I've never flown standby, so I'm not completely sure how it works, but I think it's a model that makes more sense.
Let's say a plane has 100 seats. The airline knows on average there will be 4% no-shows. What if, instead of selling 104 tickets at full-price, they sold 100 tickets at full-price, and 4 at a discount? Those people with the discounted tickets would usually get to fly, but would understand they might get bumped.
"Empty seats" in the sense of the article are already profitable for the Airline, as someone has payed for the seat but didn't show. They don't "cost the airline money" except in the sense that they are a revenue opportunity to sell the seats of no-shows a second time.
Perhaps airlines should be forced to refund tickets if they manage to resell the seat - which given the way their pricing works they invariable do at a higher price anyway.
I'm not defending the practice, but you are missing one scenario: lost connections. If my initial flight is late, and I miss my connection, then the seat I paid for on the 2nd flight is empty (assuming no overbooking happened). The airline still needs to get me to my final destination, which means they need to find a flight with an available seat. In this scenario, putting a paying customer in my "empty" seat actually means breaking even, since that customer basically covered the cost of my seat in the final flight that I got re-booked on after missing the connection.
What about salary comparison? Places with higher rent tend to involve higher salary (though not necessarily proportionally so). Without an indication of salary, the rental prices provide little useful data.
All the deliveries I get from Amazon are via an independent delivery company (e.g. UPS, USPS, etc.) So in my mind, "amazon-like" delivery would involve contracting the work out to a 3rd party.
I'm in Canada, and I have seen people being escorted out of work in less than 30 minutes.
Some guy is called in a meeting, he goes there nonchalantly not knowing what is going to happen, then he has to give back his badge/key and is escorted by security outside the building. Some people were not even allowed to say "bye" to their coworker.
It works like this in North America.
When I've seen this happen in the US, although the employee is kicked out, he still gets paid for some length of time. (Usually at least 2 weeks, often a bit more, depending on the circumstances.) I have no idea what the law states. I suspect pay could be stopped immediately, but the company is trying to be nice, figuring that the employee would be less likely to start a legal battle. (Even if an employee is terminated for valid reasons, a legal fight could hurt the company.)
Touch screens are generally distracting, because you have to look at them to operate. By this definition, operating a cell phone while driving is bad. Yet car companies seem to be making more and more car controls work via touch screen. This needs to change too.
I remember there was a startup ISP in my area that was looking for beta testers before they were ready for paying customers. They put a small ad in the local newspaper that simply stated their dialup number, followed by 9600,8,N,1.
RS232 an null-modems are mentioned in TFA, but I'd like to add a detail: Most of the more hackerish students where I went (ca 1990) knew the minimal pinout for a null-modem by heart so we could improvise one with 3 wires and matches/paperclips/whatever. By the time we graduated LANs and to some degree internet mane that knowledge obsolete, but it sure did save the day a few times, typically for transferring files between different platforms with different floppy formatting.
I guess I'm about 10 years younger than you, and I had the same information memorized. But I guess I was using it more for working with lab equipment, as some sort of a project, rather than for the purpose of sharing data with friends in my dorm. I also used to have the correct ordering for Ethernet and cross-over cables memorized, but it's been a long time since I've had to put together any kind of cable myself. So either I use cables a lot less, or I'm just lazy, and find it easier to buy a ready-made cable instead.
Also there was: "no, a standard PC 3.5 inch floppy drive cannot format an apple floppy because the heads don't have enough travel range, so please read the FAQ and stop asking again and again on the USENET forums"
Really? Maybe things changed later on, because I remember buying a software package that allowed me to read/write Mac-formatted disks on my PC - I don't recall having any difficulty using it.
Thanks to a certain member of the US government, whose name I won't mention, the media is starting to realize they need to better fact-check the claims they are reporting. It's one thing to that someone said a thing. It's another to report that the thing is true (unless it's been verified as true). Fixing a headline doesn't require that much work. For example, instead of titling this "Verizon Introduces Unlimited Data Plans", it could be re-wored to "Verizon Advertises New Plan As Unlimited Data". There is a difference between the plan being actually unlimited, and Verizon advertising it as unlimited.
So Facebook would let him run for government... but it's more important that he demonstrate to the government that he won't have any potential conflicts of interest (unless he runs for President, of course).
