You're worried about nothing, as most people who have OnStar would tell you. Note that it doesn't do this right now -- I have my doubts it would work anyway -- and the GPS features while helpful in locating already stolen things doesn't really work as an active locator. Show me the police force that can go track somebody in realtime that stole an OnStar-equipped vehicle. LOL! Doesn't really exist. It's good for a call to 9-11 and with a little communication between operator and person in the car. And now, it's helpful to a bunch of class-action lawyers who are gearing up to fight the cancellation of OnStar's current service with the new-fangled all-digital-or-whatever service. "Don't Believe the Hype," Jesse, not on this.
not a big deal on this one...don't like it vote with your pocket book.
im more worried abotu the tire based rfid taht they didnt' want to tell us about....not real tiem tracking, but tracking none the less.
I don't see why it wouldn't work, Brian -- what could prevent it? And why advertise it if it is a dead in the water feature?
Asian cars were better anyway -- and now they're made in the states. No sane, intelligent person has a huge number of reasons to buy from GM in the first place. Nails in the coffin here.
Jen stopping in for a second whilst wrapping up some Friday stuff.
RE Onstar--even people like good ol' "waaah Jen my computer is doing strange things make it stop" MOM opted AGAINST OnStar "because I have a cell phone and that TomTom thingie that [my bro] got me for Chanukkah, why would I want to pay another subscription fee?"
Mom also wisely chose a rice-burner (mid-topline Lexus) on the advice of all her (retired, schoolteacher) peers.
And Brian, I don't see why this CAN'T be abused or hacked. If there IS a remote kill switch in a car, then someone WILL find a way to reproduce it. And it won't take too long either.
Remote kill switch and GPS?
Submitted for your approval:
1. AQ (or home grown terrorist) hacks the system.
2. Scans list of cars for following properties:
a)Going >60mph
b)On major urban freeway during high traffic period.
3. Kills ignition of cars fulfilling search criteria.
4. Much wackyness ensues!
Some people want the state to use its power to protect their property at any cost. It's a lojack with special capabilities. It's opt in so I am not so concerned. It's when they make these suckers mandatory that I will be worried.
Unless, I got it wrong (and maybe I did) I think Jesse's onto something here. Please note the "money" section in the last para:
"GM also stated that the owner of the vehicle may opt out of the service upon request."
Now, I read that (OPT OUT) to mean that it's a done deal. Period. If you don't have the common sense the Creator gave a fire hydrant and decide to stay with the service, you kinda deserve what you get. Personally, I'm not too cool with this...
In answer to why this won't work, because they can't track in real-time today. It can take them something like 5-10 minutes today to find one of these OnStar-equipped vehicles today, depending on location. They're changing and upgrading the service, but they're not launching new satellites. They want to stop a car? It's going to take just as long. Moreover, you know those nice features like unlocking remotely, etc. Yeah, doesn't always work. Excepting the worst car chases, this isn't going to make a difference. It won't mean the cops will be able to track you anymore than they are today.
By the way, aside from that, GM vehicles are pretty good, almost as reliable as the Japanese vehicles. Really, Toyota's no better than GM. Plus, when you buy a GM, you are supporting American organized labor, something I thought the left was supposed to be into doing. But if you think Americans don't need high-paying manufacturing jobs, or if you think this is best handled by, say, Chinese labor in the future, or it's fine to have it done in Japan without unions, that's your opinion, I guess. If that's the case then, what's everyone's objections to Wal-Mart?
I bet Bruce Wayne is hard at work in the BatCave...disabling the OnStar system.
That's right...Batman uses OnStar.
I seem to remember Batman using OnStar as a tie-in to one of the Bat movies.
Although I suspect that Bruce, Dick, and Alfred would have trashed the system before now, 'cause you wouldn't want the Joker to track the car to Wayne Manor.
>>Plus, when you buy a GM, you are supporting American organized labor,
Except if they're built in [a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Aveo"
]Korea[/a], Canada, Mexico....
Crap. Screwed the tags...Preview is my friend...
Brian, increasingly, when you buy GM, you're supporting either Mexican or Canadian labor, much of which is not organized.
