Wow, what an incredibly sensationalist and uninformed post to the Autoblog. There are only two things you need to know:

1) This re-establishes the regime that was in place prior to Bush 43 (and that has always been provided for in the Clean Air Act). Was there chaos before? No.

2) States can't just enact their own emissions standards. What the statute says is that states can propose stricter/alternative emissions guidelines that the EPA can then approve at its discretion. So, under Bush 43, basically the EPA was gimped into disallowing all alternative plans, leaving everyone stuck with the national standard.

The result of this change? As others have stated: there will be the national standard and the California standard. Just like it's always been.

The simple reality is that GM cannot afford to axe any of its brands because the franchise laws for auto-dealers are so one-sided that the litigation costs alone would send GM back to Congress for another bailout.

It happened with Oldsmobile, and it will happen again. The only solution is to sell assets and get rid of brands (Saab, Hummer, Saturn) that way. Unfortunately, that means the Pontiac-Buick-GMC trio is here to stay, even if Chevy and Cadillac are the only sustainable GM brands.

So GM finds itself in a situation where it needs to run two successful car companies (Chevy-Cadillac and P-B-GMC) on the sales strength of one. And while many of us would like to see Pontiac become a niche performance brand, it can't ever be that in GM's current configuration: among Pontiac, Buick, and GMC, Pontiac is the volume seller. Buick and GMC are already niche sellers with a small lineup of vehicles. By my count, Pontiac offers eight models, Buick three, GMC five. And the GMC lineup is seriously dated save the Acadia and the Yukon.

There's a difference between picture quality in optimum conditions and picture quality in typical conditions. I prefer LCD because it's less reflective, which means I can put it anywhere without having to worry about light reflecting off the screen and ruining the picture. I can watch my LCD without sitting in darkness, and I can put my LCD in any room in the house regardless of windows/sunlight.

If I had a sunless room and I was content to always sit in the dark to watch HDTV, then I'd go plasma. As it stands, I'll stick with LCD.

No need. The Digital Copy comes on a DVD. Just pop it in and iTunes does the rest. I've done it with Dark Knight, Constantine, X-Files: IWTB, and Nightmare Before Christmas.

I haven't noticed a higher price for Digital Copy.

FiOS1 has existed for a long time, guys.

http://newscenter.verizon.com/press-releases/verizon/2007/fios1-verizons-first-local.html