Analogy: Let's say I'm a Windows user, and I have a laptop that I love. It turns out that laptop commonly catches fire. Based upon that data alone, what kind of laptop do you think I'll purchase next?
Most likely, I think I'd consider switching brands, but still go with a laptop that runs the same software that I like, and has a similar design. I suppose it's possible I'd switch to a Mac, but only if the Mac had the features I wanted, but it certainly wouldn't be my first instinct.
I'm not familiar with the Samsung Note 7, but I'm willing to bet it has some features that doesn't exist in an iPhone. Users who like those particular features will look for a phone that has them when buying a replacement. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that a few users switched to iPhone, but it would surprise me if most users did.
The person doing the "giving" (Alphabet) gets the tax write-off, so the employees got absolutely nothing. Alphabet is in no way required to give their employees gifts, and I think it would have been better if they didn't. This is just an failed attempt at good PR. I'm happy Alphabet is donating to charity - they just shouldn't be pretending they're doing it for their employees.
I'm not into tech news these days but has anyone been able to build a smartwatch with as long a battery life as the Pebbles? I always thought epaper was the right tech for smartwatches since because of size limitations they are restricted to a small battery
My Garmin smartwatch lasts over a week if I don't use the GPS.
I own an original Pebble from Kickstarter, which I bought before owning a compatible smartphone. Since I'm into running, I ended up replacing my Pebble with a Garmin smartwatch that also provided GPS and a heartrate monitor. (Were I not into running, I'd still be using that original Pebble, since it did everything else I wanted.) I feel like Pebble really started the smart watch revolution, and they did it right -- a simple watch that works with your phone, without attempting to replace it. Unfortunately for them, once the idea was out, any other company could copy it, and that's exactly what happened.
Sadly, the first to market is rarely the one who lasts the longest. Hydrox is gone, but Oreos are here to stay.
Five years ago, paying a fee for unlimited texting sounds about right. Perhaps 10 years ago, it was more common that you'd be charged a fee (perhaps $0.10 or $0.20) for every text sent or received. For this reason, texting took quite a while to catch on in the US.
As for minutes, most companies no longer have a concept of "long distance" (international is still a thing). So for calls within the country, there is no distinction between "incoming minutes" and "outgoing minutes" -- they're just "minutes". If you're making an international call, I believe you're changed a per-minute surcharge. If you're receiving an international call, you are billed just for the "minutes" used, with no international surcharge.
Simple, right? Of course, none of this is law or anything, so it's really up to the individual companies to decide how to do things.
Sorry, it is exactly like the door example: someone rings me, I have zero control over that, all I can do is choose to answer it or not. Someone rings my door bell, I have zero control over that (walking up to someone's front door is not trespassing, in the UK or the US) and all I can do is choose to answer it or not.
The reason paying for phone calls is so barbaric is that it's so completely ripe for abuse. How's that problem with robo callers working out for you over there in the US?
Texting is even worse (at least before most people got plans with unlimited texts) - in that case, you couldn't chose to not answer. If someone sent you a text, you got charged. You couldn't decide not to receive it.
Actually, a paperless bathroom would be easier than a paperless office. If we added bidets, we would hugely decrease the amount of toilet paper needed. There is no similar technology available for the office outside of the bathroom.
The paperless office is not a dream... at least not a dream of mine.
I don't print things every day, but I'm glad to have that ability. Paper is portable, easy to annotate, and just plain useful. I see no reason why I should want to get rid of it.
Yes, society is becoming more global, and we are having more meetings with people in different time zones. But we also have computers that can very easily figure out the local times. I know that it would be reasonable to schedule a meeting between 9am and 5pm local time. If we all use a universal time, it'll be much harder to figure out who's in the office and who isn't. Likewise, every time I travel, I'll have to figure out what the appropriate time is to wake up, start work, eat lunch, etc.
The number of conveniences created by a universal time would be offset by the much larger number of inconveniences created.
If things go well for Tesla, there are going to be more and more Tesla cars on the road. For the early adopters, the idea of free charging stations was a great bonus point to offset any complaints about range. Naturally, it costs Tesla money to build and maintain these, and of course, the power isn't free. As long as they charge reasonable prices, I'm fine with this. If I owned an electric car, the vast majority of my charging would be done at home, so even if a recharge at a Tesla station cost as much as a tank of gas, I'd still be paying a lot less to power a Tesla than I would to fuel a gasoline car throughout its life.
