Research particulates from a gasoline engine vs a diesel engine. Diesels emit much more -- if they were popular we would have extreme smog issues.

Another easy way to tell: Look at the bumper of diesel cars around the exhaust -- sooty! That soot is being released into the air and is a carcinogen.

With recent EPA requirements changing, manufacturers have had to combat this. One low tech technique is to put a paper filter on the exhaust to catch the particulates. Another is to change the fuel/air ratio to ensure combustion of the soot -- however that results in increased NOx transmissions. To solve this, newer diesel cars/SUVs (BMW, Mercedes, Jeep, Chevy) come with a urea tank. The urea is injected into the exhaust which then allows a catalytic converter to break down NOx. The engine computer is required to prohibit you from starting the car if the urea tank is empty. (Usually there is a small grace period -- 10 starts or so.)

I am looking forward to clean (and affordable!) diesels but we are still not quite there yet.

I think Trey Parker and Matt Stone are on to something with the South Park drug free treatment

IT unemployment is low! (I've heard ~2% more recently)

I set it to 85 so it would heat up faster!

Walmart had a pretty sweet deal -- Xbox + Kinect + $50 gift card for $200. http://bfads.net/Walmart-Black-Friday-Xbox-360-4gb-Console-w-50-Walmart-GC

But they don't have a presence in California, your orders placed with Amazon are fulfilled by a [legally] different company!

They are essentially drop shipping everything you order.

Are you sure the company that sold you the product has a presence?

I work for a company (not in Washington) that drop ships for Amazon. In other words, Amazon.com, LLC buys the product from us and we ship it to whatever address they want. In this case, it seems the "brick and mortar" argument is easily arguable to not apply because we have no ties with Amazon.

Now, what if Amazon warehouses were considered to be owned by a different company legally? I'll pick a name, say "Amazon.com KYDC, LLC". ;)

Amazon.com, LLC does the same thing where they buy from this secondary company and have them ship it to the customer. Does Amazon.com, LLC still have a presence?

Yep, the new Chevy Volt will be lithium, but the Prius and other hybrids are all NiMH. You said the exact reason why -- they were (still are?) the most proven battery technology at the time the cars were engineered. (That's also the "big deal" about the Volt -- GM is having to do a bunch of research to develop a car worthy lithium battery in a very short time.)

Yes! I have fond memories of programming simple programs in BASIC and storing my hangman dictionary on cassette. The keyboard was a little difficult -- I believe the colon, brackets, other normal punctuation were a special key + normal alphabet key. a picture

Agreed. I have an ASUS Intel board and I bought 4 x 2GB sticks. Pick any three and it was rock solid -- add in that fourth and the machine would blue screen or processes would mysteriously crash after some time.

Turns out it's a very common problem for boards to have trouble reliably powering all 4 DIMMs, and upping the voltage by .1-.2V over spec saved the day.