to exempt automakers from safety standards not applicable to the technology
Since "the technology" will require the ability of a human to take control of the vehicle and operate it safely when the AV fails or enters conditions that it is not designed to handle, then this means exempting automakers from existing safety standards such that it makes human operation of the vehicle less, if not completely, unsafe.
ICC. Auto manufacturers rarely have production facilities in every state where they sell cars, thus automobile sales clearly involves interstate commerce. Further, automobiles, as in 'mobiles', often cross state lines; therefore legislation that reduces different laws for different areas is justified. E.g., there is a reason why there is a standard for stop signs.
Well until competent drivers are able to drive 100% of the time distraction free, we're going to have to look for alternatives.
Are you trying to claim that AV will be operating 100% percent of the time distraction free? "AV, change your destination..." Dog runs into the road. Child runs into the road. Sun glint obscures the camera that watches for red lights/stop signs. Pot hole ahead! Person standing on the corner looking across the street, but chatting with the person next to them instead of crossing. Person walking BACKWARDS through a crosswalk (I've seen it.)
Distraction free? No, I don't think so.
Maybe you follow the rules, but do you trust everyone else to as well?
As another poster has commented, the AV he sees being tested come to a stop 20-30 feet away from people before they have entered the street. This is not following the rules. So no, I do not trust AV to follow the rules, either. Any claim that AV will be inherently safer because they will "follow the rules" is obviously false.
Too bad technology can never, ever be improved once it has been created.
Three years into a 100,000 car/year introduction of AV and you will have a huge percentage of those vehicles that will be the same technology as they were when they drove off the dealer's lot. I know for a fact that the 2005 vehicle I use every day is the same 2005 technology, despite it being 2017 in this part of the world.
The automated cars are so wary of me as a pedestrian that they stop a full 20-30 feet away even before I leave the curb.
This is a certain recipe for gridlock in many places, such as college towns. Any vehicle that stops for you before you leave the curb will find itself sitting stock still in any situation where there is anyone on the sidewalk, whether they intend to cross or not.
Note that the law (at least in Oregon) does not require anyone to stop for a pedestrian before they leave the curb, and thus every AV that follows your "stop" rule will be a traffic hazard to every human-operated vehicle that does not expect sudden, unrequired stops from other vehicles.
Try it some day, preferably when I am not also using the road you are on. Try stopping at random and for no apparent reason every twenty feet and see how safe you are making things for everyone involved.
Replace every instance of "self-driving car" you just wrote with "plane" and you have the same argument. Except it hasn't happened.
"Planes" are one of the more regulated activities, and yet there are still aircraft "accidents" that occur due to aircraft failures, and aircraft accidents that do not happen despite aircraft failures simply because there was a human aboard to manage the situation.
There is a reason there are a dozen or so ways to disable the autopilot on an aircraft and that several of them are tested before each and every flight. It isn't because of how reliable and safe autopilots have turned out to be over the years.
Were there a move to deregulate safety regulations at the federal level to increase the number of aircraft in use, and no increase in accidents your statement might make sense. Since there has been no activity towards that end your attempt at changing the words does not work.
Whirlpool is now facing a non-level playing field.
By that definition, there is never a "level playing field". Each provider of a service makes choices about price/quality/features, all of which attempt to tip the "playing field" in their own favor. The fact that Hershy chocolate is waxy and unappealing but costs a lot less than Lindt or Ghiardelli tips the playing field in favor ofHershy in some markets, the others in others.
You are perhaps confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome -- a common mistake in today's politically correct, hypersensitive society.
How would the next streaming-video company compete if it has to require customers to pay for bandwidth while entrenched players like Netflix can give them for "free"?
What you are effectively arguing is that no company may ever give away its product for free, because that would give it a competitive advantage over any new competition. Do you really wish to have that kind of legislative control over private contracts?
Is our current electric grid a horrid dystopia because the electric company is not allowed to give free unlimited power to people as long as it is used on co-branded appliances? I don't think so.
The difference is, T-Mobile is not a monopoly. Even the "electric company" can no longer be considered a monopoly, at least in places where you can buy your electricity from more than one company. I have a choice of four, if I recall correctly, electricity suppliers using the same electric infrastructure.
