All the people I know personally who claim to be libertarian are pro-choice, pro-drug, pro-porn, against federal government being involved in sex education At all, against special status for churches, and pro-assisted-suicide.

I, mind you, am not a libertarian. I'm far too socialist for that. But I agree with them on many principles of freedom. Where we part company is that I want business to be heavily regulated. Businesses are legal fictions to begin with, otherwise they are simply groups of people.

Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to look like a dumbshit on Slashdot. Quick quiz, how did Saddam Hussein come to power in the first place?

We bought a lemon tree, then we were told we had to destroy it because it wasn't licensed. Got a letter from the feds no less (well, the USDA or something like that, but anyway.) What did that poor tree ever do to anyone? It just wanted to self-replicate and make us free food.

This is absolutely needed. Because yes, the world has gone mad. For thousands of fucking years: It's called dominion.

Yes, but it's also easier to make use of the exploit information to produce an exploit than a patch. That's why it's responsible to report the bug to the maintainers before announcing it publicly. But your argument is the reason why you don't wait indefinitely for the maintainers to kick out a patch, either.

As usual, the answer lies somewhere between extremes.

All of the above.

I assume Tahr had to go retest everything with OpenSSL updated to avoid the Heartbleed bug?

JEOS (Just Enough Operating System) used to be a sub-version of Ubuntu, with a minimal server edition; anything else you wanted was an apt-get install away. But there hasn't been a real JEOS version since about 8.04 or so, and with virtual machines these days I have a need for a lot of small-disk-footprint VMs. Is there something that's relatively similar, with basic networking and maybe a LAMP stack?

It would be nice to have a basic X windows environment, but I don't need big piles of Gnome or KDE, and I definitely don't need OpenOffice or lots of the other fun tools. Thanks!

Who told you that? It's often very easy.

Except a lot of Audis weren't offered with a MT in the USA, so you have to buy a substantially different car. And new car, new problems.

It usually isn't much of a PITA at all, there are a number of such swaps that are very simple and commonplace, like Mustang or F-Series swaps. In the Audis, it's usually a simple matter of a recode, or replacement of a module with a relatively inexpensive used one. Going to an automatic is often a PITA, because of wiring issues. Unless, of course, you're installing a pre-electronics automatic with a VRV or similar.

They're not aiming to be there because they're already there. And it tends to be a lucrative market to be in, because those models attract people who will pay a lot for options.

Which Audi is it? I guess it's a pretty well solved problem (if spendy) to put a six speed into the A8

Guess what? It's not just Mercedes. I don't know where Mercedes gets their transmissions, but the automatics (tiptronic or not - actually, in some cars, it's a software and shifter issue only) that VAG gets from ZF seem to be quite crap. The A8Q I'm working on right now is on its second transmission, and the first one was replaced in about year two. As leaky as this car is, I wouldn't likely have bought it if it had been on the original slush box.

Germany was the watchword for quality up until the late eighties. But German cars are now, I am quite sorry to say, shit. My father once explained to me (repeating something a wise man must have said to him) that the Germans believed in using the best parts and the Japanese believed in doing the best design such that you could get away with the cheap parts. My experience is that these are in fact the design strategies employed by these nations. The problem with the German strategy today is that the companies making their parts are now making shit. Bosch is now turning out at least as many total turds as roses, for example, if not far more, and all of these German cars have Bosch ignition and traction control (etc.) systems — all the VAGs, all the Mercedes, and all the BMWs, as far as I can tell. These are both exquisitely expensive and poorly designed, vulnerable to water intrusion and for some reason these days typically mounted in the engine compartment. Except my LHD D2 A8, which puts the ABS control module in a really annoying place up under the dash instead of upside down in the E-box right under the PCM where they put it on the RHD vehicles, even more annoying.

Meanwhile, there are very few things that were annoying back in the W123, W126 Mercedes days in the 1980s. Turbo oil return on the diesel was crap. The engine mounts are a bit overcontrived to the point that you can't really torque all the bolts without a special tool, or taking off a bunch of stuff.

It's the economy, brother.

The last Mercedes built like that was the W126. I have a 1982 W126 300SD, with the OM617.951A... and with the 951B turbo from an '85. You wind up replacing suspension stuff about as much as any other car, but the control arms are actually quite inexpensive. I'm about to do them as soon as I get a spring compressor.

Saab never even came close to the cachet of Mercedes.

A person or two mentioned Conway's Game of Life. Unless I specifically say so, I am not binding myself to only mentioning that one thing and never moving on to any related ideas which happen to be outside its scope. And I didn't specifically say so. Therefore I see no value in pointing that out.

Mercedes is much more worried about Audi than they ever will be about Tesla. And not about EVs, either.

Mercedes is utterly capable of producing a complete EV. What they're trying to do is figure out how to sell it to the people who buy Mercedes.