I'm so tired of this bullshit example being trotted out as evidence of how evil Uber is. Here's the facts of what happened in Australia:
A bunch of people suddenly wanted Uber rides out of the area during the hostage situation. Uber's computers responded accordingly, and automatically, in activating the surge pricing. Whether you like the surge pricing or not, it's designed to get more drivers onto the road by providing the incentive of higher pay to meet the spiking demand. One would assume that at least some drivers are more likely to go out and pick up passengers when their phones alert them that they can suddenly make 4x the normal fare.
When human beings running Uber in Sydney became clued in as to what was happening, they made all rides in the area free.
Here's what DIDN'T happen: Uber in Sydney finds out about hostage crisis, says "omg let's charge 4x the normal fare because bunches of people are going to want rides and we can gouge them!"
You can disagree with Uber's business practices, or how they run their business, and that's fine, but when you just start making shit up, you lose all credibility and take away from an intelligent conversation on what to do about Uber. You're the problem.
What a dopey comparison - when Target, Home Depot, and Chase were hit, they didn't CLOSE THEIR FUCKING STORES based on groundless threats from hackers half a world away. Sony did exactly that - they took a $42 million movie and decided to take a complete loss on it, at least for now. That's why it's big news.
As for Sony being based in Japan, what's that got to do with anything when you're talking about a multi-national corporation? What country do you think Sony makes the lion's share of its profits in? I'll give you a hint, it's the one that the most tickets were going to be sold for this movie, by far.
No, ask all the questions you want. Just realize, when you assure people that it "must" be a ruse to provide an excuse to attack North Korea, you sound as loony as the NK leadership.
I'm not saying NK definitely did plan a cyberattack against Sony; it's an open question at this point. But when you smugly assert that you know it's our own government, with your only proof being your own paranoid crazy logic, you're really not advancing the conversation any.
Depending on where you are, yes, broadband can get that high, because of "bundling." Cable companies in the US offer the "triple play" of internet, TV and phone in a bundle that costs you well over $100 for even the slowest internet connection they offer. Then when you ask "how much for just internet?" the price often turns out to be as high, or, inexplicably, even higher if you refuse the other two services. because, capitalism free markets MURICA.
I don't know the details anymore, because I'm lucky enough to live in an area serviced by Verizon FIOS, and haven't had cable internet in a while. For me, I get 6MB and I pay about $120/month for internet, cable and phone. Hoever, most people don't live in a area where they have a choice of more than one service, so I imagine that drives the price up for them.
there should have been some people who would wait an extra 20 minutes to save $20
According to who? Maybe there weren't any, or the amount of people was small enough to where it didn't matter. "Should've been" is pretty arbitrary.
The other problem is that you still need drivers who are willing to take less for making the same trip. If drivers are making more with Uber, and there's plenty of passengers available, you have a chicken-and-egg problem: Drivers won't move to Sidecar because it pays less, and passengers won't move to Sidecar because there aren't any drivers. If Sidecar had come first, and established a critical mass, they might have become a sustainable business. They were late.
This assumes that passengers are willing to put up with waiting a lot longer for a Sidecar driver (of which there were always fewer) instead of paying a little bit extra and getting an Uber driver very quickly. They're not; Uber wins this one every single time. There's more drivers (in the four cities I've used it, I've never waited more than 5 minutes for a ride), and contrary to the drivel in this blog entry - "UberX and Lyft are about the same price as a taxi" - bullshit. Uber, at least, is waaay cheaper than a taxi (i haven't used Lyft yet).
The added incentive of being able to save a few dimes on a Sidecar ride was not enough to move passengers from Uber to Sidecar. Uber's just plenty cheap already.
You're right, I should've stuck with my real-world example of when unions work, and work well - which I notice you conveniently ignored.
I'm so tired of hearing the same "squawking parroting of talking points" from anti-union types such as yourself that I let me emotions get the better of me, and sank to your level. For that, I apologize, it was the wrong road.
However, the fact remains that a few bad unions are constantly cited by assholes as being the rule, rather than the exception, and it's just not true. You do most Americans a disservice by attempting to paint all unions with that same brush. My family and I are better off because I'm in a union. If I wasn't, you know who would be better off? Rupert Murdoch, Disney shareholders, Viacom shareholders... the list goes on. I care about their pockets exactly the same amount as they care about mine - zero. The question is, why do YOU do care that they should be making more money than they already are? Why don't I and my fellow union members, in your view, have the right to seek more profit, just like they do?
Another over-simplified common argument from someone that doesn't know anything about unions, just knows that they don't like them, because, uh... Ayn Rand! or something.