Why should it be any of your business as an XYZ power customer if Frigidaire Electric company wants to give free electricity to Frigidaire refrigerator owners? As long as they are putting as much power into the delivery system as their customers are extracting, why should you care?
This is the failure in almost all of the arguments against all those awful monopolistic ISPs. They simply aren't monopolies.
I've never seen one as busy as a well-situated record store of the same size.
This proves exactly what? That you need to figure out how to shop at stores that sell what you want to buy and not to shop at stores that sell things you don't?
It certainly doesn't prove that a big-box store should stop selling DVDs and CDs.
but because of the risk of getting an edited version of a CD when I want the real thing.
What absolute nonsense. You think big-box stores have nothing better to do than tell record manufacturers what they need to edit out of a CD? And that the CD you buy in a big box store is somehow different than the same thing you buy for more at a specialty store?
That is specious reasoning. As a nerd you should use the scientific method: Instead of going with your gut feeling, you should trust SDCs when the evidence shows they are safer than HDCs.
The evidence has not yet shown that.
In fact, the evidence shows otherwise. AVs will have computers in them. The computers I have access to crash much more often than I ever have while driving, giving a significant and un-ignorable new meaning to "the blue screen of death". And the places I have had accidents are places where AVs would not be driving in the first place, so they wouldn't have prevented the problem.
"Science" is a two-edged sword. When there is no actual data, it is a bit odd to ask that people rely on the data.
I've been to the local big box store a lot of times, and the CD/DVD section always has people there. I'm one of them. I don't know why you have such a problem with a store selling things you don't want, but you might want to get over it.
Every Kroger or Safeway store looks exactly like this. And it has for the past 50 years.
And the local Whole Foods has copied exactly that same pattern. Only the impulse items cost a lot more. You think Amazon is going to change it? Grocery stores have had generations of experience on product placement that Amazon is late to the party at doing.
Milk crates are the ultimate utility cargo container.
You just listed a whole slew of reasons why stores don't use milk crates for customer delivery.
Stores need to be a fraction of the size they are now. I went wandering to see what my local big box store had. DVDs and CDs had almost as much foot print as produce.
I.e., "stores are selling things I don't want. They should stop." How about you go to stores that sell what you want, instead?
I can't think of the last time anyone I knew *had* to go get Grownups 2 at 2 in the morning.
I can't think of the last anyone I knew (or even didn't know) *had* to get a bag of carrots at 2 in the morning.
Here's the clue: stores sell things to a lot of different people, so they stock a lot of different things. Either learn to live with it, or go to stores that sell what you want and don't go to stores that sell what you don't want. Or at least, don't walk down the aisles where they stock the stuff you don't want. I can't think of the last time I *had* to walk down an aisle where they had nothing I wanted to buy, whether at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon.
I am justified in killing those who are terrorists and who increase violence through radical racism and hate.
You claimed the ethical duty to destroy sympathizers. That is a very large, poorly defined group, often doing nothing more than having thoughts that you do not like. You almost certainly include me in that group simply because I question your right to kill people just because they think differently than you do.
Look up the catechism of the 5th commandment.
Ahh, a Holy Crusade. Amongst your weaponry is... You, sir, give Catholics a bad name.
As I expected, there is no rational discussion on this matter with you. You accept the ethical duty to kill others who think wrong, and do so in a zealous and unforgiving manner. Goodbye.
I will, so don't try another putsch if you don't want to end up like your hero;
I have no idea what "hero" you seem to be referring to. I made no such reference. What I did was make a clear reference to an old saying about people who support the right to free speech, just twisting it to match your own statements about destroying the people who support nazism.
It shows the dichotomy between what people use to think about free speech and what the current meme is. You feeling justified in destroying them for their thoughts is a bit extreme, I think. And it clearly leaves no room for a rational discussion about the issue, as your response shows.
These kids have spent too much time in their bedrooms fake shooting people to understand the moral and ethical obligation to destroy Nazism and all of its sympathizers.
I will defend to the death your right to free speech, unless I don't like you. Then I'll shoot you my own damn self and say good riddance to bad ideas.
That's because google also happens to have freedoms. In this case freedom of association.
