When was the last time Microsoft had a unified vision that was focused on building an amazing line of products that integrated well with each other?
I can only think of short snippets in history where they moved in that direction for maybe a year or two & then went scatterbrain.
Microsoft has benefited from a monopoly in the enterprise and has never been forced to innovate from a product perspective. See Slack/Teams as a case study of how they have operated when even slightly pushed.
* Edit - .NET, C#, TypeScript teams are an exception to the above. Highly underrated. Amazing talent there. Not sure who all gets credit. Anders & Mads for sure though.
I'd say the late '80s - early '90s when Microsoft was building the early versions of Microsoft Office. Integration among productivity apps was one of the key points of competition among all of the office suites of that era.
There were other huge coordinated efforts like the TwC initiative and the Windows 10 refactoring but those were invisible to end users.
For enterprises it almost always comes down to - does it reduce risk, is it easy to manage, authentication & authorization features, is it good enough & is it compatible with our current stuff.
It would help if Americans educated themselves on the basics of taxes. They would realize quickly how W-2 income employees pay a very high tax rate when you factor in FICA vs high wealth individuals who pay little to no FICA or income taxes. Add in the benefit of compound interest, cheap margin loans, and you have an incredibly unfair system. It's also why many wealthy individuals argue for a "smaller" government & less taxes. They travel private, go to private schools & prefer to avoid anything "public".
All this is with just the very basics, not counting step up basis, trusts or anything slightly complicated.
I'm not joking, in Australia the tax "filing" takes like 2 mins, you literally go, next, next, look at the details, "yep looks correct" put in your claims, and then submit.
You are all done.
Unless you have something wack going on its not even a process. I have had signups which are more complicated then it.
American taxes on the other hand mega suck, and have 9000 pitfalls.
Finland doesn't even ask you to approve. They send you a suggestion and if you do not amend it by deadline they take it as it is.
And amending is online form where everything is clearly explained, links to documentation. And longest time it takes is actually to look up numbers from your own records.
In the US, property tax typically works that way for many people. You get something in the mail that says this is what your tax will be. If you happen to have a loan for your house, the bank in charge of your loan handles it.
The only opposing political argument I've heard is that if income taxes were this simple, many people would be overpaying. I think that argument has many obvious flaws. Unfortunately few US citizens demand anything of their politicians on this topic or other topics that would dramatically improve their lives. Instead they care more about vanity topics that don't even effect them.
There are 3 things always overlooked in this conversation.
- It’s not just representatives but their staff, family and friends. See the Covid scandals as an example.
- Often the information they’re privy to can come from their networks outside of government. The current transparency laws give us insights into their family members’ investments which is incredibly beneficial public knowledge.
- The current laws have no teeth and are not enforced well. Immediate disclosure should be required & automated for elected representatives, judges, family & staff within 24 hours. Late reporting should be immediate sale and loss of any profits.
If there is a bubble then the hyperscalers with dominant market shares and big cashflows are most likely to survive if it bursts. Google, MSFT and Amazon. Oracle are on very shaky ground. Their bonds are selling at a discount to par, even though interest rates are dropping, and their debt to equity ratio is nearing 400%. AI is an existential bet for them, but not so much for the others.
Not just this but the lack of diligence by companies that allow accounts to be created, bills to go unpaid & then sent to collection agencies is something that needs to change.
Speaking as someone who has had companies give away my PII and then other companies open accounts with it without contacting me until bills are due.
None of this should be the fault of innocent individuals.
You are correct and I sincerely apologize. I have always had immense respect for my conservative peers. This is something else carrying the mantle of conservative, cowing the conservatives to silence.
This gets proposed a lot. The reason it isn't more frequent is due to the cost of the structure to hold the panels & risks of people running into them.
It would be great if these costs could come down. Parking lots, animal pastures & other areas could be protected & create energy at the same time.
Here is a large installation over surface parking at a VA medical center. I think it is just a matter of time before this becomes the standard everywhere.
People drive into buildings all the time. Like it's actually like over a hundred per day sort of thing in the US. Happens really frequently here in Canada as well.
If you include stuff like stop signs, light poles, mailboxes, and fences its probably in the several thousands. Fixed object collisions are super common.
Probably ya'll need to update the driver's license exam. First, in the written exam, include rules against hitting stationary structures, and quiz them on it before issuing the learner's permit. Then also test for it during the road test. If they can't avoid a stationary structure, perhaps fail them?
In the US, this is not a problem unless you are drunk. When you are driving drunk, you are violating the law anyway.
We don't know the state of the multiple drivers to cause these posts, or for the drivers to run into the corresponding posts, but they're a) in the US (Atlanta, Oakland, and Brookfield, CT) and b) it sounds like it's happened more than a few times.