Steelworker jobs disappeared as a result of automation. One quick example that you can find in 5 seconds of googling:
“When I joined the company, it had 28,000 employees,” said George Ranney, a former executive at Inland Steel, an Indiana mill that was bought out by ArcelorMittal in 1998. “When I left, it had between 5,000 and 6,000. We were making the same amount of steel, 5 million tons a year, with higher quality and lower cost.”
But keep spreading that myth of "unions=job loss". They're lapping it up in the red states. Amazing how so many middle-class people will vote against their own self-interests.
Being anti-union is inherantly being for the workers, not the overseers.
I forgot to add the third aspect of "after union" - you make 20% less pay and your union leader lives in a mansion.
Both of these assertions are such complete bullshit and make it obvious that your entire knowledge of unions is based on no real-world experience with them.
Let's start with your "like teachers' unions" analogy. Right there you've equated a union in a public service job (government paycheck) with all unions, which is ridiculous. Yes, it's true that it's tougher to fire a teacher than it is to fire a McDonald's employee. It's also true that you have no clue about how private sector unions are formed, or why they're formed. Their primary purpose is not protectionism, it's to get paid more. You can't just lump all unions into one box and declare they're all evil. Are some corrupt? Yes, of course. Do people like you then erroneously believe they're all corrupt, just because you've got some right-wing dogma implanted in your Archie-Bunker-like skull? Yes, you do.
When the people with 99% of the money dictate what you should be paid, and their decrees have nothing to do with your fair market value, because they're a near-monopoly that believes in getting workers for the absolute minimum amount possible, the only way to push back is with a union. You can't do it yourself, period. I'm in a union of freelancers (not programming or IT related, but I am a technician) and before the union was formed, the people in charge of setting the rates for freelancers had a "take it or leave it" attitude, even though their profits was very very comfortable - that didn't matter, they wanted more. Well, guess what? Us freelancers wanted more too. We got the union formed, and my day rate went up about 30% almost overnight. And was there less work as a result? Not at all. The execs and shareholders making the money are still making money, they're just making a little bit less profit than they were before. It's not like they were going to say, "Oh we were getting.26 on the dollar before, and now we're only getting.23 on the dollar.... fuck it! let's shut the whole operation down."
Everyone wants to make more money. Unions are the only way for the workers to push back - if workers don't push back, they'll just make less and less and less over time. Take your anti-union rhetoric and toss it back to Fox News where it belongs. The real world is much more complex than the simple cliches you've trotted out.
but the two are not mutually exclusive; rather they are complimentary.
"I love what you've done with the people on your mission! So fancy."
"oh, that's fine, but YOUR mission is so much cleaner and free of human interference, it's great!"
The only problem with your logic is that no one said "Yahoo is cool again", except for the original poster, who, despite his use of a question mark, was the first to introduce the idea of "Yahoo is cool again", so I was wondering how he even got to that thought, interrogative or not.
Sure, anyone can just "cite" a reason. That doesn't mean it's going to work.
Anyway, I was only addressing the previous poster who made that blanket statement about "When you are playing fast and loose with your customers" - they aren't.
Doesn't matter much, as the number of people using Firefox has been steadily dropping for the past couple of years. It's not like this change will affect that; however, it does seem that Yahoo is a little late with this strategy, if they're trying to use to boost numbers.
There's always a slight chance that if a user that's used to using Google suddenly sees Yahoo is the default search engine, they'll get annoyed and switch browsers. But I suspect most people in that situation would either figure out how to change back to Google, or just shrug and say "oh well", as you said.
Either way, at this point, I don't see this helping Yahoo at all, and it could potentially slightly accelerate Firefox's fall. A lose-lose.
Not sure how you got from your first 4 points to "Yahoo is cool again"; it's pretty clear that Yahoo is so uncool at this point that they're making a desperate effort to get cool again by paying Mozilla. I have my doubts about this strategy working.
Slashdot Mirror
So when Japan attacked Hawaii, they weren't attacking the United States? Reality, indeed.
I'm so tired of this bullshit example being trotted out as evidence of how evil Uber is. Here's the facts of what happened in Australia:
A bunch of people suddenly wanted Uber rides out of the area during the hostage situation. Uber's computers responded accordingly, and automatically, in activating the surge pricing. Whether you like the surge pricing or not, it's designed to get more drivers onto the road by providing the incentive of higher pay to meet the spiking demand. One would assume that at least some drivers are more likely to go out and pick up passengers when their phones alert them that they can suddenly make 4x the normal fare.