Ahh, the "freedom ofassociation" meme again. Ok.
I have a business -- a small diner. I have freedom of association, right? I don't serve African Americans as part of the exercise of my freedom of association. You're ok with that, right?
Before you say "protected class", remember that "protected class" is a legal, not natural, definition, and it changes over time.
cause being stuff like inciting violence, which includes turning a blind eye when a significant portion of their users incite violence
Would you claim that gmail incites violence when it does nothing to monitor or filter the email of its users, and a significant (subjective term) portion of them are using gmail to communicate about inciting violence?
a wealth tax levied against an individual or company's total net worth.
Yes! A tax on being frugal and saving your money for your retirement! Fuck anyone who puts 10% of their income away to provide for themselves when they get old. If they're rich enough to be able to do that, then they deserve to have it all drained away from them by endless taxes on the same money over and over again.
Before you blame the employees for this problem, consider the State Of Oregon which faces a huge deficit because of this (and cities and counties since they are part of the system). But it wasn't the employee unions that created the problem. The state came to the union many years ago and said "we can't give you a raise, but would you accept a good pension plan for when you retire?" In lieu of better pay during a time of inflation, the employees settled for more later. The state then, in its infinite wisdom, decided not to put the money away so it would be able to pay it when it came due. Now it is coming due and the employees are getting blamed for the state's double faced dealing.
Having a physical presence for the purposes of charging a sales tax is an artificial legal distinction. The sales tax is not paid by the corporation, it is paid by you, and YOU have a physical presence. The sales tax goes to provide services to YOU.
The "physical presence" makes a great deal of sense when it comes to income and corporate taxes, but not so much sales taxes.
If they were to tax Netflix and Amazon for the content they send to you
They aren't taxing Netflix for the content they send you, they would be taxing you on the sale of the service. It's easy to identify the difference. You can have a Netflix sub and not watch anything for a month. The sales tax would be levied on that month's charge from Netflix but there was nothing that you were sent.
they would also have to tax Facebook, Youtube and your neighbor down the street who runs that recipe blog you enjoy so much for the content they send to you.
How much do you pay for the service you get from Facebook, YouTube, or you neighbor? You pay $0, and 7% of $0 is $0. OMG, you ARE being taxed on Facebook, YouTube, and your neighbor! It's at the horrendous rate of 20%! But zero times 0.2 is still 0.
If you agree that you should pay for everything you view on your computer screen,
There is a big difference between a sales tax and being taxed "for everything you view on your computer screen".
tried to prevent Louisville from permitting Google Fiber's trained, bonded, insured, licensed, fully qualified workers from moving existing wiring around on city-owned poles
AT-T's communications network. Pole ownership is irrelevant, it's stuff that belongs to AT-T.
This means that only _one_ company would have to touch the wiring on the pole to perform the new installation, hence the term "one touch make ready".
Yes, I understand that. What did I say that contradicted that? It's Google moving AT-Ts equipment without having to tell AT-T that it was even happening.
Google Fiber would be (and still is) on the hook for any disruption to service or damage their workers cause.
If Google contractors were operating withing the scope of the law that allows them to move AT-T stuff, then no, they are not "on the hook" unless they act in a negligent manner. That's the reason for the law. Once the law allows the action, it also allows a reasonable interpretation of liability.
"One touch make ready" only _doesn't_ make sense if you have a _strong_ reason to believe that the workers who will be moving the wiring are improperly trained,
No, sorry. That's your opinion. It makes a lot of sense not to allow unsupervised and uncontrolled access to your core business asset to someone who isn't directly liable for any damage they do, and who doesn't even have to tell you that they were doing anything. "Oh, we didn't think that would disrupt your business operations" is all it takes for Google to not bother notifying AT-T of the action. "What, that was your core fiber and it broke when we moved it to the other side of the pole? Woopsies. The law said we can do that, so sorry, but it's your bad equipment that broke." It's not a case of incompetence or inability to pay, it is a case of unwillingness to hand money to the competitor.
Nope. The guys who performed the work are on the hook for damages. Nope. The guys who performed the work are on the hook for damages.
