-nuked.

The cost just to switch between AMD choices is creeping up on 600 every 2-3 years or 200-300 a year. Intel is even greater

Now you're just putting on the clown shoes. A motherboard/cpu combo can be had for less than half the cost of a new console. Throw in a cheap graphics card, a stick of RAM, and you'll have a system that will blow the doors off a PS3 or 360 for the cost of a Wii. Or did you skip over the part where console costs can be inflated right along with PC gaming costs? You want to start talking $300 processors or $300 graphics cards, and we'll also start talking about $5000 TV's and $800 stereo systems.

But, amazing things can be done when selective math is used in conjunction with leaning an elbow on one side of the scales.

If the chevy volt looked 100% identical to a $15,000 car it would have sold nothing at all because there is no "LOOK AT ME!!1!1!" factor.

I don't know, the Volt and the Civic look pretty similar to me.

Why, then, does my 1982 S-Class Mercedes with power everything that weighs 3450 at the curb get 30 mpg on the freeway?

First off, the plural of anecdote is not data. We're talking about FLEET averages, not individual cars. Every auto maker is perfectly capable of making cars that get better than 30mpg and most of them have.

Second, did you really want to use Mercedes as an example? They have worse fuel economy than Ford or GM across their fleets. In fact aside from some small luxury car makers they have the absolute worst overall fleet fuel economy of any major auto manufacturer who sells cars in the US.

The same cost is applied to all automakers. Well, those who haven't already made efficiency a priority; it won't cost them anything.

That could not be more wrong. They all have to spend money as a result of CAFE, the difference is when and why. The Asian manufacturers who had low labor costs and thus competitive small (low margin) cars are obviously ahead of the game but they still have to invest to keep their lead in small cars. They also want to get into bigger (higher margin) cars which hurts their fuel economy averages unless they invest in the same technology as the US and European makers. The US and European manufacturers with their historically higher labor costs and resultant product lineups with larger (higher margin) cars have a different problem trying to get people to buy smaller vehicles from them. Basically US and Europe are tying to go small while Asian makers are trying to go big. End of the day they all have to invest a lot of extra engineering money to meet mandated fuel economy standards.

I've worked on both types of vehicle directly and I promise you that Toyota has better engineers.

And I've actually worked WITH their engineers in their manufacturing plants. I've helped design assembly lines where the products of both companies are made and sat in design reviews of products. The difference in engineering talent are negligible. The differences in management talent are rather more significant. There is a huge difference between knowing how to engineer a great product and actually being allowed to do it.

He's decided to change cars too!

I INTENTIONALLY slow down when someone is tailgating me

Someday you'll meet "pam" (first comment on the link).

I hope you die alone and don't hurt anyone else.

There is a PICTURE of the charge cable in TFA

You can't, but you can look at other external data, for corroboration. As an example, the age breakdown seems to be indicative more of driver error than mechanical issues...

Did anyone else read this article about the NHTSA not having software engineers or any ability to evaluate computerized systems? http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042836_nhtsa-has-no-software-engineers-or-ees-to-analyze-toyotas Makes this conclusion seem a bit sketchy to me? This is a good answer for Toyota, wonder how much it cost them?

Woah, slow down with the conspiracy theory, Hoss. Your article is from February. If you bothered to read this article before leaping to that unlikely conclusion, you'd find that Toyota provided the NHTSA with data analyzers in March.

Also? What is with every sentence ending in a question mark? It makes you sound like either a teenage girl, or a concern troll?

Because there's a significant age correlation to these reports of sudden acceleration.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/I-am-not-afraid-of-my-Toyota-Prius-87361597.html

http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1043440_toyota-sudden-acceleration-is-it-all-older-drivers-fault

Not definitive, but enlightening. Another group also proved that a runaway car with open throttle can still be stopped by the brakes anyway - they tried it with multiple cars - even a 500+ horsepower car.

Did anyone else read this article about the NHTSA not having software engineers or any ability to evaluate computerized systems? http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042836_nhtsa-has-no-software-engineers-or-ees-to-analyze-toyotas Makes this conclusion seem a bit sketchy to me? This is a good answer for Toyota, wonder how much it cost them?

It's the other way around, actually. 80 - 90% of a vehicle's lifetime energy use is in driving it around. You can google many versions of this calculation, but here's one from Slate.

You might be remembering the report from a few years ago that claimed a Hummer was more efficient than a Prius, but that's been pretty thoroughly debunked many times now.

It's like car designers intentionally doing all their drawings such that only 3' midgets can use the car

Welcome to the world of rat rods:

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/jalopnik/2009/02/Bettie_Paige_Rat_Rod.jpg

http://s-seriesforum.com/albums/jman/rat_rod_s10_2.jpg

At least on this one the roof has been helpfully removed:

http://images.thecarconnection.com/med/1932-ford-rat-rod_100170259_m.jpg

Given NASA's experience with writing software that's just gotta work or else, I'd be very hard-pressed to think of no better team of programmers for the job.

And considering that the NHTSA has absolutely no experience with or personnel capable of writing or even reading software, they have to go _somewhere_.

This doesn't hurt Toyota; if anything it helps them. Nobody is buying the sticky-pedal, caught-in-the-floormat explanation anyway, so how could this do anything but help restore confidence in Toyota? You get NASA to say that the electronics could use some better shielding, everyone assumes that EMI was the problem, and you get right back to selling Prius'.

