It's too bad the environmentalist morons who don't actually understand the fucking environment let alone a dam or an atom won't let us use them.

The obstacle to nuclear isn't so much political as it is expensive. The start-up investment in building a nuclear reactor facility is massive, and the per-kw cost savings of generating power from nuclear isn't so great that it makes the investors a pile of money right away.

Check this wikipedia article about the economics of nuclear power plants. Here is a choice quote that was sourced from The Atlantic:

"One of the big problems with nuclear power is the enormous upfront cost. These reactors are extremely expensive to build. While the returns may be very great, they're also very slow. It can sometimes take decades to recoup initial costs. Since many investors have a short attention span, they don't like to wait that long for their investment to pay off."

It's a long, slow process to put a project like this together from a financial perspective. When Fukushima happened, the federal government was very careful not to mouth-off about increasing regulations on nuclear power production. It would have jeopardized the projects currently collecting funding.

If you think the environmental lobby is the obstacle to nuclear, I think you should compare the public resistance to fracking and other fossil fuels with public demonstrations against nuclear. The resistance isn't that significant.

Seth

If you get the gist of the message, then my job is done -- I've effectively communicated the idea.

Poor grammar and spelling is an example of poor craftsmanship. Either the composer is unskilled or uncaring. Why should I care about the message written by someone who doesn't care enough to use the established standards of communication? If the person didn't learn the difference between "then" and "than" in second grade, should I expect to find wisdom within the content of her message?

I've got a lot of content to read throughout the day. I don't have the time to read and consider everything. Spotting poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation is one way I can increase the signal to noise ratio.

-- Seth Johnson

There's a documentary, almost a how-to manual, on this very subject.

Said documentary is available for streaming via Netflix and features Danny DeVito. Probably as the narrator or something.

Seth

Not only that, he wasted a liver that could have been used for a lifetime by a person who should have gotten it

Most assuredly, this liver was used for a lifetime by Steve Jobs.

Seth

"Here are two things we made, they won't be able to run the same programs, we're not going to really demo any of it, we won't tell you the price, we won't tell you when it's shipping, and none of you here get to play with it."

And let me add:

"And we've got each of these devices tethered to power supplies because we've barely gotten the OS optimized for this hardware and we can't depend on battery life lasting through the entire presentation. YMMV when it's released, hopefully."

They've got to undercut Apple's price and provide more and better features.

You've probably already realized this, but didn't mention it in your post, so I thought I'd post an addendum...

With Apple's massive volume discounts in the supply chain, it's unlikely Microsoft can match their price without taking a loss on each sale. This is what they did on the xBox360 and Amazon is doing with the Kindle Fire. Microsoft has the cash reserves to pull this off so long as the board of directors allows.

Here's the trick, though. Their hardware partners (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, et. al) won't be able to do that. Not unless there's dramatic profit-sharing built into content delivery. Because the hardware partners can't sell units at a loss, AND they'll have the additional expense of OS licenses, Microsoft's move here literally shuts the door on any third-party releasing Windows-based tablet devices.

Seth

North American's, and Europeans partially are not yet used to prefab houses.

We've had them in the US for a VERY long time. They're mostly referred to as 'mobile homes', but a more recent euphemism has been applied- 'manufactured housing.'

The common problem with anything prefab vs. custom is quality. The emphasis in prefab is always cost savings. The end user is then defined by those willing to make a trade-off of cheap over nice.

seth

Regardless of whether the actual usage experience is good or bad, the minority market share puts Windows Phone users at a disadvantage when it comes to accessories. I have seen plenty of reasonably-priced ( under $140) aftermarket car stereos that are speccd. to be iPhone compatible and even can control apps like Pandora through their front bezel controls. I haven't really seen any that support WinPhone7 or any nightstand clock radios that can wake you up playing mp3s off a WinPhone7.

It's difficult to just magically have this kind of third-party ecosystem materialize. Definitely a chicken-and-egg situation... Not one that I am eager to be a part of.

