Donald Trump may be an arrogant bastard who thinks of attractive women as trophies to fondle, but he's not Anti-Christ-Hitler-Stalin-Pol-Pot.
No, those are the people he's appointing as his chief advisors and to head federal agencies. He's appointing people who deny science to head the EPA. His chief advisor is a known right fringe racist. His VP thinks women are subhumans who should surrender any reproductive rights, is anti-LGBT, is a climate change skeptic, etc. Basically he's hiring a bunch of fringe lunatics who he's going to put in positions of real power.
The fringe right also said a lot of idiotic things when Obama was elected
They ALWAYS say a lot of idiotic things. The difference is that now they have access to actual power and can act on some of those idiotic things.
In truth, very little can be done to significantly change things without Congress' approval (you know, that "balance of powers" thing), and the Republicans have a *very* slim majority in the Senate.
Trump's party has majorities in both houses and there is a very good chance he'll be able to appoint some members of the Supreme Court. There is very little preventing him from doing a whole bunch of really bad things.
A year from now, when the country hasn't actually imploded, all this angst is going to look a bit silly in retrospect.
Maybe but there is scant evidence that Trump and his cronies aren't going to do a lot of damage to a lot of people in the mean time. He's more or less promised to do a lot of cartoon villainy. I see no reason to not take him at his word that he will try to actually do the awful things he has promised.
This is simple. They are ether common carriers or they are not.
That is the very definition of a false dilemma. Sorry but this is unfortunately not a simple either/or with no third options. Our government could classify these companies in any number of ways and regulate them (or not) accordingly. You've mentioned two of the options but there are plenty more possibilities.
I always find it such an exaggerated way of presenting statistics to use a percentage of a percentage, the number gives no context (percentage of what), and the smaller the group of people the more the number is likely to fluctuate wildly.
I'd go further. It needs to not only indicate WHAT it is a percentage of but also what the confidence interval is for the result and what the population size was and its composition and the calculation methodology. Statistics that do not include the error bars should be considered only with great skepticism. Statistics which do not disclose the calculation methodology doubly so.
Whats wrong with a absolute percentage? "No. of people with dementia dropped by 2.8% between 2000 and 2012"
What specifically do you mean by "absolute percentage"? When people talk about changes they generally talk about absolute value change or percentage change but absolute percentage change isn't really a thing. Percentages are by definition relative. You can have an absolute percentage error which is something used routinely.
Is there a reason walmart cannot just run a central database with a bunch of submitted information?
Yes. First off there are few/no standards in place to do it nor much infrastructure for real time tracking of this information currently. All this will have to be created from scratch and so they are experimenting with various technologies for doing just that. This is one of those experiments. Second, our food supply chain is hugely decentralized and tracking the transaction records is currently very cumbersome. Since we need to know the origin of products it makes sense to adapt a technology which is built specifically to accurately and transparently log the transaction history of a given item.
The only thing good about blockchain tech is that its decentralized.
No that isn't the only good thing about it. It's pretty useful for logging transaction histories which has nothing inherently to do with being centralized or decentralized. This feature of blockchains is probably FAR more useful to supply chains than it is for currencies. Bitcoin and the like are cute experiments that probably will never amount to much but blockchain tech has potential applications well beyond crypto-currencies which are probably far more economically valuable than bitcoin could ever hope to be.
UPS, FexEx, etc. track packages with barcodes, no need for blockchain.
A barcode doesn't track anything nor can it realistically be updated once it has been created. They use a database to track packages. The barcodes are merely a means of quickly "typing" a bit of data at a physical location - the database is what actually keeps track of things. Barcodes become cumbersome as a means of identifying specific packages when you get to very large volumes. UPS deals with about 15 million packages per day. A big number but nothing like what would be necessary for real time tracking of what Walmart is looking at doing. Walmart deals with tens of billions of individual product transactions so the complexity is substantially higher. There is a big difference in data and complexity between shipping a single box of 100 widgets versus knowing the entire supply chain history for each and every one of those 100 widgets.
Reading comprehension much? I was not talking about interior surfaces, I was talking about exterior. I will assume that you are genuinely stupid instead of being a troll...
