Agreed. I love Tesla. I'm really excited by what they're doing, and have nothing but admiration for Elon Musk.

However, Top Gear have made their reputation winding people up. He was being pretty touchy by responding.

Here's what I posted at the time: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2856821

Of course, only time will tell in the case of the NYT.

I haven't downvoted you, but I would hazard a guess that the reason for the downvotes as at least partially due to the combative nature of your tone.

As to your point, I have no idea about the legalities, but it seems to me that if law enforcement officials are going to operate in a foreign country they might want to go through official channels before turning up.

Regarding the private plane, I would imagine that the article mentions it because it (accurately or otherwise) enables me to better visualise a group of brash Americans turning up via the most expensive mode of transport and expecting the little Icelanders to be so awed by the powerful FBI that they won't ask for little things like, you know, governmental authorisation.

I really want to like America. There are so many things to love about it, especially on paper. And then I read about stuff like this and wonder if it really is that much of a mystery why much of the world has such distaste for the country and the people.

Not that I'm claiming the UK is any better, mind. And our teeth are much worse.

Economist articles have no byline as editorial policy.

Can't comment on the rest of your points.

Just wanted to add my thanks for a great product. We are a pro license holder where I work, I believe.

Not sure if this was your point, but I assume that you are using a lot of MSI and Windows API hooks, in which case this is a great example of the flexibility and integration options of Windows being leveraged for the good, as opposed to the crapware blight, which must be as frustrating for Microsoft as it is for us.

Good point. The relative openness of win32 allows junkware but gives us enough slack to fight it too.

It does make for a noisier and more confusing ecosystem though. My mom's still better off using an iPad.

Thanks for using Ninite Pro!

What's the point of having open, published standards if you only have one implementation?

You might ask, what's the point of having more than one rendering engine implementation, but look what happened with IE6.

Edit: Fixed formatting and reworded while I was at it.

Difficult to disagree I must admit, but what do you think happens to their web stack in your future?

Yes I do, although in fairness my experience has been that Verisign and Thawte at least will ring the number you provide at some stage. I guess they also do a Companies House[0] lookup in the UK as they request related details IIRC.

What's more of a scandal is that Verisign at least 'license' their EV certificates to be used on a given number of servers [1]. Now if the 'service' provided is identity verification, that practice is the real scam.

[0] http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/

[1] http://www.verisign.co.uk/ssl/ssl-information-center/ssl-bas...

I have been a paying GAFYD user for ~ two years and wasn't even aware there was an 'account PIN'! I fear for most people this simple solution may come with the benefit of hindsight.

Well, this is not very reassuring: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...

Nope, no "PIN" for me under "Support". Worse,

> "Please note that for your security, your Customer PIN will be updated periodically.

So even if I find it now and write it down, there's a chance that I still won't be able to access support at some point down the road if/when I need it.

Only paid accounts and government/education accounts have a "customer PIN", apparently.

I didn't know about the account PIN either. Here's how to find yours: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6...

> I think the fundamental problem with noisy people is (...) that they don't have any train of thought to interrupt

I must say that this choice of words rather took me aback as well. The problem is, it's difficult to call someone breathtakingly arrogant (which was my first reaction) when they have so much to be arrogant about!

I'd love to see some more insight on this from pg.

Edit: It's since occurred to me that pg may have meant at that particular moment rather than lacking a train of thought in a general sense. If that's the case, my comment is unjustified - apologies.

> pg may have meant at that particular moment

That's plausible; however, the conscious brain is constantly thinking / wandering / conjecturing about the past and the future, so it's next to impossible to not have a train of thought while you're awake. (If you have years and years of training as a zen master, maybe; if not, not).

Therefore, saying that people don't have a train of thought at a specific point in time is a little like saying they don't have a brain.

The rest of the post from PG would tend to confirm this: "ordinary people can understand" (...) "what they don't grasp".

In fairness, if the parent was referring to online services you are absolutely correct - Google are streets ahead with their data liberation work. Microsoft and Apple are worryingly closed in that area.