I'm with you. Unless he's primarily using that giant truck to make himself money, he's doing it wrong -- and even then if he's got a luxury pickup he's still doing it wrong, burning money up and down the road all the while complaining about how he'll never retire because gas costs so much. Thanks Obama. Want to really get some work done? Get a real work truck, not a fancy chromed up & decked out pickup. BTW the insurance will be cheaper, too.

As far as the question of whether you're truly insuring the driver or the car, it's actually both. If you buy an expensive sports car your insurance will be high no matter what your driving record says. Likewise if you drive a super-safe car your insurance will still be high if you've had several accidents in the recent past. I have to admit, if I were an insurance company I would want to consider both factors, too -- Who is driving it, and what are they driving?

I'm far from being a fan of insurance companies, but I still think the GP is barking up the wrong tree here.

One benefit of no-fault insurance is that when it's hard to determine who is at fault, or if both parties are partially at fault, you don't have to spend years in court pointing fingers. Instead, your hospital bills are paid in a reasonable amount of time. It's the same reason that no fault divorces follow. With fault cases, nobody really wins. I live in a no-fault state and while the auto insurance premiums are slightly higher, it's not that much higher. Certainly not enough higher to justify the increased stress over it that there seems to be in this thread. You'll spend more on blood pressure meds than you will additionally on no-fault insurance.

"Didn't get on front page of Slashdot soon enough"

A Library of Congress has many volumes.

"Every day we had shed-loads of treasure coming out of all the graves...." Holy shed, that's a lot of treasure.

I wonder how many Libraries of Congress worth of treasure they ended up with.

Learning how to manage software developers is exactly the same as learning to be a good manager in general. I manage software developers. I'm not perfect, I wouldn't even rate myself very high, but many of my employees have told me fairly often they appreciate what I do for them. They things they seem to appreciate are: being as transparent as possible, being interested in their personal interests and development, going to bat for them when they need something (new PC, training, etc), giving them honest and quick feedback both good and bad, and not being willing to place blame but instead just looking for solutions. None of those behaviors are specific to managing software developers, but instead are some things good managers do in general.

I was a software developer before this so while I'm not up to date on the tech they are currently using, I understand the types of struggles they face. That helps, although I'm fairly sure if I went tomorrow to manage a team of mechanical engineers that I could become effective fairly quickly in that role, too.

Don't get me wrong, I'm don't think I'm a great manager, but I have had one or two great managers and I'm trying to borrow the things I thought they did well and my employees seem to respond to that.

Now, if it was a lame attempt at the tired, old, worn the fuck out *hurr, durr USAians dumb hehe* humor, then at least fucking mod it as such.

No, dumbass, it was a poke at how self-involved we Americans tend to be. Way to make his point for him.

The big lie, I guess.

I heard it. Problem is, that Whooshing sound coming from across the aisle in both directions is what will prevent either of these men from being president.

It's a net loss of $9,000 when your current path will lose you $10,000 -- so it actually puts $1,000 back in your pocket. Still seem rational to oppose it?

I'm not even sure what the spacecraft needs log files for anyway. Are they planning to recover it at some point and try to debug something?

Hah, yes, only slightly.

light coding, some light hardware and light theory

Let's not be picky -- dark coding, dark hardware, and dark theory might be fun, too.

Seriously, I never understand why people seem to believe there is such a difference between the two parties. I personally like one better than the other, but overall I don't like either of them all that much.

...or Gatorade to help with this bad situation

Of course! After all, it's what plants crave!