Do you see a lot of indoor atriums, greenhouses, sunroofs, etc or are you cherry picking to just be a jerk? You seem to be the one lacking in reading comprehension in addition to failing to understand anything about materials science. Glass does not intrinsically equal fragile. It's perfectly possible to design glass surfaces to be quite robust and take a substantial impact.
In case you still don't get the point, glass can literally be bullet proof if you want it to be. Who is the "genuinely stupid" one now?
Shingles, on the other hand, could have hail dropped from a very high distance indeed -- enough to reach terminal velocity. Where I live we had a severe hail storm a couple of months ago. A friend of mine is getting insurance to replace his entire roof.
And that is not a glass roof so what exactly is your point? No practical roofing material is going to be indestructible. Glass tiles can be just as durable as stone ones if not moreso. If you had a clue about materials science you would already know this.
Uhhhh, how much glass is used for horizontal (or horizontal-ish) surfaces?
Quite a lot. Open up your refrigerator and chances are you'll see a rather large load bearing glass surface. Look at atriums of commercial buildings with glass roofs. Look at greenhouses. Glass table tops. Check out the sunroofs in cars. There are glass walkways.
Horizontal glass surfaces are all over the place if you actually bother to look for them.
I've been through a hailstorm with hail that was easily golf-ball sized. My roof (asphalt shngle) was a total loss, plus my cars all had major damage, including having to replace windshields.
With big enough hail stones it won't matter much what your roof is made of unless you live in a bunker. I'm sure these tiles are durable but they aren't armor plating.
All that said, I like the idea, and if Tesla is willing to warranty it against hail, I'll sign up./p?
That is what insurance is for. The insurance companies will take a good hard look at the product and if they aren't likely to result in higher costs than existing products then they'll treat them pretty much like they do traditional roofing products. No real need for Tesla to warranty them against hail unless the tiles have some special properties that make them impervious to most hail.
What can you expect from a country that seems to be allergic to brick or concrete for houses and seems to build most of them out of cheap plywood.
The type of material used is determined by the price point of the dwelling in question. If you want to build a house out of brick you can do that but it's a lot more labor intensive and thus more expensive. Cheap houses are made from cheap materials no matter what country you are in. Expensive houses are usually made from pricier material no matter what country you are in.
25 years to de-carbonize the Global Economy and we are wasting resources on rooftop panels.
What's your brilliant idea? What have you done that would do more to reduce the need for fossil fuels? Come on Mr. Snarky McCynic, dazzle us with your brilliant and feasible plan.
Frankly I can't think of a better way to reduce the need for carbon based fuels than to put solar panels and batteries on/in every building possible and switch to primarily electric cars. It's not the only think we can or should do but it's a vital piece of the puzzle.
How are the Global Warming deniers going to turn this into a horrible thing that people should avoid?
Easy: It takes away jobs from hard working coal miners and oil workers. Then they will follow up with something along the lines of "put a GLASS roof on my house? What a stupid idea". Then there will be some idiotic populist argument about baseload power and how solar hurts our power companies by increasing costs to those who can't afford these expensive roofs.
All shitty and stupid arguments but they each make for a nice sound bite.
Tesla's new solar roof product, he proclaimed, will actually cost less to manufacture and install than a traditional roof -- even before savings from the power bill.
Unlikely that it will be cheaper than an asphalt shingle roof. Not so surprising that it might be cheaper than an (expensive) slate or similar high end tile.
They're made of textured glass and are virtually indistinguishable from high-end roofing products
Umm, no. They are not "indistinguishable" from high end roofing products but they are reminiscent of them and appear to be rather attractive looking on their own merits.
When was the last time I needed to haul a 4x8 sheet of plywood?
I've done it about 15 times this year alone. Plus loads of stone, dirt, compost, 2X4s, concrete, tools, lumber, dog crates, bicycles, trash and countless other things that a sports car would be utterly useless for. Believe it or not some of us here on slashdot don't just spend all our time behind a keyboard. Some of us actually build stuff and work with our hands. I own a pickup because it's practical for me to own a pickup and I actually use it.
