That is a quite interesting comment, since this was a very common reaction to Windows XP when launched, especially here on Slashdot and similar sites. It was heavily criticized as a "Fisher Price UI", and a lot of people wanted the old Win2K UI.
You COULD at least permanently switch back to the W2K UI. And most people I know did, to avoid the "Fisher Price UI". You cannot permanently switch back Windows 8 to the Windows 7 UI.
You would be amazed. If you are not looking for completely obscure stuff which maybe two people on the whole planet like, but instead would like to have e.g. music which is ONLY sold in Japan (and not available via itunes, amazon, spotify,... anywhere in the western world), there is an IMMENSE amount of websites which fill that gap (torrents with hundreds or thousands of seeders). I'd like to buy a lot of those CDs, I'd be willing to pay the usual $10 to $15 for an album, but I cannot download the stuff legally as mp3, e.g. via amazon and I cannot buy the physical CD except by ordering in directly in Japan and having it shipped here, which would end up at maybe $60 per CD or so. So I simply download the whole album as FLAC with cover scans like everybody else does.Seems they simply have not realized yet that they are missing out on a lot of money by not offering all the stuff worldwide, which really should not be any problem when you're talking about downloads.
its also a pretty good gaming machine and will probably steal a lot of alienware and other silly computer case company customers
Yes, definitely. Especially since the built-in graphics card will be able to handle all that graphics glory at the native resolution of the display. Or maybe not, and you'll have to scale down the resolution and it will look like crap (as some screenshots in various reviews already have shown). Oh, and thank god that 256GB disk space of the cheaper 15" model (no upgrade available) is large enough to have your OSX *plus* Bootcamp installs plus game and data (since, for games, you will need Windows on the machine).
Open a new tab, and in the upper right corner click on the checkerboard looking icon to hide or show the tab page. Not real intuitive, but you don't need to mess with about:config.
Ah, good to know that there's a button for it. But... it's a setting, so why isn't there an option in, like, the "settings" dialogue? That's where I supposed most people would look, not on the tab itself, when all other global settings are in the dialogue window.
First thing I did was to look for an option to disable the "Newtab page" (the feature that Firefox shows you your most used websites including little pictures of them whenever you open a new tab). Seems the Firefox devs decided that this is such an important function that there is no option to disable it in the settings dialogue, or at least I could not find one. But you can disable it via about:config and then setting "browser.newtabpage.enabled" to "false". Guess that is handy if you do NOT want your boss/colleagues to find out about your "hotponysex" fetish whenever you want to open a harmless Intranet page while somebody standing next to you.
a Macbook Pro might be nice software-wise, because you can run everything under either Lion or Windows Bootcamp, but I am not to happy with the HARDWARE of my Macbook Pro (a late 2011 15"). The notebook has two very annoying "features". One is that it has a real heat problem - if you run a game or any other software which stresses both the CPU and the GPU, it is easy to get the CPU to a thermal level at which it throttles in self-defense (apparently there is one heatsink which is shared between the CPU and the GPU). Also, the Magsafe power supply is sized too small - there are lots of posts on the Apple forums by users who have the problem that when plugged in while using CPU/GPU-intensive software, their Macbook Pro not only does not charge anymore, it actually NEEDS the battery, too, to run. Meaning the battery is discharged and when it is empty, the notebook shuts down because the power supply itself cannot maintain the power needed.
Like I said, I own a Macbook Pro and I really like it for everyday work - since I upgraded it with a SSD and more RAM, it is under normal load a very quiet and nice-to-work-with piece of hardware. I am just very disappointed that unlike every other notebook I ever dealt with (e.g. the high end HP ones I get to use at work), it seems to be not designed at all for anybody who actually wants to use all the CPU/GPU power they put into it.
That week is critical to not seeing spoilers online, we live in an international community, forums inhabited by users all around the world, if half of them can't see the episode for a week+ that doesn't work.
Pretty sure that TV series is based on books which have been available for years already. So I don't know how one week more would make a difference.
