Do you do said laughter right after highlighting the different capabilities of trucks and SUV's, as you just did above? You weren't hauling 7 people plus gear in that sports coupe, at least not safely.
Of course we didn't put 7 people in a coupe. (5 sometimes though) If we needed to haul more stuff we *gasp* took a second vehicle.
If I'd had a minivan, I'd also have needed to buy a pickup truck. An SUV fills both roles.
An SUV does NOT fill the role of a pickup truck unless you don't actually need a pickup truck. You need a pickup when you are toting things that you do not want to carry in the interior of a vehicle like loose dirt, stone, certain bulky supplies, trash, etc. Messy stuff. Very bulky stuff. If you can put what you are likely to carry in an SUV then you don' t actually need a pickup. My wife has an SUV which we use for plowing and I have a pickup which we use for transporting bulky stuff. Significant overlap but the use cases are not identical.
An SUV can fill the role of a station wagon or minivan depending on the specific use case and number of people you need to transport. If you get up towards 7 with lots of gear then you need either a minivan or a full sized van. If you are just transporting up to 4/5 people with some gear then an SUV or station wagon can serve adequately.
I kind of laugh when I hear people say they "need" a minivan. Amazing how those of us who predate minivans somehow managed to survive. They're a great tool but hardly a necessity. The car my family had when I was growing up was a sports coupe. We took all the family trips and got all our gear in it too.
Neither quite as well as the ideal vehicle, but well enough that it makes more sense than two vehicles... actually three since we also needed a commuter vehicle.
Why would you "need" a commuter vehicle? The cost of any commuter vehicle is going to hugely outstrip any fuel savings you might possible generate.
The trouble in setting up there would be, what are you going to use for a workforce?
You think there is a lack of a willing and capable workforce in Detroit Metro? You could not be more wrong. There are reasonable reasons to pick places other than Metro Detroit to build a factory but the blight in Detroit City and perceived lack of a workforce is not among them. Honestly I can't think of many better places to build a factory if you really look at the evidence. The opportunity is definitely there. You might find cheaper labor elsewhere but you aren't going to find a more capable labor force anywhere for manufacturing.
Likely as not, not locals
You bet. There is more manufacturing and engineering talent in Detroit metro than all but a handful of places in the US. Did you forget that GM has their headquarters in downtown Detroit? Where do you think they get their people from? Do you think it is by accident that almost every single car supplier of consequence has engineering operations somewhere near Detroit? Michigan ranks 4th in the nation in high tech jobs. Metro Detroit is the second largest source of tech jobs of any metro area in the US. If you want manufacturing talent you could do a lot worse than Michigan.
So yeah, the locals will do just fine.
how are you going to convince folks to me to Detroit, not much incentive to move to a barren, economically sparse, drug infested/violence infested area.
If you think that properly describes all of Detroit then you aren't wanted there and you clearly know little about the area. Downtown Detroit near the Renaissance Center has actually seen a pretty nice revival. Not to say the city overall doesn't have a long way to go (it very much does) but there are big parts of it that are nothing like the hell hole you are describing. Guys like Dan Gilbert are buying up all kinds of property and businesses are setting up shop left and right. It's a hell of an economic opportunity if your investment horizon is sufficiently long term. There are three major stadiums, a convention center, a university, three casinos, GM, outstanding restaurants, Whole Foods, and lots more all downtown. You really think Whole Foods is going to set up shop in the middle of a blighted, drug infested area? I just had a relative open up an upscale coffee shop in Downtown Detroit and another relative of mine has a fast casual restaurant at the Renaissance Center.
Furthermore it doesn't have to be in Detroit City. The Detroit Metro area is genuinely nice. I live in Oakland County which is immediately to the north of Detroit City and is one of the ten wealthiest counties in the entire US, has a AAA credit rating and is a genuinely nice place to live. Washtenaw and McComb counties are equally nice places. The University of Michigan as well as several other excellent local universities provides an outstanding local talent pool.
Umm, entertainment? Like going to a party and chatting with friends, I learn something everywhere, but mostly here, I just discuss, sometimes argue. But seriously, most of it is just entertainment.
Learning and entertainment are not exclusive to each other. Not everything has to be a firehose of education. I come to slashdot for entertainment as well but if I never learned anything the entertainment value would vanish rapidly.
There is a whole world out there of people playing with obsolete technology. It's not always nostalgia either.
Exactly my point. There are lessons to be learned from obsolete tech and sometimes it turns out to be not as obsolete as we think. You can even have fun while you do it. But I don't really understand pointless nostalgia. Learn from the past but live in the present.
and is based off the (discontinued in the states) Previa styling:
Thank $diety. The Previa was one of the ugliest vehicles this side of a Pontiak Aztek. I've never seen a minivan I thought was remotely pleasant to look at but the Previa was ugly above and beyond the call of duty. I'm kind of astonished nobody has seemingly even tried to make a minivan that is better looking.