Mr. R wouldn't even let me get the Prius model that came equipped with a Bluetooth phone hookup. The old hacker knows that Bluetooth is "promiscuous" -- that is, it'll hook up with just about anybody. I've never heard of anyone having problems with getting their Bluetooth-equipped car hacked; but he's deaf to any and all corporate protestations that they've done the security thing exactly right.
The man's spent 25 years working with Microsoft development systems, so I guess I can see why he'd be just a little, um, twitchy that way.
OnStar will never happen in our house. I don't mean that I'll buy a GM and not activate it. I mean I'm not buying a car that's even wired that way.
When I was 14, I used to saddle up my horse, pack a lunch, and ride off into the Sierra for the day -- usually alone, sometimes with a girlfriend. No cell phone, no flight plan, no nothing. My parents would only worry if I wasn't home by sunset (and not even much of that, because I was at least smart enough to get by for a night on my own in those woods).
If my horse had broken a leg, or someone with malevolent intent had crossed my path, it might have been bad. But it never happened. All that happened was I learned to handle large animals and hard terrain and my own resources, without anyone to rely on but myself.
A few years later, I used to drive home from college, leaving LA after dinner and crossing the Great Mojave Desert in the middle of the night -- again, alone, just me and my car and very few places for food or gas. There were places that were entirely out of radio range; places where you could go 100 mph for half a hour or more and never see another car.
The idea that the eye in the sky knows where I am just creeps me out. Don't people know how to be alone in the world any more?
What Sara says.
When I was a kid, in between the spots of mild violence, getting my eye sliced in half, and the occasional (monthly?) bouts of serious bad shit, my non-violent pals and I, used to ride our bicycles a lot.
Get one of our folks to drop us 60+ miles from the house on the back side of a mountain range, half way up on a dirt road early Saturday morning, and they'd vanish. We'd spend all Saturday, rolling down the dirt, then back around an entire major range and back into the Tucson valley through desert at 90-100 degrees on back roads. Sometimes we too wouldn't see a car for hours.
And if we somehow didn't make it in, worse would be, we'd hole up for the night, as from early on we knew how to live in the desert, where not to put our hands, which plants are tasty and which bite back.
I still drive up to the Cascade range, grab a dirt road at random and go till it becomes a grass-covered fire road at 20% which then spills off the grass into barely visible ruts, then keep going till eventually it skids to an end at a chain blocking a cliff at 4,500 feet overlooking a 1,000 foot drop with Mt. St. Helens a straight shot 10 miles across the burst open valley into the open caldera, still churning out two football field's worth of hot lava per day since the latest eruptive phase started in 2004.
No iPod either. Just sitting, being outside, being in the world.
Last thing I need is some damn operator in Dearborn MI checking my location, then beeping through... "We see your location is in a non-standard off-road location for a long time. Are you certain you're okay?" And for all this I get the privilege of paying them just $19.99 a month ($240 per year. Times 2 million a year is Half a billion dollars a year. Not a lot of money for GM, but enough to fund its own operations, anyway. And that's just in the first year of operations. Once it really gets rolling, by the time year TEN rolls around they've got a nice little 5 B a year business, assuming everyone signs up and no one stops driving. Call it $3 B at 60% effectiveness.
Not too damn shabby.
Plus they have a record of your every single move, saved for 3 years, available including SPEED and coordinated with Traffic Signals, which they can sell to your insurance companies, unless you out-bid, which means your insurance rates are going up.
Not only that, when you get in a crash, opposing counsel is going to SUE to get a copy of all this data on you, and use it to prove you have a history of driving recklessly, which negates your swearing you always drive like a little old lady on her way home from church. I mean, perhaps you do. The Church of TOP FUEL FUNNY CARS FEEL THE BURN, BABY!
No major database in the world which I know of, has ever been left limited to its original purpose. This is a massive threat to security and privacy. And that's entirely leaving alone the insanity of giving HERNANDO & MONICA PO-LICE permission to wave their magic wand and bring you to a stop in a quiet, oh so private stop and conduct a special private interrogation early Sunday morning after the bars close.
Really, Toyota's no better than GM
Brian, about 20 years (and counting) of Consumer Reports Frequency of Repair reports would disagree with you about that.
Very. Strongly.
As for OnStar ...