The joysticks are not linked. If one joystick is being pulled back, the other joystick does not move. So one pilot doesn't know what the other pilot is doing by looking at his own controls. He has to look at the other pilot's controls.
True, but from what others have written here, you get an warning message "DUAL INPUT" yelled at you by the computer when both are trying to control the plane via the joystick, so it's not as if the pilots are not aware that the other one is also doing something. It seems that the pilot in this crash chose to ignore the warning that the copilot was also trying to control the plane for too long.
So yes - the Airbus system makes it impossible to feel what the other guy is doing when you hold the joystick, but you ARE aware that the other one IS doing something, too. And you can then tell him to let go of the joystick.
I dont know. I got a core i7 950 @ 3ghz for my new workstation at home, and with a corsair bolt on water cooler I was able to easily get it to 4.2ghz stable. It runs cool and only uses a couple hundred watts. It crushes anything I throw at it, so why not overclock?
If you overclock because you enjoy tinkering with your hardware or if you actually need every little clock increase for whatever it is you're using your computer for, more power to you. But I think he has a point - overclocking is not as necessary anymore for "standard" users/gamers as it was a few years ago.
I, too, overclocked everything back in the days of the 486, Pentium, P2, P3 (plus the various AMD alternatives). But that was mostly because back then the clock increase actually made a huge difference when playing games, because most stuff was CPU limited. Overclocking my PII-400 to 450 actually meant I could choose more graphical details or maybe a higher resolution in the games without getting FPS which were too low to play.
But today, when I overclock my i7-2600K (which cost much much less than my PII-400 back then), I notice no difference at all in games or in any other application, even stuff which should be only about CPU speed (say, zipping a couple hundred megs of files). Yes, maybe I save a second or two when I zip files, but does that matter? Any CPU which you can buy right now (if you do not choose something extraordinarily slow like an Atom CPU etc.) is fast enough that it does not limit you in any meaningful way when you do normal stuff or even games on your computer. Gaming performance today is limited by the graphics card, not the CPU. So if you have a decent graphics card which allows you to play at the native resolution of your screen with full details, overclocking your CPU won't give you any noticeable benefit. And that's why I do not overclock anymore. I just don't notice any difference to the standard clock speed.
Like I said, if you overclock because it's fun for you or because you need to run extreme calculation tasks 24/7, go ahead. But for games or normal applications? Nah, not needed anymore.
Definitely not required reading in school. Would be no point in doing that anyway, since the whole book is just crap, nothing to learn there except that Hitler was not good at writing:-) Maybe some excerpts are used in history class somewhere to show how delusional Hitler was.
The book could not be bought anywhere because of the mentioned copyright, but it never was any problem getting your hands on an old version of it - basically every household back then in Germany had one, and many of those books survived to this day on some grandma's / grandpa's bookshelf. I know that my grandmother had one (she said that most people threw theirs away after the war, but she kept hers because it had an autograph in it), I think my uncle has it now.
german banks do use a two factor authentication scheme: - to log in you need your account number and a five digit pin - to authorize a transaction after logging in, you need one out of 100 one-time-use 4 digit pins; The bank issues you 100 of those at a time, and then chooses one of them randomly when you enter a transaction ("Please enter pin number 17").
While I agree with your general point, what you're describing might be the minimum requirements; for example, at ING-DiBa: - to log in you need your account number + an 'ID' number at least 7 digits long + a virtual keyboard-input 6-digit PIN - to authorize a transaction, you need a 6-digit m-TAN sent by SMS In short, you can often find a bank paying more attention to security...
My (German) bank recently switch to a smart TAN system with a card reader. To authorize any transaction, you need to insert your debit card into the reader and then have the reader pick up some flashing bar code transmission from your screen. You then can verify the transaction on the display of the reader (amount, account number, etc.) and if everything is correct, you then use the TAN the card reader generated to authorize the transaction on your computer. So if anybody wants to transfer some money from your account, he would need a.) the password to log onto the banking website b.) your debit card and c.) your specific card reader (every bank account is linked to one specific card reader). The whole thing looks similar to this: https://www.volksbank-forchheim.com/files/smarttan_leser_klein.jpg
I really wish these search companies would go back to their roots and provide bare metal search results. Stop geo/mood/intelligence filtering the results for me.