I'm not even sure whether this is legal. Or probably it is, because tesla lawyers have made it part of the preorder conditions.
Nobody has preordered a model 3 yet. A preorder would require an existing product, or at least a list of available specs. So far, people have merely reserved a place in line to make a preorder.
This is kind of sad, really. These people lust for the new product but will fake it in order just to fool others into thinking they have it. And they even admit that there's no compelling reason to 'upgrade' to the new shiny. It's a techno-tragicomedy.
I don't know how much "lust" is going on there. A lot of it is about social status. Both for the purpose of showing off in the corporate hierarchy, as well as in social/dating life, it's important to demonstrate that you can afford the latest, and this isn't an easy cycle to break. As an American, I have a hard time relating... the closest comparison I can make would be with cars. For many, your social standing can be measured by the car you drive. (I'm glad this is finally changing among the younger generations. My parents think I'm crazy for owning a reliable, but 10-year-old car, even though I could afford a new one.)
I just finished buying a new set of apple approved pants for all the various adaptor cables that I'm always forced to carry with me to use common commodity and widely used hardware with Apple devices. Don't tell me I need to upgrade my pants AGAIN!
Fuck it. I'm buying a dell. Then I'm buying pants so baggy that Vanilla Ice wouldn't know how to shuffle in them. That way I can do away with adapters and just carry an entire frigging docking station, spare mouse, 100 earbuds since I keep losing the ones that fall out of my ears, a keyboard with actual keys that's nice to type on, and a monitor with a matte screen in them.
But you don't need to buy those adaptors from Apple, since USB is a standard. Heck, my non-Apple Android phone has a USB-C port. Proprietary ports are stupid, but USB-C is at least a standard connection. Personally, I hope other companies start putting USB-C ports in their laptops too... though I think the ideal solution for now would be to have a few USB-A, and a few USB-C ports.
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I've never flown standby, so I'm not completely sure how it works, but I think it's a model that makes more sense.
Let's say a plane has 100 seats. The airline knows on average there will be 4% no-shows. What if, instead of selling 104 tickets at full-price, they sold 100 tickets at full-price, and 4 at a discount? Those people with the discounted tickets would usually get to fly, but would understand they might get bumped.
"Empty seats" in the sense of the article are already profitable for the Airline, as someone has payed for the seat but didn't show. They don't "cost the airline money" except in the sense that they are a revenue opportunity to sell the seats of no-shows a second time.
Perhaps airlines should be forced to refund tickets if they manage to resell the seat - which given the way their pricing works they invariable do at a higher price anyway.
I'm not defending the practice, but you are missing one scenario: lost connections. If my initial flight is late, and I miss my connection, then the seat I paid for on the 2nd flight is empty (assuming no overbooking happened). The airline still needs to get me to my final destination, which means they need to find a flight with an available seat. In this scenario, putting a paying customer in my "empty" seat actually means breaking even, since that customer basically covered the cost of my seat in the final flight that I got re-booked on after missing the connection.
What about salary comparison? Places with higher rent tend to involve higher salary (though not necessarily proportionally so). Without an indication of salary, the rental prices provide little useful data.
All the deliveries I get from Amazon are via an independent delivery company (e.g. UPS, USPS, etc.) So in my mind, "amazon-like" delivery would involve contracting the work out to a 3rd party.
I'm in Canada, and I have seen people being escorted out of work in less than 30 minutes.
Some guy is called in a meeting, he goes there nonchalantly not knowing what is going to happen, then he has to give back his badge/key and is escorted by security outside the building. Some people were not even allowed to say "bye" to their coworker.
It works like this in North America.
When I've seen this happen in the US, although the employee is kicked out, he still gets paid for some length of time. (Usually at least 2 weeks, often a bit more, depending on the circumstances.) I have no idea what the law states. I suspect pay could be stopped immediately, but the company is trying to be nice, figuring that the employee would be less likely to start a legal battle. (Even if an employee is terminated for valid reasons, a legal fight could hurt the company.)
Touch screens are generally distracting, because you have to look at them to operate. By this definition, operating a cell phone while driving is bad. Yet car companies seem to be making more and more car controls work via touch screen. This needs to change too.