Jesse, I feel your pain. Now you know what it feels like to live in StormcrowWorld™, where m0r0ns design security features in boardroom circle-jerks and never, never, ever consult either the copious historical records of security snake oil, or the multiply credentialed experts they have hired to help them navigate them through this shit.
Oh, gee. That looks like kewl security. Let's do it.
And eighteen months later, the roof falls in.
I'm just going to hit a few of the more unforgivable high spots of the last half dozen years. If they don't ring bells - alarm bells - well, they don't pay you to do this.
But keep 'em in mind. You'll run across them sooner or later, if you haven't already.
1) Fingerprint biometrics. Don't even get me started.
2) PHP. And just about everything built from it.
3) Google apps.
4) The original native encryption standards for generic 802.11 wireless.
5) Replacement of encryption with encoding. Or conflation of the two. A long-time favorite of outfits like the MPAA.
6) RFID tagging.
I could go on, but I'm starting to feel dizzy, and if I don't veer off from this train of thought, I'm going to start frothing at the mouth pretty soon.
Beam me up, Scotty. There's no intelligent life down here.
Oops, my bad - number 3 should have read Google docs, not "Google apps".
Read and marvel.
This will exist exactly until one of the following situations:
1) some dumb official (police, whatever) decides to send a signal to "turn a car off" travelling at 75 mph with sufficient traffic around it (say, Connecticut interstates or the Mass Pike.) Instant 150 car pile-up.
2) Hacking of system by pimply-faced high-school kid who thinks it would be funny to cause cars to stop (or start) randomly.
Result (aside from several very large lawsuits): who in the hell will buy a GM car?
Brian:
Many Japanese Cars have more US made content than US branded cars. particularly Toyota.
The Prius has the lowest rate of service of any car available in the US.
The Prius has the lowest rate of service of any car available in the US.
And, OMFG, it is a complete dream to drive one.
But it does have its own peculiar risks.
That car wants to go. And it makes so little engine noise that it is incredibly easy to find yourself doing 75 or 80 on the freeway without realizing it.
Dayam. That electric car has more pickup than any conventional car I've ever owned.
Damn, Jesse, I can probably see you just past the curvature of the earth from my dreary office window.
And, in any case, if you've been within 10 miles of Mt. St. Helens, you already know that neither Verizon nor General Motors can reach you when you're out there. Hell, people have trouble getting a good signal on parts of I-5. Not that this plan isn't inherently evil (the banal kind, but still), of course it is. But technological failure will doubtless render it occasionally, mordantly, hilarious.
[sarcasm]You know what? You guys are right. Screw Detroit. Screw organized labor. Screw Ohio. Let's farm it out to China and buy it all at Wal-mart. Screw those Canadians, too.[/sarcasm]
(Those would be the Canadians who are organized labor as well, Mrs. Robinson.)
You "liberals" aren't liberals at all. You ought to put your money where your rhetorical "mouths" are and support organized labor, seeing as they'll be working for the same candidates and causes we work for.
SteveK, do you really believe that bullshit you spouted about Toyota having more U.S. content than U.S. branded cars? That's crap. General Motors alone has 82 major plants and facilities supporting about 150,000 American employees including 73,000 UAW members. That's just GM. That doesn't include Ford or Chrysler.
Toyota has 13 American plants supporting about 30,000 American workers, non-union labor, and they only promise to buy $5 billion a year in American parts in total including their own plants, which they usually fail to do. For comparison, depending on how its measured, GM alone spends over $150 billion a year on American parts.
Do we want to talk about the pensioners the Big Three support? Don't see the Japanese taking care of American retirees. Do we want to talk about the amount of taxes the Big Three and their employees contribute to our nation's coffers as well as their value to the GNP compared to Japanese autos?
Quality as measured by Consumer Reports? That would be the magazine that rates new autos without actually testing them, basing their annual reviews of new cars not on actual testing or even current surveys, but instead they base their annual ratings on past performance on past surveys. And that's past surveys instead of current as well as instead of actual repair records. Right? That's the magazine you mean? Okay, just so we're all clear on that magazine's practices, okay? (I know some of you may not believe it, but go look it up yourself.) Moreover, they recently announced that they are stopping the practice of instantly recommending ALL Toyota cars and trucks based on past performance, as they have done for YEARS now, not that they really bothered to comprehensively test them all or look at the actual repair records, basing most of it on surveys, because opinion is so reliable, apparently. You know why they stopped recommending Toyotas without even looking at them? A look at the same surveys which I think are not all that, showed the Camry wasn't reliable lately.
