If all it takes is google street view to penetrate your security infrastructure then its not the fault of a bunch of images.
Google Street View would provide tremendous value to the average person in India - just like it has in so many other countries - the govt again rather be lazy then invest. Shame.
Firstly there is no shortage of housing, there is a shortage of housing in relation to where people work.
The housing crisis that this person speaks of can be solved if there was much more infrastructure that allows business to thrive in other parts of the US. Sensible Law, access to capital, access to good transport network, access to good educational institutions . .
You just do not put programmers in a room to generate software - programmers are there to improve their real life just like everyone else.
It seemed that this was implied. People are increasingly more educated and jobs requiring educated workers are concentrated in a handful of cities as those cities benefit from network effects.
From what I've seen, most companies are pretty stubborn about remaining in those coastal cities. As long as they can keep finding employees there, they don't have too much incentive to move to better areas with greater supply of labor. Instead, they'll just lobby congress for more H1Bs.
1) Yeah, they are a small resource rich country, not practical for the rest of us.
America, Canada, UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia were resource rich and still are ( America is the largest producer of oil )
and had the opportunity to do what Norway did but chose not to do it.
UK had a huge surplus from north sea oil during the 1990s which is allowed private companies to profit off. Same with America, Australia and Canada.
It is really remarkable how Norway was able to and still is able to think so far ahead then the rest of us.
All of the countries mentioned have royalty regimes which companies have to pay to extract natural resources. Oil extraction in Texas has a 25% royalty rate [2]. This is typically based off of the retail price, not some interim price too.
Governments are very careful to set royalty rates appropriately. Extraction companies compare total costs, so countries with low labour and shipping costs can have higher royalties than countries with high costs. [3] I've seen a report out of New Zealand showing just how mercenary this is, comparing the cost-to-market from several countries complete with royalty rate comparisons.
The difference is in what the countries do with the royalties. For example, Alberta does have a sovereign wealth fund, but it also doesn't collect sales tax. Saudi Arabia has a huge sovereign fund - just not quite as big as Norway's. Saudi Arabia also has no personal income taxes.
Norway's genius is in sending the royalties through the fund, and then only allowing them to spend at most 4% of the total [1] - the estimated average annual return.
Norway is culturally optimized for safe equilibrium. America is culturally optimized for risky advancement. It's pretty starkly different and makes direct single-variable comparisons into shallow exercises in meaninglessness
How so? What stops any state in the US from doing similar things? Genuine question. California for example routinely establishes new and stricter (compared to other US states) environmental rules governing emissions and whatnot. Legalizing pot is similarly fairly out of the mainstream and it is being done independently by several states.
> Legalizing pot is similarly fairly out of the mainstream and it is being done independently by several states.
And for a while those states were subject to ongoing raids from the federal government. The Obama administration has held off, but the legal framework that justifies said raids is very much in place. If opinions blow back the other way they could resume any time.
When you're not sovereign, then your sovereign can tell you what you can and can't do. If you're mostly on their side, it's not a problem, but there's no guarantee it will stay that way forever.
Say a conservative supreme court comes to power and says, "Yeah, pot is totally banned and states can't opt out of it." End of discussion.
The Clean Air Act allows the federal government to give CA the ability to set alternative standards for car emission controls, but it isn't likely it allows CA to ban all fueled vehicles.
...aaaand the federal government (via congress, the executive, or the courts) could find some way to intervene and challenge that and hold it up indefinitely.
California already has stricter emissions standards than most states. You can't purchase a car in Oklahoma and register it in California without making modification to the emissions system.
banning gas stations isn't a ban on new gas vehicles, it's a ban on all gas vehicles. very different, and the people will never vote for it until we are in a very different place than we are today.
I'm talking about the former, the latter i guess is at least somewhat correlated with differing opinions too. Reaaly its the vast difference in size that matters -- USA has SO many differing constituencies with differing needs and wants and opinions. Norway is a municipal government by comparison.
I agree: I believe if you look at average incomes, rapid transit, and geography within a given state or city, you would definitely see different needs.
The average income in San Francisco, which has very good rapid transit solutions is $83k. The average income in Lancaster, Ca (a city at the edge of the Mojave) has an average household income of $51k. Busses are its rapid transit du jour. People need cars there, cheap cars, and they drive far each day.