Especially the geographic results. If I want results for my location, I'll include it in the search.
Oh yes. This is something which really makes me mad sometimes, when a website/search engine/whatever makes ASSUMPTIONS based on my location (IP address). Listen, just because I am sitting in Germany, that does not automatically mean I *want* everything to be presented in a crappy German translation (I can understand your normal website with MORE content very well, ty very much), or that I want to see only stuff your German distributor has available. Maybe I want to look up stuff for some US product I bought on ebay. And maybe I do not want to see only the search result for my current location, maybe I want to look something up for my holiday next week. Assumptions are bad.
Yup. My Golf (GTI) has "brake assist", as do all newer (last couple years) VW. Brake overrides throttle, and if the car senses you suddenly applying the brake (i.e. you accelerate and then suddenly put your foot onto the brake), the car even applies full brake force automatically (because apparently many drivers are not capable of doing a full emergency braking when it is needed, because they never trained it or even only tried it once).
For me it runs fine on my main system. Windows is nothing more to me than a way to start the applications I need. So Microsoft now forces me to pay E 90,- just so I can safely click my apps again ?
When you bought XP, you knew that Microsoft would stop support for it eventually, because they clearly stated that (and the date for it) on their website. In fact, they even extended that support by a few years. Still, you bought the OS, knowing that fact. So it's not as if Microsoft suddenly forces you to upgrade, you were aware of the need to eventually upgrade your OS if you want security updates and support for current hardware for it, and had several years to prepare for that and save up $5 or so every year for the next OS version.
Aren't Fords made in the US ? The ford focus is quite a nice and fairly popular car.
As far as I know, the mk1 Focus was developed/built in Europe in 1998, and then Ford US built it in 2000, too, with some changes. The mk2 Focus was developed independently in Europe/US (US model was very different from Europe model and only a restyled mk1). The mk3 Focus was a joint development between Ford US and Europe, and is built both in US and Europe. So the Focus is not really a good example of a good car developed solely in the US.
And the rest of the world would be buying millions and millions more US autos making it our number 1 industrial powerhouse again and pouring money into our coffers at such a booming rate that $10/gal of gas looks super cheap.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
As others point out, it's as good as the source, but only as good as the source. A FLAC file encoded from the original CD track will indeed be 100% CD quality. If you instead encode it from, say, a 96kbps MP3, then it can only be as good as the MP3 was.
FLAC is very good. It is, however, not magic.
Yes, but it is generally kind of expected to use CD quality (or better) source material when you use FLAC to encode. What would be the point of encoding a 96kps mp3 with FLAC - you'd end up with the same audio quality, but a larger file...
So while "FLAC" technically does not necessarily mean "CD quality", in general everyday use, it does.
So, the guy let you use his product for four months without charge.
How exactly is that screwing you over??
Thousands of customers BOUGHT the full, unrestricted, version of the app for $5, and now they would need to pay AGAIN to unlock the same app content which they already paid for (and were using), because the app automatically got "updated" into a "free, but pay to access all content" version.
Car analogy: you BUY a car (cash), and then one day the car manufacturer installs an "upgrade" which forces you to pay $1 each time you want to start your car's engine. According to you, that would be ok, since "they let you use the product for months without charge".
I always thought that the definition of "bricked" was (paraphrasing): won't start even with a fully charged battery.
Is the blogger's brain bricked mewonders?
Nah, but he should have written that it is the battery pack which gets bricked just by letting the car stand somewhere, not the whole car. And yes, in that case "bricked" would be the correct term, if all you can do is have Tesla sell you a new battery pack. But at $40k to have the battery pack replaced, that's bad enough...
You really believe that a fully discharged rechargable battery needs replacement, just because a blogger said so? You're an idiot.
Nah, but I'd tend to believe Tesla themselves, when they state that the battery needs to be replaced because the car's owner let it fully discharge. Which they did. Not only once, but several times already. Follow the many links in this thread.
