JMS

Dude.. Gretchen was Miss America in 1989. I heard Fox hired an outside legal group to conduct an investigation thinking it would turn up nothing. They came back with six or seven women who claimed they were harassed. Including Megan Kelly. Megan Kelly is being marketed as the future of the network. Her ratings are just under Bill O'reilly's but her upside is seen to be higher. That put the nail in the coffin. So now he'll get a nice huge severance package (40 million) and all the ladies are free to sue... One must wonder how long this has been going on, cause Roger Ails has been a GOP insider for decades. He's credited along with Lee A****er for getting George Bush Sr's come from behind victory over Dukakus in 1988. First clue might be that most of the two dozen women who work at fox on air all look like clones of each other. Bleached blond, big hair... For years I couldn't tell them apart. They all looked alike to me and sounded alike. Megan Kelly was the first one who ever impressed me and that was just recently when she hosted the Republican Presidential Debates. I thought she asked hard questions to everybody and really was probable the best debate host I've seen.

Yeah that's not really the case. the peaks on the electric grid is during the day when folks are using their aircondistionaers and going about their business. There is huge spare capacity in the evening when an electric car would be charging.. The other cool thing about this when you buy an electric car, or you sell 200,000 of them; you are creating huge storage capacity on the power grid which didn't exist before and will really help potentially with brown outs. Also gasoline prices are at like 10 year lows right now. It's what roughly $2. a gallon roughly. That's still about 1/20th the cost of the electrical energy equivalent of a gallon of gas. IT's just way more efficient to create electricity than gasoline and always has been. The problem was we didn't have efficient ways to store electricity before, nor convert electricity to genetic energy.

I think electric cars are better if they are better cars.. And at least according to road and track; Tesla's cars are the best cars they've ever reviewed.. not the best electric cars.. the best cars. That doesn't necessarily make it so for every consumer.. but I do think today, unlike yesterday, every consumer should take a hard look and consider the electric option before deciding on the best solution for themselves. I think having that option along with all the innovation occurring in the auto industry largely due to electric and hybrid cars is something everybody can appreciate even folks who decide gasoline for whatever reason still makes the most sense for them.

Heard an interview on the BBC with Musk maybe six months ago. Musk was saying that in the next six or seven years most cars on the road will be self driving. The BBC's car critic was incredulous. He was openly mocking Musk. How can that be, not one major auto manufactures is even planning for that option today... Never going to happen, he says.. GM just purchased a company which specializes in self driving, and of coarse Musk's model 3 with 150,000 orders is also auto driving. It's pretty cool. Friday we have Saudi Arabi talking about the end of the oil industry and their plans for such.. it's amazing.

It's another interim stage.. I read somewhere that it costs Tesla more money today to build the model 3 than he's proposing selling it for. Why would he do this.. Musk is counting on what has become about 150,000 orders for this new car. He's counting on being able to scale up and significantly reduce the costs of building these cars.... His stated goal is to create a no compromise electric car for everyday people. The model 3 is his first go at it and 35k with a 10 k rebate is his just the third price point. Musk has been aiming at this ever since he introduced his first $120k car. As for the service complaint. Look do you think when the model T first was introduced that there were enough service stations? It's true that these cars don't require the same or as significant maintenance as gasoline cars, It's also true that diagnoses and some procedures can be done online. If the car needs to go into the shop, and their are tens of thousands or a 100 thousand on the road, folks will step up to service them. Just because that infrastructure isn't their today doesn't mean it won't be there. That's not an argument to not entertain this new car, which is a pretty exciting.