Alabama, Kentucky, New Mexico, could the cities therein afford an electric car?
I don't mean to offend, but is this a serious question?
Ideological diversity can be measured by simply conducting public opinion polls on a range of public policy issues (social, economic, foreign, domestic, etc etc). This is a pretty well established science. Add in the distribution of said opinions -- a lot of different opinions in about the same mix everywhere is much different from large concentrated enclaves in different geographic regions (ie the Big Sort[1]).
As for different needs, before we even get into ideology simple geography dictates a lot already. California has a lot of forest fires, Louisiana and Texas have a lot of floods, New England has a lot of snow.
Then you get into urban vs. rural -- America has some of the most vast expanses of rural land and many of the world's biggest cities. Urban areas have very different needs from rural ones.
THEN you get into the differing needs of the peoples themselves which is affected by a million different variables. Education levels. Income levels. Health. Languages spoken in different regions. Populations with many recent immigrants have differing legal and social needs from populations of ninth generation native-born citizens. And on and on and on.
I feel like you are pulling the discussion in an unrelated direction.
You seem to be implying that the US is the only place with diversity and that that somehow is an excuse for the US not having social security measures common in other countries.
Also what is the range of opinions in the US and how does it compare with the range of opinions in Norway?
> THEN you get into the differing needs of the peoples themselves which is affected by a million different variables. Education levels. Income levels. Health. Languages spoken in different regions. Populations with many recent immigrants have differing legal and social needs from populations of ninth generation native-born citizens. And on and on and on.
But are these requirements really that fundamentally different?
> You seem to be implying that the US is the only place with diversity and that that somehow is an excuse for the US not having social security measures common in other countries.
100% nope. Where did you get that? I'm in favor of social safety nets. This entire thread is about how easy it is to enact things like "No petrol based cars by 2025".
That's easy to do when you've got 4 million people spread over a small amount of space who come from similar backgrounds. That's harder to do with 300 million people spread over a large amount of space who come from different backgrounds. A small club is much easier to manage than a large club, I don't see what's so hard to comprehend about this.
> But are these requirements really that fundamentally different?
Yes... insofar as you get groups of people who stop thinking that it's their responsibility to cover the costs of the other group. Should people in North Dakota pay for national flood insurance of people who live in southern flood prone regions, even though it's basically guaranteed to flood there eventually? Should people in New Hampshire pay to replace homes lost in california forest fires even though it's basically guaranteed to burn in certain places? What you think is "right" on this issue doesn't matter. What matters is that people in those regions have differing opinions on the matter, and it is objectively harder to get them all to agree than a small country where people tend to have the same problems concentrated in a small place they all share.
Throw in the really controversial stuff like social issues, and the left and the right constantly trying to push their vision of it on the whole country at once, and you can see why maintaining a continent sized empire is more logistically challenging that keeping a small country together.
Religions.
Church of Norway (Evangelical Lutheran - official) 82.1%, other Christian 3.9%, Muslim 2.3%, Roman Catholic 1.8%, other 2.4%, unspecified 7.5% (2011 est.)
Not even a mix of 'white people', not even Baptists and Methodists, just Norwegian Lutherans.
It's a matter of different politics. Norway chose not to basically let private companies take all the profit from natural resources, while in the UK there's this weird system in place that has politicians ruining public orgs like infrastructure providers to afterwards claim they fixed it, once they pushed for privatization, and all they did was get it back to where it was before in quality of service. After that, it's profit-driven and the population has to fight for laws to keep up existing quality standards they pay for with taxes. There are European countries like Finland where you don't worry which school your kids go to because there are no good or bad school districts. Same for hospitals. If you have to pay taxes for public services, then it must be fair and of equal quality for everybody, or you must turn it all into a Friedman-style privatize-everything system, which may or may not work but sounds thought through and might.
The current government wants to sell off the Flytog (Airport Train). This is a state owned enterprise that even the seriously capitalist Norwegian financial magazine Kapital says is one of the best run companies in the country and should not be privatised. There have been serious suggestions that Statoil should be sold off completely. The electricity system has been privatised even though most of the energy is generated by rain that can hardly be said to be owned by anyone.
