TheFuture

Ethanol subsidies are terrible. We need to stop holding presidential primaries in Iowa.

Covering millions of acres of land with windmills isn't green to me. At worst windfarms kill wildlife, destroy property values, create noise pollution, create shadow flicker. At best they turn a natural landscape into an industrial zone for the sake of unreliable power that has no immediate future chance of being practical. Ditto for solar. The future is not centralized power generation that eats up vast amounts of land, and then transmitting the power thousands of miles on wires where the majority of it is lost.

Nuclear isn't getting attention because of irrational fear that liberals and the government promote. Gates would have a tough job, but he's someone with the resources to lobby govt, and get trusted and respected people to start taking nuclear seriously.

Perhaps after Gates starts building these reactors in other countries, the green zealots will finally get discredited. Seriously, why is someone with billions of dollars, huge influence and power, and a strong advocate of reducing carbon emissions, why is he NOT building a solar and wind power company? And why is it that the people who are making money off solar and wind seem to get all their profits through government subsidies?

http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/Bill-Ga...

Rather see Gates start a nuclear energy company, with radical new designs that focus on safety, widely distributed, low cost, zero emissions.

He's invested in such companies, but I'd love to see him really push it as CEO. He's done/doing great philanthropic work in the 3rd world. Cheap, clean, and available electrical power would do wonders for poor countries. 1MW nuclear reactor in a shipping container, runs for 30 years with no maintenance, no harmful radioactive waste? It could happen if we stop chasing foolish "green" energy windmills and solar panels.

Agree. Had a hell of a time getting OAuth to work on my iPhone Netflix app. Just hours and hours wasted.

I have an Instagram iPad app which was a breeze to implement. IG does a great job documenting their API.

Thanks for letting us know. I actually have an iPad app currently in the store (approved in October) that only supports top-up portrait. I guess it really depends how picky the reviewer wants to be. I will make sure I fix it before my next update.

Ask a subscriber to Vogue magazine if they'd prefer a copy with or without ads, both the same price.

9 out of 10 will take the ads, because the ads are beautiful and part of the content, but they are still ads.

That aspect of print advertising has not yet made the transition to digital. People love ads for stuff they like, are interesting, or/and funny.

The solution will not be to remove ads, it will be to improve ads.

Why? Most popular consumer magazines don't even cover the cost of printing and postage with their subscription fee.

If Time magazine no longer needs to print and mail their product, should't they be making MORE money?

One of the fundamental problems that no one mentions is that advertisers have been grossly overpaying for print ads for decades. They had no measure of the effectiveness or reach of their ads except "X magazine has Y subscribers".

With digital targeted advertising, we know exactly how many views, clicks, length of view, not to mention tons of demographic data on the reader. That's worth something. It's worth a lot more than an untargeted ad on a page in a magazine that might go straight from the mailbox into the garbage.

I'm not claiming to know what will happen in digital advertising, but I really don't think paywalls or micropayments are the future. My guess is something like major media companies will get rid of their entire ad sales staff, outsource advertising to Facebook/Google, and deliver their content through multiple channels/feeds/API which can been interpreted by various apps or devices to be viewed in the way the consumer likes.

That doesn't make for good class warfare rhetoric though. We're headed into an election year!

This idea that people/businesses "horde" cash is simply bizarre to me, yet I see it again and again in discussions about the economy.

Unless it's stacks of paper underneath their mattress, it's in a bank, essentially an investment, and is able to be lent out as capital.

Yeah, I don't really understand taxing business at all. They create jobs, then don't create a tax burden (like say an apartment building full of families attending local school, yet the govt constantly subsidizes building apartments). Why would you tax an entity that enables citizens to earn money and pay their taxes?

A business profit isn't profitable to anyone until it is distributed to employees or shareholders, at which point it is taxed again.

I find myself struggling with this constantly as I develop iOS apps. There's something about the programmer's brain that gets obsessed with the details, and doing it the "right way", and tweaking for completely insignificant performance gains, and just loves researching all the minutia.

You need to Get It Done. Especially if you're dealing with consumer software, you need to get something infront of the customer, because in 6 months everything may have changed!

If you have the luxury of working on corporate software where you have loose deadlines, open budget, and no competition, well go ahead and comment all your code and research all your best practices. It might even be worthwhile, because there's a much better chance that code will still be around in 8 years. If you're a startup, forget it, your product will likely be defunct in 6 months.

And if he had spent time obsessing over internal code details would the project rot less?

Things change fast in software. It's one thing if you're building the backend system behind a billion dollar bank. Obviously that's not what the author is talking about.

If you're trying to make the next Angry Birds, or Facebook, or Google, you need to get something out there now, the MVP, and iterate.

Thank you. I've worked at a theater, and this is accurate.

Amazing the answers you get when you throw a bunch of economist at the question who know nothing about the industry.

So MS is supposed to just give the magazine money? If MS really needs to advertise in that magazine, they'll pay to do it. It's a simple value equation. You do realize how MS being an advertiser (non paid) can immensely help that magazine get paid ads? Who is getting hurt here?

There is a serious lack of maturity in American adults age 18-30. It's been creeping for a long time, and now we're seeing the results.

I strongly agree that college has just become a place to delay becoming an adult, and delay the real-world.

No, you don't say "lets make crap". But you deny the proper resources. You place unnecessary restrictions on the project. You hire a bunch of iOS newbies and say "hey go make gmail, but you have to make it out of javascript in a UIwebview" and basically force the outcome.

Come on, hasn't everyone had to work on a project where the boss/manager didn't want it to succeed? Whether for political, personal, or boredom, people don't do their best work all the time. Not everyone is as demanding as Steve Jobs.

Seriously, how dense are you to think this article has to do with the title on your business card?

This is about programmers that seem to love to undervalue their skills, and then anonymously bitch in online forums about how stupid everyone else is and underpaid and under appreciated they are.

Nevermind the dozen easier ways to get a gun without a background check... When will people realize bad people that want a gun, figure out how to get one. All the ridiculous waiting periods and background checks just hassle law abiding citizens.