Doctors.They always know better than you, because they're so smart(tm!)

And people think I'm cynical for refusing to trust doctors.

I don't get "vacations", you insensitive clod!

Responsiveness, namely. While OS X was growing up (it didn't become seriously usable until 10.3 or 10.4) I missed the lightning-fast UI of BeOS. Nothing slowed it down. You could go something, and let it chug away at it while you did something else. Everything felt light or responsive. Applications started instantly, it had Spotlight-quality instantaneous searches built into the filesystem (and none of this "indexing" crap spotlight likes to pull).

Also, it had the absolute best-written SMP support I have ever seen. In Windows and OS X, it's glued-on by comparison. Fast, elegant, usable, simple, and powerful. OS X is nice, but it takes a lot more hardware power for it to manage to be as snappy and responsive. And even then, it lags in odd places.

The Haiku team have made good if slow progress, and I hope they continue to do so.

And thus, the entire military history of France was explained.

...Or more likely, "pass credit card / insurance card through slot".

Mercedes is worthy of it's reputation for reliability... provided you own one made before 1994, which is when their build quality started to nosedive.

You left out one major factor in diesel adoption: climate. In large swathes of the US (NY, PA, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota all come to mind) there are times of year where you simply wouldn't be able to start any but the hardiest of modern diesels. When I lived in NY, my older gasoline car barely wanted to start when it was -20F outside. If you are unfortunate enough to not have a heated garage (hello apartment dwellers!) then you just can't own a diesel if it regularly gets obscenely cold.

As someone who drives an old diesel Mercedes, let me just say: pffft. My 1984 300TD does 0-60 in about 180 seconds. Yes, three minutes. Entering all but the longest onramps can be a problem if I'm not already going 30MPH at the time. I love everything about that car, but it does tend to piss off the people behind me.

Good luck to 'em. That car is older than 80% of the kids at the local MB dealership!

No automatic updates for me, unless Mercedes wants to install a computer to update in my '84 300TD.

If they bought them because they were reliable, they wouldn't be transitioning over to other fleet cars, and other parts of the world wouldn't be avoiding them. Ford's one saving grace (if you discount loyalty to them because they used to be an American brand) is that they're cheap to own, and fairly cheap to fix.

In a passenger car, if having a diesel vs. a gasoline engine can lead to a 5x the life expectancy, then why NOT have one? Having known plenty of people with dodge trucks (though over the years, only one who had a diesel) I have a hard time believing that the rest of the damn thing didn't fall apart around the engine long before it reached that kind of mileage.

And respectfully, don't be such a dick. I hold a different opinion than you based on different experiences. I am not a mechanic, but I know more about what I drive and have driven than 90% of the people on the road. I disagree with you, but I will disagree respectfully.

You just made my point for me, sir. Not only having to do it, but considering it normal and acceptable!