Regarding Statoil.
The government currently owns about 1/3 of it. The oil income for the state does not come from the profit of the company but the taxes they put on the companies that extract oil (which is about 80%) and the sale of licenses through Petoro.
Selling Statoil (and the other ones) have absolutely no comparison to what Thatcher did in the 80s if that is what you are insinuating.
Regarding the power, the majority of the plants are owned by Statkraft, a 100% government owned company and is most definitely not privatized.
Flytoget runs well because even though it is owned by the government, they have had a very hands off approach and let them operate without interference. The same can be said of Statoil, the only reason it has done so well is that the government has been mostly hands off. My father was in the top management before retirement and has been very clear on this. Whenever the government tried to interfere it just made problems.
In essence, as a fellow Norwegian i disagree with you on these subjects (and some of what you write is simply not true).
What's the background on Arlanda Express. I've used it and wasn't too impressed but it wasn't late or super slow. Though I wouldn't consider it an express connection from the airport to central station compared to what's possible on rails.
Basically the government put up much of the financing but gave a private company monopoly on traffic until 2040. It was sold to venture capital which because of tax planning are paying little to no tax.
Liberal economic policy states that profit is the domain of the private enterprise, infrastructure that can't turn a profit is the domain of the state. I think it's a crazy idea, but that's the gist: if there's money to be made the government should leave that to private business and trust the invisible hand to make things right.
Because the government should run the country and not small companies.
If the company is exploiting strategic resources like oil it should be taxed, not owned as far as I am concerned.
Venezuela is run by inept kleptocrats. Either the ineptitude or the kleptocracy part would be enough to keep a similar scheme from working in Venezuela.
>In a historical sense, Canadian dollar isn't particularly low, at least not so low that I would call it "massive flooring".
There was only one period of history where we were this badly fucked. And that was when this idiot's father was PM and destroyed our economy. It took 3 decades to pay back the debt he created and have our dollar recover. And now it is happening again.
My apologies, Mulroney was worse[0]; as a conservative I tend to block Mulroney from my memory. At the time of Harper's 2008 budget, a deficit budget and the first of his majority government, the Canadian economy was being lauded internationally for its resilience in spite of the American collapse.
1. The value of the Canadian dollar right now is much closer to the historical norm than it was when at parity for a relatively short period.
2. The unemployment rate is marginally higher than in the USA. It's bad here, but it's bad over there too... the recession never ended.
3. That's true, and to be honest, I'm glad it's expensive. Expensive means there is something and/or someone there worth saving. I would argue the Halifax explosion was far more decimating, but cost significantly less to respond to, as everything and everyone was there one minute and gone the next.
Canada is and was doing fine. As much as my heart breaks for Fort McMurray, in a country this large, most of us are a world away (Ontario myself) and it has had little tangible impact on us beyond a marginal increase in gas prices.
No offense, but Trudeau is not 'our Obama.' Trudeau is the son of a former Prime Minister who is attempting to implement dramatic social reforms just as his father did. Despite the easy comparison of Democrats to Liberals and Conservatives to Republicans, when you actually look at their policies it's clear they do not reside at the same points on the political spectrum.
The Obama comparison resonated with me - not in the specifics like policy, or how left/right they are - but in spirit, level of excitement and general sexiness. Obama after bush feels alot like Trudeau after Harper.
> The unemployment rate is marginally higher than in the USA. It's bad here, but it's bad over there too... the recession never ended.
That's blatantly incorrect.
- The US unemployment rate is 9.7% on the U6. The Canadian equivalent would be closer to 13%-15% [1] (the Canadian R8 is not the equivalent of the U6). That's not a marginal difference, it's a significant difference. The US U6 rate peaked at near 18%, six years ago. A 50% reduction is a very obvious signal that the recession ended a long time ago. The U6 rate before the recession in 2006 was 9%. If the recession had never ended, the U6 rate would still be extremely elevated.
- The US has gained a massive number of full-time jobs since the recession. That metric is at a record high. [2a] [2b]
- Total US employment is six million higher than the peak before the recession.
- US manufacturing output is at all-time highs and has climbed dramatically since the recession [3]. Total construction spending on manufacturing in the US is three to four times higher than it was in 2002-2006. None of that would be happening if the US were in recession.