Odd, I say that exact thing about pickups. They suck down gas and are horrifically impracticable as a daily driver.
Most pickups get as good or better gas mileage as most high performance sports cars. Mine gets about 20mpg around town and some of the best are up over 30mpg on the highway.. If you think they aren't practical as a daily driver then you've never actually driven one. They're HUGELY practical. Excellent traction, excellent hauling ability, robustly built, comfortable to drive, plenty of power, great for plowing, reasonably quick in a straight line (not so much in a corner), decent fuel economy for many recent models especially in the light duty diesel versions, and many are reasonably priced. If you want one with a plush interior you can get one as nice as most luxury cars if you want.
Show me any pickup that sucks down gas and I'll show you a sports car that sucks it down even faster.
My VW GTI can haul 99% of the stuff I ever need
I owned a GTI when I was just out of college. Was good fun. Now that I've grown up and own a house and have a family it's not so practical anymore. I put stuff in the pickup bed weekly that you wouldn't dare put in your GTI even if you could fit it. If the GTI suits you and your current life situation that's fine but those of us who aren't so arrogant will drive what actually works. If that happens to be a pickup so be it.
Wildly over spends? It's to keep the peace and make potential rivals give up before they ever get started.
Yes the USA hugely overspends on its military. The USA spends more money on its defense budget than the next ten biggest spending countries combined. That's more than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UK, India, France, Japan, Germany and South Korea put together. There is no rational justification for that level of spending and it certainly doesn't keep wars from starting.
Germany started the Great War because they thought they would win. How'd that work out for everyone?
That's not what happened and if you bother to pick up a history book you would know it. It wasn't anywhere near that simple. First off the "Great War" was WWI and that wasn't started by Germany. That war was started by an entanglement of alliances and the shooting actually started with the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they declared war on Serbia. WWII was not solely started by Germany either. Japan was already in military action prior to Germany invading Poland in 1939. German leadership only thought they could win because they were quite frankly, delusional and overly ambitious.
You think peace is expensive, that's nothing on war.
Having one country with a gigantic and unsustainable military isn't going to stop all wars forever. The USA is borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars per year to pay for the federal budget and about a quarter of that is military spending. There is no way the US can maintain that level of spending without substantially higher taxes and even then it's probably impossible in the long run. And somehow other major world powers don't seem to need to spend ludicrous sums of money on their military.
The tesla is stupid quick to 60mph, but once you get to 60mph it fades quite fast. Over 60 and it will be clowned by anything.
Not actually true but even if it were, so what? It covers a quarter mile as fast as anything you can buy from a showroom today (usually for less money than the cars that are close to as fast) and it's not as if you can drive any car over 100mph routinely no matter who made it. Certainly not on public roads. Why would I give a shit what it does at 140mph since I'm never ever going to drive any car that fast?
Additionally comparing it to cars that can run endless laps on a track is pointless.
Why is it pointless? That's like saying it's pointless because it isn't designed to haul lumber like a pickup. The Tesla is a great car for real world driving. It's not a car that is designed to meet every need and it's not a car designed for laps on a track. If you want to do some specialty activity then buy a vehicle that suits that need. Nobody has ever pretended that a Tesla is a great track car but it is a great car for daily driving. Cars that are great on a track tend to suck on real roads. (stiff suspensions, noisy as hell, uncomfortable, too low, etc)
I've never owned a car in my life that had more than 2 functional seats
Then you clearly don't have children and/or don't do practical work involving a vehicle. My daily driver is a pickup because I need that sort of vehicle for various tasks (hauling, plowing, etc) that could not possibly be accomplished with a little sports car. Good luck hauling a 4x8 sheet of plywood in your 911. If you have a family in most parts of the US you will immediately need at least a third seat and some cargo capacity. People don't drive minivans because they think they are awesomely fun to drive.
I like cars that are fun to drive too (and have owned several) but two seat sports cars are hugely impractical and generally expensive luxuries. Nothing wrong with that but not compatible with the banalities of daily life for many of us.
Radar detectors are illegal in most states/countries.
