Even in situations where the place was going to hell and was suffering under the worst managers. (In the case I'm thinking of; a big, very bro-y, MBA-ish, golf-buddies-get-promoted, east-coast logistics company acquired the close-knit San Francisco tech company I worked for. The cultural differences were irreconcilable for more than a few of us.) The thing is, I wasn't giving notice for the benefit of the company. I was giving notice for the benefit of my co-workers. (The legacy ones from our days as our own company, that is.). Two weeks may not be enough time to hire an actual replacement. But if you're on the ball, you can cram in a lot of knowledge transfer and not leave your friends and colleagues hanging (Any more than is absolutely necessary as a consequence of your leaving.).
To provoke a no-notice resignation, I think I'd have to have become aware that the company was breaking the law or engaged in a serious ethical violation. Physical violence, or sexual harassment or orientation discrimination would probably do the trick too.
Many stores adhere to a de-facto standard that there should never be more than three people waiting in line to get to the register.
Target, for example, has employees monitor the checkout lines and opens extra registers if the ones that are open get too crowded. They'll also direct you to the shorter lines if they're simply imbalanced. Walgreens has a unified line for all the registers. But if there's more than three people in line, there's a hidden button for a cashier to press that will trigger an announcement over the store's speakers. When you hear a recorded voice announce: "I see three" at Walgreens, thats a signal for everyone to drop what they're doing, go up front, and work their registers to clear the line.
It's been a long time since I've had occasion to shop at Walmart. But I do remember the experience being fairly frustrating, with poor customer service. I don't recall if that carried through to the checkout lines though.
Have you checked the wiring at your house? My own first Keurig, along with some other appliances while I lived there, died at my former (rental) house. Eventually, we had the wiring in out unit and discovered that some outlets had fluctuating voltages. They were usually under but would sometimes spike over. It took a while to discover this, as all of the important electronics (Computers, TV, Playstation, etc.) are on UPSs as a matter of course. But we concluded that the screwy outlets did correlate with the failed appliances.
I''ve since moved, and Keurig #2 (Same model) has lasted twice as long as the first and is still going strong. Said Keurig, BTW, shares the kitchen with a french press, a Bodum pour-over, and a Bialetti moka pot. They all have their use case. And they all see regular use.
No more than any of a thousand senior execs, managers, engineers, sales drones, and even IT people who have engaged in "shadow IT" when the solutions offered under written policy didn't meet their needs.
The lesson here is not that Hillary is Satan. The lesson is that IT is a support organization, not a means unto itself. So if your users have a need, don't prattle on about policy, meet your user's needs. And if the big boss wants to use her iPhone or Blackberry, STFU about your policies, and work out a way to make it happen.
I'd rather sit at the "status quo" for four or eight years than take a massive regression. And let's face it, that's the choice we have this year: Progressing too slowly, or utter destruction of the progress we've already made. Clinton was not my first choice either. But we live in the real world of first past the pole elections, not some fantasyland where Sanders has a chance as a write-in candidate. So I'm going to vote strategically.
And really, I don't see why the "status quo" we have right now is supposed to be so bad. Sure, Obama didn't accomplish all he set out to do. But the country is still drastically improved over the bush years. We're mired in fewer oversea wars. Foreign relations, on the whole, have improved. The economy is not just improved, it's fantastically improved. Unemployment is low. Recruiters email or send LinkedIn solicitations daily (And sometimes go so far as to hunt down my phone number from the three-year-old resume that's in some database somewhere.). We've made dramatic strides in civil rights for the LGBT community. And, even though it doesn't go far enough IMO, we have universal health care. And, oh yeah... Osama bin Laden's ass is dead and Quaeda's back is broken.
Yes, the millennials are graduating with too much student debt. ENDA is not yet passed. Terrorism is not over. And Obamacare doesn't go far enough. There's still work to do. But the doesn't abrogate the fact that we're in a much better place than we were eight years ago. And even if the choice were "keep everything exactly the way right now" status quo vs. a massive Trump-induced regression to the worst of the bad-old-days; I'd still vote for the former every time.
