Can we supply enough diesel to meet demand? Isn't it produced as a byproduct of gasoline production? What I read suggests that we could not keep up with demand.

The example I recently read about was a 1985 small car, 4 cyclinder, typically got around 24mph highway. 0-60 acceleration well over 15 seconds.

Fast forward to 2012 and you can buy a car with 600HP and a 5.9L engine, 0-60 in 3.5 seconds... and it gets 24mph highway.

Gee, do you think that possibly... being several times the size of any other vehicle and highly visible might help?

Also, some trucks can accelerate faster than a Chevette... just sayin'...

I drove one of those and there are a lot of places where you cannot safely merge, especially if hills are involved.

Sure we don't "need" race cars, but 200HP in a heavy car (all cars meeting current safety regs are heavy) is not even remotely overkill.

Low performance gets people killed all the time.

Wow, what an ignoramus you are. I'd almost be willing to agree if by religions you also included zealous atheists and other religions, but I bet you don't (yes, atheists, despite the name, preach, evangelize, and are zealous often far above and beyond any of those awful religious people, so let's ban them too).

A good number of these religious people you say are obviously very weak intellectually created the world's technology, including the technology allowing you to spout your ignorance here. Really, you'd appoint a guardian to people like that? The ones that made everything you depend on?

A smoker blows smoke into the air your breathe, and they stink, and their horrid breath carries the little bits of their excessive phlegm and smoke particles to you.

Peanut eaters don't blow peanuts all over me.

Yes, but the aircraft are not glued together in such a way they are impossible to repair.

The Apple/Airplane analogy would be what if the Boeing 787 had its engines glued to the wing so that if it needed an engine overhaul, you either had to replace both wings, or the entire aircraft.

Good points.

I have found that working for things I believe in, generally has also helped my survival a great deal. Most of the time when I am looking for work it is in military, research, or industry. I believe they are foundations of this country and need help, and whenever I work in those fields I'm generally happy. Yes there is all kinds of bullshit to deal with, but you get that wherever you go. Most of the shops I work for, they are generally focused and have well known goals and needs.

Every time I have strayed from that past, I've been fairly unhappy. In a couple of places I made a six figure income, and I was absolutely miserable. Management by whim, customers internal and external who were clueless but drove everything, managers who got raises by screwing everything rotten.

NOTE: I'm not saying you have to focus on those three areas to be happy and productive, that's just my particular choice, and doesn't include a few other qualifiers I have developed over the years. It just happens that much of the time those shops are in the "let's just get work done" category and I find they work better for me.

Wherever you try to apply for work, think long and hard about actually doing the work and what you are contributing to. That will tell you far more about how happy you will be and how secure you job will be than pay scales. Also remember that even seemingly minor differences in benefits can end up being worth 5, 10, 20K US dollars a year in pay. I took a job for $20K less than what I was making recently, but the benefits are worth over 25K more and all of them are cheaper and less money out of my own paycheck.

Honestly, that is the worst advice I have heard in a long time. Management is fine if you like it but the argument that at years old means you should be in is just dumb and insanely counterproductive.

If you are 25 and have the talent to manage, do it.

If you are 65 and a good programmer or system administrator, do it.

I realize a lot of companies share this view, but that's because a lot of companies suck, and its one of the biggest causes of organizational dysfunction in the world.

I have always wanted to learn and use LISP, however I find it very hard to use the actual tools. C tools are very easy to use, and producing compiled code is very easy.

Isn't part of the reason LISP isn't widely accepted because it is difficult to work with outside its now largely dead native environments?

Just finding out how to produce standalone executables can be an exercise in frustration. I once did finally work out how to do it in Common LISP, but the process was ugly, cumbersome and the results were big and slow.

I have rarely found the LISP community to be much help. My questions about how to use it for common programming jobs was met with "just start and stop your code in the LISP environment (manually)" or "there is a compiler that will do what you want and its only $5000".

Does it work well in Europe? Or are they being subsidized by nations like the USA? Even if you don't believe that, isn't Europe currently and rapidly going bankrupt?

World shipping lanes... they work, correct? But why? Is it because how Europe handles them is working? Or, is it because the USA and a tiny few other nations do the bulk of the fighting and funding to keep the shipping lanes open? The world does very little but benefits greatly.

In any case, I don't see our changes to healthcare working over here because they don't address the fundamental problems with our system. In the past we had a pretty good system, and it was 100% private. I don't see the logic in going 180 degrees from a successful period being the way to get back to that period's success.

Also it seems to me that at fundamental problem we have is we use insurance improperly. It used to be something you bought only for emergencies, bills you could not afford to pay. Even when I was a kid, my family paid almost all medical care out of pocket, only using insurance when necessary. Almost any medical services we needed were affordable and competent, and I grew up poor. It was also 100% private.

Then over the years policies were instituted forcing insurance to start paying for nearly everything. I'm not sure how anyone can be surprised that costs skyrocketed and the system became corrupt. We have of course made some amazing improvements in medical knowledge and technology, but in many ways the service level and staff competency is much lower now, and almost nothing is affordable out of pocket any more. Even simple checkups now cost more than what used to be emergencies.

It seems to me we have some fundamental problems: misuse of insurance, massive corruption, legal system abuse and dysfunction, and failed central planning. I don't see any system working until those issues are removed.

I can understand Linus' gripe... but likewise I understand nVidia and others' gripes with Linux.

nVidia does that because that's how they protect themselves.

Drivers for Linux suck because it doesn't have a valid ABI, and not even a very stable software API.

Fix that problem, the political bullshit, and the "let's change it just because we can" mentality, and you might see things change for the better.

My solution of the whole Linux desktop mess, which still exists though in slightly lesser form, was to get a Mac and be done with it.

My solution to speed issues was to use my remaining Linux/UNIX systems with plain window managers.

Linux desktop environments and applications are still an ugly mess even in 2012.