I heard musk talking about that a year ago or so. Just googled it. Looks like they were toying with the idea but decided against it. No battery exchanges. So they don't need oil changes, air filter changes, bass filter changes, tune ups ( no spark plugs).. The breaks have some sort of genetic energy recapture utility which assists in breaking... There are a couple of dozen routine procedures which can be performed as well as diagnoses online.. What occurs in the routine matenance and where are they performed.. Does Tyson's even have a "shop"... the store is in the middle of the shopping mall? Where is the "shop", I'd like to check it out. The battery life seems to be a weakness.. guaranteed or rated or however they said it, for only 1000 fully cycle charges and a 200 mile range limit. The batteries are only going to last for what 4 years... A nice Gasoline car I can put 200k on them over more than a decade. Tesla's have that. IT's very noticeable too... take your foot off the power and they begin to slow down pretty fast without applying any breaks, and the breaks do recapture the genetic energy and charge the battery with it.

I need to learn more about the 3 series. Need to make sure I can fit in it. Order today.. take delivery in 2 years. Not sure I can wait. The S series I drove had better range and acceleration. Frankly had more acceleration than I'll use.. Still need to better understand the differences between the 3 series and the S and X series.

anybody can do tires, no need to go to a tesla dealership for that. The tesla's have a power recovery breaking system which adds life to the brakes. It's not a disk or pad breaking system which requires replacing. They don't coast. The moment you take your foot off the gas/power the cars decelerate and the kenetic energy is recovered and used to recharge the battery.. So not sure they need break jobs as often either. I've never had my suspension serviced on a car.

So right now the only time the car can auto drive ( without a driver onboard ) is when it's on private property... like your property.. pulling out of your drive way.. That's the car driving itself without anybody in it or watching it. ideally responding to your telephone command. Tesla is trying to get that "private property" ability to be expanded to shopping malls, restaurants etc in various areas.. Now as for a different example of pulling out of tight parking spaces, again when you aren't in the car.. In this case you are directly controlling that with the car fob. you hit a button and the car drives forward. The car is smart enough not to hit anything, or anybody; but you should wait until no other car is oncoming so no other car hit's your car... In this example, I was standing in front and to the side of the parked car.. Waited until no oncoming car there.. I hit the button.. The car immediately slides forward slowly out of the parking space. There is no engine to start, it's effectively instant power, no sound.. The tesla employee steps in front of the moving car, blocking it.. without my doing anything the car stops in front of him. As for the auto driving capability while commuting, etc when you are riding on board... That's not the same as self driving.. It's more like a sophisticated cruze control than an auto pilot. The car is driving itself but you are the responsible driver as far as the law is concerned.. meaning you are monitoring everything the car is doing. Like cruze control if you touch the gas or the brake your commands override the cars.. That's also true when you move the steering wheel. Now having said that I drove about 20 minutes on the beltway in heavy traffic without overruling the car once. The car slowed down, speed up, and even changed lanes all by itself. When the speed limit changed the car informed me by changing a display which holds the current speed limit, but I would have had to adjust the default speed myself if I wanted it to go slower or faster; the car did not do that automatically. I drove it.. or had the auto drive drive it off the beltway too.. Did great.. although it doesn't do traffic lights. You have to do those all by yourself.. So the auto drive feature is best used on the highway, not on roads with traffic lights etc.. although it did a serviceable job on the secondary roads. Didn't hit anybody, and when folks cut me off, the car slowed to keep good spacing between it and the car in front. When people turned in front of me the car slowed and than accelerated all by itself back up to it's default speed. You aren't going to be texting or reading the newspaper when you auto drive.. you have to be fully alert.. So it's not exactly an auto pilot.. more like a sophisticated cruze control with steering.