1. Prove we were there.
2. Prove we did it.
3. Prove we acted outside the scope of the law.
4. Prove we were negligent.
Many (most?) cities have conduit in place specifically for this sort of thing. Those that don't usually have overhead poles.
And? The point stands. Things cost less in the country. Recouping costs is a lot easier when you aren't in competition with an incumbent who already has most, if not all, the interested customers. That's why the rural fibers are being run profitably. That's why, despite the lack of a dejure monopoly, there wasn't, and isn't, a burst of wired competition for cable incumbents.
Most of those cables were run twenty to fifty+ years ago.
The cables that are being run for new services were not run twenty years ago. They're being installed today, and that costs a lot of money. Pretending that the only costs of building a physical plant and delivery infrastructure is for maintenance after it is in place is nonsense.
If the telcos and cablecos claim that they haven't recouped their initial investment, then they're goddamn liars.
As you build out the mass transit lines into less developed areas, you change the zoning around the stations to build new, high density mixed use neighbourhoods.
Because everybody who moved to the less developed areas did so because they wanted to live in high density mixed-use areas and just didn't know it yet.
Residents take the transit to work and back,
Every trip has a beginning and an end. You've explained how you make the beginning look like the big city, but not how you convince them to live in the big city environment they moved away from. But you did not explain how to deal with the destination, where you still have to get from the train station to the place of employment. Do you add a third prong where you force the employers to move into high-density mixed-use facilities next to the train station so their employees could walk from the station to work?
Why not just skip the middleman? Make it mandatory that employers build high-rise multi-use buildings with employee residences and stores in the building and do away with the trains altogether? It kinds reeks of a company-town kind of living style, and you've got to move if you change jobs, even to the building next door, but it certainly is a great way to live. If you're going to ignore the reason people move to less developed areas, you might as well go all out, no?
she immediately goes to bed to wake up at 2AM to do it all over again.
Or she spends an hour doing "after work" stuff while she's fully awake and working, goes to bed at 7 and gets up at 3AM.
She's not doing anything but sipping coffee in the morning. She chooses to get up that early to do that. She chooses to live three hours away from work. This isn't earth shattering change-the-world
news. We allow her the freedom to make those choices instead of worrying about how we can change the system so she doesn't have to suffer the consequences of them.
I used to hate it when somebody decided to schedule a meeting at 8:30 or 9:00 AM Eastern
They did it not because they had to, but because they didn't give a damn about west coast people who were supposed to attend. You needed to have a chat with your AFSCME or other union rep about your work schedule being adjusted like that.
Once the east coast gets the message because nobody from the west coast attends their little webchats they'll move them to the afternoon.
Stockbroker was just an example of how odd schedules can get.
I understand why some jobs require operating on other time zones. Government employee of DHHS isn't one of them. If the entire department needs to meet all at the same time, then move the department to the same time zone. The only reason to have an SF office is to deal with people in that area, especially considering the real estate prices there.
I don't think that really makes a difference. You get the territory map that they've carved the USA into, and instead of 4-5 companies controlling the bulk of the business, you split them into 40-50 companies.
How does that create LOCAL COMPETITION? That was the initial goal for "breaking up the monopoly". Instead of 4 or 5 big cable companies you have 40 or 50, all still serving the local communities individually. You don't create any competition that way.
That's why excuse of opposing cable company mergers on the grounds that it reduces competition is silly. When Comcast and Time Warner merge, every Comcast customer had the same choices for cable service as before the merger, and ditto TW.
Why do you think things will get better when the law says that one company can move the other company's stuff around at will?
I don't. It doesn't matter.
I agree.
They'll find some other way to stall the competition's entry into their market.
If the municipality is taking shortcuts to ease the way for the competition, you betcha there will be legal challenges. But the law specifies what has to be done to issue a second franchise.
Yeah, physically cutting the competition's cables sounds right up their alley.
That applies to every competitor. And making it legal for one competitor to "manage" the equipment for another company only makes the matter worse, because the hurdles for legal proof get higher. "You touched it you're liable" is no longer the criterion, it's "you touched it and were negligent so you are liable". Is that proof of negligence that will cost a lot of money and make lawyers rich.
