you would gain more spaces by making all regular ones smaller by an inch than by removing all spaces for handicapped people. Disabled people really need them.
Why? Because there are always too many or too few. Just like the fact that a stopped clock is right twice a day, you can almost never have just the right number of handicapped spots. So cities usually force businesses to err on the side of having too many, and that violates the Zero One Infinity rule and represents a waste of land and money.
A better design would be more dynamic and responsive to current occupancy rates. Rather than setting some arbitrary number of parking spaces close to the entrance as handicapped spaces, designate zero handicapped spaces, but make sure the spaces close to the entrance never completely fill up. Then there will always be a parking space near the entrance available for any handicapped person who needs to park there.
Perhaps Steve was simply annoyed at having to live with the poor design.
There is no supply shortage yet. Retailers are hiking prices on the anticipation of a shortage...
There is no shortage because retailers are hiking prices. The price mechanism is how a free market efficiently allocates limited resources.
If there were a shortage, it would be because the price is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand. If you don't want a shortage, simply raise the price as necessary to prevent the shortage. This is what the retailers are doing.
This isn't efficient distribution, this is gouging.
Gouging is when a retailer sets the price higher than the market equilibrium rate where supply equals demand. If the price retailers have set creates a surplus, then there is gouging.
In this case, because there is no surplus because retailers are rationing by "limiting hard drive purchases to 1-2 drives per person," there is no gouging.
A more subjective definition of gouging is setting the price higher than some person is comfortable with. The term is often used in this manner by advocates of authoritarian governments to criticize the way capitalism efficiently allocates limited resources.
If I am New York and want to call California, I still need to know what is an appropriate time to do that - a single time zone does not help.
On the other hand, if someone in California says, "Call me at 10am," the way it is now you have two questions:
1. 10am California time or 10am New York time?
2. If California time, what is that in New York time?
Having a single time zone answers both questions simultaneously.
Businesses still open at 9AM. Lunch is at noon. Dinner is at six.
You don't need a watch to tell you that businesses open shortly after the sun rises, lunch is when the sun is directly overhead, and dinner is around sundown.
If I am reading a book, and it says the time is 3AM, I know what that means. It is dark.
Again, you don't need a watch to tell you that it's dark outside.
There are reasons for government to put some money to effective use in promoting alternative energy technology research besides expected financial ROI.
Many of these reasons involve the government's meddling in making oil and its uses artificially cheap, and the government's inability to internalize the negative externalities of using oil.
The oil is going to get burned one way or another.
False. At some point it will become too expensive to find, extract, and refine the remaining oil. If we continue to subsidize oil and its uses, we will ultimately burn more oil than if we were to end the subsidies here and now.
If they moved into the middle of nowhere where few people live, then I say fuck 'em. Seriously.
If by that you mean, consider it part of the cost of living out in the middle of nowhere, then I agree. Why should people who wisely chose to live in an urban area where utilities are cheap have to subsidize the lifestyles of people who live in rural areas?
As Thoreau would say, if you love nature, stay away from it.
When is price linked to cost? If you price above the market equilibrium rate, you won't sell. If you price below the market rate, you'll lose money on each item, run out of stock, and lose money because you have nothing left to sell. Therefore, the only answer is to price at the market rate, without regard to the wholesale cost, if you're going to sell at all.
ISPs should use usage-based billing and vary the price according to the time of day: peak usage periods would cost more than off-peak, similar to the way cell phone plans have unlimited nights and weekends. Then the heavy users could still download all they want, during those times when it won't disturb other users. And grandma's bill would be very low, perhaps $10 per month for the line charge and almost nothing for usage.
The other wonderful thing about usage-based billing is it gives the ISP an incentive to improve the network so that it can move more billable bytes through the wires.
Note the huge uptick in average temperature starting roughly 11.5k years BP. I'm pretty sure the foot-powered cars the Flintstones drove didn't warm the earth, so this must've been a natural event.
What's that massive spike at the end of the graph, in the "Recent Proxies" section? Do you see it?
Funny, but this gives no evidence of either man made or natural climate change. These ice sheets were created in the last ice age, which is still ending, so they were likely to melt either way.
But you're right that this doesn't prove that the global average temperature is rising. Again, it's only a local phenomenon, and it's possible that the ice shelves are getting colder but seeing less precipitation, resulting in the loss of ice mass.
The author is talking about making the producer of bad software liable, just as we would hold a gun manufacturer liable if the gun blows up in a person's face.
Google Voice makes it easy to change carriers, and with a smartphone, incoming and outgoing text messages are fre, if you use their app. Also, they filter out junk calls.
My only worry is, what happens if Google Voice goes away?
It's a pity Netflix sucks, it would be nice to have a decent affordable movie streaming service.
How about Netflix+Amazon? For $7.99 per month, you get the entire Netflix catalog, and then you can rent and buy newer movies and TV shows through Amazon Instant Videos.
The caps are really only needed to prevent the network from getting overloaded during peak periods. The caps don't need to apply during times of low demand.
