This is pretty short sighted, and my hope is that you are not on any committees or groups planning for anything in the future, as you seem to not be able to think ahead. EV's are a small segment now, but it is growing fast, and there will be a point in the future where it will become an issue having EV's essentially free from any sort of tax that allows for maintenance on the roads they use. Oregon is simply experimenting with ways to work through that scenario, and working on a plan for the future.
EV's do have to be charged. A suitable metering system could be built in to the battery packs. Make tampering with the battery pack a tax evasion crime.
The rich live close while the poor have to commute
It's funny that those living way out in the suburbs are "the poor".
Where I live, the moderately wealthy neighborhoods are built around the up-scale office parks in the suburbs. The poor neighborhoods are the ones around the factories (mostly defunct, but a few still operating). While the middle class neighborhoods are in between. Also, the middle class often can't afford to move when they change jobs, so many live in one suburb and have to commute 2 or more suburbs to get to work.
(The very wealthy, however, do tend to live further away in semi-isolated suburbs.)
Every US state with a sales tax taxes stuff you buy out of state (in theory anyway). They just call it a Use Tax, but it really amounts to nothing more than imposing a tax on commerce that took place in another state.
The legal theory that allows this "use tax" is that the items were purchased for use in the purchaser's state of residence.
That doesn't work. Oregon can't tax the miles you drive outside Oregon--the US Constitution explicitly forbids state taxation of anything outside the state. They *have* to know not only how far you've driven but where you drove it to impose this tax.
As pointed out in another post, the device could calculate the miles drive in Oregon (or whatever state) and only report that.
Of course, I'd want proof that was all it was reporting.
How about leaving the gas tax, but also wager a electricity fee against registered electric car users? Just an a matter of figuring out how. Require a second odometer that tracks mileage that uses the electric drive train? This is getting hard.
For pure electric vehicles, build a kilo-Watt-Hour meter into the battery pack that monitors the power used to charge the battery. This would be similar to a gas tax.
In theory, the device could calculate the miles driven within the borders of the state, periodically updating it's "taxable miles odometer" and report only that. If more states institute this system, the device can have an odometer for each state,
For me, at least, Eclipse provides decent support of the languages I need to code in. If all I coded in was C/C++ and/or Fortran, I'd probably use Code Blocks. CB's support of other languages is mostly because it uses Scintilla as the core of its editor. Maybe in time CB's plug-in ecosystem will provide better support for more languages, but, for now, Eclipse is doing a much better job of meeting my IDE needs. At least for an open source IDE. If you include proprietary IDEs, then Slick Edit is the one I like best. Used that at work until recently. (After finance demanded we reduce our recuring tool support costs, the company directed us to use open source tools as much as possible, so good-bye Slick Edit (despite the fact its license is perpetual for the specified version).
I am a Team Leader / Lead Engineer. I report directly to the Software Manager, who reports to the Product Development Manager. I am on the same "level" as the Project Managers, who report to the Program Managers, who report to the Product Development Manager.
I do the (mostly) technical aspects of managing my team[1]. But most of my work is still design and coding. The PjM handles the project level administrivia while my manager and the PgM handle other administrivia.
That works for me, so I am reasonably satisfied with my work situation.
For a different employer, I've been as high as Product Development Manager, but I disliked 90% of the work. Even as Software Manager, I disliked 80% of the work. As a Team Leader / Lead Engineer, I only dislike 30% of the work. (When I was a Senior Engineer, I disliked 20% of the work.)
( [1] For me, team management involves delegating tasks, discussing effort estimates with team members, overseeing design and code reviews and other things entwined with the technical realm. While I do provide input on the technical aspects of my team's performance, I am not responsible for doing performance reviews, nor other administrative things.)
Ever heard of "Private in public" doctrine? Or has the US lost that part of privacy rights?
Another detail that the founders could not have predicted at the time. Though the founders attempted to provide for the unforeseen in the 9th Amendment.
Back then, staying several meters from other people meant that while you and whomever you were talking with could be seen, you could not be heard - at least not without the would be snoop being painfully obvious[1]. The founders had no concept of "wireless bugs" nor today's tiny, super direction microphones and highly sophisticated signal processing nor other surveillance tools.
( [1] In theory, even back then, some one with a small telescope could attempt lip reading, but lip reading is not reliable and requires a lot of context. Depending on the presumed context, a snoop could easily turn totally innocuous speech into dire threats.)
A downward slope would just be non-normalized data. If there are a lot of bad ones, bad just becomes the mean. Programming talent, like most things, probably falls neatly into a bell curve.