Slashdot Mirror
Way to not read the whole sentence:
to exempt automakers from safety standards not applicable to the technology
Since "the technology" will require the ability of a human to take control of the vehicle and operate it safely when the AV fails or enters conditions that it is not designed to handle, then this means exempting automakers from existing safety standards such that it makes human operation of the vehicle less, if not completely, unsafe.
ICC. Auto manufacturers rarely have production facilities in every state where they sell cars, thus automobile sales clearly involves interstate commerce. Further, automobiles, as in 'mobiles', often cross state lines; therefore legislation that reduces different laws for different areas is justified. E.g., there is a reason why there is a standard for stop signs.
Well until competent drivers are able to drive 100% of the time distraction free, we're going to have to look for alternatives.
Are you trying to claim that AV will be operating 100% percent of the time distraction free? "AV, change your destination ..." Dog runs into the road. Child runs into the road. Sun glint obscures the camera that watches for red lights/stop signs. Pot hole ahead! Person standing on the corner looking across the street, but chatting with the person next to them instead of crossing. Person walking BACKWARDS through a crosswalk (I've seen it.)
Distraction free? No, I don't think so.
Maybe you follow the rules, but do you trust everyone else to as well?
As another poster has commented, the AV he sees being tested come to a stop 20-30 feet away from people before they have entered the street. This is not following the rules. So no, I do not trust AV to follow the rules, either. Any claim that AV will be inherently safer because they will "follow the rules" is obviously false.
Too bad technology can never, ever be improved once it has been created.
Three years into a 100,000 car/year introduction of AV and you will have a huge percentage of those vehicles that will be the same technology as they were when they drove off the dealer's lot. I know for a fact that the 2005 vehicle I use every day is the same 2005 technology, despite it being 2017 in this part of the world.
The automated cars are so wary of me as a pedestrian that they stop a full 20-30 feet away even before I leave the curb.
This is a certain recipe for gridlock in many places, such as college towns. Any vehicle that stops for you before you leave the curb will find itself sitting stock still in any situation where there is anyone on the sidewalk, whether they intend to cross or not.
Note that the law (at least in Oregon) does not require anyone to stop for a pedestrian before they leave the curb, and thus every AV that follows your "stop" rule will be a traffic hazard to every human-operated vehicle that does not expect sudden, unrequired stops from other vehicles.
Try it some day, preferably when I am not also using the road you are on. Try stopping at random and for no apparent reason every twenty feet and see how safe you are making things for everyone involved.
Replace every instance of "self-driving car" you just wrote with "plane" and you have the same argument. Except it hasn't happened.
"Planes" are one of the more regulated activities, and yet there are still aircraft "accidents" that occur due to aircraft failures, and aircraft accidents that do not happen despite aircraft failures simply because there was a human aboard to manage the situation.
There is a reason there are a dozen or so ways to disable the autopilot on an aircraft and that several of them are tested before each and every flight. It isn't because of how reliable and safe autopilots have turned out to be over the years.
Were there a move to deregulate safety regulations at the federal level to increase the number of aircraft in use, and no increase in accidents your statement might make sense. Since there has been no activity towards that end your attempt at changing the words does not work.
Whirlpool is now facing a non-level playing field.
By that definition, there is never a "level playing field". Each provider of a service makes choices about price/quality/features, all of which attempt to tip the "playing field" in their own favor. The fact that Hershy chocolate is waxy and unappealing but costs a lot less than Lindt or Ghiardelli tips the playing field in favor ofHershy in some markets, the others in others.
You are perhaps confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome -- a common mistake in today's politically correct, hypersensitive society.
How would the next streaming-video company compete if it has to require customers to pay for bandwidth while entrenched players like Netflix can give them for "free"?
What you are effectively arguing is that no company may ever give away its product for free, because that would give it a competitive advantage over any new competition. Do you really wish to have that kind of legislative control over private contracts?
Is our current electric grid a horrid dystopia because the electric company is not allowed to give free unlimited power to people as long as it is used on co-branded appliances? I don't think so.
The difference is, T-Mobile is not a monopoly. Even the "electric company" can no longer be considered a monopoly, at least in places where you can buy your electricity from more than one company. I have a choice of four, if I recall correctly, electricity suppliers using the same electric infrastructure.
