I've had a dislike for the company since the 90's. But I'm thankful to them for the job security I enjoyed supporting and maintaining their products in enterprises. But I come home at night to Mac and Linux systems.

But seriously, Long term, Office and Windows are doomed. There is some interesting tech in Xbox Connect that could create some game changing product categories in enterprises such as Medical Tech etc. Bing, is the only thing that I can see that could even approach giving Google a ride but it's way too far behind. These 2 divisions should be spun off or at least unleashed (e.g. MSFT retains an ownership stake but takes them public) and run on a profitable basis (if they can). The bureaucracy at MSFT is killing innovation.

The other interesting things MSFT is doing are their Azure platform and universal identity management. But a mistrustful tech community will hamper adoption of these products.

As fast as you can the other way!

Not sure about your HOA but there is a federal law superseding local and land covenants with regards to satellite dishes.

But I think municipal Internet would be a great thing.

Where has he done this? Road diets increase traffic throughput and make them safe for pedestrians and vehicles to coexist. There has been no roads made bicycle only under his watch.

Did a little sleuthing and discovered they're using an F5 load balancer in front of it (at least my state exchange is). I'm rather shocked that they chose a classical client/server architecture and not say, a cloud architecture for this. This could have been written on Google's cloud or Amazon's or OpenStack even and probably done a much better job of handling this load.

I would surmise that HIPPA requirements may have made cloud architecture problematic.

Look up inelasticity of demand and tell me how a "free market" would work in healthcare.

Supreme Court already vetted this...

People typically stop for breaks every 200 or so miles on long road trips. Use the bathroom, get a snack, stretch your legs, pump the gas etc. So, if you're going to stop anyways, you can do it at a SuperCharger.

o-O, With a Tesla, you could comfortably travel between Seattle and Portland one way without recharging. Or Seattle and Vancouver Canada, or SFO Sacramento, or LA SAN Diego. Super Chargers are already in most of those pathways as well as other public charging stations. So for many longer trips, a Tesla is going to do just fine.

Tesla is making about a 25% margin on their cars now. Not great, but not bad either. Plus, because GM, Ford and Chrysler have been so lazy in dealing with the CAFE standards, they're paying Tesla about $30,000 per car that Tesla sells for CAFE credits so that they can claim their fleet mileage meets CAFE standards. Now you know how Tesla paid off their DOE loan so quickly and will have money to do R&D so when GM comes out with their (yawn) EV car, Tesla will be much farther down the road. e.g. new battery tech with higher density, their Model X crossover vehicle and other improvements.

Also, unlike Tesla, GM is (or was) losing money on each Volt it sells. But it generates CAFE credits for each Volt it sells.

Except that China is now putting more effort into building Renewables than we are even though they are still operating on diametrically opposing policies (e.g. building highways and suburbs in addition to building massive High Speed Railways; Massive wind and solar in addition to building more coal plants). Their rising standard of living is a result of decisions made in this country, on Wall Street to massively outsource our manufacturing base and the middle class jobs that went with it.

And while it is good to think globally in terms of equality, I made my arguments on the effect of policies in this country affecting the economic vitality of people in this country. There are international agreements that were signed ages ago that much of the world has agreed to, EXCEPT the United States. Can't blame China this time...

The question has been asked before. What is the consequence of we as a collective through our governmental policy of lowering human contributed GHG producing particles? It's not economic ruin. Indeed, as we are discovering, whole new industries are being born and matured that pay living wages in proximity to local and regional populations as well as contributing to our societal wealth. And yes, some people will also get rich in the process. But ecisions about land use and urbanism create more efficient cities and the prospect of continued affordability and rising equality. Decisions about how we produce food raises the prospect of better quality and healthier foods which gives rise to a healthier population. It means that we look ahead and plan for the inevitable dislocation that already observed climate change is making. It also means fewer things that unprincipled Capitalists can exploit to create human misery.

The likes of the Koch brothers are spending their billions to convince you to do nothing because their ability to exploit you and extract more billions out of you depends on your doing nothing. They salivate at the prospect of your paying them for the misery that climate change will bring to your locale. For the shortages of food, the shortages of potable water, the deluge of climate in places like Colorado are already bringing. A superstorm wipes out your town whether its on the gulf of Mexico or the Eastern Seaboard who will be there to wholesale commandeer whole cities and properties? They will. Who will control the re-construction? They will. The cycle will repeat again and again.

The problem is, libertarians make no allowances for such. They assume the market will handle all aberrations. But it is humans that suffer for this folly.

OK, it is possible that there are varieties of Libertarianism that exist TODAY that do not conform to the descriptions I've mentioned. They are certainly not common and do not hold any significant cultural or intellectual sway in our society. Those that are the firebrand of the current Libertarian movement have inculcated (quite effectively) a gut notion in the "collective psyche" of our nation the notions that government is evil, that it should be drowned in a bathtub, that there should be no regulation of the market and that we should vote for people who will instill those values. People Like Rand Paul and his father come to mind, but people like Eric Cantor, also come to mind.

Tesla's have few moving parts. Tesla has an integrated service delivery solution. There is no need for third party dealerships that complicate Tesla's relationship with its customers.