My reality is that they only sell $45,000 suvs or much cheaper minivans that can fit my whole family
You can buy a Ford E-Series van or Ford Transit van that will seat more than any minivan, tow more and is available for as little as $30,000. Only real downside is that the MPG kind of sucks.
There is something just awesome in any slashdotter telling another they are wasting their time.
If you learn things that is (almost) never a waste of time. I learn things here despite the signal to noise ratio at times. I see perspectives and debate about topics I do not find elsewhere. If you think slashdot is nothing but useless noise I would have to ask why you bother coming here unless you are trolling.
Personally I don't grok the appeal of playing around with loooong obsolete computer gear out of nostalgia but to each their own.
While there were 14 manufacturers of minivans 15-20 years ago, there are only five today
7 actually (Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan, Mazda, VW) though I think VW might contract the actual manufacturing to Chrysler.
My 2011 Town and Country actually got 27.5 mpg on one tank of gas on a recent 2800 mile trip. My brother's SUV struggles to achieve 18.
A Jeep Grand Cherokee with the diesel option will get around 30mpg on the highway and seat up to 7. The current Dodge Grand Caravan gets 17 city, 25 highway which is roughly the same as a full sized pickup truck with a boosted V6 engine. There really is no excuse for minivans to not be able to get mpg over 30mpg appropriately configured.
I sure hope the minivan doesn't disappear. Truly, it is without equal for families up to about 7 people.
It won't. It might not be sexy but as you point out there is nothing else out there with the capabilities of one. Sometimes practicality just rules the day.
I think the main problem with minivans is that the car companies have focused too much attention on SUVs and not progressed the category as much as they could have. Minivan gas mileage is better than big SUVs but what isn't? And it's not as good as it could be. I can get a big pickup with a 400HP engine that isn't much worse on gas mileage than your typical minivan. No way that should be possible. I have to believe there probably is a market for a hybrid powertrain minivan. Minivan handling is pathetic even by truck standards for the most part (except for Mazda's offering). They generally lack options like 4WD. They are used for hauling kids and stuff and yet they have cloth interiors that cannot be easily cleaned. I have a Nissan Xterra and I can literally hose out the interior of that car which I occasionally need to after toting my dogs or mountain bike around. I haven't been in a minivan used by kids that couldn't use a good hosing down. Minivan styling is horrendous. Nobody buys one because they think it looks nice.
Honestly though, I think the minivan could enjoy a resurgence in popularity if it was approached from a slightly different angle.
Perhaps. Minivans are undeniably practical for many uses but they are hard to make sexy. Of course it doesn't help that they have ugly styling, bad fuel economy and handle like a river barge for the most part.
Make it *really* easy for all of the seats to fold flat (like "push a button and they all retract into the floor" easy), and market it to the homeowners who currently shop for light trucks!
The problem is how to do that economically. There are all sorts of cool things you can do if money is no object. I think you'd have more luck with them if you started with solving the styling and fuel economy problems, then work your way to fixing the handling and then get into nifty features like what you describe. A minivan would seem to be the ideal place for a hybrid powertrain and I'm surprised there are basically no 4WD/AWD options out there.
I know I've owned a couple of pickups because they were so darn functional and useful for things like hauling away yard waste or picking up a furniture or appliance purchase, or just helping a buddy move. But their big downside is the lack of any protection from the weather for the cargo, while driving
That is the reason I have a folding tonneau cover on mine. Solves that problem for the majority of cases and even improves gas mileage slightly.
How many companies other than Chrysler are still making them for the US market at all?
Toyota, Honda, Kia, Mazda, Toyota, Nissan and VW all make and sell minivans. Chrysler, Toyota and Honda own about 90% of the market together between their 4 offerings.
Have you ever tried to find something in your email account that you know is there but couldn't locate it using any search terms that came to mind, only to find it later along with something completely unrelated? How hard do you think it would be to describe to a Google employee the type of information you want them to search for in (likely) thousands of emails and get a perfect success rate (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that that's the only satisfactory outcome)?
Law enforcement is not entitled to a perfect success rate. If they have evidence that justifies searching an entire account then fine but I defy you to come up with more than a handful of cases where such a blanket search is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. We put limits on law enforcement because law enforcement has a LONG history of abusing power. The majority of the Bill of Rights is devoted to limiting the power of law enforcement. We put these limits in place knowing full well that the result will be that some guilty people go free because the alternative is to convict innocent people. The job of law enforcement is not supposed to be easy or convenient.
I don't get the fuss, it's not like you have some right to hide suspected (they got a warrant) illegal activities just because they're recorded in an email archive stored somewhere other than your computer's hard drive.