Why should it be any of your business as an XYZ power customer if Frigidaire Electric company wants to give free electricity to Frigidaire refrigerator owners? As long as they are putting as much power into the delivery system as their customers are extracting, why should you care?
This is the failure in almost all of the arguments against all those awful monopolistic ISPs. They simply aren't monopolies.
I've never seen one as busy as a well-situated record store of the same size.
This proves exactly what? That you need to figure out how to shop at stores that sell what you want to buy and not to shop at stores that sell things you don't?
It certainly doesn't prove that a big-box store should stop selling DVDs and CDs.
but because of the risk of getting an edited version of a CD when I want the real thing.
What absolute nonsense. You think big-box stores have nothing better to do than tell record manufacturers what they need to edit out of a CD? And that the CD you buy in a big box store is somehow different than the same thing you buy for more at a specialty store?
That is specious reasoning. As a nerd you should use the scientific method: Instead of going with your gut feeling, you should trust SDCs when the evidence shows they are safer than HDCs.
The evidence has not yet shown that.
In fact, the evidence shows otherwise. AVs will have computers in them. The computers I have access to crash much more often than I ever have while driving, giving a significant and un-ignorable new meaning to "the blue screen of death". And the places I have had accidents are places where AVs would not be driving in the first place, so they wouldn't have prevented the problem.
"Science" is a two-edged sword. When there is no actual data, it is a bit odd to ask that people rely on the data.
I've been to the local big box store a lot of times, and the CD/DVD section always has people there. I'm one of them. I don't know why you have such a problem with a store selling things you don't want, but you might want to get over it.
Every Kroger or Safeway store looks exactly like this. And it has for the past 50 years.
And the local Whole Foods has copied exactly that same pattern. Only the impulse items cost a lot more. You think Amazon is going to change it? Grocery stores have had generations of experience on product placement that Amazon is late to the party at doing.
Milk crates are the ultimate utility cargo container.
You just listed a whole slew of reasons why stores don't use milk crates for customer delivery.
Stores need to be a fraction of the size they are now. I went wandering to see what my local big box store had. DVDs and CDs had almost as much foot print as produce.
I.e., "stores are selling things I don't want. They should stop." How about you go to stores that sell what you want, instead?
I can't think of the last time anyone I knew *had* to go get Grownups 2 at 2 in the morning.
I can't think of the last anyone I knew (or even didn't know) *had* to get a bag of carrots at 2 in the morning.
Here's the clue: stores sell things to a lot of different people, so they stock a lot of different things. Either learn to live with it, or go to stores that sell what you want and don't go to stores that sell what you don't want. Or at least, don't walk down the aisles where they stock the stuff you don't want. I can't think of the last time I *had* to walk down an aisle where they had nothing I wanted to buy, whether at 2 in the morning or 2 in the afternoon.
I am justified in killing those who are terrorists and who increase violence through radical racism and hate.
You claimed the ethical duty to destroy sympathizers. That is a very large, poorly defined group, often doing nothing more than having thoughts that you do not like. You almost certainly include me in that group simply because I question your right to kill people just because they think differently than you do.
Look up the catechism of the 5th commandment.
Ahh, a Holy Crusade. Amongst your weaponry is ... You, sir, give Catholics a bad name.
As I expected, there is no rational discussion on this matter with you. You accept the ethical duty to kill others who think wrong, and do so in a zealous and unforgiving manner. Goodbye.
I will, so don't try another putsch if you don't want to end up like your hero;
I have no idea what "hero" you seem to be referring to. I made no such reference. What I did was make a clear reference to an old saying about people who support the right to free speech, just twisting it to match your own statements about destroying the people who support nazism.
It shows the dichotomy between what people use to think about free speech and what the current meme is. You feeling justified in destroying them for their thoughts is a bit extreme, I think. And it clearly leaves no room for a rational discussion about the issue, as your response shows.
These kids have spent too much time in their bedrooms fake shooting people to understand the moral and ethical obligation to destroy Nazism and all of its sympathizers.
I will defend to the death your right to free speech, unless I don't like you. Then I'll shoot you my own damn self and say good riddance to bad ideas.
That's because google also happens to have freedoms. In this case freedom of association.