When human beings running Uber in Sydney became clued in as to what was happening, they made all rides in the area free.
Here's what DIDN'T happen: Uber in Sydney finds out about hostage crisis, says "omg let's charge 4x the normal fare because bunches of people are going to want rides and we can gouge them!"
You can disagree with Uber's business practices, or how they run their business, and that's fine, but when you just start making shit up, you lose all credibility and take away from an intelligent conversation on what to do about Uber. You're the problem.
If this orangutan was considered dangerous to people while it lives in a wildlife sanctuary, your ridiculous straw-man argument might have some merit.
If you'd like to place a bet on whether the US's retaliation will be limited to a strongly-worded letter, I'd very much like to take that action.
Actually, he made some very good points, and you responded with basically a sarcastic "fuck you and your smart talk!" Who's sliding past the issue?
Almost nobody had heard about the movie, now everyone has. I'm not sure that's good for North Korea.
You think North Korea is more internet-savvy than Barbara Streisand?
What a dopey comparison - when Target, Home Depot, and Chase were hit, they didn't CLOSE THEIR FUCKING STORES based on groundless threats from hackers half a world away. Sony did exactly that - they took a $42 million movie and decided to take a complete loss on it, at least for now. That's why it's big news.
As for Sony being based in Japan, what's that got to do with anything when you're talking about a multi-national corporation? What country do you think Sony makes the lion's share of its profits in? I'll give you a hint, it's the one that the most tickets were going to be sold for this movie, by far.
Bluntly, if NK had the power to pull something like this off, they would not have to fear retaliation.
What??? They're facing retaliation now and they're still claiming they didn't do it. What kind of logic were you just using?
Americans are brilliant at deceiving about half of their own citizens; the rest of the planet, not so much.
FTFY
Lawmakers were the ones mandating ABS, crumple zones, airbags, traction control, and seat belts. To a degree.
No, ask all the questions you want. Just realize, when you assure people that it "must" be a ruse to provide an excuse to attack North Korea, you sound as loony as the NK leadership.
I'm not saying NK definitely did plan a cyberattack against Sony; it's an open question at this point. But when you smugly assert that you know it's our own government, with your only proof being your own paranoid crazy logic, you're really not advancing the conversation any.
Depending on where you are, yes, broadband can get that high, because of "bundling." Cable companies in the US offer the "triple play" of internet, TV and phone in a bundle that costs you well over $100 for even the slowest internet connection they offer. Then when you ask "how much for just internet?" the price often turns out to be as high, or, inexplicably, even higher if you refuse the other two services. because, capitalism free markets MURICA.
I don't know the details anymore, because I'm lucky enough to live in an area serviced by Verizon FIOS, and haven't had cable internet in a while. For me, I get 6MB and I pay about $120/month for internet, cable and phone. Hoever, most people don't live in a area where they have a choice of more than one service, so I imagine that drives the price up for them.
there should have been some people who would wait an extra 20 minutes to save $20
According to who? Maybe there weren't any, or the amount of people was small enough to where it didn't matter. "Should've been" is pretty arbitrary.
The other problem is that you still need drivers who are willing to take less for making the same trip. If drivers are making more with Uber, and there's plenty of passengers available, you have a chicken-and-egg problem: Drivers won't move to Sidecar because it pays less, and passengers won't move to Sidecar because there aren't any drivers. If Sidecar had come first, and established a critical mass, they might have become a sustainable business. They were late.
This assumes that passengers are willing to put up with waiting a lot longer for a Sidecar driver (of which there were always fewer) instead of paying a little bit extra and getting an Uber driver very quickly. They're not; Uber wins this one every single time. There's more drivers (in the four cities I've used it, I've never waited more than 5 minutes for a ride), and contrary to the drivel in this blog entry - "UberX and Lyft are about the same price as a taxi" - bullshit. Uber, at least, is waaay cheaper than a taxi (i haven't used Lyft yet).
The added incentive of being able to save a few dimes on a Sidecar ride was not enough to move passengers from Uber to Sidecar. Uber's just plenty cheap already.
Your reading comprehension is apparently below the level required for me to have a conversation with you.
Perhaps because evidence of water does not guarantee life was ever present in that water.
You're right, I should've stuck with my real-world example of when unions work, and work well - which I notice you conveniently ignored.
I'm so tired of hearing the same "squawking parroting of talking points" from anti-union types such as yourself that I let me emotions get the better of me, and sank to your level. For that, I apologize, it was the wrong road.