Not in most of the USA they aren't. There are a handful of states with bans or restrictions and you can't use them on military bases. But most places they are perfectly legal to use. Legality varies tremendously by country.
Ok..I LOVE the performance of the Tesla, now, PLEASE make a version that looks once again like a sports car, and not like a family sedan.
I seriously WISH family sedans looked as nice as the Model S does. I think the styling on the Model S will still look good in 20 years which is something I cannot say for a lot of cars.
If they could make one with this performance, and in the ballpark range of a Vette, man..I'd be in the market for that immediatly.
Stay strong. 4 years form now you hopefully will get another shot to make your country great again.
Don't have to wait that long. There is an election in 2 years. We can put a big roadblock in front of Trump by voting the opposition into power in either wing of congress.
Actually the interesting election will be the 2020 election, particularly at the state level because that is the one which determines who gets to gerrymander the districts for the next 10 years. The republicans got to do it in 2010 and that is why they continue to hold congress. Personally I'm hoping Trump is a train wreck and the democrats take him to the woodshed in the next few elections.
What we have in many cases today are people coming here and not assimilating, simply continuing to live as they did in their native countries creating these pockets of culture that are in many cases incompatible with American culture.
Incompatible with whose "American culture"? Yours? There is no single American culture and never has been. Culture in Texas is hugely different than culture in Ohio which is hugely different than culture in Montana. Black people have a distinct culture just as white people do. Spanish speaking americans are just as american as english speaking ones. Immigrants with different backgrounds and beliefs have always been here. Just because you couldn't be bothered to pay them any attention means you missed the point entirely. We absorb bits of their culture just like they absorb parts of ours. That's why they call it a melting pot. There is no such thing as "incompatible with American culture" because American culture is not a single thing and never has been.
Slashdot Mirror
Donald Trump may be an arrogant bastard who thinks of attractive women as trophies to fondle, but he's not Anti-Christ-Hitler-Stalin-Pol-Pot.
No, those are the people he's appointing as his chief advisors and to head federal agencies. He's appointing people who deny science to head the EPA. His chief advisor is a known right fringe racist. His VP thinks women are subhumans who should surrender any reproductive rights, is anti-LGBT, is a climate change skeptic, etc. Basically he's hiring a bunch of fringe lunatics who he's going to put in positions of real power.
The fringe right also said a lot of idiotic things when Obama was elected
They ALWAYS say a lot of idiotic things. The difference is that now they have access to actual power and can act on some of those idiotic things.
In truth, very little can be done to significantly change things without Congress' approval (you know, that "balance of powers" thing), and the Republicans have a *very* slim majority in the Senate.
Trump's party has majorities in both houses and there is a very good chance he'll be able to appoint some members of the Supreme Court. There is very little preventing him from doing a whole bunch of really bad things.
A year from now, when the country hasn't actually imploded, all this angst is going to look a bit silly in retrospect.
Maybe but there is scant evidence that Trump and his cronies aren't going to do a lot of damage to a lot of people in the mean time. He's more or less promised to do a lot of cartoon villainy. I see no reason to not take him at his word that he will try to actually do the awful things he has promised.
Please tell us how higher costs, lower speeds, less competition, and blocked/gated content will make america great again.
It will make it great for rich asshats like Trump and his buddies. Weren't you paying attention?
This is simple. They are ether common carriers or they are not.
That is the very definition of a false dilemma. Sorry but this is unfortunately not a simple either/or with no third options. Our government could classify these companies in any number of ways and regulate them (or not) accordingly. You've mentioned two of the options but there are plenty more possibilities.
If you want to speed up your kids, unplug the router until all the laundry is folded.
I've seen several parents just change the wifi password and let them know what chores will be required of them to learn the new one.
I always find it such an exaggerated way of presenting statistics to use a percentage of a percentage, the number gives no context (percentage of what), and the smaller the group of people the more the number is likely to fluctuate wildly.
I'd go further. It needs to not only indicate WHAT it is a percentage of but also what the confidence interval is for the result and what the population size was and its composition and the calculation methodology. Statistics that do not include the error bars should be considered only with great skepticism. Statistics which do not disclose the calculation methodology doubly so.