- Real hourly earnings have been expanding since 2012-2013 [4]. While simultaneously inflation has been tame by most measures. Hourly earnings are about 7% higher than 2006. If the recession hadn't ended, that would not be the case.
- Government tax revenue, which is highly dependent on income taxes, is at record highs.
- The labor force participation rate has been stable for three years, despite millions of boomers retiring.
- In terms of income vs debt, US households have dramatically de-leveraged from the debt highs leading up to the great recession, and are in far better shape than Canadian households [5a] [5b].
- US household median disposable incomes are among the highest on earth. That metric obviously would not be doing so well if the US had spent the last ten years in a recession. US GDP per capita is ranked #5 out of all nations, 25% higher than Canada - an excellent sign of high economic productivity. [6]
So US economic productivity is extremely high, US unemployment has fallen by 50% back to a historically healthy level, full-time employment is at record highs, wage growth has been outpacing inflation for years, household income to debt ratios have improved dramatically, household balance sheets have never been higher, manufacturing output is at record highs. Uh, so what's the problem exactly?
The US measures unemployment differently, you're right. Which one is a more accurate measure however is up for debate. Given the higher US poverty rate, lesser social services and lower minimum wage, I don't think underemployment in Canada and underemployment in the USA carry the same weight.
I should add current Canadian unemployment (as of March) is under 1% higher than the 2006 level as reported by StatsCan.
I think you can attribute the high level of Canadian household debt to the insane cost of real estate in urban Canada. Real estate prices have inflated dramatically.
You're right, I didn't use the word recession correctly. But I don't think anyone can reasonably argue Canada or the US are currently in boom time.
US GDP per capita may be higher than Canadian GDP per capita, sure, but US external debt is 114% of your GDP, versus 92% of Canada's.
On the bright side, it is opening up some long-overdue political dialogue. For example diversification of the Alberta economy away from natural resources.
Calgary's downtown office towers have reached record high vacancy rates, with so many engineers laid off. I'm hoping this is an opportunity for tech companies to take notice and move in.
>> On the bright side, it is opening up some long-overdue political dialogue. For example diversification of the Alberta economy away from natural resources.
As far as I know, Alberta's provincial government hasn't prevented growth in other sectors. Natural resources have made a lot of sense, giving their abundance here. And despite the roller coaster ride of natural resources, the province's finances are some of the healthiest in the entire country:
- Lowest Debt-GDP ratio in the country (-1.2% for Alberta, compared with 39.6% in Ontario and 49.6% in Quebec)
- No Provincial Sales Tax
- 3rd highest spending per capita, next to SK and NL (30% higher than Ontario and 43% higher than Quebec)
- GDP/Capita almost double of every other province
And all of that doesn't include the transfer payments which go out to the Eastern Provinces.
All that to say, I do hope your right and the tech ccene is Alberta can grow from current vacancies and other problems in the province. I think the province could really benefit from some natural growth in other sectors.
I am not sure this is going to happen. Calgary is a very conservative city, very little public transportation, a terrible cab system (and a city council who opposes alternatives), terrible road network (especially crowchild) no nightlife and very conservative drug and alcohol laws.
Software engineerings in Calgary are lucky to make 70k canadian (54k usd), so the good ones just move the the USA or work remotely. I don't see Calgary becoming a booming tech scene anytime soon.
>Software engineerings in Calgary are lucky to make 70k canadian
I have to disagree with that statement. As an example, here is a system admin job posting by City of Calgary. The pay range is $77,891 - 117,609 per annum
Those city and CBE jobs are few and far between and usually pay much higher than private jobs. The 77k is starting wage more or less no matter what seniority and rises with yrs of service in the union.
I think most intermediate / senior engineers can make 75k a year, but starting is very low, like 50k.
That seems really wrong to me. I work for TELUS and starting wages for entry level programming positions is around the 55k-70k, and then for more intermediate positions (something like 5 years experience) you are looking at 70-100K
> Software engineerings in Calgary are lucky to make 70k canadian (54k usd)
That sounds low to me. Rates in Edmonton are considerably higher and I doubt Calgary skews that much lower.