Strawman argument. The question is whether the warrant and the activities permitted are appropriately narrow to the circumstances. If they are then all is well. If the warrant allows a fishing expedition then it is an abuse of the judicial process. If the search criteria that can be justified is too narrow to result in information useful for a conviction then that is just too bad. If they don't have enough evidence to convince a (properly behaving) judge that a wider search is necessary then that is how the system is supposed to behave.
The only problem I have with it could be described as a slippery slope fallacy; that is, maybe the rules will become more relaxed over time as more judges build on this case.
It's not a slippery slope problem. The problem is that there is relatively little guidance on what the rules and parameters regarding these sorts of searches should be because the technology of online accounts has advanced somewhat ahead of the law. Could be that the warrant issued was perfectly appropriate to the circumstances. However the justification was given that "investigators might miss something" which is alarmingly insufficient. Yes, they might miss something and unless they have evidence to justify a very broad search then they should have to use less invasive means even if that means they might miss something. Better that 100 guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongly convicted. Searching someone's entire Google account is a very invasive search and there had better be a very good reason to allow it.
How does this differ from a typical search warrant for a premises?
It might not be any different. However even a warrant for a premises is not (supposed to be) without limits. If the information sought can be reasonably obtained through less intrusive means then it is supposed to be obtained through those alternative means. If the cops are interested in someones google account (or hard drive - same principle) because they have credible suspicion about information that may be contained there then a warrant is fine but only to the extent necessary to search for and safeguard the information sought.
Basically if the judge is saying that searching an entire account is appropriate merely because there is a chance investigators might miss something then there is a problem. The entire point of a getting judicial review prior to a search is so that searches do not become wider than absolutely necessary. Part of that is so that people don't become accused of crimes they otherwise would not have been under suspicion of. Giving carte-blanche to search someone's google account in many cases is opening up their entire life to a search so there had better be a damn good reason to permit a search that broad.
frankly I dont know why anyone would want to open a business in cali right now.
Depends on the business. For certain types of businesses, California is where the talent is located. Not to say you can't locate a successful company elsewhere (you can!) but there is a reason you find a lot of tech companies in California just like there is a reason you find a lot of manufacturing companies in Michigan, a lot of finance companies in New York, etc. Despite the problems California didn't become the economic powerhouse it did by random chance. It got there because it has the right combination of institutions, resources, talent and location.
Id much rather open a business pretty much anywhere else in the country over cali
Then I'm guessing you haven't opened a lot of businesses. There are certain businesses that make tremendous sense in California and others that make sense elsewhere. Unless you are going to get considerably more specific about what type of business you are planning to open then you are not making any sort of reasonable point.
That is a tiny fraction of what US manufacturing used to employ
It's ONE COMPANY and a relatively small one at that. Do you expect them to single handedly employ everyone looking for work? 6500 jobs is a LOT of jobs but way to try to diminish a good thing there Debbie Downer.
During the heyday of the American middle class, GM employed hundreds of thousands of people.
They still do. GM presently directly employs roughly 219,000 people. Last I checked that qualifies as "hundreds of thousands of people". GMs suppliers employ about 6 times that many people for products made by GM. (look it up - there is roughly 6 manufacturing workers in the supply chain for every one at a major auto maker) And furthermore there is is a multiplier effect whereby every $1 spent in manufacturing results in approximately $1.35 in additional economic activity which means more jobs. The death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.
If it's okay to go through someone's locally-stored data, why not their remotely-stored data?
The question isn't local versus remote. The question is narrowly tailored search versus fishing expedition. If they have enough evidence to justify a search of someone's entire account (or local hard drive) then it shouldn't be hard to convince a judge to issue a warrant with those search parameters. However warrants should be as as narrowly defined as possible based on the available evidence. If you suspect someone of burglary that likely does not constitute sufficient grounds to search their hard drive (or google account) for in its entirety unless to police have specific and credible evidence to the contrary. Warrants are supposed to have the minimum necessary search parameters.
I'm not familiar with the particulars of this case but I can think of plenty of circumstances where it would be quite inappropriate to search someone's entire account. There are also circumstances where it is perfectly appropriate but the warrant should not be that broad without damn good reason.
lternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate.
Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point? If the search criteria isn't sufficiently broad to catch someone then that means they don't have enough evidence to be conducting the search in the first place. Almost everyone can be found guilty of some illegal activity (however minor) if the search parameters are sufficiently broad.
Maybe it's reliving the past, maybe it's a waste of time, but it's how I enjoy wasting my time.
It's not a waste of time if you are doing it to learn something. Some of the old engineering that went into these early PCs was quite remarkable and there are some extremely useful lessons to be learned. A lot of the best engineering happens when people have severely constrained resources. Engineering tends to get sloppy without constraints.
