Wow, I haven't seen mention of that thing in a long time. I didn't realize it carried into the 70's with improvements in the technology. Pretty cool! Thanks!

What I *really* want is a series hybrid with a modular power-supply. Stick in a battery module for local, daily travel. Stick in the (now) petroleum based ICE module, (later) fuel-cell module, or (really later) Mr. Fusion module for long distance travel. Heck, the neighbors and I could share the cost of the different long-distance modules... when are we all going to go long-distance at the same time? Rarely. And maybe a rental model even makes sense in that case. shrug.

Read what I wrote:

This accounts for peak oil. As peak oil hits and prices climb, the motivation to fund more incremental improvements increases. The result could be that the status quo continues to be viable for quite a while. And those incremental improvements can happen anywhere in the supply chain -- improved extraction from oil sands, more advanced location of new reserves, etc. I suspect we will become quite good at attenuating our need to keep pace with the fall in supply, until we've used every last drop

Please note that I'm no expert in this (or any other!) field and am only speculating on what might happen

Oh, I don't want that. Just stating what I think will happen...

Personally, I'm in favor of everyone (from consumer to corporation) getting their collective heads out of their collective asses and making real change instead of paying it lip service. But I don't see any flying pigs yet. And when I do, I'm sure they'll be powered by fossil fuel ICE's.

But it's potentially enough. ISTM part of the reason the ICE has lasted so long is the continued incremental improvements that make it just good enough to stick with. Continued incremental improvements in fuel economy, at a rate roughly equivalent to the inverse of the rise in fuel prices will keep the modern gasoline powered ICE a viable alternative for a long time.

This kind of improvement, along with better optimized hybrids and other "transitional" technologies effectively allow us to maintain the status quo.

IMVHO, only two things will pitch ICE's off the top of the pile: 1) a radical, cheap, viable, ready-to-go, drop-in-now replacement, or 2) time, a long time.

someone just posted on debian-user that the way to kill zombies is to have the parent processes try to reap them and if that fails, they should get reparented up the chain until their parent becomes init. Then doing `telinit u` will cause init to restart (while maintaining state) and all the zombies will be dropped. I haven't had the chance to try it.

Thankfully, *someone*'s thinking about the children!

When you get a room on the train, your meals are included, making the cost differential even smaller.

I took the family to LA for christmas last year. We flew down (from WA state, not seattle) and that was nice because we went from snow to sun in just a couple of hours. Sweet.

We took the train back with an overnight layover in Seattle before heading home. The train ride was great. We got a family bedroom which slept us all comfortably. We had windows both sides of the car for optimum viewing. We did *not* get a private bath, so next time I'd pick different accommodations, but we shared two airline style toilet rooms and a shower with one couple. not bad.

The train ride took two full days and one overnight. It was great. We hung out in the room and read or played cards. We wandered the halls of the train. We had 6 sit down meals in the dining car which were really pretty good. We had a couple of beers in the bar car. We went to a wine and cheese tasting. We went to bed early and slept in late. In all it was an extremely relaxing two days. So if you look at the train time as *part* of the vacation, it's a pretty good deal all the way around. I'll definitely do it again.

Oh, and I answered that planes are for suckers, but that's only because it was the only no-flying option. I'm not taking planes this year because I don't have the $$ :(

sudo umount /mnt/bathroom/toilet
sudo modprobe -r american_standard
sudo modprobe kohler
sudo mount /dev/plumbing/toilet1 /mnt/bathroom/toilet

don't forget to sync (3).

I've never operated under an NDA, so help me out with this. The way I've read a lot of this, operating under an NDA puts you in this situation:

you: "What's up today?"
me: "Can't tell you..."
you: "Orly? Why not?"
me: "Can't tell you..."
you: "Heh, okaaaayyy... So want to hook up later? What time are you free?"
me: "Sure, maybe 5:00"
you: "cool.."
me: "Hey can you give me a ride?"
you: "Sure, where're we going?"
me: "Can't tell you..."

it's absurd.

THe conversation should realistically be more like this:

you: "What's up today?"
me: "Oh, I've got a meeting with the palm folks"
you: "oh cool, that's right you're working on the preDevCamp thingy"
me: "yeah."
you: "so what's the meeting about?"
me: "Can't say, I'm under an NDA"
you: "oh cool. ..."

The point is that these guys were working on palm stuff! What's the big secret? It's not like they're working for the competition and going to the meeting is itself a secret. It's damn silly, IMO.

and to be clear, I'm not affiliated in anyway despite what you might think from the dialog above.

you guys have discussed what I wondered about immediately after reading the first article... this lens effect doesn't explain the distribution of handedness of spiral galaxies.

The second article discusses that the shape of the heliopause is influenced by some unknown force. Is it reasonably to suggest that the shape of the heliopause is influenced by whatever causese the Axis of Evil as an external phenomenon?

It is not unreasonable to surmise that if we are able to develop this kind of technology (big if...) prior to developing reasonable technologies for enabling interstellar travel (whether some kind of suspended animation, long term survival technologies, or "warp drive"), then other civilizations may have as well. Thus it follows that any civilization with the technology to visit us would likely have the technology to observe us while remaining unobserved.

So, though your comment is modded funny, I think it's pretty insightful.

I don't think anyone can truly appreciate proper kitchen equipment until they've tried to cook with a pocket knife, a flat rock, a stick, and a good dose of fire! Once you've done that, even the most basic saute pan is a true luxury.

You're not nuts. You're right on track. Having worked in professional kitchens for several years, as well as doing the vast majority of actual cooking in my household (my wife generally sticks to the boxed/pre-prepped stuff), I long ago learned the utility of having a high-quality chef's knife. My ideal setup is an 8" chef, a 10" chef, a 10" boning, a 3" paring and a 10" slicer. Gimme that and a match and I can recreate civilization...

I'm a fan of Wustoff, but I've recently fallen in love with a Forschner 40520 8" chef. You'd think it's crap: stamped steel blade and molded plastic grip, but it may be the best $40 I've spent in the kitchen. They somehow managed to get it right and I find myself picking it over my Wustoff Classic more and more. It's lighter, easier on the hand when centered over the balance point, and hold an edge like nobody's business.