Hand-wavy, since it varies by exact variety of software you're doing, but I'd say that was more than 20k+ below market for intermediate-senior exp. Still lower than the US, of course.
Calgary is more conservative than Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec, Vancouver, and Victoria.
Perhaps it's more liberal than Red Deer or Kelowna, but that's not saying much at all.
It's also just an awful place to live. The urban sprawl makes public transit pale in comparison even to Vancouver which also has really bad transit. It's an 80 dollar cab ride to the airport which is like an hour and a half from the downtown.
There's the Stampede, I guess, but frankly I've never found the culture in Calgary much to write home about either.
If you like pickup trucks and imported American culture, then sure, Calgary sounds great.
Calgary is demographically young and cosmopolitan. The average Calgarian came from somewhere else in Canada. Their political views reflect this. When Nenshi was elected, Toronto's media had a massive freak-out over the fact that he's a Muslim. This did not happen in Calgary because Calgarians didn't view his choice of religion as being pertinent to his job. Meanwhile, the enlightened, progressive people of Toronto elected Rob Ford.
Calgary's CTrain has the third highest annual ridership among North America's light rail systems [1]. The bus system is lagging behind, but the LRT system is being expanded. The airport is a 22 min drive from downtown under normal circumstances. There is traffic congestion during peak travel times, but absolutely nothing like in Toronto or Vancouver.
If all you know about Calgary's cultural scene is the Stampede, one has to wonder if you've even been to Calgary.
In short, thanks for slagging a city you clearly know nothing about.
>Meanwhile, the enlightened, progressive people of Toronto elected Rob Ford.
I'm not from Toronto but the fact is that the barely-literate, anti-intellectual, suburban outlying population of places like (edit) Etobicoke elected Rob Ford.
edit: ah yes, the old reddit-style downvote because the truth hurts. The simple fact is the man was a train wreck, and his supporters are basically Tea Party North.
As I said, I don't live there. So no, I didn't know that. But I do know that the bulk of Rob Ford's support is/was mostly in the outlying suburbs of Toronto, and not "old toronto". Substitute Markham for someplace like Etobicoke and I think the point still stands.
I get the impression Calgary has changed somewhat since when I lived in Edmonton in the 90s.
I still think Edmonton is cooler, and would never live in Calgary, cuz, well, I'm from Edmonton area... :-) But it seems a little less cowboy these days.
Your mention of Alberta made me realize—the low dollar, the unemployment, and the wildfire are all hitting the province of Alberta in particular. (Respectively, oil dollars, oil jobs, and oil sands, may be responsible.) And the three are intertwined: the fires aren't just destroying nature and wildlife, they're destroying liquid-asset real estate and arable farmland (i.e. jobs) as well. A lot of people are going to be suddenly qualified for income assistance in Alberta this year.
If Alberta were its own country—as a few of their conservative pundits have semi-jokingly called for—this would be the point where you'd start to see pleas for international relief aid on the news, like those from Indonesia after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Instead, the Canadian government is going to have to try to soak up all those losses on its own. I wonder if its treasury is even that big?
If Alberta were it's own country their coffers would have been much bigger to deal with this mess. They probably would have also have accepted firefighters right away from other countries instead of waiting. They're is really no farmland up near fort mac. Don't know how farmland jobs are being destroyed?
The city in Alberta that makes more sense for an software engineering industry is Edmonton. The University of Alberta is one of the top CS/engineering schools on the continent.
I keep mentioning this to my coworkers at Google. A second Canadian engineering office in Edmonton would be awesome. And then I could move closer to my family.
During the more heated oil years no one was looking for a job. And this might come as a surprise, but that actually makes it really hard to hire, even if you have competitive offers.
This might be different in other markets where job hopping is common and the overall supply of qualified hires is high (Edmonton often loses out to Calgary and Vancouver), but you don't see that as much here, unfortunately.
I hope you understand that unless you have a job lined up or citizenship it is somewhat difficult to move to Canada.
If I may make a modest suggestion perhaps try visiting Canada for a period of time in a region where you would want to eventually live instead of relying on the opinions of your friends (who may be biased) or statistics (which may not tell the whole story.)