Yeah but they've kind of changed the entire metaphor of driving.. There are so many cool useful features. Like using your phone to tell your car to heat itself up or cool itself down so you're comfortable when you get into it. Like telling your care to pull out of the parking spot so you don't have to ding the car next to you when you get into it, that's in there now... you know cadalac's auto parallel parks.. this thing has that, and back in park, and normal park.. The Tesla sales guy said the next package they were working on was to have the car self valet itself. you would still have to pull up near the parking spot, let's say at a restaurant.. But when it's time to leave you could have the car pick you up at the front of the restaurant all by itself.. That's supposed to be a future online patch just like the auto driving was. That would come in handy at the Skins game.. Today they have an ap which you can tell the car to heat itself up, open the garage door, pull out onto your driveway and wait for you... Which was pretty cool to see.. Oh and the integration with your phone is cool as hell too... coarse you have access to all your songs, and hands free phone, and contacts browsing.. and your calendar, streaming music. The car has a large built in tablet on the dash which gives you full access to a lot of your phone's features as well as it's own built in features. Like being able to change your car's performance from commuting mode, to performance mode, to ludicrous performance mode..

Yeah in theory. Home full charge is 4 hours. Full charge at rapid charge station is 1 hour. That's going from dead battery to 300 miles. Charge at tesla rapid charge station is free. Now if you don't have an hour to hang around you can have the dead bateries swapped out for the cost of a tank of gas. 30 - 40$. 2-4 minutes. That's what tesla was saying over a year ago.Now don't know how that effects the 1000 full charge limitation which would give you 4 years if your commute were like mine near the top range of the car. Most people the salesman said would not use 1 full charge cycle a day but only part of one. Still limiting though.

. My understanding is at the automated rapid charging stations battery swaps were also automated. These batteries are very expensive. you aren't going to have a spare set in your garage. Besides there is no need. Also the testa sales guy told me the power plant for these cars is only rated for 1000 full charges. Partial charge isn't the same as a full charge he said. But that still sounds pretty limiting.

I hear what you are saying but I don't think you are getting it. These cars don't get oil changes or brought to the dealer for a routine tune up. When you need a tune up or something isn't working right or even when they installed the auto driving function; all that is done remotely. You call up tesla and while your on the phone the tech logs into your car and can fix adjust many of the cars routine maintenance. If it has to go into the shop, like a wreck. They come and pick up the car. So yes tesla does everything and your right that's an issue, it's also true there is less to do, and much of that can be done remotely. Battery changes for the x and s can be done automated at the rapid charging stations tesla stated over a year ago. Don't know about the model 3 yet.

Battery does not have to be professionally installed at least for S and X models. At the rapid charging stations it's an automated procedure. But they are supposed to be pretty expensive like 10k ish. Basically you are talking about trying to keep an extra tank of gas around. Not practical or necessary. If you need more range than the 200 miles base package buy a larger package. The S and X models could go rarther than 300 miles put charge

I didn't realize they were that cheap.. I would just say, based upon driving the S series, Tesler electric vehicles aren't compromise cars. They are very nice no compromise cars. There really isn't a comparison between them and a Prius. I'm a tall guy, 6'6"... I couldn't possible fit in a Prius.. I did fit in the model S.. although it was tight and kinda awkward before I fully adjusted the seat.. Heard the model X was roomier, plan to test drive that in the coming weeks. Heard the model 3 is for 5 people, not sure about the leg room there yet. Yeah not really... They do have the battery exchange program so if you are in a hurry and don't want to wait for the charge you can pay about the same price you would pay for a tank of gas and get new charged batteries. Tester does have rapid charging stations they've built all over the country... 3 in the DC area, about 30 between DC and Boston, eye balling it. The map and directions to these centers is built into the car mapping system. But really this car is supposed to be charged at your home. You can buy an automated charge system which will auto plug your car in when you park it. else you plug it in yourself.. and unless you commute more than 200-300 miles a day... you never have to worry about gas or charge again... You rely on the rapid charging stations if you are taking a road trip, generally. Here is a map of all the charging stations Tesla has today... They've got a boat load of them. https://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82,-124.39?search=destination%20charger&name=usa