Whats wrong with a absolute percentage? "No. of people with dementia dropped by 2.8% between 2000 and 2012"
What specifically do you mean by "absolute percentage"? When people talk about changes they generally talk about absolute value change or percentage change but absolute percentage change isn't really a thing. Percentages are by definition relative. You can have an absolute percentage error which is something used routinely.
Is there a reason walmart cannot just run a central database with a bunch of submitted information?
Yes. First off there are few/no standards in place to do it nor much infrastructure for real time tracking of this information currently. All this will have to be created from scratch and so they are experimenting with various technologies for doing just that. This is one of those experiments. Second, our food supply chain is hugely decentralized and tracking the transaction records is currently very cumbersome. Since we need to know the origin of products it makes sense to adapt a technology which is built specifically to accurately and transparently log the transaction history of a given item.
The only thing good about blockchain tech is that its decentralized.
No that isn't the only good thing about it. It's pretty useful for logging transaction histories which has nothing inherently to do with being centralized or decentralized. This feature of blockchains is probably FAR more useful to supply chains than it is for currencies. Bitcoin and the like are cute experiments that probably will never amount to much but blockchain tech has potential applications well beyond crypto-currencies which are probably far more economically valuable than bitcoin could ever hope to be.
UPS, FexEx, etc. track packages with barcodes, no need for blockchain.
A barcode doesn't track anything nor can it realistically be updated once it has been created. They use a database to track packages. The barcodes are merely a means of quickly "typing" a bit of data at a physical location - the database is what actually keeps track of things. Barcodes become cumbersome as a means of identifying specific packages when you get to very large volumes. UPS deals with about 15 million packages per day. A big number but nothing like what would be necessary for real time tracking of what Walmart is looking at doing. Walmart deals with tens of billions of individual product transactions so the complexity is substantially higher. There is a big difference in data and complexity between shipping a single box of 100 widgets versus knowing the entire supply chain history for each and every one of those 100 widgets.
Reading comprehension much? I was not talking about interior surfaces, I was talking about exterior. I will assume that you are genuinely stupid instead of being a troll...
Do you see a lot of indoor atriums, greenhouses, sunroofs, etc or are you cherry picking to just be a jerk? You seem to be the one lacking in reading comprehension in addition to failing to understand anything about materials science. Glass does not intrinsically equal fragile. It's perfectly possible to design glass surfaces to be quite robust and take a substantial impact.
In case you still don't get the point, glass can literally be bullet proof if you want it to be. Who is the "genuinely stupid" one now?
Shingles, on the other hand, could have hail dropped from a very high distance indeed -- enough to reach terminal velocity. Where I live we had a severe hail storm a couple of months ago. A friend of mine is getting insurance to replace his entire roof.
And that is not a glass roof so what exactly is your point? No practical roofing material is going to be indestructible. Glass tiles can be just as durable as stone ones if not moreso. If you had a clue about materials science you would already know this.
Uhhhh, how much glass is used for horizontal (or horizontal-ish) surfaces?
Quite a lot. Open up your refrigerator and chances are you'll see a rather large load bearing glass surface. Look at atriums of commercial buildings with glass roofs. Look at greenhouses. Glass table tops. Check out the sunroofs in cars. There are glass walkways.
Horizontal glass surfaces are all over the place if you actually bother to look for them.
I've been through a hailstorm with hail that was easily golf-ball sized. My roof (asphalt shngle) was a total loss, plus my cars all had major damage, including having to replace windshields.
With big enough hail stones it won't matter much what your roof is made of unless you live in a bunker. I'm sure these tiles are durable but they aren't armor plating.
All that said, I like the idea, and if Tesla is willing to warranty it against hail, I'll sign up./p?
That is what insurance is for. The insurance companies will take a good hard look at the product and if they aren't likely to result in higher costs than existing products then they'll treat them pretty much like they do traditional roofing products. No real need for Tesla to warranty them against hail unless the tiles have some special properties that make them impervious to most hail.
Are these solar tiles also installed so that there are no nooks and crannies for water to get into?
Did you give that question even a moment's thought? They are roof tiles and work exactly the same way every other roof tile works.