That said if you are doing it frequently purely for nostalgia then you should probably worry about whether you are wasting time. Nothing wrong with playing with an old machine for a while out of nostalgia just like there is nothing wrong with watching a favorite old movie once again. But after a certain point it ceases to become nostalgia and becomes an inability to move on. Living the past over and over isn't (likely) going to result in anything new or creative. It might be fun but unless you do something with it beyond just playing old games and solving old problems (again) then it runs the risk of being pointless.
Yeah, if you look, you'll find that phrase is not found in the US Constitution.
No those exact words are not there but I refer you to the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eight amendments, particularly the Fifth. Innocent until proven guilty is the shortened version of what they collectively say.
It's merely an inference (by the courts) that it exists as part of US jurisprudence.
It is nothing of the sort. Explain to me how "nor shall any person... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" be anything other than different phrasing of innocent until proven guilty. (That's from the Fifth Amendment BTW)
That data proved to be an excellent fossil showing a business running an insecure system without basic protections, failing even to install security updates for seven years.
You will find that the majority of small businesses fit that description. The company I work at right now has about a dozen computers. Before I got there ALL of them hadn't seen a security update in at least 5 years, the server wasn't being backed up, there was no firewall or antivirus to be found, the company books were done on a spreadsheet, etc. And they were better than many. I've consulted with probably 20-30 small businesses in the last 10 years and maybe 3 or 4 handled their computer security and data in even a moderately safe manner. Some I'm amazed they are still in business at all. Remember that the next time you say you want to support small business. (and then do it anyway!)
Sure it is. If any of my customers and/or employees found out that I had leaked their sensitive data then I would not only loose that customer/employee I would likely find our company at the pointy end of a lawsuit. (and rightly so) Given that our customers are mostly large companies I assure you that we cannot afford to piss them off. We take reasonable precautions but there are security holes that I'm aware of that the risk/reward ratio do not even come close to being justified. If a serious criminal targeted our systems and had the resources to do it right there isn't much I really can do to fend them off. We just aren't a big enough target to bother with.
Now in our case we don't deal with credit cards or social security numbers on a computer etc so the risk of someone getting sensitive data from us is fairly minimal. You'd have better luck rooting through our trash than our servers.
Innocent people getting executed is perfectly acceptable to me as long as the error rates are low.
Then you are a pathetic cowardly inhumane sociopath who I pray never is put on a jury. I don't care if you support the death penalty or not but the notion that it is ever acceptable to execute an innocent person is just reprehensible. Of course for someone who talks so tough you apparently can't be bothered to post under your own name.
1,000 out of 4,000,000 tickets makes a 0.025% error rate. That's a perfectly acceptable margin of error.
Bullshit. That's a HORRIBLE error rate. Remember that whole "innocent until proven guilty" part of the Constitution? If they are going to be used at all these things have to be tuned to have a false positive error rate of close to zero. If that means a higher false negative rate (people who ran the light but didn't get a ticket) then so be it. That's the way it is supposed to work in our justice system. If that means foregoing some traffic penalty revenue then so be it. Better that a hundred people get off without penalty than one person be falsely convicted.
I bet 90% of all small businesses still have no real clue data security and about the amount of data their printers, cash registers,.. still contain.
As someone who has spent many years consulting to small businesses I can tell you that you are being too conservative. 99% is probably closer to the mark. Nearly all small business owners are clueless regarding data security and frankly don't really have the time to worry about it either. Running a small business is a hugely time consuming endeavor and dealing the the nuances of data security is a luxury most do not have time for. Shoot, you'd be terrified at how many of them don't even bother to back up key data like their accounting software.
I run a small business myself and while I'm more aware than most about our security I don't really have time to deal with all of it. At some point you sometimes simply have to live with a certain level of risk until you have the resources to address things properly.
If I were the government, I would do it by mandated carbon emission levels per watt of power generated by power companies. The idea is similar to the way that fuel efficiency standards were mandated for automobiles and led to vastly more fuel efficient cars.
And if you have a standard and enforce it by penalties (presumably financial ones) how is that really any different from a tax aside from taking longer and being less effective? We use mandated fuel efficiency standards because that was a politically acceptable compromise, not because it was the best policy. The fastest way to get fuel efficient cars is to raise the price of fuel for those cars. The higher the price of fuel the more consumers are going to begin to buy more fuel efficient cars. The EU has much higher fuel prices and as a result has higher average fuel economy in the cars people buy even after the recent increase in mandated fuel standards. If people actually want to buy more fuel efficient cars then companies will find ways to supply them. Taxing fuel is a proven effective way to get people to take an interest in fuel economy.
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Do you do said laughter right after highlighting the different capabilities of trucks and SUV's, as you just did above? You weren't hauling 7 people plus gear in that sports coupe, at least not safely.
Of course we didn't put 7 people in a coupe. (5 sometimes though) If we needed to haul more stuff we *gasp* took a second vehicle.
