Perhaps I came off a little too brashly in my comment. I wasn't intended as a specific criticism of the GP per se, more a commentary on the repeated "MS will go back on this, you just wait, it's 100% assured" type comments that I've seen on /. every time a story about windows 10 comes up.

At some point we'll know whether or not they're serious beyond the first year, but then the narrative will just switch to "just wait, any time now" sword-of-damocles type stuff.

I honestly think Microsoft took a long, hard look at Windows and decided to take the plunge and emulate the OS X model. Now I know that the cost of development for OS X is rolled into the hardware for Apple (as do MS I have to assume), but I am also assuming that MS have figured that they'll be better off by making Windows a one time purchase with lifetime updates and then drawing revenue and money to develop it from other areas like Office, Xbox, cloud services etc, Any other stream that generates revenue for them.

Having the majority of your user base on the most current version of Windows because it's free to continually update as long as you bought it once has to outweigh the scenario where MS would love everyone to be on the latest version but that means people buying a copy.

The answer is, they don't have to make revenue on Windows. That is what they're banking on. Sure they'll sell it for people that don't have it, but they have realised that the concurrent model works - make it so that if you run Windows, you're likely to be running the latest Windows, and the best way to d that is to effectively make it "free" (after you buy it once, or have it come with your computer, it's yours going forwards when new versions come out).

Their revenue stream will be Xbox (games and Live) and Office. Making Windows a service model helps them in those areas. At least, that's the idea.

Especially now that Apple have finally opened the taps on "official unofficial" third party TRIM support on SSDs (you can turn it on with a warning that Apple doesn't support it) which has been far too long coming.

I think it's a small sign that someone at Apple has finally said "enough of the attempts to make it iOS, remember what OS X used to be when we launched it?"

It's only a small change, but it may be a small ray of hope.

The Xbox One reversal was listening to consumer demand. They made a decision (a silly one) and reversed course due to unpopular backlash and the obvious threat to the bottom line.

You can't really hold that up as evidence of them lying. They changed position quite publicly in response to feedback.

If you're going with that then any company that has responded to feedback and changed the way they have done something is also a liar and untrustworthy.

Whether you trust microsoft or not, the fact remains that trying to push the "you need to buy it every year" line as a fact is in direct opposition to what Microsoft is publicly stating at this point.

Trying to claim that it is a factual statement because "Microsoft is always lying" is just weak.

As of the time of writing Microsoft's stance on this has been repeatedly outlined. Trying to ignore it, dismiss it, or simply state that they're lying to fit your predetermined narrative that anything that comes out of Redmond is bad just makes you look like you're grasping at straws.

No, I'm not forgetting any of those things, They're factored in already. The EV still comes out ahead.

It's not perfect yet, of course, but these are all things that can be improved on.

I have a single (one) [1] song selected in iTunes and selected "get info". The checkbox to mark is as part of a compilation is present.

You can do it that way if you like - you can tell iTunes to let you manage the directory structure how you like. This is the first time an automated feature has clashed with that option it seems (it won't change the directory structure, but it might affect things like custom start and end points set in id3 tags). It's not supposed to interfere if you set it to manual control so this is clearly unintended behaviour.

Did the really, really obvious "this is a compilation" checkbox that has always been there elude you?

Not sure what Apple is meant to "fix" about that. I'd say "check the box for you automatically" but then we're in a story talking about how the sky is falling because the Music launch caused issues with non-desired editing of metadata.

You can't win!

Hence my "big cons" section in the above comment.

But to address your points in turn (also you forgot to log in).

1) infrastructure is obviously lacking at the moment, but as I said, you either ship it around in tanks (inefficient), or you generate it relatively locally if you have a decent electrical supply - which you're going to have anyway because you need to charge EVs.

2) the long cycle time will not be a problem because as I said, H2 is more suited for commercial vehicles that have very large tanks that do not need to be refuelled often. The smaller cars are all EVs.

3) Water on roads? seriously? You think the water vapour produced by a hydrogen fuel cell is going to ice up the roads in cold climates more than the local weather is? If you really think it's a problem, we add a $5 container designed to collect the waste water and feed it back into the vehicles systems (washer fluid top up, etc) with a button for "safe to dump waste water because we're not on a road" button for when it's nearly full.

4) Energy cost to produce. Yes, it is very high right now. The two main ways to make it are steam reforming of methane (expensive and uses fossil fuels) which is about 80% of the production and electrolysis of aqueous sodium hydroxide (energy intensive). Of course, as more energy sources come online that cost will reduce, as will research into improved H2 production methods (catalysis, higher density solar, nuclear, wind).

5) As far as hydrogen corrosion of metals goes, it's almost as if you think that metal corrosion is not something that we deal with in modern machinery all the time.

No one is say that H2 vehicles should be "the winner" over battery powered vehicles. The idea is that they complement each other. EVs have downsides. H2 vehicles have downsides. EVs have upsides. H2 vehicles have upsides. Funnily enough, they each have different strengths and weaknesses that can counteract each other while still sharing a lot of common ground (like the traction motor being electric).

True, coal is pretty much at the bottom of that heap, but when you factor in the cost of making gasoline and transporting it around to fuel stations, those inefficiencies really start to add up.

No one is saying that EVs run but coal power stations is ideal, just that it is better than gasoline power.

The aim is to add a lot more renewable (including nuclear) as time goes on, sooner rather than later.

Because the ICE in your car is extremely inefficient. A vehicle-sized gasoline engine is about 30-35% efficient. Then add in the the energy cost of producing the gasoline from crude oil, now factor the cost of transporting it around before you put it in your car.

Even if you remove the transportation and production costs of gasoline (which you conveniently left out of your comparison) you're still doing better by using an electric car.

They are just much more efficient, even with generation, transmission, charging and discharge losses.

No, it would reduce them.

Your gas engine is 30% efficient. Your generating station is not.

Centralised energy generation is much better than lots of smaller gas engines effectively doing the same job.

The first point has been addressed many times already - even if you're powering your electric car on 100% fossil-fuel electricity you're still doing better than burning gasoline.

A centralised generating station is much more efficient than lots of gas engines that are about 30% efficient. Obviously it would be ideal to move to renewable generation, but that will also be happening as those sources get cheaper and more effective. You also have to factor in transmission losses and charging losses, but even with these included you're still ahead.

Ideally your work truck would be hydrogen fuelled.

Your typical week sounds like the ideal workload for an H2 vehicle.

Keep all of the truck the same as a pure electric design (motors, chassis, etc), but swap the battery packs for a hydrogen tank and a fuel cell.

I think that will be the best way to reduce emissions in the future - pure electric for the bulk of commuters and so on, with H2 for large commercial vehicles. The bulk of the manufacturing can be shared across the lines (for example, they'd use the same electric motors) but each system has pros and cons.

Obviously a big con of H2 systems is infrastructure for H2 production and storage. If we can crack the catalysis issue (making it cheaper to manufacture quickly from bulk electrolysis than it is currently, and moving away from steam reforming of natural gas) then it can be made anywhere you have a good source of electricity and water. Given that you need a solid electricity supply to provide recharging stations for EVs, this part will be solved. Just need to crack the other part now.