[an]

[quote=CA renter]He has customers and employees in developing countries, as well. Wouldn’t it be better if they could have more of that money instead of Bill Gates?[/quote]
I would say the disabled of those countries are more deserving of his money than those countries’ middle class. Again, you and I have different perspective on who is more deserving of help. Also, what make you think MSFT wasn’t/isn’t paying market or higher wages?

[an]

[quote=CA renter]There are many places in the world that were major cities (or empires) and are now just a pathetic shadow of what they once were. Nothing lasts forever.[/quote]You’re right, nothing last forever, but what kind of time frame are we talking about here? Last I checked, NYC is still one of the financial capital of the world. Long before Silicon Valley is one of the major tech hub. Do you think SV will last at least as long as NYC?

[an]

[quote=CA renter]Of course he gives a greater percentage of his income/wealth to charity than the average American. It’s much easier to do that when you have a net worth in the billions and annual earnings in the millions, as opposed to a net worth in the tens or hundreds of thousands (if one is lucky).[/quote]Yes, but that’s exactly my point. The poor people of the world benefits much more because Bill Gates has his billions instead of it being spread out between a few million middle class American.

[quote=CA renter]But charity isn’t the only “good” way to spend money. How about putting more money into the hands of “regular” people, like customers and employees — money that is more likely to be spent on goods and services…creating a greater demand for goods and serives…thereby, creating more jobs.

I would rather have a good job than be the recipient of charity. But that might not garner the idol worship for the rich that highly concentrated wealth (and their “benevolent generosity”) tends to generate.[/quote]This is purely your opinion. That’s OK, but not everyone agree with it. I think middle class Americans are doing just fine. I would much rather have that money goes to the truly poor people of Africa or South East Asia or any other 3rd world countries. But regardless, neither you or I have Bill Gates’ money, so ultimately, it’s he who decides what he would rather spend that money on.

[an]

Simple answer is YES. I’ve dealt with something similar and have asked lawyers about it. Bottom line is, you’re SOL if they’re following the HOA guidelines. If you decide to sue, the HOA’s fee pays for their lawyer fees and if you win, your HOA fee will go up due to the cost of the lawyer fees. So, in short, you’re best to just pony up the fine and get the problem fixed.

[an]

[quote=CA renter]Would Bill Gate’s money “not be there” if he had given his money away instead of growing his company more? Not sure about that. Maybe his competitors would have made it instead, and perhaps they would have given even more to charity. And/or, maybe his customers would have been able to buy another, equally good product for less money if he didn’t create a monopoly (which is one of the main reasons he could “build his company” to the extent that he did), leaving more money in their pockets for charity. What if he had paid his employees better, instead of keeping perma-temps, so that they could have given more to charity?

We know of Bill Gates’ charity because his wealth is so concentrated…leaving a legacy, as livin’ pointed out. Do we know for sure that this money wouldn’t have been put to better use if it had gone to other competitors, or employees, or customers?[/quote]There are way too many what ifs in your post to know for sure. But what we know is, he does give more $ to charity as a % of his total life time income/wealth than an average American.

FYI, Microsoft didn’t put a gun to their customers’ head and force them to buy Windows. Windows became a monopoly because it was the cheapest and easiest OS to use at the time. They were held back for many years because they were afraid of being broken up due to the monopoly lawsuit. Now that they no longer are as dominant, they can finally bundle more of their services together. Even if Windows gotten 100% of the market share, Android will still happen and the move to portable devices would still happen. But if they were allowed to bundle more of their services together, end user would have given a more cohesive user experience earlier, instead of having to wait till the last few years to have that.

[an]

[quote=CA renter]Thanks for your input, AN. Yes, I’m sure that Melinda was altruistic, pretty much from the beginning, but not so sure about Bill Gates.[/quote]
Does it really matter when he started his philanthropic work? Looking back and with 20/20 vision, I’d say many more people benefited because he wasn’t as philanthropic earlier and concentrated in growing MSFT. If he gave all of his $ away early and not concentrated on growing MSFT, there wouldn’t be Billions to give away today. Same can be said w/ Warren Buffett. I’m pretty sure these guys can grow their $ much better than most if not all charity. So, sure, they weren’t helping people earlier on, but the sure help a lot more people during their life time due to them not giving their wealth away too early.