However, the fact remains that a few bad unions are constantly cited by assholes as being the rule, rather than the exception, and it's just not true. You do most Americans a disservice by attempting to paint all unions with that same brush. My family and I are better off because I'm in a union. If I wasn't, you know who would be better off? Rupert Murdoch, Disney shareholders, Viacom shareholders... the list goes on. I care about their pockets exactly the same amount as they care about mine - zero. The question is, why do YOU do care that they should be making more money than they already are? Why don't I and my fellow union members, in your view, have the right to seek more profit, just like they do?
Another over-simplified common argument from someone that doesn't know anything about unions, just knows that they don't like them, because, uh... Ayn Rand! or something.
Steelworker jobs disappeared as a result of automation. One quick example that you can find in 5 seconds of googling:
“When I joined the company, it had 28,000 employees,” said George Ranney, a former executive at Inland Steel, an Indiana mill that was bought out by ArcelorMittal in 1998. “When I left, it had between 5,000 and 6,000. We were making the same amount of steel, 5 million tons a year, with higher quality and lower cost.”
But keep spreading that myth of "unions=job loss". They're lapping it up in the red states. Amazing how so many middle-class people will vote against their own self-interests.
Being anti-union is inherantly being for the workers, not the overseers.
I forgot to add the third aspect of "after union" - you make 20% less pay and your union leader lives in a mansion.
Both of these assertions are such complete bullshit and make it obvious that your entire knowledge of unions is based on no real-world experience with them.
Let's start with your "like teachers' unions" analogy. Right there you've equated a union in a public service job (government paycheck) with all unions, which is ridiculous. Yes, it's true that it's tougher to fire a teacher than it is to fire a McDonald's employee. It's also true that you have no clue about how private sector unions are formed, or why they're formed. Their primary purpose is not protectionism, it's to get paid more. You can't just lump all unions into one box and declare they're all evil. Are some corrupt? Yes, of course. Do people like you then erroneously believe they're all corrupt, just because you've got some right-wing dogma implanted in your Archie-Bunker-like skull? Yes, you do.
When the people with 99% of the money dictate what you should be paid, and their decrees have nothing to do with your fair market value, because they're a near-monopoly that believes in getting workers for the absolute minimum amount possible, the only way to push back is with a union. You can't do it yourself, period. I'm in a union of freelancers (not programming or IT related, but I am a technician) and before the union was formed, the people in charge of setting the rates for freelancers had a "take it or leave it" attitude, even though their profits was very very comfortable - that didn't matter, they wanted more. Well, guess what? Us freelancers wanted more too. We got the union formed, and my day rate went up about 30% almost overnight. And was there less work as a result? Not at all. The execs and shareholders making the money are still making money, they're just making a little bit less profit than they were before. It's not like they were going to say, "Oh we were getting .26 on the dollar before, and now we're only getting .23 on the dollar.... fuck it! let's shut the whole operation down."
Everyone wants to make more money. Unions are the only way for the workers to push back - if workers don't push back, they'll just make less and less and less over time. Take your anti-union rhetoric and toss it back to Fox News where it belongs. The real world is much more complex than the simple cliches you've trotted out.
but the two are not mutually exclusive; rather they are complimentary.
"I love what you've done with the people on your mission! So fancy."
"oh, that's fine, but YOUR mission is so much cleaner and free of human interference, it's great!"
The only problem with your logic is that no one said "Yahoo is cool again", except for the original poster, who, despite his use of a question mark, was the first to introduce the idea of "Yahoo is cool again", so I was wondering how he even got to that thought, interrogative or not.
Yes, you're right. What do you propose to do about it?
Sure, anyone can just "cite" a reason. That doesn't mean it's going to work.
Anyway, I was only addressing the previous poster who made that blanket statement about "When you are playing fast and loose with your customers" - they aren't.
Doesn't matter much, as the number of people using Firefox has been steadily dropping for the past couple of years. It's not like this change will affect that; however, it does seem that Yahoo is a little late with this strategy, if they're trying to use to boost numbers.
There's always a slight chance that if a user that's used to using Google suddenly sees Yahoo is the default search engine, they'll get annoyed and switch browsers. But I suspect most people in that situation would either figure out how to change back to Google, or just shrug and say "oh well", as you said.
Either way, at this point, I don't see this helping Yahoo at all, and it could potentially slightly accelerate Firefox's fall. A lose-lose.
Not sure how you got from your first 4 points to "Yahoo is cool again"; it's pretty clear that Yahoo is so uncool at this point that they're making a desperate effort to get cool again by paying Mozilla. I have my doubts about this strategy working.