What can you expect from a country that seems to be allergic to brick or concrete for houses and seems to build most of them out of cheap plywood.
The type of material used is determined by the price point of the dwelling in question. If you want to build a house out of brick you can do that but it's a lot more labor intensive and thus more expensive. Cheap houses are made from cheap materials no matter what country you are in. Expensive houses are usually made from pricier material no matter what country you are in.
You don't see that many large glass surfaces around for a pretty good reason...
You mean except for almost every window on every house and car made? [sarcasm] Yeah barely any glass out there. Who would use glass? [/sarcasm]
25 years to de-carbonize the Global Economy and we are wasting resources on rooftop panels.
What's your brilliant idea? What have you done that would do more to reduce the need for fossil fuels? Come on Mr. Snarky McCynic, dazzle us with your brilliant and feasible plan.
Frankly I can't think of a better way to reduce the need for carbon based fuels than to put solar panels and batteries on/in every building possible and switch to primarily electric cars. It's not the only think we can or should do but it's a vital piece of the puzzle.
How are the Global Warming deniers going to turn this into a horrible thing that people should avoid?
Easy: It takes away jobs from hard working coal miners and oil workers. Then they will follow up with something along the lines of "put a GLASS roof on my house? What a stupid idea". Then there will be some idiotic populist argument about baseload power and how solar hurts our power companies by increasing costs to those who can't afford these expensive roofs.
All shitty and stupid arguments but they each make for a nice sound bite.
Tesla's new solar roof product, he proclaimed, will actually cost less to manufacture and install than a traditional roof -- even before savings from the power bill.
Unlikely that it will be cheaper than an asphalt shingle roof. Not so surprising that it might be cheaper than an (expensive) slate or similar high end tile.
They're made of textured glass and are virtually indistinguishable from high-end roofing products
Umm, no. They are not "indistinguishable" from high end roofing products but they are reminiscent of them and appear to be rather attractive looking on their own merits.
When was the last time I needed to haul a 4x8 sheet of plywood?
I've done it about 15 times this year alone. Plus loads of stone, dirt, compost, 2X4s, concrete, tools, lumber, dog crates, bicycles, trash and countless other things that a sports car would be utterly useless for. Believe it or not some of us here on slashdot don't just spend all our time behind a keyboard. Some of us actually build stuff and work with our hands. I own a pickup because it's practical for me to own a pickup and I actually use it.
Odd, I say that exact thing about pickups. They suck down gas and are horrifically impracticable as a daily driver.
Most pickups get as good or better gas mileage as most high performance sports cars. Mine gets about 20mpg around town and some of the best are up over 30mpg on the highway.. If you think they aren't practical as a daily driver then you've never actually driven one. They're HUGELY practical. Excellent traction, excellent hauling ability, robustly built, comfortable to drive, plenty of power, great for plowing, reasonably quick in a straight line (not so much in a corner), decent fuel economy for many recent models especially in the light duty diesel versions, and many are reasonably priced. If you want one with a plush interior you can get one as nice as most luxury cars if you want.
Show me any pickup that sucks down gas and I'll show you a sports car that sucks it down even faster.
My VW GTI can haul 99% of the stuff I ever need
I owned a GTI when I was just out of college. Was good fun. Now that I've grown up and own a house and have a family it's not so practical anymore. I put stuff in the pickup bed weekly that you wouldn't dare put in your GTI even if you could fit it. If the GTI suits you and your current life situation that's fine but those of us who aren't so arrogant will drive what actually works. If that happens to be a pickup so be it.
Wildly over spends? It's to keep the peace and make potential rivals give up before they ever get started.
Yes the USA hugely overspends on its military. The USA spends more money on its defense budget than the next ten biggest spending countries combined. That's more than China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UK, India, France, Japan, Germany and South Korea put together. There is no rational justification for that level of spending and it certainly doesn't keep wars from starting.
Germany started the Great War because they thought they would win. How'd that work out for everyone?
