Gates and MS Don't See Eye-To-Eye On CO2 288
Sam Machkovech writes "Bill Gates's speech at last week's TED Conference centered on 'moving to zero-carbon energy, and our need to reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.' His choice of subject was an abrupt turn from The Gates Foundation's typical humanitarian topics, but he insisted that energy innovation is crucial to his Foundation's goals. A move by Microsoft today proves that Gates's old company has less interest in that carbon-neutral goal — Microsoft has begun campaigning against a bridge redesign that would result in more bus and transit options for commuters between Seattle and the company's homebase of Redmond, WA."
wait, what...? (Score:5, Funny)
"moving to zero-carbon energy"
That would be the end of life as we know it. Quite literally, as a matter of fact, since we're all made of carbon.
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Go and sequester yourself.
Re:wait, what...? (Score:5, Funny)
You are hereby awarded 1 "I was retardedly obtuse on the internets on purpose" merit badge.
Congratulations.
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Re:wait, what...? (Score:4, Funny)
That would be the end of life as we know it. Quite literally, as a matter of fact, since we're all made of carbon.
Bah. I'm nitrogen-based, so the only thing I'll need to worry about is head shoulders shampoo.
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Bah. I'm nitrogen-based, so the only thing I'll need to worry about is head shoulders shampoo.
Dude, all I have to do is inhale and I will end you.
Re:wait, what...? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not made out of carbon, I'm made out of jesus's love power!
You don't exist. Go away.
Devil's advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
The changes Microsoft made to both Windows Vista and 7 have resulted in more CO2 savings that most other efforts combined. I am of course talking about the default and recommended power settings in Windows along with the "best practice" guidelines given to their corporate partners. Microsoft has also added support for power saving features to Windows ahead of what the hardware and or drivers in the market offered...
Re:Devil's advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
>>The changes Microsoft made to both Windows Vista and 7 have resulted in more CO2 savings that most other efforts combined.
Which is really sad, since the overall effect is quite small.
If we'd gone nuclear since the 70s, we'd have met every CO2 target out there today, and we wouldn't be having all this annoying debate. Well, we'd be having some kind of annoying debate, but not so much over CO2 production.
I watched that talk by Gates a few days ago, and he has an interesting design for a nuclear reactor, that basically would work like burning a candle - "burning" starts on one end of the nuclear log and proceeds down the log until 50 years later, when you pop it out and put a new log in. The little bit of waste left over could be put into a new log, and it runs on unenriched uranium, which makes fuel a lot less expensive, and a lot more available. It could all be a pipe dream, but it would be great if they could get it working. Given that Gates can bankroll all the R&D out of his deep pockets, I'm cautiously optimistic about Terrapower.
The sad thing is that environmentalists have a sort of knee jerk reaction every time they hear the word nuclear, even though it is the only power source that is cheap, safe, and good for the environment. The only people who oppose it are the ignorant (Nuclear Power means Nuclear War!) or people who think life would be AWESOME if we could all go back to living in caves.
Re:Devil's advocate (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, you have created some sort of God-Emperor of Strawmen there.
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>>Wow, you have created some sort of God-Emperor of Strawmen there.
He grants spells up to 6th level, too.
But seriously, it's true.
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Well, I don't know if it's completely true. No one can know if it's completely true. From what I've heard, there's reactors now where the waste is something actually useful, or can be easily converted to non-hazardous materials, so at the very least, now is the time to start a massive push to nuclear, supplimented by renewable sources like tidal/geothermal/solar/wind as regionally appropriate.
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The sad thing is that environmentalists have a sort of knee jerk reaction every time they hear the word nuclear
I think it's a small but vocal minority. I doubt any environmentalist that thoroughly researched it would recommend coal or gas over nuclear. (those are the current solutions in the US)
Certainly, we should avoid living within 50 miles of a nuclear reactor, just to be safe - but denying such an efficient form of energy generation because of possible risks seems fool hearty - and perhaps even hypocritical. For example, there's significantly more evidence out there that genetically modified corn (and the fruct
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We should also consider the impact of gamers on CO2 emission. This growing population insist on 700-1200W power supplied to run obscenely inefficient video cards. Thankfully some manufacturers are greener than others. 343W in 2005 to less than 270W in today's best. Still we need to do some work here.
troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are plenty of perfectly good reasons to oppose a bridge that may well be a bad idea to build.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure they've already de-trolled the area. It's a nasty process evicting a troll from his home once he's settled in.
