I might be wrong, but I think MS employees tend to be better integrated into the local community.

I can't make a generalization of that scope.

There's definitely been stages in the "maturity" of Microsoft. Early Microsoft was uber geek, for sure.

Now, it's more like Boeing than Google, just a megacorp filled with corporate wage slaves.

What you did right there is called "projection". It's when you accuse someone else of your own failings. It's a signature trait of the mentally ill.

Pretending for a moment that you have the ability to reason, let's ask a simple question:

How does using less energy make me poorer?

I insulate my house, I drive less, I buy better appliances, I eat locally grown food, and so forth means that -- wait for it -- I save money.

Living more sustainably makes me more wealthy.

I do more with less. But in your world view, being anything less than a glutton is somehow morally wrong.

Okay, lesson time's over.

Please, resume banging those rocks together. And pass the Cheetos. Ook, ook.

You are worse than wrong. There are no alternative explanations.

Scientists follow the principles of Popperianism.

Theories must be falsifiable. Each theory must have tests for which if false, disprove the theory.

Further, for a theory to be accepted, it must do a better job of explaining reality.

You can't merely say something is wrong. You have to say how it's wrong AND have a better explanation.

Um, no. And this cute belief system of yours disqualifies you from the discussion.

So, please, run back to your cave and resume banging the rocks together. See how far that gets you.

Our opponents are not interested in reality. Data, facts, logic, reason be damned.

These are the culture wars. The battle lines have been drawn. Long ago. One side wants the best outcome for the most people. The other side wants to win. At all costs.

I don't mean to be catty, but where have you been these last 30 years, especially the 8 years of Bush The Lesser?

As a progressive I used to think that we could all sit down, have a reasonable chat, sort all this shit out. Fail at that enough times, and you'll (hopefully) learn that the only thing the troglodytes respect is power. It's distasteful. But the alternative is plutocracy, theologians, and the continued descent downwards.

Hey. Given your experience, I have an off topic question for you.

What are the prospects for ceramic internal combustion engines?

When I was a kid, I read in Scientific American that future cars will likely have ceramic engine blocks. Being air cooled, they'd be more simple and smaller. Being ceramic, the fuel would be burned hotter and so more efficiently. So these ceramic engines would be 1/3rd the size for the same horsepower and burn cleaner.

Alas. Here we are today.

I went back and found that issue of SciAm in the library. From that and other reading, I gather that the two production methods have serious shortcomings. Sintering hasn't been worked out for forms that large. And drilling would be huge expensive and probably leave defects in the material (e.g. cylinder walls).

I did find one news item where the US Navy was buying ceramic engines for unmanned vehicals. It sounded like a turbine engine, vs internal combustion.

Any news, insights, tips you could offer would be great.

modules != layers

I'm a huge fan of removing extraneous abstractions, layers, extension points, gratuitous use of design patterns, silly third party libraries, etc.

In my experience, API designers biff the modeling (abstraction) and then try to hide the problems with ever more shims and layers.

Examples of my counterculture designs include DesignGridLayout, flogger, and LOX.

Alas, programmers are unimpressed by simple solutions and persist in using productivity slashing and mind gelling albatrosses.

A/E/C (architecture, engineering, construction) is nothing like software development.

Software is far more complex than construction. Complex, as in information content, as in how many decisions must be made. Bridges are described with a few 100 construction drawings and some supporting text.

Construction is a far more constrained problem space, compared to software. Physics (engineering), construction materials, site location, application, and building codes pretty much predetermine what any given bridge is going to look like. A civil engineer spends most of their time "finding" the bridge design that satisfies all the constraints (a search problem). They get all excited over green field projects, because there's more room to play (e.g. highways rebuilt after St Helens blew up).

Construction design has regular checkpoints (e.g. 30, 60, 90, 100% submittals) for full client review. Iterative development in software is the exception, not the rule. When things get tough, it always degenerates into the waterfall "model".

The points previously made about transparency (open source) and quality of requirements also apply.