In terms of programmers most of the employers I know would deem employable, they are only looking at the best programmers so they only see a few percent at one end of the slope. The rest are just increasing numbers of increasingly unacceptable programmers. The shape of the curve doesn't matter to them.
For some job postings I've seen, "Entry Level" means less than 4 or 5 years experience. And when you factor in "internships", having a recruiter or HR staffer say "you don't have enough experience" to an applicant for an "entry level" job is no longer the oxymoron it once was.
If employers lose lawsuits over this, they'll probably change it to "up-to-date education" and "3 years of active use of a major social network, iOS or Android operating system, and electronic bill payment". This allows older people to technically qualify by having taken a relevant class at a local college and joining Facebook.
My employer already requires its employees to keep their education "up-to-date" (at our expensive, though the company will pay for any classes it requires us to take). I happen to use an Android device - but not for accessing company resources as the company expressly forbids that. I also happen to use electronic bill payment - for my convenience. The company doesn't care. And while my employer happened to find me through Linked In, they don't care about my "social network" usage (I last used it during my last job hunt, years ago). (The closest the company comes to "social media" is an internal IM/VOIP conference system they have us use instead of using conference rooms for meetings.) They also don't care that I've contributed to open source projects unrelated to the company's business. (They would care if I contributed to a project they view as competition, of course. Nothing new or surprising about that.)
Unless the job I was applying for actually involved working with social media, Android, iOS or electronic bill payment, such requirements would be improper. Unfortunately, it would still be a major pain to get yet another ruling to that effect.
I seem to recall that we went through this in the mid to late 90s, where the government insisted any use of strong cryptography should as a matter of law, have a backdoor for the government. Then suddenly they dropped it,
I recall reading that a researcher figured out a way to spoof the "Law Enforcement Access Field" shortly before the US government dropped their push.
And what about when the router you use is an all-in-one provided by your ISP and you dont get a say in which one you use? Like cable companies that provide a cable modem/router and dont give you any choice but to use theirs. Or things like Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-Verse where they provide the same (modem/router in the one box)
So far, in my experience, cloning a PC's mac address to your own router's WLAN port has worked for me and for friends of mine. And since my router (as well as most of the PCs in my house) is running a version of Linux, I can truthfully say I'm running Linux.
I would have filed a claim for unemployment, then when said claim was initially denied because you quit voluntarily tell the Department of Labor why you quit. You would have doubtless been approved at that point and DOL starts an investigation of that company, a win win.
More likely, the arbitrator would not have believed you and rejected your appeal. Maybe after the DOL investigation, assuming they manage to confirm your accusation, you could appeal again.
One client I worked for, software developers were issued 2 PCs. One for email, Word and Excel documents, and other office stuff. The other for SW development. There was also a separate LAN for the SW dev PCs. The only support IT provided for the SW dev PCs was (1) an install DVD so we could re-install Windows and (2) hardware repairs (for example, replace a failed hard drive). Otherwise, IT treated us like an outside vendor.
on a trip to Italy, from Rome to Naples (same distance as DC to Philadelphia).... There was no security theater - you could arrive two minutes before departure and run onto the platform and make the train. The seats were comfortable and roomy, and there was free wifi and charging stations at every seat.
As of the last time I rode Amtrak (a few years ago), there was no security theater, the coach class seat were more comfortable and more roomy than any airline first class seat I've ever ridden in, and there was a 120 VAC outlet for each seat. Supposedly, Amtrak has expanded its free WiFi offerings to more trains. Unfortunately, the TSA has "promised" to expand its operations into train and bus stations. I am quite sure this will soon affect - if not already - at least 2 of the stations I would be likely to use.
In the old days, websites handled this sort of thing very well -- the reflows they did were helpful and didn't break the user experience. Somewhere along the line, though, website stopped doing this well, so now reducing the window size often breaks the usability.
Having done some software dev for websites, in my experience, the problem arose as more and more designers wanted precise control over every pixel on the screen. Thus they would design to a specific pixel width. If your screen/window wasn't wide enough, you had to side-scroll. The wide variation in screen size and resolution in mobile devices has forced designers to cede some of the layout control back to algorithms.
Even with the scholarship they were offering, we would have been stretching our finances to the breaking point. So, yes, it was a choice, but not much of one.
It is unfortunate that so many schools are unable to offer true merit scholarships any more. The school I went to (and, later, my daughter) still offers true merit scholarships. And even with the need-based scholarships they don't raise an issue with a yearly family vacation - and especially not a vacation involving visiting grandparents or other family members.