I read they have that for the models S and X. Musk has built a series of rapid charging stations across the country. At the automated charging stations one option if you don't want to wait for the charge is to swap out the batteries which takes 2-4 minutes. We have 3 of those rapid charging stations in the DC area. Eyeballing the map in the car there appeared to be about 20-30 of them between DC and Boston. So you charge your car every night at home and get about 200-320 miles per charge depending upon what package you own, each car has different packages. Home charge takes 4 hours for the 300 mile charge if the car is completely dead, less if not completely dead. If you are driving on a trip.. like me between DC and Boston... then you rely on the rapid charging stations.. Takes 1 hour to completely charge your batteries at a rapid charging station.. free of charge. If you don't want to wait, you can pay about the cost of a tank of gas and swap out your batteries. That too is an automated process and takes 2-4 minutes. Here is a map of all the rapid charging stations they've got.. Their are a lot of them.. and the making system of each car will tell you which is closest to you and allow you to schedule it and such... https://www.teslamotors.com/findus#/bounds/49.38,-66.94,25.82,-124.39?search=supercharger,&name=usa

The "charging stations" are actually "rapid charging stations"... The car will take about 4 hours to charge from dead to full charge plugged into your home. It will take 20-30 minutes to achieve that charge at a rapid charging station. Or you have the option to swap out the batteries which takes about 2 minutes but costs about the cost of a tank of gasoline.. 30-40$ if you don't want to hang around for 20 minutes. You can hit a button in the car and it shows you a map with all the rapid charging stations. We had only 3 here in the DC area. I regularly drive from DC to Boston, and was interested in seeing they had the infrastructure to make that trip pretty easily in 200-300 mile hops.

You can't buy a Prius for what the model 3 costs. The model 3 Tesler costs $35000 and that's before a $10,000 worth of write off on Federal Taxes. There are states which also will rebate costs, but that's inconsistent.. So the model 3 is about a $25k car... maybe less depending on your state's incentive package. I just drove (test drove) a Model S a week or so ago. I drove the medium one.. 0-60 in about 4.5 seconds. I was on the beltway in it, and stomped on the gas, and it put me in the back of my seat. There is no comparison between that S model and my BMW 330e I currently drive. the S was just an impressive as hell car. I had one concern... I typically commute about 170 miles a day, which makes the auto drive feature really attractive to me..... That's two ways all in. If I'm charging the battery every day given it's 200-300 range depending on the package... I'm going to go through the 1000 charge cycles pretty quickly on that car.. 1000 charge cycles seems to be fairly limiting.. Now I do realize I can swap out the batteries for 30-50$ at the rapid charging station and that might fix this. Still sounds like a big hole in their business plan. Also read that about swapping out the batteries in Musk's book, haven't read it anywhere else yet. I was really excited about was that auto driving feature in the S. It was pretty cool. Any word if that made it into the 3? And how much is it with that feature? It's not like self driving, it's more like a smart cruise control which includes steering. I set that thing to 40 on a stretch of road.. It picked up with the speed limit changed and told me the spread limit was now 35, only it won't change your speed for you.... Car pulls in front of me.. it slowed down for that, no problem, settled to a safe driving distance back. When the car in front of me turned off, the car accelerated back to my set desired speed. One time I was going through an intersection and the car in front of me changed lanes. My care changed lanes too automatically to continue to follow the care in front. That was cool. The dealer attendant told me the car looks for the lines on the side of the road. If it can't find the lines it will follow the car in front as a default. So if their were lines and the car in front changed lanes, it would have treated that differently.. which I later saw it did. Anyway, very cool very exciting. Test driving test things was fun... scheduled it about a week ahead of time. The car is a fun car to drive with a lot of pep. I drive a sports car and this care was super fast in comparison; and I wasn't driving the high end one either.

I think you are wrong on that. You need more than the hard core Trekie fans. You need new fans, you need to be able to grow the franchise, that's more important than appealing to the hard core folks. Frankly the hard core folks are part of the problem with Star Trek. They've so idealized the series that they all think they are experts and want to point out where the shows.. "got it wrong". They make it hard if not impossible to develop new story threads.