People typically are bad at math and long-term planning. Specifically, people often foolishly look only at the upfront cost, and ignore the total cost of ownership. A late-model car from a reliable make like Honda or Toyota will run pretty much repair-free for over a decade following only the scheduled services in the owner's manual. Divided out, that turns out to be a better deal than the cheap Dodge you can get for half the upfront price at Uncle Al's Used Car Lot. Replacing the master brake cylinder a year in, the clutch the year after that, the ECU the next year, then the radiator, and so on... it all adds up, as does the lost use of the car while it's in the shop.
And while the average may be $34,000 (Oh, and BTW, is that the mean or the median? It kind of matters in this sort of discussion.), there are some damn fine options in the $20K range, and some very good choices even for under $20K. I bought my 2013 Mazda 3 new for $17.5K, and it's absolutely fantastic. Most MX-5s will come in under $30K, as will most models of the BRZ or FRS. Pretty much the entire Scion lineup (Toyotas by another name and about to be folded into the main brand anyway.) is in the $16-28K range. If outdoors is your thing, Subaru also has the Crosstrek and Impreza wagons running $18-25K. For in-city versatility, Honda's Fit seldom exceeds $20K. And if you want the canonical classics, Civics and Corollas start at $18K and I don't think it's even possible to configure one over $30K.
As for self-driving, I suspect the impetus will come from the insurance companies. If Google's claims about the safety of self-driving cars bears out, they will be dramatically safer than human-driven cars. And that data is easy to gather. Self-drivers are more sensor package and data recorder than they are actually cars, after all. So the only real question there is: "Is Google telling the truth?". The insurance companies will take notice of this. Their actuaries will update their tables. And the premiums will go up on human-driven cars to the point that the total cost of ownership I mentioned above makes them prohibitively expensive, except perhaps for weekend recreational driving under 5000 miles/year.
Not to say that was acceptable behavior, because it's not. But in the category of "celebrity jackassery" that little scuffle was pretty low in the hierarchy of sins. And we routinely tolerate much worse from our entertainers. Just google, for example, for those lists of celebrities who have killed people (outside of military service, that is) and see how many are not only not ostracized and blacklisted, but have been forgiven and are still actively celebrated. ('ll go ahead and toss out Caitlyn Jenner, Mathew Broderick, William S. Burroughs, Howard Hughes, and Charles S. Dutton, to start that list.)
So yeah. I'm fairly inclined, as well, to believe that the BBC execs were just waiting for an excuse to sack Clarkson; which he unfortunately gave them.
The things is though, if you goto the regular farmers' market on the outskirts of the city and not the fancy-pants one downtown, those heirloom tomatoes are cheaper, pound for pound, than the regular homogenous ones at the supermarket.
I learned that trick before I had disposable income, when I had to hunt for every bargain I could find.
I have no particular objection to GMOs for staple foods like rice or wheat. But I LIKE that the tomatoes I get from one vendor at the farmers market have a different flavor from those at the next. One may be better for salads and the other may be better for sauces. That's great! I like the variety of berries from one stall to the next. Some are better for pie, some are better for snacking. I like the challenge of working out what combination of ingredients will make for the best dish. If every tomato or strawberry is identical, you suffer from the culinary equivalent of the "a jack of all trades is the master of none" problem.
Tight corporate IP control and the potential for homogeneity in the food supply are both valid concerns wrt/ GMO food. But aside from the occasional, non-specific, and inarticulate rant of "Monsanto is teh evilz!"; a very tiny minority of the anti-GMO crowd addresses either of those issues.
Instead, it's nearly all incoherent rants about how "frankenfood" is not what "mother nature" intended for us to eat. They don't cite scientific research to support their arguments, they cite "alternative medicine" websites and some random person's blog. They don't use dispassionate reason and peer review, they use scare tactics and heartstrings. Sorry. But these are not the sort of people with whom I care to have any sort of conversation.
We can solve the corporate control problem with patent reform. Drop them back to the original term of 14 years, close the "change one minor thing and re-patent" loophole, and make damn sure they STAY at 14 years and don't let them ever become renewable or extended and grow out of control like copyright has. Frankly, I don't begrudge a business a 14-year monopoly on "super rice" or "Roundup Ready" whatever... Or, for that matter, a song or a movie, 14 years would be perfectly fine and respectable for copyright too... so long as everything did truly enter the public domain at the end of that term.
