abhimishra

IMO the sign-off culture would be a problem at MS with or without triads. When you have such a large middle-layer (especially ones with ranks like 'partner' who seem to mostly be faking it) there are going to be loads of people whose chief role is to be a gatekeeper who needs to 'sign-off' on something. There are going to be layers of management who want to perform that filtering and relaying you mention, even though it does nothing for the company. And until some kind of purging happens, that won't change.

And of course, we can expect that Ballmer will still be around...

Oh I definitely can agree with the notion of renting a car for the edge case. Others have also suggested that families could have two cars, one electric for daily use and the other gasoline-powered for road trips or tasks that require more utility perhaps.

But my point simply was that purely electric technologies cannot satisfy all needs (yet?) and that the range capabilities of electric vehicles is not on part with fossil-fuel vehicles (which is what was seemingly claimed by the parent post). And yes, this might mean that fossil-fuel vehicles don't disappear entirely, but simply play a smaller role in our future society.

I'm glad you are skilled at being snarky and rude, but it has no place here on Hacker News (or really anywhere).

Now onto your post: Writing off something as DOA because of current technologies is not a good argument at all. People made similar arguments about electric cars just a few years back (as shown in 'Who Killed the Electric Car'). A long time ago, no one ever thought computing would be cheap enough to be inside consumers' homes. There is always the possibility of a break-through technology, of a reduction in cost, increase in efficiency, etc.

The quote above cherry-picks some statements in 2008 regarding GM and Toyota's views at the time on fuel-cell vehicles. However, there is a long list of companies who have publicly talked about their investment (and upcoming production vehicles as well) in the fuel-cell space just this year (2012!). A quick search through fuel-cell news this year brought up the following: Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz aka Daimler, Audi aka VW, Toyota, GM, BMW. There are probably others as well, but that already covers the vast majority of vehicle manufacturers.

Secretary of Energy and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu reversed his view on fuel-cell cars and noted recently (mentioned towards the end of your quoted text as well) that there may be a higher feasibility for fuel-cell-based vehicles now.

There is ample proof that fuel-cells deserve more attention and research before closing the discussion. It is worth investigating this space if only to have alternatives - electric vehicles have some issues (range, cold weather performance, environmental impact of producing batteries) that perhaps other technologies could address.

No one is mentioning Hydrogen fuel-cell cars that have been in trials, such as the Honda FCX Clarity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_FCX_Clarity).

Relative to battery-powered fully-electric vehicles, some advantages are: - Quick re-fueling (like with a gasoline vehicle) - No loss of range in cold weather (and seems like earlier freezing issues have been addressed) - No deterioration of a battery's performance over time

Some disadvantages: - Hydrogen economy is not here yet and may be difficult to make efficient relative to electricity delivery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy)

> Hydrogen vehicles are just plain stupid from an efficiency stand point - where are you going to get the hydrogen exactly? Purifying it is too expensive - and since it's lighter than air - there is no economical source of hydrogen on earth. It'd be cheaper to fuel your car with coal.

No, it is expensive _today_. Which is different from saying it would be expensive at scale.

How does the Model S solve the longer trips issue? On a road-trip I might drive 500 miles in a day. The priciest Model S gets 300 miles at 55 miles an hour. And with climate control on that is likely to be less in reality. If this trip were in cold weather (ski trips and such) the range would be SIGNIFICANTLY less.

As a comparison, my gasoline-hybrid can squeeze out over 500 miles on a tank at 55 miles an hour. And I never worry about being 'stranded' as I might with a fully-electric car.

Another issue I have with battery-based solutions is the potential lifespan of the batteries - they are warrantied only for 8-years. A new pack costs ~30k (pulled this unofficial figure from discussions in the Tesla forums).

What about for IDE features that are 'non-intrusive'. A lot of the editor features Visual Studio (+ Resharper) or IntelliJ provide don't get 'in my way'. To be honest I can't think of many ways in which tools get in my way to be honest, except perhaps initially having to define a 'project' that the IDE understands (versus just files on disk).

I don't agree that it stops the language from advancing. What is your definition of advancement here, exactly? Lots of successful, productive languages pay attention to tooling as well. I see it as just weighing the costs and benefits of various trade-offs.

I always used Java with Eclipse or IntelliJ personally. But in the Microsoft world it is not uncommon for coders to use tools that are very 'plain text' and 'ungraphical' like WinDbg even with languages like C#, alongside other tools like Visual Studio.

Out of curiosity, why don't you like the idea of language developers spending time on tools?

I don't think things have to be mutually-exclusive. The article suggests that you have to be in either the language camp or tools camp because of the time-investment developers have to make in either - but in reality the investment is smaller than portrayed IMO.

As for parallel programming - that itself is a wide-spectrum of different types of programming, and again I don't think we have to paint it as choosing one or the other.