If I'd had a minivan, I'd also have needed to buy a pickup truck. An SUV fills both roles.
An SUV does NOT fill the role of a pickup truck unless you don't actually need a pickup truck. You need a pickup when you are toting things that you do not want to carry in the interior of a vehicle like loose dirt, stone, certain bulky supplies, trash, etc. Messy stuff. Very bulky stuff. If you can put what you are likely to carry in an SUV then you don' t actually need a pickup. My wife has an SUV which we use for plowing and I have a pickup which we use for transporting bulky stuff. Significant overlap but the use cases are not identical.
An SUV can fill the role of a station wagon or minivan depending on the specific use case and number of people you need to transport. If you get up towards 7 with lots of gear then you need either a minivan or a full sized van. If you are just transporting up to 4/5 people with some gear then an SUV or station wagon can serve adequately.
I kind of laugh when I hear people say they "need" a minivan. Amazing how those of us who predate minivans somehow managed to survive. They're a great tool but hardly a necessity. The car my family had when I was growing up was a sports coupe. We took all the family trips and got all our gear in it too.
Neither quite as well as the ideal vehicle, but well enough that it makes more sense than two vehicles... actually three since we also needed a commuter vehicle.
Why would you "need" a commuter vehicle? The cost of any commuter vehicle is going to hugely outstrip any fuel savings you might possible generate.
The trouble in setting up there would be, what are you going to use for a workforce?
You think there is a lack of a willing and capable workforce in Detroit Metro? You could not be more wrong. There are reasonable reasons to pick places other than Metro Detroit to build a factory but the blight in Detroit City and perceived lack of a workforce is not among them. Honestly I can't think of many better places to build a factory if you really look at the evidence. The opportunity is definitely there. You might find cheaper labor elsewhere but you aren't going to find a more capable labor force anywhere for manufacturing.
Likely as not, not locals
You bet. There is more manufacturing and engineering talent in Detroit metro than all but a handful of places in the US. Did you forget that GM has their headquarters in downtown Detroit? Where do you think they get their people from? Do you think it is by accident that almost every single car supplier of consequence has engineering operations somewhere near Detroit? Michigan ranks 4th in the nation in high tech jobs. Metro Detroit is the second largest source of tech jobs of any metro area in the US. If you want manufacturing talent you could do a lot worse than Michigan.
So yeah, the locals will do just fine.
how are you going to convince folks to me to Detroit, not much incentive to move to a barren, economically sparse, drug infested/violence infested area.
If you think that properly describes all of Detroit then you aren't wanted there and you clearly know little about the area. Downtown Detroit near the Renaissance Center has actually seen a pretty nice revival. Not to say the city overall doesn't have a long way to go (it very much does) but there are big parts of it that are nothing like the hell hole you are describing. Guys like Dan Gilbert are buying up all kinds of property and businesses are setting up shop left and right. It's a hell of an economic opportunity if your investment horizon is sufficiently long term. There are three major stadiums, a convention center, a university, three casinos, GM, outstanding restaurants, Whole Foods, and lots more all downtown. You really think Whole Foods is going to set up shop in the middle of a blighted, drug infested area? I just had a relative open up an upscale coffee shop in Downtown Detroit and another relative of mine has a fast casual restaurant at the Renaissance Center.
Furthermore it doesn't have to be in Detroit City. The Detroit Metro area is genuinely nice. I live in Oakland County which is immediately to the north of Detroit City and is one of the ten wealthiest counties in the entire US, has a AAA credit rating and is a genuinely nice place to live. Washtenaw and McComb counties are equally nice places. The University of Michigan as well as several other excellent local universities provides an outstanding local talent pool.
Umm, entertainment? Like going to a party and chatting with friends, I learn something everywhere, but mostly here, I just discuss, sometimes argue. But seriously, most of it is just entertainment.
Learning and entertainment are not exclusive to each other. Not everything has to be a firehose of education. I come to slashdot for entertainment as well but if I never learned anything the entertainment value would vanish rapidly.
There is a whole world out there of people playing with obsolete technology. It's not always nostalgia either.
Exactly my point. There are lessons to be learned from obsolete tech and sometimes it turns out to be not as obsolete as we think. You can even have fun while you do it. But I don't really understand pointless nostalgia. Learn from the past but live in the present.
and is based off the (discontinued in the states) Previa styling:
Thank $diety. The Previa was one of the ugliest vehicles this side of a Pontiak Aztek. I've never seen a minivan I thought was remotely pleasant to look at but the Previa was ugly above and beyond the call of duty. I'm kind of astonished nobody has seemingly even tried to make a minivan that is better looking.
My reality is that they only sell $45,000 suvs or much cheaper minivans that can fit my whole family
You can buy a Ford E-Series van or Ford Transit van that will seat more than any minivan, tow more and is available for as little as $30,000. Only real downside is that the MPG kind of sucks.