It would not be news, if a corporation, that had purchased a similar tablet based course-ware system and what the supplier delivered did not meet the needs (however hazily defined the requirements), stopped further payments and filed suit to collect a refund of payments made.
Suppliers deliver dodgy products to corporations, government organizations and ordinary citizens, alike. And even corporations issue hazy, clueless or even bad requirements. If a supplier supplier promises to deliver a satisfactory product based on questionable requirements, caveat vendor.
As a component supplier, our point of view is far smaller. It is normal for a new project to take an existing design then modify it as needed. Sometimes, this involves combining changes from different variations from a common ancestor. When this involves a single physical part, as opposed to an assembly, this requires some kind of "design merge". Sometimes this involves taking one of the 3D models and modifying it to incorporate the desired aspects of its "cousins". How much of this can be done automatically depends on a lot of things. The hardware designers have told me it usually takes very significant effort on their part to achieve the intended final result..
Still, we have a lot of metadata associated with the designs that we track.
My point is that, while we have a "wish list" of improvements to our tools, we're already doing what Jono said the maker community needs to figure out. Many of my coworkers - and I - are part of our local maker community. And I'm sure other local area maker communities have similar experts as members. Just a matter of education and sharing.
if someone refines a 3D printed piece of a drone, how do they fork the blueprints, submit their changes, have them reviewed, and get them merged into the project?
Where I work, this happens as part of our normal product develop processes. Design documents, whether for hardware or software, are still documents. Granted, "merging" changes in a "blueprint" or 3D model is harder to do, but not impossible. Right now, it still requires a lot of human work, but that can improve over time.
Jury nullification is a side effect of the prohibition against retrying a defendant for the same crime after having been found not guilty
This prohibition is important because, at least in theory, it prevents a determined prosecutor from repeatedly retrying until there is a conviction, the defendant caves or the prosecutor gets tired. Of course, it's not impossible to get around this by filing charges for other things the defendant might have done at the same time. In theory, the defendant or defendant's lawyer could argue these new charges are "lessor included charges" and get them dismissed.
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This is pretty short sighted, and my hope is that you are not on any committees or groups planning for anything in the future, as you seem to not be able to think ahead. EV's are a small segment now, but it is growing fast, and there will be a point in the future where it will become an issue having EV's essentially free from any sort of tax that allows for maintenance on the roads they use. Oregon is simply experimenting with ways to work through that scenario, and working on a plan for the future.
EV's do have to be charged. A suitable metering system could be built in to the battery packs. Make tampering with the battery pack a tax evasion crime.
It's funny that those living way out in the suburbs are "the poor".
Where I live, the moderately wealthy neighborhoods are built around the up-scale office parks in the suburbs. The poor neighborhoods are the ones around the factories (mostly defunct, but a few still operating). While the middle class neighborhoods are in between. Also, the middle class often can't afford to move when they change jobs, so many live in one suburb and have to commute 2 or more suburbs to get to work.
(The very wealthy, however, do tend to live further away in semi-isolated suburbs.)
There are already significant penalties in places for failure to repair/replace a broken odometer. they will just get increased.
Every US state with a sales tax taxes stuff you buy out of state (in theory anyway). They just call it a Use Tax, but it really amounts to nothing more than imposing a tax on commerce that took place in another state.
The legal theory that allows this "use tax" is that the items were purchased for use in the purchaser's state of residence.
That doesn't work. Oregon can't tax the miles you drive outside Oregon--the US Constitution explicitly forbids state taxation of anything outside the state. They *have* to know not only how far you've driven but where you drove it to impose this tax.
As pointed out in another post, the device could calculate the miles drive in Oregon (or whatever state) and only report that.
Of course, I'd want proof that was all it was reporting.
How about leaving the gas tax, but also wager a electricity fee against registered electric car users? Just an a matter of figuring out how. Require a second odometer that tracks mileage that uses the electric drive train? This is getting hard.
For pure electric vehicles, build a kilo-Watt-Hour meter into the battery pack that monitors the power used to charge the battery. This would be similar to a gas tax.