[an]

[quote=CA renter]
I seem to remember that back in the earlier days, Bill Gates was NOT philanthropic and had to be goaded into charitable giving. There were rumors that he was incredibly tight-fisted when it came to charitable giving, IIRC. Does anyone else remember this? Going 100% from anecdotal memory here so would appreciate if any of the other Piggs who’ve been around the block a few times could offer up their own accounts from the 80s and early 90s. I could be totally wrong about the reality of his giving, but do remember the rumors[/quote]
I actually did a report on him in HS many many years ago. I remember reading him saying that he will only leave his daughter tens of millions (or maybe a couple of hundreds). He always planned to give most of his wealth away. So, his philanthropic actions today isn’t surprising. Melinda Gates has been doing a lot of philanthropic work since the 90s if not earlier.

[an]

[quote=flu]That’s just cupertino. We aren’t talking about other nicer arenas… Atherton, Los Altos Hills,etc…

A comparable place in Santa Clara County to Mira Mesa is currently around $500/sqft….Never thought I’d see the day when a hole-in-the-wall home in SantaClara would be worth more than a place in CarmelV.[/quote]
Exactly, when you start talking about nicer areas, it really shows how out outrageous the prices are up there. It also show how cheap houses are down here, relative to up there.

I would say $560/sq-ft, not just $500/sq-ft. An area that I would consider similar to Mira Mesa would be the western side of Sunnyvale. That’s almost twice Mira Mesa’s $290/sq-ft. 3-5 miles from major work center, good schools, tract homes on 5-6k sq-ft lots. Most are smaller SFR.

[an]

Might not be from San Diego, but Cupertino is currently at $704/sq-ft. Makes SD look dirt cheap. Even San Jose is at $404/sq-ft. The “ghetto” part of San Jose that have bad schools are going for ~370/sq-ft.

[an]

[quote=flu]Note to self… If ER needs car repair, offer to do it for him because what he expects should cost him money is normally free under warranty 🙂

ER, someone need to reset expectations for you, so I’ll go ahead and do it…

If you spend more than $60k+ for a new car, you shouldn’t have to pay anything more for things like this. It’s not specific to Tesla. It applies to just about any other car out there…Spending close to a $100k or over, you should expect concierge service….Except maybe BMW, in which case your mileage may vary depending on what stealership you go to…

Also,…For future reference…Best way to avoid this sort of thing in the future is simple. Buy your wife a matching car….[/quote]
Totally agree. Both Infiniti and Acura gives loaners for services taking longer than 1 hr. Huyndai takes service to the next level and actually come to you with an Equus and pick up your Equus for service. So you NEVER have to step foot into a service waiting room. AFAIK, all luxury brands also wash and vacum your car when you bring it in for service, even if it’s for a $20 oil change. BMW, I think even replace your tires for free too, not to mention all other services needed w/in 40k miles.

[an]

[quote=The-Shoveler]Hybrid’s will rule the day I think.

I really hope his dream comes true but I think cheap Pure EV for the masses are a long way off.

Same for Fuel-Cell-V, its just way too expensive to get reliable cars that can be driven all day/night long, Parked less then 5 hours and do the same thing the next day (would need to get to less than 25K to hit the mass market IMO).

100 Miles is nothing when your trying to shop and get stuff done.
3-5 dollar gas is going to be around a very long time as well IMO.[/quote]I agree that FCV is not cheap today, but why do you think it can’t be parked <5 hrs. and drive again the next day? AFAIK, FCV can be refueled in 5 minutes or less, just like gasoline today.

[an]

I call bubble. When it’ll pop, who knows, but it’s definitely not sustainable. At this rate, it’s definitely profitable to just start farming your own bitcoin.