Canada is big. Calgary is one small part, and that guy was exaggerating anyways. Let's remember that Calgary elected mayor Naheed Nenshi, a famously liberal Muslim who is pushing for better transit and more intensification. Iirc, Calgary was also the provincial stronghold of the NDP, a hard leftward swing of Alberta politics against the long control of the Progressive Conservative party.
But yes, the pay sucks for coders outside of Vancouver and Toronto, and there the insane housing market makes it not worth it anyways.
> Calgary was also the provincial stronghold of the NDP
Correction: Edmonton is the stronghold of the NDP. Premier Notley's seat in the Legislature is in Edmonton's Strathcona riding, and I believe before last year Edmonton was the only city to elect NDP MLA's. Calgary has always been a Progressive Conservative stronghold.
Calgary has been die hard right wing for years. Edmonton is the stronghold for the NDP. And historically that was always the case. (I'm old enough to remember Jan Reimer as mayor in the 80s...)
> # Continued job losses months on end - Unemployment rate of 7.1% !
I wouldn't get too hung up on that -- historically that's a fairly decent rate for Canada.
For a variety of reasons (difference in the way the rate is measured, and structural differences between the two countries) Canada's unemployment rate has generally been several points higher than the US since the late-70s.
At least one analysis I've seen of the structural differences pinned the higher rate on the fact that unemployed Canadians were more likely to be seeking to return to the workforce than US counterparts, inflating the number since they don't "drop out" of the workforce entirely.
edit: and the low dollar is a mixed bag. Higher basic good prices, but somewhat of a protective for middle-class manufacturing jobs.
Massive mining industry including potash, precious ore and diamonds.
Massive hydroelectric power system (Northeastern US guess where much of your power comes from).
Massive agriculture industry
Massive seafood industry
Massive forest industry
Add to that movies, music, manufacturing, cars, steel mills, shipbuilding ($26B ship contract near me), munitions and software industry. We used to have some pretty good hardware too remember Matrox and ATI video cards?
Oil and gas aren't the only things we produce but even so there is also a lot of it on the east coast.
Anecdotally, most people I know and talk to in Canada (myself included) are doing fine; the low dollar hurts if you want imports or to travel abroad, but is good for exports and tourism. Alberta is hurting because of oil, but other provinces are doing decently well employment wise.
A lower Canadian dollar is good for Canada. We are an export economy. It's not great for consumers, but the dollar isn't even that bad right now. It has been far lower, and during 'boom' times.
1) Extremely low interest rates combined with government backed mortgages (CMHC) means lots of people now have mortgages they will be unable to carry if interests rates rise by 1% (as that would be a 50% increase in their interest payments...)
2) Foreign investment (Vancouver+Toronto).
Well, long term this may be healthy for the economy and unemployment. Hardly polite conversation, but this allows infrastructure upgrades on a massive scale, which implies employment of many and an increased cash flow for the region.
Our Obama? How so? Obama campaigned on change. The only thing that is a change w/ the way the liberals do things is they're going to legalize marijuana. Everything else is just icing on the same cake.
The west doesn't tend to have a lot of influence. Especially when a candidate is popular out east (Ontario and Quebec). When it's conservatives coming to power it's different since Quebec tends to avoid voting conservative.
I'm from BC. Polls close and the victory is called before votes even results even really start coming in.
>What? Obama wasn't elected on the strength of nice hair and Daddy's legacy.
Neither was our current PM. You're thinking the way the Conservative political strategists did. They ran their election against Trudeau Senior, not the current one.
>Do you really think Trudeau would be PM (now) without his name?
Yeah I do. You've got a young, good-looking, charismatic leader with what look like progressive policies on things like drugs and other social issues who occasionally slips up with the etiquette like calling an MP a piece of shit on the floor of the Commons. It makes him look like a real guy, and less like a standard shitty politician, which is what the electorate are sick of. He's also a relative newcomer and time spent out of the limelight of either the PMO or the Official Opposition means he looks like a fresh change.
That's exactly the opposite of Harper and Mulcair, the former of whom comes off as stodgy, out-of-touch and kind of an asshole, and the latter of whom comes off as one of the most fake, manufactured politicians of the modern age.