In theory, the device could calculate the miles driven within the borders of the state, periodically updating it's "taxable miles odometer" and report only that. If more states institute this system, the device can have an odometer for each state,
For me, at least, Eclipse provides decent support of the languages I need to code in. If all I coded in was C/C++ and/or Fortran, I'd probably use Code Blocks. CB's support of other languages is mostly because it uses Scintilla as the core of its editor. Maybe in time CB's plug-in ecosystem will provide better support for more languages, but, for now, Eclipse is doing a much better job of meeting my IDE needs. At least for an open source IDE. If you include proprietary IDEs, then Slick Edit is the one I like best. Used that at work until recently. (After finance demanded we reduce our recuring tool support costs, the company directed us to use open source tools as much as possible, so good-bye Slick Edit (despite the fact its license is perpetual for the specified version).
I am a Team Leader / Lead Engineer. I report directly to the Software Manager, who reports to the Product Development Manager. I am on the same "level" as the Project Managers, who report to the Program Managers, who report to the Product Development Manager.
I do the (mostly) technical aspects of managing my team[1]. But most of my work is still design and coding. The PjM handles the project level administrivia while my manager and the PgM handle other administrivia.
That works for me, so I am reasonably satisfied with my work situation.
For a different employer, I've been as high as Product Development Manager, but I disliked 90% of the work. Even as Software Manager, I disliked 80% of the work. As a Team Leader / Lead Engineer, I only dislike 30% of the work. (When I was a Senior Engineer, I disliked 20% of the work.)
( [1] For me, team management involves delegating tasks, discussing effort estimates with team members, overseeing design and code reviews and other things entwined with the technical realm. While I do provide input on the technical aspects of my team's performance, I am not responsible for doing performance reviews, nor other administrative things.)
Ever heard of "Private in public" doctrine? Or has the US lost that part of privacy rights?
Another detail that the founders could not have predicted at the time. Though the founders attempted to provide for the unforeseen in the 9th Amendment.
Back then, staying several meters from other people meant that while you and whomever you were talking with could be seen, you could not be heard - at least not without the would be snoop being painfully obvious[1]. The founders had no concept of "wireless bugs" nor today's tiny, super direction microphones and highly sophisticated signal processing nor other surveillance tools.
( [1] In theory, even back then, some one with a small telescope could attempt lip reading, but lip reading is not reliable and requires a lot of context. Depending on the presumed context, a snoop could easily turn totally innocuous speech into dire threats.)
A downward slope would just be non-normalized data. If there are a lot of bad ones, bad just becomes the mean. Programming talent, like most things, probably falls neatly into a bell curve.
In terms of programmers most of the employers I know would deem employable, they are only looking at the best programmers so they only see a few percent at one end of the slope. The rest are just increasing numbers of increasingly unacceptable programmers. The shape of the curve doesn't matter to them.
Entry level implies no experience.
For some job postings I've seen, "Entry Level" means less than 4 or 5 years experience. And when you factor in "internships", having a recruiter or HR staffer say "you don't have enough experience" to an applicant for an "entry level" job is no longer the oxymoron it once was.
If employers lose lawsuits over this, they'll probably change it to "up-to-date education" and "3 years of active use of a major social network, iOS or Android operating system, and electronic bill payment". This allows older people to technically qualify by having taken a relevant class at a local college and joining Facebook.
My employer already requires its employees to keep their education "up-to-date" (at our expensive, though the company will pay for any classes it requires us to take). I happen to use an Android device - but not for accessing company resources as the company expressly forbids that. I also happen to use electronic bill payment - for my convenience. The company doesn't care. And while my employer happened to find me through Linked In, they don't care about my "social network" usage (I last used it during my last job hunt, years ago). (The closest the company comes to "social media" is an internal IM/VOIP conference system they have us use instead of using conference rooms for meetings.) They also don't care that I've contributed to open source projects unrelated to the company's business. (They would care if I contributed to a project they view as competition, of course. Nothing new or surprising about that.)
Unless the job I was applying for actually involved working with social media, Android, iOS or electronic bill payment, such requirements would be improper. Unfortunately, it would still be a major pain to get yet another ruling to that effect.
I seem to recall that we went through this in the mid to late 90s, where the government insisted any use of strong cryptography should as a matter of law, have a backdoor for the government. Then suddenly they dropped it,
I recall reading that a researcher figured out a way to spoof the "Law Enforcement Access Field" shortly before the US government dropped their push.
And what about when the router you use is an all-in-one provided by your ISP and you dont get a say in which one you use?
Like cable companies that provide a cable modem/router and dont give you any choice but to use theirs.
Or things like Verizon FiOS or AT&T U-Verse where they provide the same (modem/router in the one box)
So far, in my experience, cloning a PC's mac address to your own router's WLAN port has worked for me and for friends of mine. And since my router (as well as most of the PCs in my house) is running a version of Linux, I can truthfully say I'm running Linux.