The problem of very productive GMOs encouraging homogeneity in the food supply would be a bit harder and would require more nuance, and possibly regulation, to solve. But I'm sure if we disregard the scaremongers and consider things reasonably; we could work the problem and figure a solution.
In fairness, half the episodes of ANY well-regarded TV series from the 1960s are crap. And half of the episodes that are left will usually just be well-done repetitions of a reliable formula. And those are the shows that are still remembered for being good. There are dozens more that were so bloody awful that they have long since faded into well-deserved obscurity.
Even such exalted genius such as The Twilight Zone were as much miss as they were hit. We just remember the good ones because they're SO good.
You jest. But the producers of the Star Wreck series (And eventually, Iron Sky) did exactly that. The last installment before they switched to moon nazis vs. Sarah Palin (No, I did not make that up.), was "In the Pirkinning", which chronicles an adventure of the C.P.P. Potkustartti, commanded by Captain James B. Pirk, with the assistance of crew members Commander Dwarf and Commander Info.
Through various somethity hole something anomaly blah blah blah; they eventually cross over into the universe of the Babel 13 space station, commanded by Captain Johnny K. Sherrypie, with first officer Commander Susannah Ivanovitsa, and Security Chief Mikhail Garybrandy, who sometimes also have to deal with the machinations of Psy-Co officer Festerbester.
I know it must be hard to believe for people like you, but there are others out there who actually use and genuinely like Apple's products, and use and like Uber's, Lyft's, and Airbnb's services, and think that the shuttle busses are a fine way to get cars off our streets during commute hours, and think that Google glass was a really cool idea that should have been taken farther (A lot farther. I wanted my goddamned Predator, or at least Terminator, vision.). That doesn't make us "shills", or even "fanbois". We're just normal people who like different products and services than you, and don't believe that articles of incorporation instantly and irrevocably turn everyone associated with them into the hellspawn of satan.
I have about half a dozen Google apps on my iPhone that compete with one or another of Apple's own offerings. In the streaming realm; on the audio side Pandora, SoundCloud, and Amazon Music are unmolested by Apple. And Netflix and Amazon Video do seem to be operational as well. Presumably, if Spotify's complaint is in any way at all valid, Apple will correct this oversight and pull these from the app store as well. Yes?
Also, there's zero evidence that anyone job is really in danger. It's quite possible... I'd guess probable even... that this is just some PR flack or "social media manager" doing a "pull the heartstrings" effort to get the product's reviews up. One employee sending messages or a dozen, it's probably all one person's (poor) efforts at spin control.
So very much this. It is beyond and past time for the entire Kanye / Kardashian / Beyonce / J-Z / Jenner pantheon to just go the hell away and fade away into obscurity.
It's not even as though I seek out their vainglorious tommyrot. In fact I actively avoid it. But it keeps intruding into the spheres that I do care about. I know bad news sells more papers than good. And people mostly goto hockey games to see the fights and NASCAR to see the crashes. But hell... I feel like a dumber and all-around worse person for even knowing who those people are. And damn the media for keeping them in business. It's not as though they produce anything worthwhile besides media attention anyway. At this point, they're even worse than Tila Tequila or the Jersey Shore crowd.
Seems like we see this same idiocy on every/. story related to immigration. Here's the thing: an immigrant has the same cost of living I do, the overseas guy doesn't. Every single developer who immigrates get paid more as a result. The average pay for the work increases with every immigrant.
I doubt that's the case with H1B immigrants who are locked into a specific sponsoring employer under pain of being kicked out of the country. It certainly is the case, though, with actual green card immigrants who, if they they are underpaid or otherwise unfairly treated, can jump ship for a new employer. So that would be my solution:
Eliminate H1B, and any other employer-restricted visas entirely. But for provably skilled and educated workers in the STEM fields, have a fast track program to get them permanent residency in short order. That way they can't be trapped by an abusive employer. And they'll be here, contributing to our economy, in the long-term rather than making a bit of money and taking it, and their skills, back overseas.