No offense but based on what happened here point #4 isn't profit. However if you read up on him they may have gotten closer to a Sanders if anything. Based on his actions he has try to what Obama promised to do (Transparency, cabinet mandate and such is publicly available) but never intended to do.
The question that exist is, will his continued openness/transparency in governance keep alive the honeymoon period long enough to deliver on the large number of promises made in an unfriendly economy. You can promise the moon but economics will not let him deliver it.
I wouldn't buy the DELL XPS 13 due to my experience with the Samsung Series 9 and seeing other people use Macbook Air.
All these classes of laptop are not really durable - they last maybe 2-3 years with heavy use - so unless you are ready to shell out a huge amount of money every 2 years for a laptop it it not worth getting these shiny laptops.
My current laptop - Thinkpad X1 Carbon is like a wife - durable and I can have some garantee of failure tolerance.
# There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ?
[1] '.. Bryan is a writer and works as the Social Media Marketing Manager of SUS ...'
how does this person know this laptop is good for developers without being a developer ? It says right there that his job is marketing ! wake up sheeps !
> # There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ?
That's amazing, I never knew that. I loved my old Thinkpad T42, got a good 4 years out of it before the hinge on the screen broke.
I thought that was impressive too, given how poorly I treat my equipment. It fell out of my bag numerous times but never had any problems except for the screen hinge finally wearing down at a corner from overuse.
Then I got a 2010 MacBook Air. I'm still using it today. It's got numerous dents on top, bottom and all corners, and a small crack at the bottom of the screen (which strangely hasn't resulted in any dead pixels), but otherwise it's still in full working order. I remain hugely surprised at how well it's lasted.
Despite the general consensus of Macbooks being very well built, and Thinkpads being built like tanks, this anecdote is definitely the opposite way around.
Now if I could get a nipple on a Macbook, or a decent trackpad on a nippled-Thinkpad, I'd have found my perfect laptop!
Anecdotal, but I also have an 11inch air that I have abused the crap out off since 2013, and it is still going strong, though the battery charge is less than it was brand new. Also the trackpad has completely spoiled me now and I'm struggling to find laptops for Linux with trackpads I like.
I think your experience was an exception, maybe you were more careful with the MacBook Air subconsciously because you knew it couldn't withstand being thrown around like a cheap whore ?
Also you can watch how the markets values second hand laptops, generally you will see that second hand thinkpads retain more of its original market price then second hand any other laptop.
Having said that thinkpads usually do not have the best screens - but even though its slightly brutal to not have a good screen anymore, I am more comfortable with the fact that I do not have to worry too much about my laptop not working or overheating.
> maybe you were more careful with the MacBook Air subconsciously because you knew it couldn't withstand being thrown around
I suspect the opposite, actually. The T42 I paid for myself and cared for like a baby, until I heard from too many people that it was built like a tank, and started treating it as such. The MBA was originally an employer-supplied laptop, and thus was unloved from the start. It fell to the ground many, many times. All the corners are dented in, and I once built a computer ontop of it without realising (which then dented in the lid, and probably resulted in the crack in the screen).
I powered on the T42 recently. Such a beautiful machine. Shame fixing the screen hinges requires so much disassembly. I have very little chance of doing it correctly, and the value of the laptop is so low now it's not worth paying someone to do it for me.
Sadly, I'll probably end up buying a macbook pro when the next refresh comes through. Too much friction changing platforms again.
> # There is a reason NASA only approves thinkpads in space - ask yourself why your laptop is not being used by astronauts ?
I remember this being true in the IBM days, but has is it still accurate after the Lenovo-fication of the Thinkpad line?
Some of the key features that would make them great (e.g. ease of field repair) seem to have been greatly diminished - especially on the lighter models.
There is a price to be paid for tightly coupled system.
I forgot but there was this good book on mathematics that paul graham recommended.
That book talks about the fact that every 100 years in mathematics there is an explosion of innovation and then at the end of a period there is integration.
Having diversity is how things improve - its also the basic law of physics - entropy.
By creating chaos we learn more about how to do things better, either it be software or mathematics. So to those software craftsman who are complaining about diversity - grow up, this is how all of science works.
Google Street View would provide tremendous value to the average person in India - just like it has in so many other countries - the govt again rather be lazy then invest. Shame.