An indiscriminate cap is a pretty clumsy way to prevent network saturation. So give us free unlimited nights and weekends.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry, there will always be an open parking space or two near the entrance for anyone who needs it.
Because the empty space(s) would be constantly changing, the paint budget would go through the roof!
Why? Because there are always too many or too few. Just like the fact that a stopped clock is right twice a day, you can almost never have just the right number of handicapped spots. So cities usually force businesses to err on the side of having too many, and that violates the Zero One Infinity rule and represents a waste of land and money.
A better design would be more dynamic and responsive to current occupancy rates. Rather than setting some arbitrary number of parking spaces close to the entrance as handicapped spaces, designate zero handicapped spaces, but make sure the spaces close to the entrance never completely fill up. Then there will always be a parking space near the entrance available for any handicapped person who needs to park there.
Perhaps Steve was simply annoyed at having to live with the poor design.
There is no shortage because retailers are hiking prices. The price mechanism is how a free market efficiently allocates limited resources.
If there were a shortage, it would be because the price is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand. If you don't want a shortage, simply raise the price as necessary to prevent the shortage. This is what the retailers are doing.
Gouging is when a retailer sets the price higher than the market equilibrium rate where supply equals demand. If the price retailers have set creates a surplus, then there is gouging.
In this case, because there is no surplus because retailers are rationing by "limiting hard drive purchases to 1-2 drives per person," there is no gouging.
A more subjective definition of gouging is setting the price higher than some person is comfortable with. The term is often used in this manner by advocates of authoritarian governments to criticize the way capitalism efficiently allocates limited resources.
On the other hand, if someone in California says, "Call me at 10am," the way it is now you have two questions:
1. 10am California time or 10am New York time?
2. If California time, what is that in New York time?
Having a single time zone answers both questions simultaneously.
You don't need a watch to tell you that businesses open shortly after the sun rises, lunch is when the sun is directly overhead, and dinner is around sundown.
Again, you don't need a watch to tell you that it's dark outside.
If they had sold them on eBay, they wouldn't have run out.
Many of these reasons involve the government's meddling in making oil and its uses artificially cheap, and the government's inability to internalize the negative externalities of using oil.
False. At some point it will become too expensive to find, extract, and refine the remaining oil. If we continue to subsidize oil and its uses, we will ultimately burn more oil than if we were to end the subsidies here and now.
That reminds me about the man who fell off a tall building, and every time he passed another floor he said to himself, "so far, so good!"
Should electricity costs be subsidized for farmers also? And fuel for farm equipment? And feed for the animals?
The more we subsidize, the less they try to conserve, and we all lose.
If by that you mean, consider it part of the cost of living out in the middle of nowhere, then I agree. Why should people who wisely chose to live in an urban area where utilities are cheap have to subsidize the lifestyles of people who live in rural areas?
As Thoreau would say, if you love nature, stay away from it.
Is there a price point where it simply isn't worth the cost to subsidize service?
When is price linked to cost? If you price above the market equilibrium rate, you won't sell. If you price below the market rate, you'll lose money on each item, run out of stock, and lose money because you have nothing left to sell. Therefore, the only answer is to price at the market rate, without regard to the wholesale cost, if you're going to sell at all.
ISPs should use usage-based billing and vary the price according to the time of day: peak usage periods would cost more than off-peak, similar to the way cell phone plans have unlimited nights and weekends. Then the heavy users could still download all they want, during those times when it won't disturb other users. And grandma's bill would be very low, perhaps $10 per month for the line charge and almost nothing for usage.
The other wonderful thing about usage-based billing is it gives the ISP an incentive to improve the network so that it can move more billable bytes through the wires.
Or have limited on-peak and unlimited off-peak data transfer, similar to the way they have unlimited nights and weekends on their voice plans.
Because the current sea level and sea level change is uniform around the globe?
Wrong.
What's that massive spike at the end of the graph, in the "Recent Proxies" section? Do you see it?
No, the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. There was a more recent "little ice age," but that was a local phenomenon, not global.
But you're right that this doesn't prove that the global average temperature is rising. Again, it's only a local phenomenon, and it's possible that the ice shelves are getting colder but seeing less precipitation, resulting in the loss of ice mass.
The author is talking about making the producer of bad software liable, just as we would hold a gun manufacturer liable if the gun blows up in a person's face.
Google Voice makes it easy to change carriers, and with a smartphone, incoming and outgoing text messages are fre, if you use their app. Also, they filter out junk calls.
My only worry is, what happens if Google Voice goes away?
How about Netflix+Amazon? For $7.99 per month, you get the entire Netflix catalog, and then you can rent and buy newer movies and TV shows through Amazon Instant Videos.
The caps are really only needed to prevent the network from getting overloaded during peak periods. The caps don't need to apply during times of low demand.
An indiscriminate cap is a pretty clumsy way to prevent network saturation. So give us free unlimited nights and weekends.
When one seismologist is accused of being alarmist by the Director of the Civil Defence, forced to remove his findings from the Internet, and reported to police for "causing fear" when he predicts an earthquake, is it no wonder why other seismologists would hesitate to report an impending earthquake?
Or make him use a VPN that's in his name.