Ok, well, for what it's worth it sounds like a second hand toyota or something to that effect would be your ticket, they're reasonably cheap and about as reliable as it gets.
Other than that... you'd have to provide a whole pile of information on what your budget is (cheap is not the same for everybody), where you are and how much you expect to drive annually.
The way I do it is I set a budget, research the hell out of what is available on the local car sites within that budget, then pick a car make & model.
Then for the next month or so, every day I log in to all those sites and scan the listings for one that does not match the price/model year/mileage bracket.
The ones that are far below the average are worth looking in to and then you can probably still get a deal 20% better than what is listed. It's a buyers market at the moment.
I just bought a car listed at 11950 euros everywhere for 7000, (a c5 diesel), I expect to drive it for years.
EDIT: regarding the 'trust' factor, if I'm going to code up some stuff and I need advice I'd go to HN, not to my 'mechanic buddies' because I trust them more. Trust is not just personal relationships, it is also expertise.
What's preventing the reverse engineering effort? Legality issues? Difficulty? Time? (I've heard stories about samba, and it seems like if MS protocols can be reverse engineered, then things that have to obey the laws of physics couldn't be that much worse).
I'm not sure. Probably the relatively obscure nature of the task and the manufacturers' relatively short design-life cycles discourage any sort of heroics.
Given issues like this, and how talented the kernel guys are ... why haven't they written a C compiler? (Not meant to rant; serious question -- we wrote silly C compilers for class; seems like programmers with real talent should be able to write real, industry strength C compilers, especially if it only needs to support C, and not C++/Java/ObjC/...)
I think (but this is just a guess) that a production multi-platform c compiler is as hard as a kernel to get right (or at least in the same order of magnited) and fast enough to be useful, so I think it's more of a "there is no need for NIH" attitude.
They were also people who were fascinated in the stuff they became famous for.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can work hard at something you don't like and become a legend. Find what you love, what you don't mind working hard at. Do that. If you want your work to be separate from your life, expect cognitive dissonance.
My advice, from life experience: Try everything. Do what feels natural. Give the relationship a try; if it falls apart, then continue with your work. Not everybody succeeds young. Not every girlfriend turns into a wife.
Agree. Also: beware sample bias. For every hero the public worships, there may be 1000 people who love what they do, make tremendous sacrifices, and remain completely anonymous.
Yep, and they were also very, very lucky in addition to being dedicated and talented. The world is full of smart, talented, determined people who never achieve fame.
Live your life, be honest with yourself and others, work hard, everything else will take care of itself.
I think that most of the people who truly want fame achieve it. Most people don't. They value other things over just being well-known. Being famous is not particularly difficult to achieve if you crave it.
Then again, many people who don't want fame become famous anyway. Fame is hard to avoid.
I don't know the personal stories of all those people you mentioned, but I can guarantee you that none of them passed on relationships while aiming for their success.
The ones who did, most likely didn't suffer, because they were so focused on their work, that they didn't even notice the opportunity.
EDIT: This is really the type of stuff I'd love to see more on news.ycombinator.com -- tools to make me more efficient.