Ahh, the "freedom ofassociation" meme again. Ok.
I have a business -- a small diner. I have freedom of association, right? I don't serve African Americans as part of the exercise of my freedom of association. You're ok with that, right?
Before you say "protected class", remember that "protected class" is a legal, not natural, definition, and it changes over time.
cause being stuff like inciting violence, which includes turning a blind eye when a significant portion of their users incite violence
Would you claim that gmail incites violence when it does nothing to monitor or filter the email of its users, and a significant (subjective term) portion of them are using gmail to communicate about inciting violence?
a wealth tax levied against an individual or company's total net worth.
Yes! A tax on being frugal and saving your money for your retirement! Fuck anyone who puts 10% of their income away to provide for themselves when they get old. If they're rich enough to be able to do that, then they deserve to have it all drained away from them by endless taxes on the same money over and over again.
Before you blame the employees for this problem, consider the State Of Oregon which faces a huge deficit because of this (and cities and counties since they are part of the system). But it wasn't the employee unions that created the problem. The state came to the union many years ago and said "we can't give you a raise, but would you accept a good pension plan for when you retire?" In lieu of better pay during a time of inflation, the employees settled for more later. The state then, in its infinite wisdom, decided not to put the money away so it would be able to pay it when it came due. Now it is coming due and the employees are getting blamed for the state's double faced dealing.
because it has a physical presence
Having a physical presence for the purposes of charging a sales tax is an artificial legal distinction. The sales tax is not paid by the corporation, it is paid by you, and YOU have a physical presence. The sales tax goes to provide services to YOU.
The "physical presence" makes a great deal of sense when it comes to income and corporate taxes, but not so much sales taxes.
If they were to tax Netflix and Amazon for the content they send to you
They aren't taxing Netflix for the content they send you, they would be taxing you on the sale of the service. It's easy to identify the difference. You can have a Netflix sub and not watch anything for a month. The sales tax would be levied on that month's charge from Netflix but there was nothing that you were sent.
they would also have to tax Facebook, Youtube and your neighbor down the street who runs that recipe blog you enjoy so much for the content they send to you.
How much do you pay for the service you get from Facebook, YouTube, or you neighbor? You pay $0, and 7% of $0 is $0. OMG, you ARE being taxed on Facebook, YouTube, and your neighbor! It's at the horrendous rate of 20%! But zero times 0.2 is still 0.
If you agree that you should pay for everything you view on your computer screen,
There is a big difference between a sales tax and being taxed "for everything you view on your computer screen".
This suit by Ma Bell
AT-T.
tried to prevent Louisville from permitting Google Fiber's trained, bonded, insured, licensed, fully qualified workers from moving existing wiring around on city-owned poles
AT-T's communications network. Pole ownership is irrelevant, it's stuff that belongs to AT-T.
This means that only _one_ company would have to touch the wiring on the pole to perform the new installation, hence the term "one touch make ready".
Yes, I understand that. What did I say that contradicted that? It's Google moving AT-Ts equipment without having to tell AT-T that it was even happening.
Google Fiber would be (and still is) on the hook for any disruption to service or damage their workers cause.
If Google contractors were operating withing the scope of the law that allows them to move AT-T stuff, then no, they are not "on the hook" unless they act in a negligent manner. That's the reason for the law. Once the law allows the action, it also allows a reasonable interpretation of liability.
"One touch make ready" only _doesn't_ make sense if you have a _strong_ reason to believe that the workers who will be moving the wiring are improperly trained,
No, sorry. That's your opinion. It makes a lot of sense not to allow unsupervised and uncontrolled access to your core business asset to someone who isn't directly liable for any damage they do, and who doesn't even have to tell you that they were doing anything. "Oh, we didn't think that would disrupt your business operations" is all it takes for Google to not bother notifying AT-T of the action. "What, that was your core fiber and it broke when we moved it to the other side of the pole? Woopsies. The law said we can do that, so sorry, but it's your bad equipment that broke." It's not a case of incompetence or inability to pay, it is a case of unwillingness to hand money to the competitor.
Nope. The guys who performed the work are on the hook for damages. Nope. The guys who performed the work are on the hook for damages.