Japanese cars are a bit more reliable than American. The luxury Japanese and European cars are the least reliable. American cars fall comfortably in the middle of those reliability ratings. So why don't you all want to help out fellow Democrats? Anyway, this paranoia over OnStar, a service which doesn't really promise live, instant tracking, is silly.
.. OnStar, a service which doesn't really promise live, instant tracking ..
No, what it promises is instant hacking. Sometimes, and most dangerously, by the cops. They'll be issued the gear to do this with, while the rest of the crooks will have to build theirs or buy it greymarket or blackmarket.
But the crooks that worry me here are the ones with the blue suits, badges, and legal guns on their belts.
Not that they'll systematically exploit this, because they can't. That'll play out like the cameras the idjits on the other side of the pond are gleefully and thoughtlessly deploying. Not enough monitoring personnel for your cameras means most of them are useless. Same thing goes for OnStar. There will just be too many cars to monitor in any kind of systematic way, because you simply don't have enough people to process the incoming data and you aren't ever going to have enough.
The way this will be exploited is on the spur of the moment, against a particular target or small set of targets. Probably by street cops, because they'll be the ones most tempted and least overseen.
Oh, and Brian. About Big Three cars versus Toyotas. I've also driven both. And taken them to the shop. Most of the other Japanese automakers aren't up to Toyota standards. Anecdotal evidence, yeah. But it matches up with what CR publishes perfectly.
I wouldn't use CR reviews of computing equipment for catbox filler, because they use the wrong model. But my own experience validates what they say about cars.
I will point out, as I have before, that both RFID and Onstar can be blocked by aluminum foil (as can cell phone tracking).
Stormcrow, Honda's allegedly the reliable one these days and has been for years, NOT Toyota.
So, you know about computers and as a result wouldn't trust Consumer Reports reviews of them because they're testing models are wrong?
But for new autos -- which Consumer Reports do NOT actually test for their big annual car reviews, and for which they do NOT consult actual repair statistics, and for which they do NOT even bother to conduct NEW surveys but instead rely on OLD opinion (not factual) surveys on past models to review new models -- for autos, Consumer Reports testing model is correct? That's a crock.
Anyway, about OnStar and your paranoia, go to their site and read their terms and conditions, which pretty well spells out, this is NOT and WILL NOT be a real-time service. They cannot even guarantee that they will be able to find a stolen car. What OnStar is good for is placing a call in case of an accident or trouble and getting someone to you. It's better than a cell phone in that regard. It's not magic. Shutting down autos? Not instantly, it will not be that way. Also, you can turn the whole thing off if you want (go read, like I said). Moreover, it's going to be on less than 2 million of the 9 million cars and trucks they sell annually. You guys are paranoid about this. Because you obviously have no experience with it, not surprising since you apparently are against buying American-made products.
Moreover, you sound like conservative, whacked-out liberitarians, NOT liberals.
Technology which could, in limited circumstances, stop a few police chases? [sarcasm]Oh, no, the man is watching! Violating your rights![/sarcasm] (Never mind that he knows where you are already since you filled up for gas with your Visa card 15 minutes ago and he already has cameras on the freeway you drive.)
Buy American and support union organized, American labor? [sarcasm]Oh, hell, no! It's a free market and its time we taught these unions a lesson. It's a global economy, don't you know, and there's no point in buying American products and supporting my American, unionized neighbors who deserve to lose their means of support and have their unions broken. Adam Smith's Invisible Hand will take care of it all! Haven't you read Ayn Rand or Milton Friedman? Buy American, no way! On PRINCIPLE I won't buy unionized American manufactured products, even when I know reviews of them are demonstrably biased.[/sarcasm]
And how did we come to these values? [sarcasm]Back in the day when I was a child, I'd saddle up my horse and ride off into the sunset for days at a time without supervision, because I was pulling myself up by my bootstraps and I didn't need any municipal government services, or a tool to help law enforcement out in limited circumstance! Now, with all this excessive government regulation, a man can't hardly breathe anymore. It's a violation of my rights I tell you! Yeah, because that Wild West scenario is really reflective of how urban and suburban America lives, which is how the vast majority of Americans live. They just need some trickle-down economics to help them, not police![/sarcasm] NOT!