9600,8,N,1,XON/XOFF
I remember there was a startup ISP in my area that was looking for beta testers before they were ready for paying customers. They put a small ad in the local newspaper that simply stated their dialup number, followed by 9600,8,N,1.
RS232 an null-modems are mentioned in TFA, but I'd like to add a detail:
Most of the more hackerish students where I went (ca 1990) knew the minimal pinout for a null-modem by heart so we could improvise one with 3 wires and matches/paperclips/whatever. By the time we graduated LANs and to some degree internet mane that knowledge obsolete, but it sure did save the day a few times, typically for transferring files between different platforms with different floppy formatting.
I guess I'm about 10 years younger than you, and I had the same information memorized. But I guess I was using it more for working with lab equipment, as some sort of a project, rather than for the purpose of sharing data with friends in my dorm. I also used to have the correct ordering for Ethernet and cross-over cables memorized, but it's been a long time since I've had to put together any kind of cable myself. So either I use cables a lot less, or I'm just lazy, and find it easier to buy a ready-made cable instead.
Also there was: "no, a standard PC 3.5 inch floppy drive cannot format an apple floppy because the heads don't have enough travel range, so please read the FAQ and stop asking again and again on the USENET forums"
Really? Maybe things changed later on, because I remember buying a software package that allowed me to read/write Mac-formatted disks on my PC - I don't recall having any difficulty using it.
Thanks to a certain member of the US government, whose name I won't mention, the media is starting to realize they need to better fact-check the claims they are reporting. It's one thing to that someone said a thing. It's another to report that the thing is true (unless it's been verified as true). Fixing a headline doesn't require that much work. For example, instead of titling this "Verizon Introduces Unlimited Data Plans", it could be re-wored to "Verizon Advertises New Plan As Unlimited Data". There is a difference between the plan being actually unlimited, and Verizon advertising it as unlimited.
So Facebook would let him run for government... but it's more important that he demonstrate to the government that he won't have any potential conflicts of interest (unless he runs for President, of course).
Analogy: Let's say I'm a Windows user, and I have a laptop that I love. It turns out that laptop commonly catches fire. Based upon that data alone, what kind of laptop do you think I'll purchase next?
Most likely, I think I'd consider switching brands, but still go with a laptop that runs the same software that I like, and has a similar design. I suppose it's possible I'd switch to a Mac, but only if the Mac had the features I wanted, but it certainly wouldn't be my first instinct.
I'm not familiar with the Samsung Note 7, but I'm willing to bet it has some features that doesn't exist in an iPhone. Users who like those particular features will look for a phone that has them when buying a replacement. It wouldn't surprise me to hear that a few users switched to iPhone, but it would surprise me if most users did.
I think I found your problem:
Which takes ages if you have a hundred of tabs.
I can't imagine my browser being remotely functional if I had hundreds of tabs open.
The person doing the "giving" (Alphabet) gets the tax write-off, so the employees got absolutely nothing. Alphabet is in no way required to give their employees gifts, and I think it would have been better if they didn't. This is just an failed attempt at good PR. I'm happy Alphabet is donating to charity - they just shouldn't be pretending they're doing it for their employees.
I'm not into tech news these days but has anyone been able to build a smartwatch with as long a battery life as the Pebbles? I always thought epaper was the right tech for smartwatches since because of size limitations they are restricted to a small battery
My Garmin smartwatch lasts over a week if I don't use the GPS.
I own an original Pebble from Kickstarter, which I bought before owning a compatible smartphone. Since I'm into running, I ended up replacing my Pebble with a Garmin smartwatch that also provided GPS and a heartrate monitor. (Were I not into running, I'd still be using that original Pebble, since it did everything else I wanted.) I feel like Pebble really started the smart watch revolution, and they did it right -- a simple watch that works with your phone, without attempting to replace it. Unfortunately for them, once the idea was out, any other company could copy it, and that's exactly what happened.
Sadly, the first to market is rarely the one who lasts the longest. Hydrox is gone, but Oreos are here to stay.
Five years ago, paying a fee for unlimited texting sounds about right. Perhaps 10 years ago, it was more common that you'd be charged a fee (perhaps $0.10 or $0.20) for every text sent or received. For this reason, texting took quite a while to catch on in the US.
