On Fri, 3 Feb 2017 13:26:28 -0500, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

In October I bought a brand new 2012 Mustang convertible with the stick
shift. (It had 200 or so miles on it--it had got caught up in the
Takata airbag mess, so the dealer couldn't sell it for ages.) Got a
nice discount too--it wound up being the price of my daughter's Kia
econobox.

He must have been glad to get rid of it after five years depreciating
in storage. Congratulations.

I once bought a new 1967 Mustang (after I trashed my mother's car).
200 cid engine, 3 speed manual transmission (of course), and zero
options. It was truly an economy car. At the time, I was working
part time at a local Ford dealer, so I got a good deal and was later
able to economically deal with the inevitable broken parts. It was
the worst car I had ever owned. All the weight was over the engine.
If I tried hard, I could spin the wheels in any of the 3 speeds.
Traction in snow or mud was non-existent. Because the rear end was so
light, the leaf springs on the rear were not very stiff. When I
loaded the trunk with about 250 lbs of Motorola 40V, 80D, and 160D
radios, the rear end sank. The range of adjustment for the headlights
was not enough to make the light beams level again. I could go on
forever complaining about the Mustang. However, that was 1967 and
presumably Ford has learned a few things in the intervening 50 years.

Newer cars are full of surveillance devices, which I cordially dislike.

Yep. One of the casualties in the rush towards progress is the loss
of privacy. I'm told that this is now the "information age" which
makes little distinction between public and private information. The
loss of privacy sucks, but is survivable. Think of it like the
Japanese shoji paper curtains. There's little real privacy with
those, but if everyone pretends not to notice what's happening on the
other side, one can get the illusion of privacy. I think that's where
we're heading. Every data collecting entity knows what's happening,
but as long as they don't do anything with the data, you have the
illusion of privacy. When those entities abuse your information is
where the problems begin. I don't believe we can stop the collection
of information, but we might have a chance stopping anyone from using
what it collects.

Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558