There are 2.75 - 4 billion buildings on this planet. Something will happen a few times or more than few times. Sometimes asteroids hit the planet and most species go extinct.
Even animals (with significantly smaller brains) know how to avoid stationary structures (and even moving things that are trying to eat them!).
Where are ya'll from that people are running into stationary structures all the time? If people have an epidemic of running into stationary things, wouldn't there be a 100x problem of them running into moving things - like cars, trucks, trains, airplanes?
Regardless, why is it okay for people to run into any stationary structure but not okay for people to run into structures that hold solar panels? Or is there some effort to remove ALL stationary structures because of this problem?
If you put solar panels in parking lots, you're adding a lot of posts to the parking lot to hold them that weren't there before. People are going to crash into those posts in parking lots often.
For example, light posts constantly get bumped in parking lots.
To hold your solar panels you need really strong posts that can both hold them and get bumped into by vehicles. Especially in the USA where you have giant vehicles & tight parking spaces.
This all adds to the cost before you even get to electricity storage & transmission.
I think every engineer knows that all things come with trade-offs.
A great engineer, however, is able to readily admit when one option among others has a far, far greater set of costs than another, for the exact same benefit.
And if said engineer can't decide (for claim of ignorance), they mature to learn that the experience and knowledge of others is the best source for understanding the trade-offs involved to make a decision.
I think its pretty clear solar power has trade-offs. I think it's also obvious solar has far less negatives than all other power generating sources.
Interesting that just sharing a link of the trade-offs got a bunch of down votes when I didn't even take a side.
Maybe it was a misunderstanding of my intentions to purely share information based on your reply.
If you don't mind, please help me understand. Did it come across as anti-solar in general? That's how I'm interpreting your reply.
The article, which I wonder if anyone read, argues local environmental concerns based on the giant size of the solar farm. One of those things was mountain sheep that migrate across the lands. This would be creating a wall of sorts. Another was Native American archeology. What I'm ignorant of is if any of these issues were addressed at all & what the impact is.
In a general sense, I'm a huge fan of solar farms. I think they make more sense than using land to plant corn for energy, which funny enough also got me down votes here.
I didn't downvote or anything, but I read the article a few hours ago and felt the information in that article is only political. If we're talking about destruction, ecological or of heritage, your choice not in whether it happens, but how much and where. Consequently, I feel that the stated reasons of political action groups are usually myopic at best. But really, I always suspect they're speaking in bad faith.
If you really care about animals, plants, or archeology, you're probably not a fan of coal or natural gas, which are obviously destructive of geology and habitats, and that's _without_ getting into more nebulous and catastrophic climate stuff.
I tried digging deeper into understanding the opposition's arguments. I do understand my article was light on details & as you stated, fairly politicized arguments.
Based on my research, 1/3 of the land that would have had major construction disturbances effecting plants & archeology. A fair counter argument is that construction crews deal with archeology all the time. I would also assume it should be fairly easy to take rare plants into account & make sure there is an equal amount grown & taken care of after construction is completed. I don't know what plants they are concerned about, but solar farms do improve a lot of vegetation by offering shade & reducing evaporation.
The entire area was to be fenced off which would prevent big horn sheep migration. It seems no pathways were offered to be built to help with migration of animals. This seems like something that could be fairly easy to do though it would add expense of fencing & reduce some solar panels possibly.
"When I didn't even take a side" sea-lioning and worse is so prevalent with regards to solar, wind, and climate change that frankly if you are going to link dump without much of your own input, it's going to be written off as disingenuous.
So many people constantly talk about the costs of solar. If that is all you are contributing to the discussion, you aren't adding much new or interesting, in my opinion.
As an aside, I also just generally hate when commentors link to stuff with nothing else. It feels smug. Start the discussion you want to spark with honesty and earnest thoughts. Those who "just ask questions" engage in this same tactic to derail topics and pretend like they didn't take any side. Just "linking to useful information". What's useful about it? Highlight something to start discussion.
I am not claiming you are doing these things. But surely you are aware of and can appreciate the tactics of those that spread misinformation.
That's fair & I get your point. Thank you. The parent link was really light on details. My link gave some opposition reasons but I could have summed them up or dug into them better. Since it's a very local issue, I assumed getting real info would be challenging without digging into local government minutes.
While I was just trying to help understand some opposing reasons, you're right that it didn't add much to the overall discussion.
I can only think of short snippets in history where they moved in that direction for maybe a year or two & then went scatterbrain.
Microsoft has benefited from a monopoly in the enterprise and has never been forced to innovate from a product perspective. See Slack/Teams as a case study of how they have operated when even slightly pushed.
* Edit - .NET, C#, TypeScript teams are an exception to the above. Highly underrated. Amazing talent there. Not sure who all gets credit. Anders & Mads for sure though.
reply