Let me tell you about my childhood. When I was about about 7 to 8 years old, with the fear and paranoia lasting up until I was about 10, at least four kids were snatched off the streets and murdered by a serial killer, including one victim that I knew of, friends of friends -- it was a small town, really -- who was snatched a literal half-mile from my house. So much for bucolic fields with horsies and picnics. And I lived in a relatively nice and safe area until then. The streets of the cities I knew of were the crime-ridden slums that existed in the wake of the riots throughout the '60s, the causes of which were never addressed by an uncaring series of governments starting with Nixon thru Reagan. The New York I read about and saw on TV was the New York of the "Summer of Sam" -- slums, crime, depravity, uncaring conservative governments and literal monsters hunting humans in the streets. The L.A. I read about and saw on TV was the one that existed in the wake of Watts, the streets N.W.A. rapped about and that we all finally saw explode in the wake of the Rodney King trial. It also had its monsters. My own home and what I saw growing up was far from some quiet, safe pastoral scene with cowboys and horses. We needed cops, if only they weren't overworked and half of them seemingly corrupt. I don't know what America you all grew up in, but mine was the America of drug epidemics, rampant crime, horrible race relations exacerbated by conservative policies, and literal blood in the streets. No horsies and picnics for me. Giving cops a tool that might save a few lives doesn't seem too scary to me.
The next thing you all are going to tell me is that all I need is some 2nd Amendment protection to go along with my free markets and cowboy values.
Who the hell replaced my liberal bloggers with libertarians?
Brian after the Bush years is there any American that trusts the government. What hasn't been morally repugnant has been wild incompetance.
People are beyond outraged at torture, suspension of Constitutional rights and fear mongering all the while watching the Republican party attack middle Americans as traitors because we question anything.
Brian? You do know that those American cars being assembled by your union neighbors are being built from parts, right?
Care to wager about what percentage of the American made parts used (themselves not a majority of total components) are being made by workers protected by collective bargaining agreements?
Answer: None. One of my aunts has been lifting windshields off an assembly line since 1989, every damn one of which goes into a GM vehicle, and not only have 5 efforts to unionize her workplace been crushed by management, but frequent changes in ownership allow for worse manipulations of workers than permitted by Ohio law.
The plant fires and rehires everyone who knows how to run the machines and do the lifting every 23 months, new entity has a new employment relationship with new employees, presto! And the honorable lads at the UAW, heirs to the men who fought scabs, Pinkerton and the feds, can't seem to do a damn thing to help their non-union brethren.
I wouldn't piss on a Pontiac if it were on fire, except if it were endangering the welfare of my Honda parked alongside. And not just because it's a POS that breaks down every 5000 miles.
Brian Bell wrote:
Stormcrow, Honda's allegedly the reliable one these days and has been for years, NOT Toyota.
1) You did not read my statement, or chose to put words in my mouth. Where, pray tell, did I say "Honda"? Please cite the line. Otherwise, stop putting words in people's mouths. Nobody here is going to be impressed to see you win a duel with a strawman.
2) Upon what reportage do you assert that Toyotas are not reliable? Source, if you please.
So, you know about computers and as a result wouldn't trust Consumer Reports reviews of them because they're testing models are wrong?
Yes, Brian. But once again, you interpolate. I did not say "testing model", I said "model". Please go back and RTFP.
The next thing you all are going to tell me is that all I need is some 2nd Amendment protection to go along with my free markets and cowboy values.
Who the hell replaced my liberal bloggers with libertarians?
This speaks for itself. The subtext practically screams at the perceptive reader.
Back to topic. About OnStar: Wikipedia entry, as follows:
When a driver presses the Red OnStar Emergency button or Blue OnStar button, current vehicle data and the user's GPS location are immediately gathered. This information is then sent to OnStar. OnStar Emergency calls are routed to the OnStar Center with highest priority. Two centers exist to receive emergency calls: Charlotte, North Carolina and Oshawa, Ontario; and all centers are open 24 hours a day.
This part I like. Nice to have at least the possibility of someone on call when the shit hits the fan.
Although about 90% of the time (in my experience, anyway), the systems on the other end are likely to be swamped.