If you can afford a Tesla, you can afford to RTFM and get a trickle charger.
Probably (although I am sure that many people who have enough money to buy one won't read/understand all the technical stuff and will want the car to "just work") - but that still leaves us with the point that the battery pack can go kaputt within a couple days if the car is not charged (if the car was already at low charge) - which is something which needs to be communicated to customers far more clearly than just a sentence here and there that it is not good to let the battery go completely flat. Because I am sure that for almost every person who is not very familiar with battery technology, the EXPECTED consequence of a flat battery would be "recharge it again and you're good to go". If there is the possibility of making a $40k mistake, I'd expect the car to go full "star trek red alert" on me when I park it somewhere at less than 10% charge, and to start sending "help! I am dying!" SMS when the battery goes below 5%.
When not plugged in or when plugged in with an unsuitable extension cord, the battery can run completely dry within a few days (one claim say that the battery can go from full to 50% within a week, another claim on that website says that according to Tesla, one car went from 4% to dead in a week).
I guess most people who buy an electric car will say "well duh, I know that when I have my car not plugged in, eventually the battery will be empty. I'll just have to recharge then". But I guess also most people will not know that the battery will be DEAD, as in "you have to get a new one, this one's DESTROYED" when it goes to zero charge.
Having a battery which can be destroyed in a matter of days if the car is not plugged in is a pretty big issue. An issue people really need to be made more aware of. Go on holiday and leave your Tesla at home? You better ask a friend to check every couple days if the car is still charging. Or what if you park your Tesla at an airport, plan to leave it plugged in there for a week, but on the first day you're gone, some kid unplugs the car "for the lulz"?
Slashdot Mirror
That is a quite interesting comment, since this was a very common reaction to Windows XP when launched, especially here on Slashdot and similar sites. It was heavily criticized as a "Fisher Price UI", and a lot of people wanted the old Win2K UI.
You COULD at least permanently switch back to the W2K UI. And most people I know did, to avoid the "Fisher Price UI". You cannot permanently switch back Windows 8 to the Windows 7 UI.
Windows Server 2012 DOES have the metro UI. Sad, but true. So many of our Blades have touchscreen.
You would be amazed. If you are not looking for completely obscure stuff which maybe two people on the whole planet like, but instead would like to have e.g. music which is ONLY sold in Japan (and not available via itunes, amazon, spotify, ... anywhere in the western world), there is an IMMENSE amount of websites which fill that gap (torrents with hundreds or thousands of seeders). I'd like to buy a lot of those CDs, I'd be willing to pay the usual $10 to $15 for an album, but I cannot download the stuff legally as mp3, e.g. via amazon and I cannot buy the physical CD except by ordering in directly in Japan and having it shipped here, which would end up at maybe $60 per CD or so. So I simply download the whole album as FLAC with cover scans like everybody else does.Seems they simply have not realized yet that they are missing out on a lot of money by not offering all the stuff worldwide, which really should not be any problem when you're talking about downloads.
its also a pretty good gaming machine and will probably steal a lot of alienware and other silly computer case company customers
Yes, definitely. Especially since the built-in graphics card will be able to handle all that graphics glory at the native resolution of the display. Or maybe not, and you'll have to scale down the resolution and it will look like crap (as some screenshots in various reviews already have shown). Oh, and thank god that 256GB disk space of the cheaper 15" model (no upgrade available) is large enough to have your OSX *plus* Bootcamp installs plus game and data (since, for games, you will need Windows on the machine).
... and let them watch each other. And enjoy the hilarity of seeing them both trying to serve ads to each other. And then implode.
Open a new tab, and in the upper right corner click on the checkerboard looking icon to hide or show the tab page. Not real intuitive, but you don't need to mess with about:config.
Ah, good to know that there's a button for it. But... it's a setting, so why isn't there an option in, like, the "settings" dialogue? That's where I supposed most people would look, not on the tab itself, when all other global settings are in the dialogue window.