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Well, there's a troll [wikipedia.org] under the Aurora Bridge, which is only a couple of miles away.
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This is not a troll bridge. It's a fee bridge.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Informative)
They're opposing any further delay for replacing an old, existing bridge. There is already an approved design for the new bridge, but some want to change the design to accommodate more HOV and public-transit lanes. From TFA:
Apparently, the existing bridge could fall into the water at the next earthquake and it's a main route for Microsoft employees to/from the campus.
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So Microsoft is Anti-Envriomentalist because it doesn't want to add public transit that most people wont use. Being a real environmentalist is being a realist too. Every choice you take has a trade off, Trying to push too green may cause a bridge that is not efficiently used. Thus creating a negative impact. Being green just to wave a flag to say Look I am green I am a good human being is often the worst thing you can do as you are not evaluating what you are doing and what tradeoffs you have.
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I never said or implied any such thing. I simply responded with facts from the article that the parent didn't take time to discover. He stated himself that he hadn't read anything and implied that MS didn't want the bridge built, when in fact they actually want it built now rather than later for practical reasons.
You're reading too much into what I wrote. Chill. I agree with your comments.
Re:troll... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, public transit is heavily utilized here in the Seattle area and many people support the plan for more rapid transit options over the bridge because as it stands now, due to congestion, the buses are stuck in gridlock with everyone else. More dedicated lanes for buses means less sitting in traffic and now that the light rail is complete, people are already anxious to see its extension both north and east over Lake Washington. Finishing the bridge rapidly will only increase the costs to add rail to the eastside later (or more likely cause it to not happen at all, devaluing the light rail as a transit option for many) instead of just doing it now while they are already going to to be rebuilding.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Informative)
The irony is they took out the advertisement to oppose delays on replacing the existing bridge, and in turn doing so they are "against" another proposal that would add more mass transit.
From TFA, the statement made by MS in their full page ad:
While there are still some final design issues that need to be resolved with the City of Seattle, we should not let last-minute objections undermine the hard-won agreements already in place for the rest of the project. Doing so would cause yet more delay, increase the cost to taxpayers, and put this vital transportation and economic corridor at risk. The current bridge is 47 years old, and state engineers warn that it could sink in a major storm or earthquake.
So basically they want it finished now, not sitting in government limbo like so many other infrastructure improvements do.
I'd also like to point out the obvious: Bill Gates is not Microsoft.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
All large business attempts to minimize their tax burdens via legal means. How many home owners have been taught that a "Home mortgage is a great tax deduction!"? As long as you do it legally by the law, there is no cheating involved.
Pick any WA politician, and ask would they rather get those taxes, or would they like Microsoft to move their HQ and jobs elsewhere.
At least they didn't move their HQ to a PO Box in the Cayman islands...
Re:troll... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they're not directly opposing mass transit. They're opposing efforts to delay the expansion of the existing (car only) bridge because the expansion has been needed (light rail or no) for a long time (a decade or so), and now that they've finally got an agreement worked out, they don't want to go back to the drawing board.
I don't know the details of the current bridge plans, but when I worked out there, it was patently obvious the bridge needed expansion. The highway leading up to it on the eastern side (the MS side) was three lanes each way, one of which was an HOV-3 lane. Problem was, when you hit the bridge, it narrowed to two lanes, eliminating the HOV lane. Which meant all the HOV travelers had to merge back in, and the merging itself created massive traffic jams. The HOV lane was only really useful at the edges of rush hour; in the middle of rush hour it would back up almost as badly as the non-HOV lanes (and keep in mind, buses were using it to, so mass transit wasn't a workaround). If they could just expand the bridge by one lane each way, and make the extra lane HOV-3, carpooling would make a lot more sense, as would riding the bus, and even people in the non-HOV lanes would benefit a bit (since the last second merging wouldn't exacerbate otherwise minor traffic jams).