Like that last ice storm that shut down everything for a day or so late last November in Metro Seattle. Everybody unlucky enough to be on the road when that lovely paid us a visit was in the soup. Whoever is on the other side of the emergency lines when something like that hits is going to is going to be bankrupt of resources about 5 minutes into an incident that can last for dozens of hours to days.
Now, let's read on further ...
Starting 2009, General Motors will equip new vehicles with an updated version that allows police to remotely halt the vehicle.[1] Customers can opt out of that function, but critics doubt that this decision will be honored in all cases. Also it could give someone who hacked into the system control over the car.
This is a part that's not so nice. If you think this isn't going to get abused, badly, than you have not actually done much thinking about the sentence I just cited.
Brian, please do not serenade us all with another tirade. No matter how much outrage you summon up about serial killers and Son of Sam and the Watts riots, you have yet to convince me that you have done one iota of thinking about the security implications of this last quotation.
I saw it in a heartbeat. But then, I do this sort of thing for a living, professionally. That's what they pay me for.
PhoenixRising, the majority of the parts in GM vehicles are union made, not "none." One glass shop in Ohio does not make all the parts in GM's cars. And continuing to buy foreign cars only ensures less and less will be union made and less and less will be American. Why do you think your aunt is having so many problems? GM has to compete with the likes of non-union foreign companies -- wait 'til China gets into it -- and they cut costs to do it and the UAW is weakened. Your aunt is experiencing that cost cutting. Keep buying foreign and some day your aunt won't even have a job at that plant because it won't exist.
Stormcrow, read again. You said Toyota was reliable. I said, no, Toyota is unreliable. I said Honda's the reliable one now. And parsing over whether you said Consumer Report's model or testing model is wrong is mincing words. If they tested the wrong model or didn't test your model, they're using the wrong testing model, just as I said. Just like how they "review" new cars without actually reviewing them. Consumer Reports uses old surveys, not new tests or actual repair records for their annual car reviews, which means they don't actually review new models or use the correct testing models. All you're doing is mincing words on that Stormcrow, or you need to work on your reading comprehension. And Wikipedia as an authoritative source? LOL! That entry is wrong on the "immediate" part, and you're paranoid about the rest.
The old News Blog I remember wasn't filled with free-market truisms and fear of technology. I can't believe I am reading anti-union statements on an allegedly liberal or Democratic blog. No wonder the Republicans beat the crap out of us. Steve Gilliard was not against organized American labor. Indeed, he was all for it.
I reiterate, who the hell replaced my liberal bloggers with libertarians?
And parsing over whether you said Consumer Report's model or testing model is wrong is mincing words. If they tested the wrong model or didn't test your model, they're using the wrong testing model, just as I said.
Sigh.
Differential diagnosis. I see one of two possibilities on first inspection.
1) Your reading comprehension has failed you.
2) You chose to interpret the word "model" to mean "specific product line", rather than "way to think about a type of machine".
I cannot help your confusion. I left the field of higher education nearly two decades ago. I made no plans to ever return. Today, nobody pays me to try to sweet-talk or reason or just plain hammer past determined ignorance on the other side of the table. Since this is generally a hopeless undertaking anyway, I don't make the attempt without better reasons than I see here.
The old News Blog I remember wasn't filled with free-market truisms and fear of technology.
The old News Blog had it's share of trolls and blockheads, just like any other public forum. Steve was more patient with the blockheads than I will ever be. But he generally gave the trolls the bum's rush.
I can't believe I am reading anti-union statements on an allegedly liberal or Democratic blog. No wonder the Republicans beat the crap out of us. Steve Gilliard was not against organized American labor. Indeed, he was all for it.
It isn't my job to correct your interpretations of what you read. If you prefer to get them wrong, that's your business.
Stormcrow said:
1) Your reading comprehension has failed you.
Great, you can imitate what I wrote. Good job!
Stormcrow said:
2) You chose to interpret the word "model" to mean "specific product line", rather than "way to think about a type of machine".
Okay, then, if you mean "way to think about a type of machine" then what I said about "test model" is entirely accurate. You believe Consumer Reports testing model is wrong for PCs. So, the question remains, if you think their test model is wrong for PCs, then it is specious to think their testing models are right for automobiles.