There is something just awesome in any slashdotter telling another they are wasting their time.
If you learn things that is (almost) never a waste of time. I learn things here despite the signal to noise ratio at times. I see perspectives and debate about topics I do not find elsewhere. If you think slashdot is nothing but useless noise I would have to ask why you bother coming here unless you are trolling.
Personally I don't grok the appeal of playing around with loooong obsolete computer gear out of nostalgia but to each their own.
While there were 14 manufacturers of minivans 15-20 years ago, there are only five today
7 actually (Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Kia, Nissan, Mazda, VW) though I think VW might contract the actual manufacturing to Chrysler.
My 2011 Town and Country actually got 27.5 mpg on one tank of gas on a recent 2800 mile trip. My brother's SUV struggles to achieve 18.
A Jeep Grand Cherokee with the diesel option will get around 30mpg on the highway and seat up to 7. The current Dodge Grand Caravan gets 17 city, 25 highway which is roughly the same as a full sized pickup truck with a boosted V6 engine. There really is no excuse for minivans to not be able to get mpg over 30mpg appropriately configured.
I sure hope the minivan doesn't disappear. Truly, it is without equal for families up to about 7 people.
It won't. It might not be sexy but as you point out there is nothing else out there with the capabilities of one. Sometimes practicality just rules the day.
I think the main problem with minivans is that the car companies have focused too much attention on SUVs and not progressed the category as much as they could have. Minivan gas mileage is better than big SUVs but what isn't? And it's not as good as it could be. I can get a big pickup with a 400HP engine that isn't much worse on gas mileage than your typical minivan. No way that should be possible. I have to believe there probably is a market for a hybrid powertrain minivan. Minivan handling is pathetic even by truck standards for the most part (except for Mazda's offering). They generally lack options like 4WD. They are used for hauling kids and stuff and yet they have cloth interiors that cannot be easily cleaned. I have a Nissan Xterra and I can literally hose out the interior of that car which I occasionally need to after toting my dogs or mountain bike around. I haven't been in a minivan used by kids that couldn't use a good hosing down. Minivan styling is horrendous. Nobody buys one because they think it looks nice.
Honestly though, I think the minivan could enjoy a resurgence in popularity if it was approached from a slightly different angle.
Perhaps. Minivans are undeniably practical for many uses but they are hard to make sexy. Of course it doesn't help that they have ugly styling, bad fuel economy and handle like a river barge for the most part.
Make it *really* easy for all of the seats to fold flat (like "push a button and they all retract into the floor" easy), and market it to the homeowners who currently shop for light trucks!
The problem is how to do that economically. There are all sorts of cool things you can do if money is no object. I think you'd have more luck with them if you started with solving the styling and fuel economy problems, then work your way to fixing the handling and then get into nifty features like what you describe. A minivan would seem to be the ideal place for a hybrid powertrain and I'm surprised there are basically no 4WD/AWD options out there.
I know I've owned a couple of pickups because they were so darn functional and useful for things like hauling away yard waste or picking up a furniture or appliance purchase, or just helping a buddy move. But their big downside is the lack of any protection from the weather for the cargo, while driving
That is the reason I have a folding tonneau cover on mine. Solves that problem for the majority of cases and even improves gas mileage slightly.
It seems that in the US at least, the minivan is quite nearly dead.
Not even remotely. 532,357 minivans were sold in the US in 2013.
How many companies other than Chrysler are still making them for the US market at all?
Toyota, Honda, Kia, Mazda, Toyota, Nissan and VW all make and sell minivans. Chrysler, Toyota and Honda own about 90% of the market together between their 4 offerings.
Have you ever tried to find something in your email account that you know is there but couldn't locate it using any search terms that came to mind, only to find it later along with something completely unrelated? How hard do you think it would be to describe to a Google employee the type of information you want them to search for in (likely) thousands of emails and get a perfect success rate (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that that's the only satisfactory outcome)?
Law enforcement is not entitled to a perfect success rate. If they have evidence that justifies searching an entire account then fine but I defy you to come up with more than a handful of cases where such a blanket search is not a violation of the Fourth Amendment. We put limits on law enforcement because law enforcement has a LONG history of abusing power. The majority of the Bill of Rights is devoted to limiting the power of law enforcement. We put these limits in place knowing full well that the result will be that some guilty people go free because the alternative is to convict innocent people. The job of law enforcement is not supposed to be easy or convenient.
I don't get the fuss, it's not like you have some right to hide suspected (they got a warrant) illegal activities just because they're recorded in an email archive stored somewhere other than your computer's hard drive.