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I don't know the details of the current bridge plans, but when I worked out there, it was patently obvious the bridge needed expansion.
And when the bridge expands more people will move to the other side of the bridge thereby making it just as congested as before. When will people learn that increasing highways just makes people move that much further away from their work place.
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Without reading anything...this sounds like trolling.
Accusing somebody of trolling without taking 5 seconds to check their assertions — that's definitely trolling.
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Yes, you were right. But that doesn't make you any less of a troll.
Re:troll... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's be 100% clear about this. I take that bridge to work every day.
It is one of the worst, most overly congested bridges I've ever seen. It's congested all day every day except sunday and between about 9pm -> 6am, generally speaking, and right now, it seems like getting a new bridge in sooner would do more to alleviate carbon production than waiting for extra PT could ever hope to achieve in any kind of useful timeframe.
Simply put, when taking the bridge, I spend up to an hour, for what should be a 15-20 minute trip. That's around 30 minutes of extra idle time in my car, which could easily be saved. We also already have functioning public and private bus systems across the bridge, and that's not going to go away.
Additionally, this is a company that went out and bought a bunch of coaches to setup their own private transit system so that even more employees could leave their cars at home in places where there was no effective PT to campus. I hardly think this is an example of Microsoft not caring about the environment or carbon emissions. We've also been working hard to consolidate and reduce the amount of computer lab space we're using, reducing energy costs, setting more machines to sleep at night ,etc.
This article is a complete hatchet job designed to just paint Microsoft in the worst possible light. I'm not surprised that kdawson posted it in the slightest.
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Drive down to I-90 instead. Only moderately congested. It may add 10-15 miles to your trip if you head north of 520, but it will save you 30 minutes. I'm lucky enough to live in downtown seattle between the 2 bridges. I don't even bother taking 520 anywhere anymore, its just not worth it. It's almost faster to travel city streets around lake washington.
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It doesn't save me anything, as a matter of fact. fighting past bellevue, then across the i-90, then back up to greenwood takes just as long, if not longer, the times i've tried it. I've had occasional success with going over the top of the lake, but the traffic needs to be completely screwed on the 520, and relatively light on the 405 north for that.
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Microsoft doesn't oppose the bridge. In fact, Microsoft is in favor of the current plans for the bridge. Currently plans for the bridge include 6 total lanes with two of those lanes (one in each direction) being HOV lanes. Apparently there is a contingent that wants to change the plans so that so there are two lanes for light rail and/or buses, two HOV lanes, and one general purpose lane in each direction.
Microsoft is right to oppose such a boondoggle.
The fact of the matter is that most of the people
I, for one, am shocked... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I, for one, am shocked... (Score:5, Insightful)
nobody puts money into malaria research except for philanthropic reasons
Oh I don't know, they can't very well buy MS products if they're dead now can they?
In all seriousness, why is giving '3rd world kiddies' free access to your companies software cynical? Ok, yes you can make the argument that you're trying to indoctrinate them, but isn't it more likely that Bill Gates genuinely believes that MS products are some of the best available and that the kids should have the best available products? Especially since, given his contacts, the software can be had at little to no cost? Not every act of a millionaire is duplicitous, it seems to me that he's just trying to do the most good possible. His opinion of the software may be wrong, but I doubt that he is conciously trying to brainwash the developing world.
only 2 general lanes? (Score:3, Informative)
Tha alternative plan MS is arguing against has only two (one each way) lanes for general car use - no wonder they don't want it. Light rail and long range buses are only good if lots of people want to use them. HOV lanes are only good if people can be convinced to carpool. Apparently MS management feels the employees want to drive their own cars to work by themselves. If that's the case, making them idle in the traffic snarls created by the one general lane each way bridge will not only make everyone late to work but also really exacerbate the smog problem.
