If Obama would get a white intern, would that make things a bit better?

Kitt kumpel, gehen wir

(German dubbed Knight Rider)

server mainboards, who cares about the colors? That includes windows.

I own a Prius, my second one. And I keep seeing people make a lot of fuss about the battery replacement. Really, does anyone have some real data on this? My dealer said he never experienced a customer coming in and asking for it (and they sold a lot of these cars due to the tax benefits in my country). But I realize that a car dealer doesn' t sound too objective.

At this moment I still believe the vast majority of hybrid cars, at least the Prius, will never have a replacement. At most the capacity in the end will be so low that the fuel benefits are nearly negated, but in such old cars you don't invest in replacing the batteries. Simply keep driving it.

  Up hill: even my previous Prius (which had a small 1.5 liter engine) was the best car I ever drove in the mountains. The aid of the electric part really makes a difference. And down hill was even better as it breaks 'on the engine' much better than a normal car. I am sure it doesn't get close to a a four wheel drive, but it saying it is terrible up hill seems a myth to me.

It's not a sports car, but at least the current model with the 1.8L engine is not slow either. You can't compare it to cars like BMW or Audi or such cars. But take a test drive once.

What is true in my view is that for long distances, the advantages of the hybrid are nearly gone. I get decent mileage if I drive long distances, but that seems to me has more to do with the design of the car rather than with the hybrid part.

So coming back to my original question, does anyone have some realistic data on battery replacement?

Perhaps NASA can develop a spray paint kind of solution to fully seal the rock. That would probably weigh a lot less to transport to Mars than a structure strong enough to provide proper shelter against dust storms etc. Caves provide less extreme temperatures which might reduce the energy requirements as well.

Because if you drive 80 miles a day, it may be cheaper to buy a car that uses less gas. Especially if you take into account that it will last you longer, as it is newer, so it will either save you another $8K a few years from now.

It depends on the price of gas (which is high where I live) but driving an old car makes sense if you have low mileage.

ehm, numbers give them headaches. Use graphs and pictures. And the first slide should be some stock photo with smiling young people that are engaged in something completely unrelated.

Oh and if you report on a project, use a traffic light that is green or use smileys...

I'm sure there are a lot of DBA's that would be happy if less people in the company knew SQL...

And why would you ask Soviets and Cuba or Venezuela how European socialist capitalism is going? They don't/didn't have that.

Better ask the Swedes or the Norwegians. Those are much better examples.

I have a tip for you then, you probably don't need to go 'no-carb'.

I stopped eating wheat and dairy for bowel problems. I replaced wheat with spelt (different grain) for bread, cookies, pasta etc. And not only did it for me also solve nose issues as well as the bowel issues, I also lost the 20kg weight I had gained since my early twenties.

I personally believe that in stead of no carb, people should go with the right carbs.

You've managed to asses that he is 'a raging asshole', but now how to properly spell his name?

Get on my Lawn!

Even if there was load testing, in my experience load and stress testing is within the test community not something that is very well developed. Two days ago I spoke about performance testing on a 4 day conference ( http://www.eurostarconferences.com/ ) and my talk was the only one that dealt with performance.

In my view, this fields needs to be better developed. Tests usually focus just on response times, based on usage profiles that are practically fantasy. Monitoring of the systems is minimal, and the queuing model is usually not even known to the testers.

I wish my car could: drive itself, park itself somewhere cheap, come over if I call it via my smart watch, be practically indestructible so it can drive through walls, go under water be bulletproof and drive itself in a driving truck with a hot female mechanic inside. Old geezer asking stupid questions optional.

I want all that, I just don't want to look like Daivd Hasselhof and have the car talk back to me.

Every married man knows this is not a catch but a feature