Strawman argument. The question is whether the warrant and the activities permitted are appropriately narrow to the circumstances. If they are then all is well. If the warrant allows a fishing expedition then it is an abuse of the judicial process. If the search criteria that can be justified is too narrow to result in information useful for a conviction then that is just too bad. If they don't have enough evidence to convince a (properly behaving) judge that a wider search is necessary then that is how the system is supposed to behave.
The only problem I have with it could be described as a slippery slope fallacy; that is, maybe the rules will become more relaxed over time as more judges build on this case.
It's not a slippery slope problem. The problem is that there is relatively little guidance on what the rules and parameters regarding these sorts of searches should be because the technology of online accounts has advanced somewhat ahead of the law. Could be that the warrant issued was perfectly appropriate to the circumstances. However the justification was given that "investigators might miss something" which is alarmingly insufficient. Yes, they might miss something and unless they have evidence to justify a very broad search then they should have to use less invasive means even if that means they might miss something. Better that 100 guilty men go free than a single innocent man be wrongly convicted. Searching someone's entire Google account is a very invasive search and there had better be a very good reason to allow it.
How does this differ from a typical search warrant for a premises?
It might not be any different. However even a warrant for a premises is not (supposed to be) without limits. If the information sought can be reasonably obtained through less intrusive means then it is supposed to be obtained through those alternative means. If the cops are interested in someones google account (or hard drive - same principle) because they have credible suspicion about information that may be contained there then a warrant is fine but only to the extent necessary to search for and safeguard the information sought.
Basically if the judge is saying that searching an entire account is appropriate merely because there is a chance investigators might miss something then there is a problem. The entire point of a getting judicial review prior to a search is so that searches do not become wider than absolutely necessary. Part of that is so that people don't become accused of crimes they otherwise would not have been under suspicion of. Giving carte-blanche to search someone's google account in many cases is opening up their entire life to a search so there had better be a damn good reason to permit a search that broad.
frankly I dont know why anyone would want to open a business in cali right now.
Depends on the business. For certain types of businesses, California is where the talent is located. Not to say you can't locate a successful company elsewhere (you can!) but there is a reason you find a lot of tech companies in California just like there is a reason you find a lot of manufacturing companies in Michigan, a lot of finance companies in New York, etc. Despite the problems California didn't become the economic powerhouse it did by random chance. It got there because it has the right combination of institutions, resources, talent and location.
Id much rather open a business pretty much anywhere else in the country over cali
Then I'm guessing you haven't opened a lot of businesses. There are certain businesses that make tremendous sense in California and others that make sense elsewhere. Unless you are going to get considerably more specific about what type of business you are planning to open then you are not making any sort of reasonable point.
That is a tiny fraction of what US manufacturing used to employ
It's ONE COMPANY and a relatively small one at that. Do you expect them to single handedly employ everyone looking for work? 6500 jobs is a LOT of jobs but way to try to diminish a good thing there Debbie Downer.
During the heyday of the American middle class, GM employed hundreds of thousands of people.
They still do. GM presently directly employs roughly 219,000 people. Last I checked that qualifies as "hundreds of thousands of people". GMs suppliers employ about 6 times that many people for products made by GM. (look it up - there is roughly 6 manufacturing workers in the supply chain for every one at a major auto maker) And furthermore there is is a multiplier effect whereby every $1 spent in manufacturing results in approximately $1.35 in additional economic activity which means more jobs. The death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated.
If it's okay to go through someone's locally-stored data, why not their remotely-stored data?
The question isn't local versus remote. The question is narrowly tailored search versus fishing expedition. If they have enough evidence to justify a search of someone's entire account (or local hard drive) then it shouldn't be hard to convince a judge to issue a warrant with those search parameters. However warrants should be as as narrowly defined as possible based on the available evidence. If you suspect someone of burglary that likely does not constitute sufficient grounds to search their hard drive (or google account) for in its entirety unless to police have specific and credible evidence to the contrary. Warrants are supposed to have the minimum necessary search parameters.
I'm not familiar with the particulars of this case but I can think of plenty of circumstances where it would be quite inappropriate to search someone's entire account. There are also circumstances where it is perfectly appropriate but the warrant should not be that broad without damn good reason.
lternatives, like asking Google employees to locate messages based on narrowly tailored criteria, risked excluding information that trained investigators could locate.
Ummm, isn't that PRECISELY the point? If the search criteria isn't sufficiently broad to catch someone then that means they don't have enough evidence to be conducting the search in the first place. Almost everyone can be found guilty of some illegal activity (however minor) if the search parameters are sufficiently broad.
Maybe it's reliving the past, maybe it's a waste of time, but it's how I enjoy wasting my time.
It's not a waste of time if you are doing it to learn something. Some of the old engineering that went into these early PCs was quite remarkable and there are some extremely useful lessons to be learned. A lot of the best engineering happens when people have severely constrained resources. Engineering tends to get sloppy without constraints.
