That "crazy transmission" is simplicity itself -- a single planetary gear set. Two motor/generators and high-power inverters transfer torque around, changing the effective gear ratio. Far fewer moving parts than the most basic of non-"crazy" transmissions.

Priuses have been around for eight years now (they came out in Japan in 1999) and the battery pack has been a non-issue. The reason is that the electrical control system babies the battery, never allowing it to get close to full charge or full discharge. This also is why folks who modify their Priuses to make them plug-ins are in for a bit of a surprise -- attempts to get a full charge into and out of the battery pack will shorten its life to the 300-500 cycles that NiMH batteries generally get.

And that's why Toyota doesn't sell them with a 120V plug on them.

Useful plugin hybrids are on the way (probably with lithium-polymer batteries), but range/lifetime/cost tradeoffs are why they aren't here now.

Though in the LW's case "getting away with it" seems to be part of the turn-on. But now that she's graduated to bedding business clients, it's only a matter of time before her way of getting kicks blows up in her face.

If it really is just the sexual variety she craves, she should 'fess up, and if her spouse doesn't want any part of an open relationship, she should divorce and find someone who does. Somehow, though, I don't think that's quite what she's after...

Well, X-rays are ionizing radiation; perhaps they neutralized the static charge that was attracting the dog hair. Or some other factor (moisture?) did.

"Vayjayjay" is on about the same level as "peepee."

I dunno; I think Bush's suggestion to Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf that "you can't be President and head of the military at the same time" has a bit more gravitas as a QOTD.

But it's like watching paint dry to find out.

Wake me up when enough of a plot has accumulated that I can actually form an opinion.

does the pundit equivalent of a six-year-old with his fingers in his ears going LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA.

Maybe after a few months enough plot will have accumulated for me to read and even enjoy this comic -- I just don't think there is enough material each week to provide any sense of continuity. But the letters make it worthwhile. It was brave and/or foolhardy to attempt a serial in a small single weekly panel. The histrionics of the letter writers is quite amusing, however. Well done!

Is there a breakdown between sales of Vista as part of a new system (where people often don't have a choice of OS, and aren't likely to deviate from the "standard" configuration -- Vista -- even when they do), and sales of upgrades to existing systems? You'd need the latter number for a true apples to Apples™ comparison.

Every time Google adjusts its ranking system, hordes of increasingly well-heeled search engine spammers tune up their link farms and spam sites to push their vapid results toward the top. Fighting this is a major effort for Google and its competitors. What Wales envisions contains the seeds its immediate collapse in this environment.

The discs may look the same, but there are several physical differences which might have given HD-DVD a practical advantage. For one, it keeps the same .6mm distance between the disc surface and the data layer as regular DVDs, thus they both can use the same player optics (though both red and blue laser diodes are required) and the discs can be produced in the same plants using the same materials. Blu-ray, on the other hand, shifted the data layer up to .1mm, requiring that a harder, more scratch-resistant material be used with new production facilities and different (and more expensive) player optics. Since compatibility with standard DVD's is a given for any HD player, this adds considerable complexity and cost to Blu-ray players vs. HD-DVD.

Now these physical differences give Blu-ray an advantage of 25GB per layer versus 15GB per layer, but with VC-1 or AVC compression (which close to doubles the compression possible with standard DVD's MPEG2) 15 or 30GB is likely quite enough. (Blu-ray discs have tended to waste the extra bandwidth by using MPEG2 and uncompressed -- rather than losslessly-compressed -- multichannel audio.)

What's recorded on the discs can differ as much. Blu-ray uses embedded Java (BD-J) while HD-DVD uses Web technology such as HTML and CSS (HDi) for interactive content. Blu-ray supports region-limited playback, while HD-DVD drops support for regions.

It didn't need to happen this way. Sony's new CEO is on record as saying that Sony's refusal to work with the HD-DVD camp on a common standard was a mistake, but that by the time he had anything to say about it Blu-ray was too far along to back off.

Northern California has some of the most expensive electricity in the country (about $0.15/kwh) at least where PG&E is the power company. A 10KW solar system thus pays back at $9/day (assuming the equivalent of 6 hours of full sun a day), or about $3200/yr. If the subsidized price is about $20,000, it pays for itself in about a decade (compared to investing the money at 5% interest).

I don't think it has too much to do with making him look Muslim so much as tying him to Saddam. To the lizard brain in us, it's like saying "Barack Hitler Obama" except that half of us blame that Hussein fellow for 9/11 and thus representative of our present evil threat and not a long-vanquished one.

"Hitler" was a fine name, too. Anyone care to argue that a candidate with that name isn't working with a disadvantage?

I see you've published an article by Camille Paglia today, too.