Good news, but I think this should go further.
Like showing potential buyers the average or median amount spend for people who actively use(d) the app. Or money spend per hour/week of usage.
On a related note: Yamauchi was 55 when the NES was released and he retired some time after the Gamecube at 74.
Steve died at 56, makes one wonder what else he could've given us.
Especially if he hadn't ignored his doctors with homeopathy! Every time I think about it, I wonder how anyone could fall victim to such things. Imagine Steve Jobs being thrown into prison for 20 years. Homeopathy was just as horrific, because it gave him an excuse to ignore his doctors and allow the cancer to fester.
I wonder what they'll do next year. Reactivate a discontinued iPhone 5? Or maybe they keep the smaller form factor around but then they'd have to maintain three iPhone lines.
edit: Thinking about it, an iPhone 5C 8GB seems like the most likely candidate.
Of course terrorism is the way to get the foot in the door. Once total surveillance is cemented and the possibilities for public outrage have diminished enough, it will be broadened to murderers, pedophiles and so forth.
For pointers of where it'll stop, I think we can look at society today. Where the people in power are very careful not to threaten their privileges. Milking the people as much as they can while not to cause the public to seriously demand change. (of course the milking equipment gets more and more sophisticated)
So in the end those surveillance tools won't be used for petty crimes (except where it concerns the least powerful) but everything that could send you to jail for half a year or more.
Let's talk about public outrage. In the last decade the US has officially invaded countries, tortured prisoner (and still continue), lied and spied its citizen, blatantly ignored the responsible for the biggest crisis in a century.
All of that happened, and well, there is still no real public and media outrage.
I'm an even worse procrastinator and what is helping me the most is Beeminder: You define a goal and pay exponentially increasing sums of money if you fail.
For it to work you need to dislike losing money, be honest about your goal progress and rerail if you derail (although they now have an automatic rerailing feature). Getting some pleasure from the goal progress and statistics is important too.
I'd start with something like "study 1 pomodoro/day of $course" and slowly increase it. Maybe also add a time requirement ("by 2 pm").
The fact that I have to rely on something like Beeminder to get things done can be a little hard to accept. I'm essentially the same procrastinator, I'm just forced now to do things.
I have yet to find a way to fundamentally change myself but if there is, then a structured life surely is a better starting point than being depressed because you've procrastinated your life to shambles.
I also have some hope that the habits formed with Beeminder will have some deeper self-discipline changes in the long run.
Apart from the slightly mentioned Pomodoro Technique, Anki also helps me.
I don't think utilization (without taking into account the number of passangers) is important, as peff pointed out.
What will change demand is that the car occupancy rate will grow. And since one doesn't need to own a car anymore, the number of cars will be reduced.
Bringing together strangers on the same route will get a lot easier in the future. And if one isn't using one's own car but essentially a taxi, we'll see a lot more ride sharing. Especially, if some of the oil price horror scenarios (at least partly) play out.
Right now, the car occupancy rate in the US is around 1.6[1]. Imagine it going up to 2, which is around the rate of some Eastern European countries a couple of years ago[2]. I think it will be even higher.
Another thing to consider is the demand change, since the usage changes (to some degree) and the buyers change (renting companies instead of consumers). If that benefits domestic car manufacturers, idk.