That said if you are doing it frequently purely for nostalgia then you should probably worry about whether you are wasting time. Nothing wrong with playing with an old machine for a while out of nostalgia just like there is nothing wrong with watching a favorite old movie once again. But after a certain point it ceases to become nostalgia and becomes an inability to move on. Living the past over and over isn't (likely) going to result in anything new or creative. It might be fun but unless you do something with it beyond just playing old games and solving old problems (again) then it runs the risk of being pointless.
The occasional error in the court system is perfectly acceptable to an orderly society.
It may be inevitable but it is NEVER acceptable. Only a sociopath would think otherwise.
Yeah, if you look, you'll find that phrase is not found in the US Constitution.
No those exact words are not there but I refer you to the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eight amendments, particularly the Fifth. Innocent until proven guilty is the shortened version of what they collectively say.
It's merely an inference (by the courts) that it exists as part of US jurisprudence.
It is nothing of the sort. Explain to me how "nor shall any person... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" be anything other than different phrasing of innocent until proven guilty. (That's from the Fifth Amendment BTW)
That data proved to be an excellent fossil showing a business running an insecure system without basic protections, failing even to install security updates for seven years.
You will find that the majority of small businesses fit that description. The company I work at right now has about a dozen computers. Before I got there ALL of them hadn't seen a security update in at least 5 years, the server wasn't being backed up, there was no firewall or antivirus to be found, the company books were done on a spreadsheet, etc. And they were better than many. I've consulted with probably 20-30 small businesses in the last 10 years and maybe 3 or 4 handled their computer security and data in even a moderately safe manner. Some I'm amazed they are still in business at all. Remember that the next time you say you want to support small business. (and then do it anyway!)
The problem is, the risk isn't yours.
Sure it is. If any of my customers and/or employees found out that I had leaked their sensitive data then I would not only loose that customer/employee I would likely find our company at the pointy end of a lawsuit. (and rightly so) Given that our customers are mostly large companies I assure you that we cannot afford to piss them off. We take reasonable precautions but there are security holes that I'm aware of that the risk/reward ratio do not even come close to being justified. If a serious criminal targeted our systems and had the resources to do it right there isn't much I really can do to fend them off. We just aren't a big enough target to bother with.
Now in our case we don't deal with credit cards or social security numbers on a computer etc so the risk of someone getting sensitive data from us is fairly minimal. You'd have better luck rooting through our trash than our servers.
Innocent people getting executed is perfectly acceptable to me as long as the error rates are low.
Then you are a pathetic cowardly inhumane sociopath who I pray never is put on a jury. I don't care if you support the death penalty or not but the notion that it is ever acceptable to execute an innocent person is just reprehensible. Of course for someone who talks so tough you apparently can't be bothered to post under your own name.
1,000 out of 4,000,000 tickets makes a 0.025% error rate. That's a perfectly acceptable margin of error.
Bullshit. That's a HORRIBLE error rate. Remember that whole "innocent until proven guilty" part of the Constitution? If they are going to be used at all these things have to be tuned to have a false positive error rate of close to zero. If that means a higher false negative rate (people who ran the light but didn't get a ticket) then so be it. That's the way it is supposed to work in our justice system. If that means foregoing some traffic penalty revenue then so be it. Better that a hundred people get off without penalty than one person be falsely convicted.
I bet 90% of all small businesses still have no real clue data security and about the amount of data their printers, cash registers,.. still contain.
As someone who has spent many years consulting to small businesses I can tell you that you are being too conservative. 99% is probably closer to the mark. Nearly all small business owners are clueless regarding data security and frankly don't really have the time to worry about it either. Running a small business is a hugely time consuming endeavor and dealing the the nuances of data security is a luxury most do not have time for. Shoot, you'd be terrified at how many of them don't even bother to back up key data like their accounting software.
I run a small business myself and while I'm more aware than most about our security I don't really have time to deal with all of it. At some point you sometimes simply have to live with a certain level of risk until you have the resources to address things properly.
If I were the government, I would do it by mandated carbon emission levels per watt of power generated by power companies. The idea is similar to the way that fuel efficiency standards were mandated for automobiles and led to vastly more fuel efficient cars.
And if you have a standard and enforce it by penalties (presumably financial ones) how is that really any different from a tax aside from taking longer and being less effective? We use mandated fuel efficiency standards because that was a politically acceptable compromise, not because it was the best policy. The fastest way to get fuel efficient cars is to raise the price of fuel for those cars. The higher the price of fuel the more consumers are going to begin to buy more fuel efficient cars. The EU has much higher fuel prices and as a result has higher average fuel economy in the cars people buy even after the recent increase in mandated fuel standards. If people actually want to buy more fuel efficient cars then companies will find ways to supply them. Taxing fuel is a proven effective way to get people to take an interest in fuel economy.