Just how the hell does this group of 10 people get themselves in front of a car such that it's only options are to plow through and kill them, or swerve into a wall and kill the driver/rider? We're not talking about a single kid unexpected chasing a ball out into a street in a residential zone, where the speed limit is already lower and it's usually not even practical to drive as fast as the speed limit anyway. This isn't a "school zone" situation where there are crossing guards and the car is already traveling at 15mph while the yellow lights flash. Nor do peds rush into a crosswalk en masse totally against traffic. Sometimes groups will go before they have the "walk" light but after crossing traffic; but we don't rush out in groups when said crossing traffic is going at full bear.
The most realistic group of 10 people I'm picturing would be a pack of drunk clods being asses by playing chicken in traffic on a major thoroughfare or something. (Don't scoff. This happens across the bay in Oakland quite a lot. Worse, they have what they call "sideshows" there, where the collections of drunk idiots include some that are playing in traffic whilst driving.) Hell, we're not even talking about drunks fresh out of the bars and clubs here. The bars and nightclubs districts are all 35mph limit zones where the realities of traffic, stop lights, stop signs, alleys, parallel parking, and et cetera make for a realistic top speed of 20mph, which you won't even attain around closing time because of the constellation of Ubers, Lyfts, and taxis making pickups in the area. And if you're an ass who thinks tracking over to one of the fast-traveling roads and playing in traffic is fun, I don't have a lot of sympathy for you.
So, my question is "Who is where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there?". Program the car to save that/those live(s).
Of course, I'm assuming the robot car is correctly programmed and that it obeys traffic laws, including speed limits, school zones, right of way, cross walks, stop signs and lights, and adjusts speed downward if the posted speed limit is unsafe under the conditions at the time.
And it applies only to "Transportation Network Companies" such as Uber and Lyft, NOT legacy taxi companies. Also, there's a lot more in there than just background checks. There's a host of other restrictions and requirements in there, including: restrictions on dynamic (surge) pricing, geofencing restricting them from providing service to special events, a money grab, a demand social "outreach events", and a requirement for access to their customer and user data.
> But you bring up an interesting point â" just what is > it, that the city needs to know in addition to what > AirBNB tells everyone? Or is this registration > requirement simply a way of collecting $50 fees?
That, and by throwing obstacles in the way of people who want to host on Airbnb, they're protecting the entrenched business interests of Hilton, Marriott, Westin, and the like. Just like the various municipal attacks against Uber and Lyft are to the benefit of Yellowcab, Checker Cab, Luxor Cab, and et cetera. It's a government failure mode known as "regulatory capture".
Cripes, that was incoherent. What I meant to type was:
"San Francisco is trying to place the onus of enforcing the registration fee on Airbnb (With no compensation for doing so.) and to fine the company, not the user, $1000/user/day for any who don't register."
It's not the registration fee itself. San Francisco is trying to place the of enforcing the registration fee (With no compensation for doing so.) and to fine the company, not the user, $1000/user/day for any who don't register.
Seriously. If those sketches and doodles of a vaguely iPhone-ish/iPad-ish device are cause for action, then the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation have a massive case of prior art and out to totally destroy this guy. Hell, Star Trek didn't stop at drawings either, they built full-size mockups and put them on television.
Section 230... which probably should be its own law rather than part of the CDA, but whatever... explicitly shields internet services from liability for illegal actions by their users.
The problem is not so much San Francisco imposing requirements on hosts to register with the city. Though the city is doing so in a fairly half-witted way. There is really no excusing the necessity to trudge down to city hall with actual pulp paper, rather than using a web form. The problem is that San Francisco is trying to shuffle its responsibility for enforcing that requirement onto Airbnb, and proposes to fine the company, rather than the users, if those users break the law.
It should also be noted that a very similar law was actually voted on as a ballot initiative last year. It was rejected by the electorate. And the board of supervisors is now trying to end-run their way around the voters' decision. That's tangental, of course, but City Hall is definitely not acting in good faith here.
> If you allow drug use, you are going to see a lot of > overdosing, addiction, ruined health and early death.
And this differs from the rest of the entertainment industry... how exactly? Or should I knock up a list of actors, musicians, and etc. who've suffered ODs, addiction, ruined health, and death?