First thing I did was to look for an option to disable the "Newtab page" (the feature that Firefox shows you your most used websites including little pictures of them whenever you open a new tab). Seems the Firefox devs decided that this is such an important function that there is no option to disable it in the settings dialogue, or at least I could not find one. But you can disable it via about:config and then setting "browser.newtabpage.enabled" to "false". Guess that is handy if you do NOT want your boss/colleagues to find out about your "hotponysex" fetish whenever you want to open a harmless Intranet page while somebody standing next to you.
a Macbook Pro might be nice software-wise, because you can run everything under either Lion or Windows Bootcamp, but I am not to happy with the HARDWARE of my Macbook Pro (a late 2011 15"). The notebook has two very annoying "features". One is that it has a real heat problem - if you run a game or any other software which stresses both the CPU and the GPU, it is easy to get the CPU to a thermal level at which it throttles in self-defense (apparently there is one heatsink which is shared between the CPU and the GPU). Also, the Magsafe power supply is sized too small - there are lots of posts on the Apple forums by users who have the problem that when plugged in while using CPU/GPU-intensive software, their Macbook Pro not only does not charge anymore, it actually NEEDS the battery, too, to run. Meaning the battery is discharged and when it is empty, the notebook shuts down because the power supply itself cannot maintain the power needed.
Like I said, I own a Macbook Pro and I really like it for everyday work - since I upgraded it with a SSD and more RAM, it is under normal load a very quiet and nice-to-work-with piece of hardware. I am just very disappointed that unlike every other notebook I ever dealt with (e.g. the high end HP ones I get to use at work), it seems to be not designed at all for anybody who actually wants to use all the CPU/GPU power they put into it.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2787732
https://discussions.apple.com/message/17771835
That week is critical to not seeing spoilers online, we live in an international community, forums inhabited by users all around the world, if half of them can't see the episode for a week+ that doesn't work.
Pretty sure that TV series is based on books which have been available for years already. So I don't know how one week more would make a difference.
The joysticks are not linked. If one joystick is being pulled back, the other joystick does not move. So one pilot doesn't know what the other pilot is doing by looking at his own controls. He has to look at the other pilot's controls.
True, but from what others have written here, you get an warning message "DUAL INPUT" yelled at you by the computer when both are trying to control the plane via the joystick, so it's not as if the pilots are not aware that the other one is also doing something. It seems that the pilot in this crash chose to ignore the warning that the copilot was also trying to control the plane for too long.
So yes - the Airbus system makes it impossible to feel what the other guy is doing when you hold the joystick, but you ARE aware that the other one IS doing something, too. And you can then tell him to let go of the joystick.
I dont know. I got a core i7 950 @ 3ghz for my new workstation at home, and with a corsair bolt on water cooler I was able to easily get it to 4.2ghz stable. It runs cool and only uses a couple hundred watts. It crushes anything I throw at it, so why not overclock?
If you overclock because you enjoy tinkering with your hardware or if you actually need every little clock increase for whatever it is you're using your computer for, more power to you. But I think he has a point - overclocking is not as necessary anymore for "standard" users/gamers as it was a few years ago.
I, too, overclocked everything back in the days of the 486, Pentium, P2, P3 (plus the various AMD alternatives). But that was mostly because back then the clock increase actually made a huge difference when playing games, because most stuff was CPU limited. Overclocking my PII-400 to 450 actually meant I could choose more graphical details or maybe a higher resolution in the games without getting FPS which were too low to play.
But today, when I overclock my i7-2600K (which cost much much less than my PII-400 back then), I notice no difference at all in games or in any other application, even stuff which should be only about CPU speed (say, zipping a couple hundred megs of files). Yes, maybe I save a second or two when I zip files, but does that matter? Any CPU which you can buy right now (if you do not choose something extraordinarily slow like an Atom CPU etc.) is fast enough that it does not limit you in any meaningful way when you do normal stuff or even games on your computer. Gaming performance today is limited by the graphics card, not the CPU. So if you have a decent graphics card which allows you to play at the native resolution of your screen with full details, overclocking your CPU won't give you any noticeable benefit. And that's why I do not overclock anymore. I just don't notice any difference to the standard clock speed.