I would have filed a claim for unemployment, then when said claim was initially denied because you quit voluntarily tell the Department of Labor why you quit. You would have doubtless been approved at that point and DOL starts an investigation of that company, a win win.
More likely, the arbitrator would not have believed you and rejected your appeal. Maybe after the DOL investigation, assuming they manage to confirm your accusation, you could appeal again.
One client I worked for, software developers were issued 2 PCs. One for email, Word and Excel documents, and other office stuff. The other for SW development. There was also a separate LAN for the SW dev PCs. The only support IT provided for the SW dev PCs was (1) an install DVD so we could re-install Windows and (2) hardware repairs (for example, replace a failed hard drive). Otherwise, IT treated us like an outside vendor.
on a trip to Italy, from Rome to Naples (same distance as DC to Philadelphia).... There was no security theater - you could arrive two minutes before departure and run onto the platform and make the train. The seats were comfortable and roomy, and there was free wifi and charging stations at every seat.
As of the last time I rode Amtrak (a few years ago), there was no security theater, the coach class seat were more comfortable and more roomy than any airline first class seat I've ever ridden in, and there was a 120 VAC outlet for each seat. Supposedly, Amtrak has expanded its free WiFi offerings to more trains. Unfortunately, the TSA has "promised" to expand its operations into train and bus stations. I am quite sure this will soon affect - if not already - at least 2 of the stations I would be likely to use.
In the old days, websites handled this sort of thing very well -- the reflows they did were helpful and didn't break the user experience. Somewhere along the line, though, website stopped doing this well, so now reducing the window size often breaks the usability.
Having done some software dev for websites, in my experience, the problem arose as more and more designers wanted precise control over every pixel on the screen. Thus they would design to a specific pixel width. If your screen/window wasn't wide enough, you had to side-scroll. The wide variation in screen size and resolution in mobile devices has forced designers to cede some of the layout control back to algorithms.
Even with the scholarship they were offering, we would have been stretching our finances to the breaking point. So, yes, it was a choice, but not much of one.
It is unfortunate that so many schools are unable to offer true merit scholarships any more. The school I went to (and, later, my daughter) still offers true merit scholarships. And even with the need-based scholarships they don't raise an issue with a yearly family vacation - and especially not a vacation involving visiting grandparents or other family members.
It would not be news, if a corporation, that had purchased a similar tablet based course-ware system and what the supplier delivered did not meet the needs (however hazily defined the requirements), stopped further payments and filed suit to collect a refund of payments made.
Suppliers deliver dodgy products to corporations, government organizations and ordinary citizens, alike. And even corporations issue hazy, clueless or even bad requirements. If a supplier supplier promises to deliver a satisfactory product based on questionable requirements, caveat vendor.
As a component supplier, our point of view is far smaller. It is normal for a new project to take an existing design then modify it as needed. Sometimes, this involves combining changes from different variations from a common ancestor. When this involves a single physical part, as opposed to an assembly, this requires some kind of "design merge". Sometimes this involves taking one of the 3D models and modifying it to incorporate the desired aspects of its "cousins". How much of this can be done automatically depends on a lot of things. The hardware designers have told me it usually takes very significant effort on their part to achieve the intended final result..
Still, we have a lot of metadata associated with the designs that we track.
My point is that, while we have a "wish list" of improvements to our tools, we're already doing what Jono said the maker community needs to figure out. Many of my coworkers - and I - are part of our local maker community. And I'm sure other local area maker communities have similar experts as members. Just a matter of education and sharing.
if someone refines a 3D printed piece of a drone, how do they fork the blueprints, submit their changes, have them reviewed, and get them merged into the project?
Where I work, this happens as part of our normal product develop processes. Design documents, whether for hardware or software, are still documents. Granted, "merging" changes in a "blueprint" or 3D model is harder to do, but not impossible. Right now, it still requires a lot of human work, but that can improve over time.
"The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason." sounds a lot like a sci-fi version of "It was a dark and stormy night."
Sounds like a Disaster Area song.
Jury nullification is a side effect of the prohibition against retrying a defendant for the same crime after having been found not guilty
This prohibition is important because, at least in theory, it prevents a determined prosecutor from repeatedly retrying until there is a conviction, the defendant caves or the prosecutor gets tired. Of course, it's not impossible to get around this by filing charges for other things the defendant might have done at the same time. In theory, the defendant or defendant's lawyer could argue these new charges are "lessor included charges" and get them dismissed.