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You almost make sense. Your argument is based on the assumption that people wa
Re:only 2 general lanes? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if they are stuck in traffic jams day after day, they may find themselves much more likely to try the train, bus or carpool option
Hasn't happened yet. [forbes.com]
it's also faster. At least, it's faster in a well-designed transit system.
Spherical cow. [wikipedia.org] It's all easy if you can postulate away any actual practical limitations. Things like existing residence and employment location patterns ("first, we make everyone live within 5 miles of where they work..."); stuff already in the way of your well-designed transit system ("how many dozens of blocks are you willing to demolish to set up your light rail system?"); and the simple societal preference for individual mobility.
The U.S. is a big, sprawling country, and the cities are big and sprawling too. That is the result of, and the reinforcement for, the big, sprawling, commute-centric mindset of suburban/exurban America. And 3-hour commutes, $4 per gallon gasoline, and 35,000 traffic fatalities a year haven't changed it yet. If you don't mind, I won't hold my breath.
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But you have to account for people like me who hate public transportation and would gladly sit in their cars, idling, for 8 hours a day rather than be forced to ride a stinking scum infested bus or train.
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It's cheaper to you than building new roads, and accomplishes a fair amount of congestion relief when properly implemented. Would you rather the cities use eminent domain on anything near a highway and expand them all to 12 lanes?
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It's because nobody would want to spend an hour stuck in a car with operagost, listening to him spout his ill-informed pseudo-libertarian nonsense.
It's hard to carpool when nobody wants to be around you.
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Actually, many people have enough to do in their lives that they don't have time to deal with someone else's commute schedule. Personally, my life is full enough between exercise, my day job, my side business, and other projects that I couldn't typically pick someone else up for work. You know, I try to live life.
But, I ride a motorcycle that gets great gas mileage (40+ easy, 50 if I'm careful) in far less space than any car. It also doesn't strain the roads as much and takes far less to build. Why don't yo
Re:only 2 general lanes? (Score:5, Informative)
Tha alternative plan MS is arguing against has only two (one each way) lanes for general car use - no wonder they don't want it. Light rail and long range buses are only good if lots of people want to use them. HOV lanes are only good if people can be convinced to carpool. Apparently MS management feels the employees want to drive their own cars to work by themselves. If that's the case, making them idle in the traffic snarls created by the one general lane each way bridge will not only make everyone late to work but also really exacerbate the smog problem.
Not quite. Most of the MS employees in Seattle ride the Microsoft Connector bus in to work. The existing one carpool lane is more then sufficient to accomodate the MS busses. I live right by the 520 bridge and I'm with MS on this one. More carpool lanes and/or light rail will just increase the time and cost of the project and add little to no benefit. We need a new bridge now.
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FWIW, my experience is that car-pooling is very common in the Seattle area, especially among people under 40. Much more so than in the NY area where I live now. Actions to encourage more carpooling there might be likely to meet a decent response than here in NJ where HOV lanes have been converted back to general-purpose lanes.
Just some food for thought.
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I don't know where you're getting that. I don't know anyone who carpools, and I live here. I also see the existing HOV lanes rarely if ever have cars in them. I know the state claims they're used to near capacity, but they always look empty to me.
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It's interesting that the "conservative" view here supports government spending on a project that mainly benefits Microsoft employees.
If Microsoft wants a bridge that's best for their own employees, why don't they user their own money to build it?
If the entire state's (and federal) taxpayers have to foot the bill for this bridge, then it's completely reasonable for them to expect it to be environmentally responsible.
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>that mainly benefits Microsoft employees
So what % of traffic driving across the 520 each day do you think is that of Microsoft employees? 95%? 75%? 50.00001%? Anything less... and it 'mainly benefits NON-Microsoft employees'.
Remember... we aren't talking about the 'bridge to Microsoft' that connects two portions of the corporate campus and which Microsoft is picking up something like 80% of the tab... we are talking about one of two over-water routes across Lake Washington that is heavily used by many p
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It's interesting that the "conservative" view here supports government spending on a project that mainly benefits Microsoft employees.