Like I said, if you overclock because it's fun for you or because you need to run extreme calculation tasks 24/7, go ahead. But for games or normal applications? Nah, not needed anymore.
Definitely not required reading in school. Would be no point in doing that anyway, since the whole book is just crap, nothing to learn there except that Hitler was not good at writing :-) Maybe some excerpts are used in history class somewhere to show how delusional Hitler was.
The book could not be bought anywhere because of the mentioned copyright, but it never was any problem getting your hands on an old version of it - basically every household back then in Germany had one, and many of those books survived to this day on some grandma's / grandpa's bookshelf. I know that my grandmother had one (she said that most people threw theirs away after the war, but she kept hers because it had an autograph in it), I think my uncle has it now.
german banks do use a two factor authentication scheme:
- to log in you need your account number and a five digit pin
- to authorize a transaction after logging in, you need one out of 100 one-time-use 4 digit pins; The bank issues you 100 of those at a time, and then chooses one of them randomly when you enter a transaction ("Please enter pin number 17").
While I agree with your general point, what you're describing might be the minimum requirements; for example, at ING-DiBa:
- to log in you need your account number + an 'ID' number at least 7 digits long + a virtual keyboard-input 6-digit PIN
- to authorize a transaction, you need a 6-digit m-TAN sent by SMS
In short, you can often find a bank paying more attention to security...
My (German) bank recently switch to a smart TAN system with a card reader. To authorize any transaction, you need to insert your debit card into the reader and then have the reader pick up some flashing bar code transmission from your screen. You then can verify the transaction on the display of the reader (amount, account number, etc.) and if everything is correct, you then use the TAN the card reader generated to authorize the transaction on your computer. So if anybody wants to transfer some money from your account, he would need a.) the password to log onto the banking website b.) your debit card and c.) your specific card reader (every bank account is linked to one specific card reader). The whole thing looks similar to this: https://www.volksbank-forchheim.com/files/smarttan_leser_klein.jpg
I really wish these search companies would go back to their roots and provide bare metal search results.
Stop geo/mood/intelligence filtering the results for me.
Especially the geographic results. If I want results for my location, I'll include it in the search.
Oh yes. This is something which really makes me mad sometimes, when a website/search engine/whatever makes ASSUMPTIONS based on my location (IP address). Listen, just because I am sitting in Germany, that does not automatically mean I *want* everything to be presented in a crappy German translation (I can understand your normal website with MORE content very well, ty very much), or that I want to see only stuff your German distributor has available. Maybe I want to look up stuff for some US product I bought on ebay. And maybe I do not want to see only the search result for my current location, maybe I want to look something up for my holiday next week. Assumptions are bad.
Yup. My Golf (GTI) has "brake assist", as do all newer (last couple years) VW. Brake overrides throttle, and if the car senses you suddenly applying the brake (i.e. you accelerate and then suddenly put your foot onto the brake), the car even applies full brake force automatically (because apparently many drivers are not capable of doing a full emergency braking when it is needed, because they never trained it or even only tried it once).
For me it runs fine on my main system. Windows is nothing more to me than a way to start the applications I need. So Microsoft now forces me to pay E 90,- just so I can safely click my apps again ?
When you bought XP, you knew that Microsoft would stop support for it eventually, because they clearly stated that (and the date for it) on their website. In fact, they even extended that support by a few years. Still, you bought the OS, knowing that fact. So it's not as if Microsoft suddenly forces you to upgrade, you were aware of the need to eventually upgrade your OS if you want security updates and support for current hardware for it, and had several years to prepare for that and save up $5 or so every year for the next OS version.
Redbox runs on a modified version of XP...I wonder how they're handling the news currently...
What "news"? The fact that Microsoft will stop support for XP, which has been know for years? It's not as if that should be any surprise for anybody.
Aren't Fords made in the US ?
The ford focus is quite a nice and fairly popular car.