And there is NO misinterpreting what I have read here. It is flat out against American manufacturing and against organized, union, American labor. Examples, all direct quotes:
Be a sucker. Buy from GM.
No sane, intelligent person has a huge number of reasons to buy from GM in the first place.
I wouldn't piss on a Pontiac if it were on fire, except if it were endangering the welfare of my Honda parked alongside.
Need I go on about the anti-American manufacturing and anti-union labor statements? There's no misinterpreting them. What about the falsehoods about union labor and American manufacturing stated here:
Many Japanese Cars have more US made content than US branded cars. particularly Toyota. NOT TRUE.
-- Con't --
Brian, increasingly, when you buy GM, you're supporting either Mexican or Canadian labor, much of which is not organized. A HALF-LIE. Canadian automobile manufacturing is protected as organized labor.
Care to wager about what percentage of the American made parts used (themselves not a majority of total components) are being made by workers protected by collective bargaining agreements?
Answer: None. A BLATANT FALSEHOOD. The MAJORITY of American automobile parts are manufactured and assembled by American organized labor, not "none."
I reiterate:
The old News Blog I remember wasn't filled with free-market truisms and fear of technology. I can't believe I am reading anti-union statements on an allegedly liberal or Democratic blog. No wonder the Republicans beat the crap out of us. Steve Gilliard was not against organized American labor. Indeed, he was all for it.
For a third time, who the hell replaced my liberal bloggers with libertarians?
Go ahead, Stormcrow, avoid or deny the gist of my argument which is simple. This entire thread is chock full of anti-union and anti-American manufacturing, Republican talking points on free-market bullshit, including your own.
From now on, I only buy 1940-1979 Volkswagens.
Brian --
Once again you're wrong.
I don't talk about what I do for a living, as I don't ever talk about what I do for a living on this blog.
One, I don't want to confuse blogging with work. Two, I don't want my work to ever be able to point to anything I've said and say, "Jesse said something negative about our work. The simplest way to do that is to never comment about my work. Three, this is me talking, and doesn't have anything to do with my work. Yet again, I wouldn't want anyone to ever allege even jokingly that I'm representing my employers' views as my own, or that my views here in some way reflect those of the very larger corporation I work for. And finally, there are large parts of my job I can't talk about, due to the nature of my work.
That said, you can try and paint this as anti-Union all day long. What this is is a dangerous pro-governmental attempt by the Daddy party to gain even more control over people's lives.
I speak here as one who knows, down to the very core of how these things work, that any such system WILL be hacked, WILL be used for purposes other than it was intended, WILL be subverted... quickly.
This is a threat to personal privacy at a deep level.
I'm done talking about it in the thread. Moving on.
Fine, Jesse, you're not anti-union or anti-American manufacturing. Bully for you, though I'm not sure how "Be a sucker. Buy from GM," is compatible with that.
And, I didn't only say you. How about this: "I wouldn't piss on a Pontiac if it were on fire, except if it were endangering the welfare of my Honda parked alongside." That's real pro-union and pro-American manufacturing sentiments there.
For the fourth time, who the hell replaced my liberal bloggers with libertarians?
I don't care what you do for a living, Jesse. What I do care about is the so-called inheritors of Steve's mantle and his audience spout what I read to be going beyond a lot more than negative comments about OnStar and well into a bunch of Republican, free-market talking points and outright lies about union labor. Then, it goes without correction by the blog writers here.
Brian
I'm SURE none of the sentiments you cite in your comment might actually have anything to do with the actual DESIGN AND FUNCTION OF THE CARS UNDER DISCUSSION. Right??
I mean, the only thing that the entire engineering discipline revolves around is the issue of union versus non-union manufacture. Right??
What on Earth are these college kids doing, wasting their time breaking their heads over engineering math and strength of materials and testing methodologies, when the only thing they really need to study is labor relations?[/sarcasm]
Sweet chocolate Jesus. You single-issue people are as bad as the wingnuts.
Hey Brian...
...and everyone else who has a problem with how I, Sara, Hubris Sonic, or Lower Manhattanite somehow don't measure up to your iconic memory of Steve Gilliard.
Go fuck yourself.
If you don't like how how we do it here in comparison to Gilly, go write your own damn blog: BLOGGER
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