You apparently don't live in Washington. Everybody in a huge radius of this bridge wants it replaced ASAP. It causes huge traffic problems every day and is ready to sink into Lake Washington on a moments notice.
Ironically, replacing it benefits the average MSFT employee less then the average Seattle resident as the MSFT employee can scoot through on the Microsoft connector bus in the carpool lane at any time.
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This is the main bridge connecting Seattle and Bellevue, the 2nd biggest job center in the area. The highway then continues on to Redmond, which is where MS lives. It'll help MS employees, but it will help tens of thousands of other area workers as well.
Terrible Title & Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
While there are still some final design issues that need to be resolved with the City of Seattle, we should not let last-minute objections undermine the hard-won agreements already in place for the rest of the project. Doing so would cause yet more delay, increase the cost to taxpayers, and put this vital transportation and economic corridor at risk. The current bridge is 47 years old, and state engineers warn that it could sink in a major storm or earthquake.
So its not like Microsoft is against it because they love to emit Carbon Dioxide. In fact, closing the bridge for construction will cause people to go around, emitting more CO2.
Microsoft is mostly against it because it highly affects their employees in a negative way. It means more lates, or more inconvenience. Will the CO2 offset from more buses balance out the increased amount created during its upgrade? Who knows.
Bill's Ted talk was actually great. He promoted the design and development of the new Nuclear reactors that burn the 99% of uranium - essentially the old toxic waste that we have sitting around. Yeah, everyone was afraid of nuclear technology partly because of the waste produced, and with modern super computers we've simulated that we can actually burn the waste produced by regular nuclear reactors. We just need to jump on it. Bill Gates goes through how Solar power and Geo power are great alternatives but they aren't as solid, as such they will only work towards extending our deadline to meet the Carbon 0 goal.
These two events, the Ad and the Ted talk, are totally exclusive and neither are really about the other, and this isn't them butting heads. Bill Gates goes on about how the entire world needs to come together on a new project. This is one company against adding bus lanes to a bridge. Whoever lumped those two together didn't really look at the big picture.
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Or more telecommuting.
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These two events, the Ad and the Ted talk, are totally exclusive and neither are really about the other, and this isn't them butting heads. Bill Gates goes on about how the entire world needs to come together on a new project. This is one company against adding bus lanes to a bridge. Whoever lumped those two together didn't really look at the big picture.
Nope, they manufactured a controversy to get more page views. You at least clicked through to the slashdot discussion, and probably the article itself.
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We've known about breeder reactors for a while, just to point out. You know how nuclear energy was supposed to make electricity too cheap to meter? Replacing all our coal with breeder reactors would likely make that the case - according to wikipedia normal reactors use about 1% of the energy, and breeder reactors can use almost all of the rest. That coupled with the fact that they can use cheaper fuel - thorium instead of uranium - and it looks like the way to go.
I don't even need RTFA (Score:3, Funny)
Wait a sec if they take different sides (Score:2, Funny)
Did the submitter RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
First line in the article.
Microsoft took out a full-page color ad in the Seattle Times today opposing any further “delay” on replacing the SR-520 bridge
Re:Did the submitter RTFA? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft isn't opposing the bridge design. They're opposing further delay on starting the bridge project. They're for the bridge redesign, not against it.
Microsoft is opposing a re-redesign of the bridge.
Mostly because they want it built sooner rather than later.
Feature creep is how most any type of project can destroy its schedule and end up over budget.
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Bingo. Basically, the bridge is at the point where it can be sunk by a storm... when that happens, not only will they have *no choice* in replacing it, but it'll cause the entire region to grind to a standstill. There's only one other bridge across the lake, but both bridges are cram-packed during rush hour now, so that other bridge can't take the additional cars.
Like everything in Seattle, getting infrastructure improvements *done* is nearly impossible. I don't know why it's so hard here, but man it really
Have you ever travelled on 520? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Have you ever travelled on 520? (Score:4, Informative)
I've come to the conclusion we are really better off with buses and a few more lanes.