I think I saw Mrs Howell in there.

I have to tell you as a long time Windows guy.. I can remember Windows 1.x... Window's HW sucks ass. I typically buy new HW every 18 months, have for decades. Last time I bought HW now must have been four years ago, bought a Power Mac, which I duel boot.. It's the best PC I've ever owned. I'll also tell you running windows 10, which sucks ass btw.. corruptions all over the place.. slow.. very hookie.. I regularly have to boot to IOS to get anything done. I'm not a big fan of IOS because it's not really my wheel house, but it works, which is more than you've been able to say for MS products for a long time. I'll also tell you if you need tech support.. Microsoft Tech Support is unusable. It's like they went to India and paid the absolute bottom wage... I want to burn Microsoft's HQ to the ground after pulling my hair out with their customer support for a few days.. Ring Ring... Them -> what's your product ID. Me -> I don't have a product ID. bought this program years ago, registered it and there is no way to see the product ID in this version of windows from the OS. Them -> click. Ring Ring.... Them -> What's your product ID.. Me -> Ok blah blah blah blah blah blah....blah blah blah blah blah blah....blah blah blah blah blah blah.... Them-> Thank you.. Me -> My internet connection is down and won't allow me to connect.. Them -> It's your cable modem. Me -> When I boot to IOS the internet connection works fine Them -> It's your hardware manufacture. Me -> How can it be the HW if I use the same HW boot to a different OS and it works? Them -> it's your hardware, you have to call your HW manufacture. Me -> How could that possible be right. Them -> It's your hardware, there is nothing we can do for you. Me -> Could I speak to your supervisor Them -> It's your hardware Me -> If I remove the internet cable I get a different error. Them -> it's your HW.

Saw this and thought it was cool... Not exactly funny.. but Funny as head scratcher.. http://george-bond.blogspot.com/2012/06/coolest-thing-ever.html

I don't know if President Obama's executive decision will be brought to court or not and whether he will loose or not.. But what I do think is the Dems are incapable of passing meaningful gun control without the help of the NRA and also likely the GOP. I don't think they fundamentally understand the complexities of what they are trying to do. Thus they give us a never ending stream of meaningless reform which doesn't really help the problems.. Undetectable Firearms Act (1988) Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 (1990) (ruled unconstitutional as originally written; upheld after minor edits were made by Congress) Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1993) Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994) (expired 2004) The bills which outlaws the sale of the semi automatic M-16 but inconceivable permits the nearly identical weapon to be sold under alternative names... Can't buy an Automatic weapon, but you can buy a kit to turn a legal semi automatic to a fully automatic and get 10 years in prison if you install it. Can't buy a 14 round clip, but you can buy an 11 round clip? The penalties are huge and the laws are stupid and net effect is negligible for overall public safety. I think the Dems need to sit down with the NRA and say look.. we want to try to pass legislation so children can't take their parents guns and go to school and shoot the place up. That's in nobody's interest. We also want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and mentally unstable people. How do you think we should do it?

The NYTimes article I posted says deductibles are only 1 of four reasons being cited for the slowdown. And that the trend is global, and began before Obamacare passed. See slowdown in healthcare spending.. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/27/us/is-the-affordable-care-act-working.html?_r=0#spending

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/27/us/is-the-affordable-care-act-working.html?_r=0#/ So read it and weep.. I think the criticism of Obamacare isn't that it was some radical game changing bill which dramatically changed our system. I think the reality is it was modest change, (If adding 20 million people to the insured list can be called modest) with modestly positive outcomes so far for the average consumer. The criticism is frankly it wasn't radical enough. Obamacare was all about trying to get more people insured.. trying to make sure being insured meant something and in a revenue neutral way. Our healthcare costs are still the most expensive in the world and still dramatically more expensive per-capita than every other comparable industrialized country which all enjoy universal coverage systems.