As far as I know, the mk1 Focus was developed/built in Europe in 1998, and then Ford US built it in 2000, too, with some changes. The mk2 Focus was developed independently in Europe/US (US model was very different from Europe model and only a restyled mk1). The mk3 Focus was a joint development between Ford US and Europe, and is built both in US and Europe. So the Focus is not really a good example of a good car developed solely in the US.
And the rest of the world would be buying millions and millions more US autos making it our number 1 industrial powerhouse again and pouring money into our coffers at such a booming rate that $10/gal of gas looks super cheap.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
As others point out, it's as good as the source, but only as good as the source. A FLAC file encoded from the original CD track will indeed be 100% CD quality. If you instead encode it from, say, a 96kbps MP3, then it can only be as good as the MP3 was.
FLAC is very good. It is, however, not magic.
Yes, but it is generally kind of expected to use CD quality (or better) source material when you use FLAC to encode. What would be the point of encoding a 96kps mp3 with FLAC - you'd end up with the same audio quality, but a larger file...
So while "FLAC" technically does not necessarily mean "CD quality", in general everyday use, it does.
So, the guy let you use his product for four months without charge.
How exactly is that screwing you over??
Thousands of customers BOUGHT the full, unrestricted, version of the app for $5, and now they would need to pay AGAIN to unlock the same app content which they already paid for (and were using), because the app automatically got "updated" into a "free, but pay to access all content" version.
Car analogy: you BUY a car (cash), and then one day the car manufacturer installs an "upgrade" which forces you to pay $1 each time you want to start your car's engine. According to you, that would be ok, since "they let you use the product for months without charge".
I always thought that the definition of "bricked" was (paraphrasing): won't start even with a fully charged battery.
Is the blogger's brain bricked mewonders?
Nah, but he should have written that it is the battery pack which gets bricked just by letting the car stand somewhere, not the whole car. And yes, in that case "bricked" would be the correct term, if all you can do is have Tesla sell you a new battery pack. But at $40k to have the battery pack replaced, that's bad enough ...
Was the whistleblower hallucinating that?
Many bloggers are full of shit. News at 11.
You really believe that a fully discharged rechargable battery needs replacement, just because a blogger said so? You're an idiot.
Nah, but I'd tend to believe Tesla themselves, when they state that the battery needs to be replaced because the car's owner let it fully discharge. Which they did. Not only once, but several times already. Follow the many links in this thread.
If you can afford a Tesla, you can afford to RTFM and get a trickle charger.
Probably (although I am sure that many people who have enough money to buy one won't read/understand all the technical stuff and will want the car to "just work") - but that still leaves us with the point that the battery pack can go kaputt within a couple days if the car is not charged (if the car was already at low charge) - which is something which needs to be communicated to customers far more clearly than just a sentence here and there that it is not good to let the battery go completely flat. Because I am sure that for almost every person who is not very familiar with battery technology, the EXPECTED consequence of a flat battery would be "recharge it again and you're good to go". If there is the possibility of making a $40k mistake, I'd expect the car to go full "star trek red alert" on me when I park it somewhere at less than 10% charge, and to start sending "help! I am dying!" SMS when the battery goes below 5%.
Yes, the claim seems to be actually true: http://jalopnik.com/5887265/tesla-motors-devastating-design-problem
When not plugged in or when plugged in with an unsuitable extension cord, the battery can run completely dry within a few days (one claim say that the battery can go from full to 50% within a week, another claim on that website says that according to Tesla, one car went from 4% to dead in a week).
I guess most people who buy an electric car will say "well duh, I know that when I have my car not plugged in, eventually the battery will be empty. I'll just have to recharge then". But I guess also most people will not know that the battery will be DEAD, as in "you have to get a new one, this one's DESTROYED" when it goes to zero charge.
Having a battery which can be destroyed in a matter of days if the car is not plugged in is a pretty big issue. An issue people really need to be made more aware of. Go on holiday and leave your Tesla at home? You better ask a friend to check every couple days if the car is still charging. Or what if you park your Tesla at an airport, plan to leave it plugged in there for a week, but on the first day you're gone, some kid unplugs the car "for the lulz"?