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These redesigns have been decades in making, while the bridge is hanging by the thread on every major windstorm.
Indeed. The SR-520 bridge is a floating bridge and is nearly 50 years old. It carries far more traffic than it was designed to carry, and in any case, is nearing the end of it's design life.
To put things in perspective, the Hood Canal Bridge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hood_Canal_Bridge) is of similar age, design, construction, and span. The Hood Canal bridge suffered a catastrophic failure during a windstorm in 1979. It was rebuilt and reopened in 1982.
It's only a matter of time (Score:2)
Indeed. Washington State has three major floating bridges (I90 and SR520 on Lake Washington, and SR104 on the Hood Canal*), the 520 bridge is the only one that hasn't done 'submarine duty' because of storms.** The Hood Canal bridge lost it's western half in a 1979 windstorm, and the I90 bridge lost a chunk out of the middle due to human error and heavy storms in 1990.
And the 520 bridge is old, w
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The 520 is the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. [google.com] across Lake Washington - a pontoon bridge. [wa.gov]
March 8, 2006 - 5:10 p.m. to 4 a.m. March 9, 2006 Crews closed the bridge after on-site inspectors heard unusual noises. Those noises prompted a closer look inside the mechanical parts of the draw pontoons. They found one bolt sheared off, several loose bolts, and flaking paint which is an indication of weakening steel. They immediately clo
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This is a VERY popular and widely used bridge. About 115,000 vehicles carrying 155,000 people use the 520 bridge daily. Even counting both ways, MS employees only constit
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You are absolutely correct, one cannot comment unless one has traveled the mile in the local shoes. However, two things stand out. First, even the imminent collapse of a bridge does not mean that taxpayer, perhaps federal, can forfeit their right to due diligence. Taxpayers deserve a fully explored plan. If that means studies and whatnot delay it, then so be it.
They already have a fully explored and approved plan. Hell, it's already been explored for a decade. The problem is groups throwing hissyfit at the
Not Contradictory (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing in this is contradictory. Like most people, particularly those with power and wealth, he wants everyone else to do something to reduce carbon emissions while he flies around in his private jet and pumps megawatts into his electro-fortress. See also Al Gore's mansion and The Governator's private jet commute from Malibu to Sacramento. Contrast with Ed Begley Jr, who seems to practice what he preaches -- and is the exception that proves the rule.
The rich and famous are only required to appear as though they want a better future, or we would rise up and slay them. Good PR does more to protect their aristocracy than making sacrifices -- the PR is all that the serfs know of the nobles.
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Even worse, his efforts to prevent malaria are likely to result in millions and millions of additional living humans.
But maybe it all doesn't boil down to any simple calculus.
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Oh come on, we would do no such thing. We don't live in a D&D fantasy world, we don't live in some silly movie. We would just go about our business and grumble and complain about one more thing. The rich and famous get away with whatever they want because we (in general) envy them. End of story.
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>> The rich and famous are only required to appear as though they want a better future, or we would rise up and slay them.
> Oh come on, we would do no such thing.
Here are four examples (the causes being mixes of wealth and power):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_(1917) [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Communist_Revolution [wikipedia.org]
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Certainly Bill Gates doesn't want -ME- to build a nuclear reactor all on my own. He clearly mentions its a project that has to be undertaken by a lot of governments, not just a corporation or a few individuals.
He has even actually gone out of his way to fund some projects of the like. But he knows that he alone nor Microsoft could accomplish the goal. It requires a unilateral push by many countries across the planet.
His talk was more directed to those in political power, or to give a direction to the people
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At both end of this bridge is two of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Puget Sound; Montlake and Median. Montlake and its west coastline neighborhoods of the Lake Washington is the "old Seattle money" and Medina and its east coast line neighborhoods are where the "new tech money" billionaires live (including Gates).
They have been waging a major battle against the 520 redesign for over a decade. They do not want anything other th
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How do you mark this whole story as troll? (Score:4, Insightful)
So? (Score:4, Funny)
What is it with this 'He no longer works there'? (Score:3, Informative)
He is still the largest single shareholder (8%) and a non-executive Chairman of the Board. He's still quite involved with MS.