What's really wrong? I don't know (I'm sort of 50/50 between it being a software race condition or driver error). But one would think that EMI wouldn't result in several cases of the exact same system failure.

>There's a reason the professor has nothing but speculation to back himself up.

Yeah, it's because we can't see the code. What's worse, I've heard the NHTSA has no software experts on staff to evaluate automotive code.

>This is just some douchebag professor trying to ride the tragedies to fame.

Is that why he submitted it anonymously? I'd say the original flamebait mod was correct.

I doubt he doesn't understand how cruise control systems work. I'm quite sure he can build one out of paperclips. He just may not have been aware(read:not read the manual) of how the "adaptive" cruise control works on his Prius since its new and probably way different from any cruise control system he has ever used.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042251_is-wozs-prius-acceleration-just-toyotas-wacky-adaptive-cruise

But what is described in that article, isn't what Woz is saying happens. He says "Let's say that I'm in some place where the speed 85 mph is legal. I can nudge my cruise control speed lever and my speed barely goes up, say from 80 to 81.I nudge at again and again, up to 83. Then I nudge it again and the car takes off, no speed limit." That's not an adaptive speed controller winding up because someone is unknowingly giving it multiple 'accelerate' inputs. It gets one 'accelerate' signal and accelerates at least 15mph, according to Woz.

I doubt he doesn't understand how cruise control systems work. I'm quite sure he can build one out of paperclips. He just may not have been aware (read:not read the manual) of how the "adaptive" cruise control works on his Prius since its new and probably way different from any cruise control system he has ever used.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042251_is-wozs-prius-acceleration-just-toyotas-wacky-adaptive-cruise

Furthermore, in my opinion, it's still the fault of the car. Just because software acts in the manner that the programmer intended doesn't mean that it does what it should do. This really comes down to an issue of user interface design. A well-designed system made for the typical automotive consumer should assume that the end-user will never look at the manual.

I doubt he doesn't understand how cruise control systems work. I'm quite sure he can build one out of paperclips.
He just may not have been aware(read:not read the manual) of how the "adaptive" cruise control works on his Prius since its new and probably way different from any cruise control system he has ever used.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1042251_is-wozs-prius-acceleration-just-toyotas-wacky-adaptive-cruise

http://www.thecarconnection.com/article/1010861_prius-versus-hummer-exploding-the-myth

"[This] does not at all agree with the bulk of scientific studies on vehicle lifecycle analysis, many of which conclude that about 85 percent of total lifetime energy use occurs in driving the vehicle."

> What is needed to make your case is a statistical analysis that says C.S. majors earn less and are unable to find work.

Actually no, becuase that was not my case. A BSCS may be employable, but he or she would have been better off to have chosen a different major.

BSCSs may earn more than IT workers who have no degrees, in some cases. But, often there is little, in any, difference. Employers want experience, not degrees, look at the job ads.

Unlike doctors, lawyers, engineers, CPAs, nurses, or many other professions; a BSCS is not a hard requirement for most IT jobs. The degree has very little value relative to it's cost and difficulty. Add that to the aggressive offshoring of IT professionals, and it seems to me that a students time, effort, and money, would be better spent elsewhere.

And here is some data to back that up:

> "According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about *300,000* jobs, but during the period in question, a probable *669,681* H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

> "Gates claims that Microsoft needs more H-1b to hire new foreign graduates. But there are many U.S. graduates with several years of experience trying to find work at Microsoft and other employers - but Gates does not open these "entry level" positions to these Americans. Why? Experienced Americans are only considered for the positions that require an arbitrary 3 to 7 years of experience in several specific skills - then the Americans are summarily rejected for not meeting all of those arbitrary qualifications."

http://tinyurl.com/358alw

> "Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=us

> "Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motapr04,0,4870738.story

> "Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095

> "AMD axes 10% of its staff"
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36823/167/

> "Yahoo Profits Slip; To Cut 1,000 Jobs"
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/yahoo-profits-s.html

> "Google lays off about 300 at DoubleClick"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1

> "EBay Cuts 125 Jobs in Europe, North America"
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080320/ebay_jobs.html?.v=4

> "CNET to Lay Off 120"
http://www.redherring.com/Home/24032

> "At least 160 employees at CBS Corp. . . were let go"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stations9apr09,1,7495348.story

> Applied

"Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows" (Dude! You're getting a pink slip!)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=u...

"Google DoubleClick cuts 300 jobs"
http://www.newsoxy.com/google_doubleclick_cuts_300_jobs/article10671.htm

"Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motap...

"Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095

In other news, according to the NYT:

> The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.

> The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, its highest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.

> The downturn has even come to San Francisco, where highly trained workers with elite degrees flock to work for some of the world's biggest technology companies. CNet Networks, the online media giant, laid off 10 percent of its staff -- about 120 workers -- this year in an effort to increase profitability and its share price. Yahoo, the search engine company, said it would cut its work force by 1,000.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/04cnd-econ.html?em&ex=1207540800&en=c1de4fb13c4ec4bd&ei=5087%0A

It wasn't the Silverado.

It wasn't the F-150.

It wasn't the Ram, either.

Both the truck model and its manufacturer have names beginning with the letter T.

ISTR there being another recall earlier this year that involved the same truck and some engines that weren't put together right, or something like that.

Meanwhile, the six GM vehicles in my family (model years from 1973 to 2004) all run like champs. You fools who think imports are better...keep on telling yourselves that. I'm not buying it for a second.