For example, when I worked on parallel algorithms for very large clusters, I was really missing some of the things IDEs provide like graphical debuggers. While a better-designed language may have made some parts of my task easier, it would also have made low-level optimization much harder.

tl;dr - different things needed for different situations

And yes, we do need to agree at a global level and be willing to pay more for certain goods/services as a result. The entire economic system will just re-balance itself around that, if we as a global society agree that the costs of inaction are greater.

Another note: while China is the world's leading emitter, they also have contributed the most to abatement of emissions according to some (example: http://www.dbcca.com/dbcca/EN/_media/Global_Policy_Tracker_2...) Let's not forget that the US did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol, while China did (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_parties_to_the_Kyoto_Pr...).

I am not sure that carbon taxes NEED to be regressive - we could definitely use some of the revenue from carbon taxes to offset lower-income groups, as is sometimes done with other regressive taxes.

Another way to look at this is a simple cost-benefit analysis: is the cost (I mean more just than the monetary face value) of having a regressive tax more than the cost of potential issues that result from not addressing emissions? If so, we should do it anyways.

The article's headline is inaccurate. From Harvey Anderson's blog post (http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/windows-eu-ballot-s...): "Cumulatively 6 to 9 million Firefox browser downloads were lost during this period."

This basically seems like a tax on hyperlinking, which is at the core of the web. Absurd.

A Forbes article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/10/30/explainin...) explains further that the complaint from French publishers is about the portion of the search results page that shows links to those publishers' content (since that results page has ads on it). They could exclude themselves from indexing easily (and forego traffic of course).

Seeing as how Apple's "retina" displays are actually made by other folks (Samsung and LG for the 15" rMBP), I suspect we will see high-res panels on other laptops very soon.

In fact, Samsung recently demoed a few Series 9 prototypes at IFA with WQHD resolution (2560 x 1440, which is the 16:9 resolution you get from most 27" panels): http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/31/3282360/samsung-wqhd-2560-...

That's exactly what it is

With all the articles written about all this, I am not sure what the real motivations behind Apple's recent shuffle are. However, I can say that the 'war on complacency', regardless of whether it is applicable here, is something sorely needed across many large companies (Microsoft for example) - mediocrity in leadership and middle-management generally seems to persist forever.

This basically seems like a tax on hyperlinking, which is at the core of the web. Absurd.

A Forbes article (http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/10/30/explainin...) explains further that the complaint from French publishers is about the portion of the search results page that shows links to those publishers' content (since that results page has ads on it). They could exclude themselves from indexing easily (and forego traffic of course).

Disagree - there is nothing rude about this. The thread is not "someone else's" - it exists to benefit the community. I, and others, found these additional leads useful.

I and my family opt-out 100% of the time. Part of it is due to the unknown risks (however low the chance may be), part of it is on principle (violation of rights), and part of it is to have everyone else see in full-view that others are opting-out (so others feel comfortable doing so as well).

Agree, name and shame. If people believe there is a significant risk to their reputation in the community, that alone can function as a deterrent.

Yes, but $69 is for a regular e-ink Kindle. The tablets don't start until $159.

You don't need Gnome-Do when running in Unity, right?

A good read, and more-or-less in line with my observations from working at a couple big software companies. I think there is generally less value in estimating versus doing, especially for tasks/projects that are inevitable.

> He’s a pompous ass, pure and simple. No conspiracy required.

I don't get where this sentiment comes from - care to explain?

It's much much bigger - the blurb suggests that this is just the "release team", which I am guessing means they manage the release process.

There isn't even a lack of talent that is already trained IMO - this is anecdotal, but I know of many unemployed coders who are capable and the education system is churning out thousands more every year. I find it hard to believe that corporations cannot hire them.

In actuality, there is a lack of folks who want to pay market price (which is going up) for programming talent even if their corporation is quite profitable. Requesting higher caps is a way to conveniently dodge the market forces at play.

> Similarly, the restriction of the oil supply will drive up cost, drive down usage, and force the economy to grind to an ugly halt.

The economy wouldn't necessarily grind to an ugly hault - there is a sweetspot in the middle, which you are ignoring here. It could also be that people/businesses adjust to a _moderate_ supply restriction in some way (travel less, purchase locally, etc), new technologies arrive, and things change for the better.

> If we decreased the supply of programmers to 1 said programmer would be making a shitload of money - but that is not good for the general population, nor the economy.

I also don't buy into the 'good for general population' argument necessarily - it is fair for employees (in this case, programmers) to also want what is best for themselves. Corporations generally want what is best for their shareholders (or executives) and not their employees OR the general population, which is part of the reason they ask for higher caps.

> And let's be honest, as a single programmer making 4.5x the median household American income, our wages are plenty elevated.

Why do you think wages are elevated? Many programmers I work with are very smart folks, and I personally feel that they are underpaid relative to the value they are creating within the organizations they work for. Furthermore, why is 4.5x the median household income randomly the bar here? Should every profession be capped in your view (doctors, lawyers, etc)?