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I can only imagine you were modded funny because the first sentence is wrong. Or because of that second sentence sounds pretty ridiculous when you say it aloud.
Very loose correlation. (Score:3, Informative)
Basically Bill Gates gives a talk about the environment and says we need to burn hippies for energy (or something with nuclear power, I haven't watched the video yet) and people cheer.
Microsoft, which Bill Gates has next to nothing to do with anymore, says to the city, stop fucking around and build the bridge you have been planing since forever before the old one falls down, but because some hippies want to make last minute design changes like powering the lights with bicycles (or maybe adding more HOV lanes or something) which would mean redoing a lot of work and added years of delays, somehow makes Microsoft anti environment.
kdawson (Score:2)
The cancer that is killing slashdot or the AIDS that is killing slashdot? You decide!
This topic is flamebait. (Score:3, Insightful)
How does this indicate that Microsoft isn't green?
Maybe Microsoft is simply looking at the reality: there is no incentive for people who might cross that bridge to use public transit. People who are able to afford a lengthy daily drive to work are also likely to be able to justify not sitting another 20+ minutes on a bus/train with strangers.
Also, public transit has shown to do one thing very well in the US: bring criminals from their urban homes to suburbia where they can commit crimes and then hop back on the train in time for dinner.
Upper-middle-class people do not ride on public transit unless it is very, very clean, safe, and private. (This is partially because train lines seem to typically go from urban downtown to their pleasant neighborhoods, resulting in urban scum coming out to deal drugs and expand their turf in the relatively safe 'burbs.)
Maybe Microsoft is opposed to the lengthy extensions to the bill proposing public transit because said public transit would then come out of the Redmond tax coffers.
There's probably close to a half dozen plausible reasons why MS might be opposed to this bridge, and it has nothing to do with how "Green" they are.
Why don't you call them "Reds" and have McCarthy go after them? (That's what this Green bullshit is becoming - the New McCarthyism.)
I'm going to go burn some tires.
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Upper-middle-class people do not ride on public transit unless it is very, very clean, safe, and private. (This is partially because train lines seem to typically go from urban downtown to their pleasant neighborhoods, resulting in urban scum coming out to deal drugs and expand their turf in the relatively safe 'burbs.)
Ok, I know this not to be true, not only here in Europe, but in the US as well. I have lived in NYC, and I can tell you that there are *a lot* of upper middle class (and even wealthy) people who use the subway there, and it's not exactly clean, or private. (it's much safer than driving though)
Pure bullshit. The part about transit bringing criminals to suburbs too, can you point to *any* serious study that supports this?
The complete situation (Score:5, Informative)
The summary is unbelievably slanted; whoever tagged this story "troll" was correct. Here is the complete situation; judge for yourself.
Lake Washington is a tall, skinny lake that's rather deep in the middle. It takes a while to drive around it; if you bicycle around the circumference of the lake, it's about 50 miles total.
On the west side of the lake, you have a tall, skinny city: Seattle. The biggest city in the state, lots of people live there.
On the east side of the lake, you have a tall, skinny populated area. But it isn't just one city; it's Bothell, Woodinville, Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, Renton, and a few small ones. Collectively these are known as "the Eastside".
Because Lake Washington is so deep, an ordinary bridge is impractical. That is why the three longest floating bridges in the world are on Lake Washington: the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (I tend to slip and call it the "floating point bridge") is the one with highway 520, and it is the longest single floating bridge in the world. (The other two are used for I-90 a couple of miles to the south of 520.) By the way, I suspect that one of the reasons we have the longest floating bridges is the fact that the Chittenden Locks in Seattle allow for some control over the water level of Lake Washington; if we have torrential rain, engineers can just open the locks and let the waters drain out of the lake system and lower the water level again to the safe zone for the floating bridges.
When the 520 bridge was first built, all the action was in Seattle. Not that many people lived on the Eastside, and not that many Seattle people needed to go to the Eastside. But Microsoft and a bunch of other technical companies are on the Eastside, so now many people actually commute from Seattle to the Eastside over the 520 bridge.