That's not what happened and if you bother to pick up a history book you would know it. It wasn't anywhere near that simple. First off the "Great War" was WWI and that wasn't started by Germany. That war was started by an entanglement of alliances and the shooting actually started with the Austro-Hungarian Empire when they declared war on Serbia. WWII was not solely started by Germany either. Japan was already in military action prior to Germany invading Poland in 1939. German leadership only thought they could win because they were quite frankly, delusional and overly ambitious.
You think peace is expensive, that's nothing on war.
Having one country with a gigantic and unsustainable military isn't going to stop all wars forever. The USA is borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars per year to pay for the federal budget and about a quarter of that is military spending. There is no way the US can maintain that level of spending without substantially higher taxes and even then it's probably impossible in the long run. And somehow other major world powers don't seem to need to spend ludicrous sums of money on their military.
The tesla is stupid quick to 60mph, but once you get to 60mph it fades quite fast. Over 60 and it will be clowned by anything.
Not actually true but even if it were, so what? It covers a quarter mile as fast as anything you can buy from a showroom today (usually for less money than the cars that are close to as fast) and it's not as if you can drive any car over 100mph routinely no matter who made it. Certainly not on public roads. Why would I give a shit what it does at 140mph since I'm never ever going to drive any car that fast?
Additionally comparing it to cars that can run endless laps on a track is pointless.
Why is it pointless? That's like saying it's pointless because it isn't designed to haul lumber like a pickup. The Tesla is a great car for real world driving. It's not a car that is designed to meet every need and it's not a car designed for laps on a track. If you want to do some specialty activity then buy a vehicle that suits that need. Nobody has ever pretended that a Tesla is a great track car but it is a great car for daily driving. Cars that are great on a track tend to suck on real roads. (stiff suspensions, noisy as hell, uncomfortable, too low, etc)
I've never owned a car in my life that had more than 2 functional seats
Then you clearly don't have children and/or don't do practical work involving a vehicle. My daily driver is a pickup because I need that sort of vehicle for various tasks (hauling, plowing, etc) that could not possibly be accomplished with a little sports car. Good luck hauling a 4x8 sheet of plywood in your 911. If you have a family in most parts of the US you will immediately need at least a third seat and some cargo capacity. People don't drive minivans because they think they are awesomely fun to drive.
I like cars that are fun to drive too (and have owned several) but two seat sports cars are hugely impractical and generally expensive luxuries. Nothing wrong with that but not compatible with the banalities of daily life for many of us.
Radar detectors are illegal in most states/countries.
Not in most of the USA they aren't. There are a handful of states with bans or restrictions and you can't use them on military bases. But most places they are perfectly legal to use. Legality varies tremendously by country.
Ok..I LOVE the performance of the Tesla, now, PLEASE make a version that looks once again like a sports car, and not like a family sedan.
I seriously WISH family sedans looked as nice as the Model S does. I think the styling on the Model S will still look good in 20 years which is something I cannot say for a lot of cars.
If they could make one with this performance, and in the ballpark range of a Vette, man..I'd be in the market for that immediatly.
It will happen. Only question is when.
Stay strong. 4 years form now you hopefully will get another shot to make your country great again.
Don't have to wait that long. There is an election in 2 years. We can put a big roadblock in front of Trump by voting the opposition into power in either wing of congress.
Actually the interesting election will be the 2020 election, particularly at the state level because that is the one which determines who gets to gerrymander the districts for the next 10 years. The republicans got to do it in 2010 and that is why they continue to hold congress. Personally I'm hoping Trump is a train wreck and the democrats take him to the woodshed in the next few elections.
What we have in many cases today are people coming here and not assimilating, simply continuing to live as they did in their native countries creating these pockets of culture that are in many cases incompatible with American culture.
Incompatible with whose "American culture"? Yours? There is no single American culture and never has been. Culture in Texas is hugely different than culture in Ohio which is hugely different than culture in Montana. Black people have a distinct culture just as white people do. Spanish speaking americans are just as american as english speaking ones. Immigrants with different backgrounds and beliefs have always been here. Just because you couldn't be bothered to pay them any attention means you missed the point entirely. We absorb bits of their culture just like they absorb parts of ours. That's why they call it a melting pot. There is no such thing as "incompatible with American culture" because American culture is not a single thing and never has been.