As for minutes, most companies no longer have a concept of "long distance" (international is still a thing). So for calls within the country, there is no distinction between "incoming minutes" and "outgoing minutes" -- they're just "minutes". If you're making an international call, I believe you're changed a per-minute surcharge. If you're receiving an international call, you are billed just for the "minutes" used, with no international surcharge.
Simple, right? Of course, none of this is law or anything, so it's really up to the individual companies to decide how to do things.
Sorry, it is exactly like the door example: someone rings me, I have zero control over that, all I can do is choose to answer it or not. Someone rings my door bell, I have zero control over that (walking up to someone's front door is not trespassing, in the UK or the US) and all I can do is choose to answer it or not.
The reason paying for phone calls is so barbaric is that it's so completely ripe for abuse. How's that problem with robo callers working out for you over there in the US?
Texting is even worse (at least before most people got plans with unlimited texts) - in that case, you couldn't chose to not answer. If someone sent you a text, you got charged. You couldn't decide not to receive it.
Actually, a paperless bathroom would be easier than a paperless office. If we added bidets, we would hugely decrease the amount of toilet paper needed. There is no similar technology available for the office outside of the bathroom.
The paperless office is not a dream... at least not a dream of mine.
I don't print things every day, but I'm glad to have that ability. Paper is portable, easy to annotate, and just plain useful. I see no reason why I should want to get rid of it.
Yes, society is becoming more global, and we are having more meetings with people in different time zones. But we also have computers that can very easily figure out the local times. I know that it would be reasonable to schedule a meeting between 9am and 5pm local time. If we all use a universal time, it'll be much harder to figure out who's in the office and who isn't. Likewise, every time I travel, I'll have to figure out what the appropriate time is to wake up, start work, eat lunch, etc.
The number of conveniences created by a universal time would be offset by the much larger number of inconveniences created.
If things go well for Tesla, there are going to be more and more Tesla cars on the road. For the early adopters, the idea of free charging stations was a great bonus point to offset any complaints about range. Naturally, it costs Tesla money to build and maintain these, and of course, the power isn't free. As long as they charge reasonable prices, I'm fine with this. If I owned an electric car, the vast majority of my charging would be done at home, so even if a recharge at a Tesla station cost as much as a tank of gas, I'd still be paying a lot less to power a Tesla than I would to fuel a gasoline car throughout its life.
I'm not even sure whether this is legal. Or probably it is, because tesla lawyers have made it part of the preorder conditions.
Nobody has preordered a model 3 yet. A preorder would require an existing product, or at least a list of available specs. So far, people have merely reserved a place in line to make a preorder.
This is kind of sad, really. These people lust for the new product but will fake it in order just to fool others into thinking they have it. And they even admit that there's no compelling reason to 'upgrade' to the new shiny. It's a techno-tragicomedy.
I don't know how much "lust" is going on there. A lot of it is about social status. Both for the purpose of showing off in the corporate hierarchy, as well as in social/dating life, it's important to demonstrate that you can afford the latest, and this isn't an easy cycle to break. As an American, I have a hard time relating... the closest comparison I can make would be with cars. For many, your social standing can be measured by the car you drive. (I'm glad this is finally changing among the younger generations. My parents think I'm crazy for owning a reliable, but 10-year-old car, even though I could afford a new one.)
USB-A to USB-C adapters are easy to come by
I just finished buying a new set of apple approved pants for all the various adaptor cables that I'm always forced to carry with me to use common commodity and widely used hardware with Apple devices. Don't tell me I need to upgrade my pants AGAIN!
Fuck it. I'm buying a dell. Then I'm buying pants so baggy that Vanilla Ice wouldn't know how to shuffle in them. That way I can do away with adapters and just carry an entire frigging docking station, spare mouse, 100 earbuds since I keep losing the ones that fall out of my ears, a keyboard with actual keys that's nice to type on, and a monitor with a matte screen in them.
But you don't need to buy those adaptors from Apple, since USB is a standard. Heck, my non-Apple Android phone has a USB-C port. Proprietary ports are stupid, but USB-C is at least a standard connection. Personally, I hope other companies start putting USB-C ports in their laptops too... though I think the ideal solution for now would be to have a few USB-A, and a few USB-C ports.