Seth

My company pays for hosted Exchange services. It's all taken care of. I'm sorry you have to administer your own Exchange Server. I hear it's quite complicated. You certainly sound angry about it.

I think you've identified an excellent opportunity for Microsoft to move into yet another product space and take over. Sounds like whoever makes this "Exchange Server" product has really dropped the ball on usability and user-experience. All Microsoft needs to do is create a competing product using their awesome Win7phone user-experience experts and put it out in the marketplace. They'll win over all the irate admins like "h4rr4r" and sell millions of licenses. Whoever makes "Exchange Server" will then go out of business by failing to update their product to compete with the new offering.

Seth

You're original post was a regurgitation of Microsoft marketing materials rather than a personal anecdote illustrating the strength of the Win7phone platform. That's why people are accusing you to be an astroturfer.

Judging from your post history, you're very familiar with Microsoft. Likely even to be an employee or have some such interest in the company. With your intimate knowledge of the company, you know it's true that MS marketing employs astro-turfing "street teams" to promote Microsoft products. I suppose you'll just need to do a better job of personalizing your advocacy to avoid this confusion in the future.

Seth

The gist of it being that Windows isn't working, and Elop is killing any possible "plan B" for the company.

I wouldn't exactly call "selling off the patent portfolio to Google" no possible "plan B." That route is only profitable if the proceeds of the sale don't have to be spent on workers' salaries. The layoffs are required so the spoils are entirely given to the investors.

Seth

They survived Vista so they'll survive Windows 8, Microsoft is far too entrenched to flop in one generation.

Of course, we're assuming a failure with Windows 8 / RT, and then there was Vista preceding it. So, it's a bit more than a 'flop' on one generation here.

Don't underestimate the fallout from the evolution to mobile devices. Very big players are holding meetings each day asking each other, "What are we going to do?" It wasn't on any of their product roadmaps. Suddenly new competitors have appeared that they had never considered a threat, and those competitors are raking in unimaginable wealth.

Companies like AMD thought they were only competing against Intel. They had fortified all of their efforts in that battle against Intel. Now they've turned around and recognized they have several more armies attacking for which they have little weapons to defend their business. I hope they make it, but the prospects are dire for AMD. If they are able to shift gears and prosper, Ron Howard needs to film a sequel to Apollo 13 about the guys at AMD who pulled it off.

Oh, and Dell? That company isn't going to be around in two years. Microsoft will be around for a while, but it might look significantly different in the years to come. Assuredly, Ballmer won't be on the payroll much longer.

Seth Johnson

but for the vast majority of business use out there it is very much alive.

What bandwidth is the 'vast majority of business use out there' demanding? I proffer that 99.9999% of business users are passing around documents and files that are less than 200 mb throughout the day. If they're working with larger files, then a USB dongle is acceptable in the workplace.

I work in an enterprise software firm. We have ethernet available, but the wifi seems to work just fine for all levels of the organization.

I'm not suggesting GigE is disappearing. I'm saying that the majority of users in the majority of situations aren't needing it, so there's no compelling argument to build it into the device when doing so carries a price on form factor.

Seth

Except that floppy disk isnt rarely used. I get the impression that every one of my friends with a laptop has used floppy disk at sometime or another (if not on a regular basis) because its more reliable than cdrom, and it just works even if you know nothing about removable media.

Your post reminded me of some stuff people were saying when the iMac came out and was missing features people claimed were essential at the time.

seth

Unless you are a graphics professional, i just dont see the use-case for it.

You can see more stuff on your screen at once. You won't have to scroll as frequently. No disrespect intended, but it sounds like you've only been exposed to 1080 displays. To people who remember, the value of CRTs was that you could run ridiculously-high resolutions-- 1080 sucks. I'm one of those people who has hated LCD displays because I'm sick of not being able to put two documents on the screen at once and see them side-by-side.

Retina for a desktop environment will be fantastic.

seth