[an]

[quote=afx114]The thing about Musk is, he’s not thinking 2-3-5-10 years ahead. He’s thinking 20-30-50-100 years ahead. I understand why that may not interest some (most) people.[/quote]His track record would say otherwise. But maybe this time is different. We’ll have to wait and see. He’s betting on EV. The entire auto industry are into hybrid, reduced weight, turbo smaller engines as a stop gap. They are divided between EV and FCV. Toyota have no plan to have any EV, but they’re pouring a lot of research $ into FCV for many years. We’ll see who’s right in 10 years. One of the two will turn out to be the Betamax of car tech. I’m rooting for FCV right now.

[an]

[quote=afx114]Tesla’s working on a system to swap out the entire battery system in less time than it takes you to pump a tank of gas: http://www.teslamotors.com/batteryswap

Watch the video, pretty interesting. Imagine your charge is running low — you simply drive up to a replacement station (similar to how gas engines force you to drive to a gas station), get new batteries, and are back on the road in under 90 seconds. Granted, you’d need plenty of replacement stations within range, but that’s the eventual goal.

So imagine the consumer being able to offload battery replacement/wear/degradation/maintenance to GiantBatteryCo(tm). As the batteries get swapped, GiantBatteryCo(tm) can run diagnostics on each pack and fix/replace/recycle as needed in a centralized location/process. The EV consumer no longer needs to worry about batteries in the same way that combustion engine consumers no longer need to worry about oil extraction/refining.

Batteries are one of the biggest sticking points for EVs, but if you remove those from the equation, it changes the outlook quite a bit.[/quote]
I read up on this proposal, but as I said earlier unless all electric cars uses the same battery design for all kinds of cars, so that any EV can go into this battery swapping station and swap out their battery, I don’t see it feasible to have a lot of these battery swapping station, due to the fact that there’s not a lot of Tesla cars out there. With gas, any car can go and refuel. In order for EV to replace ICE, it needs to solve that problem too. This is one of the reason why I’m more optimistic about FCV than EV as a long term solution of replacing ICE cars.

[an]

[quote=patb]if you like the volt, realize the volt will likely be a key part of GM’s platform in 5 years. the Cadillac ELR is using the VOLTEC drive train, in 5 years, i suspect
GM will have extended that into escalades, Sierra’s, etc..

Toyota is continuing to grow the Hybrid Synergy drive. I suspect in 5 years
all of Toyota’s platforms will have a hybrid option and many of them will have
a Plug in option with a range of 20 Miles electric.[/quote]I am fully aware of plug-in hybrid tech and I personally think they’re more ready for prime time than 100% EV as it stands today.

[quote=patb]as for the Tesla, not every car has to use the Tesla battery, so much as they have to have a removable pack that’s mechanically compatible to Tesla.

Or what’s going to happen is you will see little small range extension trailers
for EV’s that have to take the occasional long road trip. When the EV-1 came out the engineers rigged little generators on 2 wheel carts so they could ferry to the test track. I suspect as EV’s get bigger, Level 3 charging, battery swap and the towed trailer will all add to the choice matrix.[/quote]Removable pack is the same as removable battery. Also, do you see how limiting that is in term of packaging compare to FCV and ICE? Model S and Model X are wide and big. If you want to have EV replace ICE, you also have to have cars the size of Fit/Yaris/etc. The space and packaging is very different between those two size of cars.
[quote=patb]I’m not sure why you are so down on Battery, but it would seem you are a better client for a Volt, a C-Max Energi or any of the EREV hybrids, so why not get one of those?[/quote]I’m not down on battery, just 100% EV as it is today. I like plug-in hybrid idea better. As for why I don’t buy the cars you listed, well, they’re all ugly and slow. Until they come out with a i8 like cars in a 5-series E-class type of cars, I’m not interested. The 2 front runner for my next car is a C63 AMG or a E63 AMG, just to give you an idea the type of car I’m interested in. I would have loved to have a Model S P85 with a 400 miles range and can be fully recharged w/in 10-15 minutes from either any outlet or have a charging station as widespread as gas station, but that doesn’t exist.

I also haven’t even touched on the fun cars like the GT-R/911/Corvette/etc. This is why I don’t see EV taking over as it stands today. Which is also why I’m more excited about FCV. FCV seems to have the advantage of refueling of gasoline, but has the power delivery advantage of an EV. Now, if they can get the cost down on those.

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