There are rich neighborhoods right on the water, on both sides of the lake. The fabled small city of Medina, where Bill Gates has his famous house, is right by the 520 bridge. The rich folks have been successfully blocking all attempts to upgrade the 520 bridge; as I understand it, their attitude is that they already don't like the car noise, so why would they want more traffic to be able to flow over the bridge? The area has been talking about replacing the 520 bridge for something like 14 years now, and for most of that time the project has been blocked.
But the 520 bridge really needs to be replaced. If you measure the life of the bridge in terms of how many cars have driven over it, the bridge is way, way past its planned lifetime already. A serious wind storm could sink it. A serious earthquake could sink it. And the consequences for traffic would be epic (not in a good way).
Right now, all it takes is a Husky football game at the University of Washington, putting extra traffic on the already overloaded bridge, and the whole area is just about paralyzed. Normally the I-90 bridge is fine, but when the 520 gets bad enough and traffic diverts to the other bridge, both bridges can be parking lots. It will already be bad when the 520 bridge is closed for construction of the new bridge; I seriously hope that they can mostly build the new bridge somewhere and float it into place with minimal down time. If the bridge fails in a wind storm, we will be many months, possibly years without any bridge and the traffic will be dire. In short, any further delay in building the bridge is Not A Good Idea.
Now, the existing bridge is two traffic lanes each way. There is no carpool lane. There is no shoulder. Any time a vehicle stalls, a tow truck gets over there ASAP and pulls it off the bridge, but it still does horrible things to the already horrible traffic. As other posters have noted, the 520 carpool lane disappears right before the bridge, and the westbound neck-down where three lanes go to two lanes is the single most congested piece of road in the whole state.
So, we have a bridge plan finally that is ready to move ahead. It ha
Re:Bill Gates vs Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bill Gates vs Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
It's just an attempt to spin the story against Microsoft, for no apparent reason
Did you miss "posted by kdawson"?
Re: (Score:3)
That's pretty much it. KDawson has got to be one really sick individual.
I mean, when I do a web search all I get is articles talking about how Microsoft is doing everything it can to accelerate the plans for the new bridge -- which can only be good for CO2 emissions, especially considering that the construction has been delayed multiple times over literally a decade. When I read TFA on slashdot, it looks like MS is just getting in the way for absolutely no reason.
Pathetic, kdawson -- absolutely pathetic.
Gates no longer has a corporate agenda (Score:2)
Bill Gates is someone who understands the need to 'stay on message', regardless of the truthiness of his facts. His performance on a deposition during the big Microsoft trial, showing obvious hostility to the questioner, but staunchly defending his company's actions, is proof that Gates practices corporate spin. Corporate PR flaks are allowed to 't
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
McGinn’s proposal would also introduced further delays. Which is what MS is complaining about.
I'll bet they don't give a hoot one way or the other about the LRT lanes. But if that bridge goes down for even one day, no matter what it looks like, they lose millions.
Re:Population Reduction (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I've wondered that too. I've noticed a number of disappeared posts, and from the replies and quoted bits, they never seem that bad. I'd almost suggest that if a post is removed, then all the replies should be turfed as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you should try browsing at -1, raw and uncut*? Then you'll see the posts that have been downmodded into oblivion.
Warning: not for the faint of heart. It will abuse your faith in the general goodwill and competence of mankind, if you have any.
Re: (Score:2)
I browse at -1 all the time. And yet I still have hidden posts, which pisses me off. It kills the entire point of browsing at -1 to still need to un-hide posts.
But even going at -1, I've seen posts indented, with titles of "Re:", exactly like they're replying to something, but there's just... there's no parent post! Hell, the replies are even consistent in what they're quoting, so unless there's a conspiracy of some kind, I have to assume that either the posts are being removed, or there's a fairly serious
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I noticed that too. He's the typical modern elite - every problem can be solved by more control and population reduction. It's funny their M.O. is always the same - the problem is everyone else.