1. Prove we were there.
2. Prove we did it.
3. Prove we acted outside the scope of the law.
4. Prove we were negligent.
Many (most?) cities have conduit in place specifically for this sort of thing. Those that don't usually have overhead poles.
And? The point stands. Things cost less in the country. Recouping costs is a lot easier when you aren't in competition with an incumbent who already has most, if not all, the interested customers. That's why the rural fibers are being run profitably. That's why, despite the lack of a dejure monopoly, there wasn't, and isn't, a burst of wired competition for cable incumbents.
Most of those cables were run twenty to fifty+ years ago.
The cables that are being run for new services were not run twenty years ago. They're being installed today, and that costs a lot of money. Pretending that the only costs of building a physical plant and delivery infrastructure is for maintenance after it is in place is nonsense.
If the telcos and cablecos claim that they haven't recouped their initial investment, then they're goddamn liars.
Non sequitor. Read the context, please.
As you build out the mass transit lines into less developed areas, you change the zoning around the stations to build new, high density mixed use neighbourhoods.
Because everybody who moved to the less developed areas did so because they wanted to live in high density mixed-use areas and just didn't know it yet.
Residents take the transit to work and back,
Every trip has a beginning and an end. You've explained how you make the beginning look like the big city, but not how you convince them to live in the big city environment they moved away from. But you did not explain how to deal with the destination, where you still have to get from the train station to the place of employment. Do you add a third prong where you force the employers to move into high-density mixed-use facilities next to the train station so their employees could walk from the station to work?
Why not just skip the middleman? Make it mandatory that employers build high-rise multi-use buildings with employee residences and stores in the building and do away with the trains altogether? It kinds reeks of a company-town kind of living style, and you've got to move if you change jobs, even to the building next door, but it certainly is a great way to live. If you're going to ignore the reason people move to less developed areas, you might as well go all out, no?
she immediately goes to bed to wake up at 2AM to do it all over again.
Or she spends an hour doing "after work" stuff while she's fully awake and working, goes to bed at 7 and gets up at 3AM.
She's not doing anything but sipping coffee in the morning. She chooses to get up that early to do that. She chooses to live three hours away from work. This isn't earth shattering change-the-world news. We allow her the freedom to make those choices instead of worrying about how we can change the system so she doesn't have to suffer the consequences of them.
I used to hate it when somebody decided to schedule a meeting at 8:30 or 9:00 AM Eastern
They did it not because they had to, but because they didn't give a damn about west coast people who were supposed to attend. You needed to have a chat with your AFSCME or other union rep about your work schedule being adjusted like that.
Once the east coast gets the message because nobody from the west coast attends their little webchats they'll move them to the afternoon.
Stockbroker was just an example of how odd schedules can get.
I understand why some jobs require operating on other time zones. Government employee of DHHS isn't one of them. If the entire department needs to meet all at the same time, then move the department to the same time zone. The only reason to have an SF office is to deal with people in that area, especially considering the real estate prices there.
I don't think that really makes a difference. You get the territory map that they've carved the USA into, and instead of 4-5 companies controlling the bulk of the business, you split them into 40-50 companies.
How does that create LOCAL COMPETITION? That was the initial goal for "breaking up the monopoly". Instead of 4 or 5 big cable companies you have 40 or 50, all still serving the local communities individually. You don't create any competition that way.
That's why excuse of opposing cable company mergers on the grounds that it reduces competition is silly. When Comcast and Time Warner merge, every Comcast customer had the same choices for cable service as before the merger, and ditto TW.
Why do you think things will get better when the law says that one company can move the other company's stuff around at will?
I don't. It doesn't matter.
I agree.
They'll find some other way to stall the competition's entry into their market.
If the municipality is taking shortcuts to ease the way for the competition, you betcha there will be legal challenges. But the law specifies what has to be done to issue a second franchise.
Yeah, physically cutting the competition's cables sounds right up their alley.
That applies to every competitor. And making it legal for one competitor to "manage" the equipment for another company only makes the matter worse, because the hurdles for legal proof get higher. "You touched it you're liable" is no longer the criterion, it's "you touched it and were negligent so you are liable". Is that proof of negligence that will cost a lot of money and make lawyers rich.