Slashdot Mirror
Even in situations where the place was going to hell and was suffering under the worst managers. (In the case I'm thinking of; a big, very bro-y, MBA-ish, golf-buddies-get-promoted, east-coast logistics company acquired the close-knit San Francisco tech company I worked for. The cultural differences were irreconcilable for more than a few of us.) The thing is, I wasn't giving notice for the benefit of the company. I was giving notice for the benefit of my co-workers. (The legacy ones from our days as our own company, that is.). Two weeks may not be enough time to hire an actual replacement. But if you're on the ball, you can cram in a lot of knowledge transfer and not leave your friends and colleagues hanging (Any more than is absolutely necessary as a consequence of your leaving.).
To provoke a no-notice resignation, I think I'd have to have become aware that the company was breaking the law or engaged in a serious ethical violation. Physical violence, or sexual harassment or orientation discrimination would probably do the trick too.
Many stores adhere to a de-facto standard that there should never be more than three people waiting in line to get to the register.
Target, for example, has employees monitor the checkout lines and opens extra registers if the ones that are open get too crowded. They'll also direct you to the shorter lines if they're simply imbalanced. Walgreens has a unified line for all the registers. But if there's more than three people in line, there's a hidden button for a cashier to press that will trigger an announcement over the store's speakers. When you hear a recorded voice announce: "I see three" at Walgreens, thats a signal for everyone to drop what they're doing, go up front, and work their registers to clear the line.
It's been a long time since I've had occasion to shop at Walmart. But I do remember the experience being fairly frustrating, with poor customer service. I don't recall if that carried through to the checkout lines though.
Have you checked the wiring at your house? My own first Keurig, along with some other appliances while I lived there, died at my former (rental) house. Eventually, we had the wiring in out unit and discovered that some outlets had fluctuating voltages. They were usually under but would sometimes spike over. It took a while to discover this, as all of the important electronics (Computers, TV, Playstation, etc.) are on UPSs as a matter of course. But we concluded that the screwy outlets did correlate with the failed appliances.
I''ve since moved, and Keurig #2 (Same model) has lasted twice as long as the first and is still going strong. Said Keurig, BTW, shares the kitchen with a french press, a Bodum pour-over, and a Bialetti moka pot. They all have their use case. And they all see regular use.
No more than any of a thousand senior execs, managers, engineers, sales drones, and even IT people who have engaged in "shadow IT" when the solutions offered under written policy didn't meet their needs.
The lesson here is not that Hillary is Satan. The lesson is that IT is a support organization, not a means unto itself. So if your users have a need, don't prattle on about policy, meet your user's needs. And if the big boss wants to use her iPhone or Blackberry, STFU about your policies, and work out a way to make it happen.
I'd rather sit at the "status quo" for four or eight years than take a massive regression. And let's face it, that's the choice we have this year: Progressing too slowly, or utter destruction of the progress we've already made. Clinton was not my first choice either. But we live in the real world of first past the pole elections, not some fantasyland where Sanders has a chance as a write-in candidate. So I'm going to vote strategically.
And really, I don't see why the "status quo" we have right now is supposed to be so bad. Sure, Obama didn't accomplish all he set out to do. But the country is still drastically improved over the bush years. We're mired in fewer oversea wars. Foreign relations, on the whole, have improved. The economy is not just improved, it's fantastically improved. Unemployment is low. Recruiters email or send LinkedIn solicitations daily (And sometimes go so far as to hunt down my phone number from the three-year-old resume that's in some database somewhere.). We've made dramatic strides in civil rights for the LGBT community. And, even though it doesn't go far enough IMO, we have universal health care. And, oh yeah... Osama bin Laden's ass is dead and Quaeda's back is broken.
Yes, the millennials are graduating with too much student debt. ENDA is not yet passed. Terrorism is not over. And Obamacare doesn't go far enough. There's still work to do. But the doesn't abrogate the fact that we're in a much better place than we were eight years ago. And even if the choice were "keep everything exactly the way right now" status quo vs. a massive Trump-induced regression to the worst of the bad-old-days; I'd still vote for the former every time.
People typically are bad at math and long-term planning. Specifically, people often foolishly look only at the upfront cost, and ignore the total cost of ownership. A late-model car from a reliable make like Honda or Toyota will run pretty much repair-free for over a decade following only the scheduled services in the owner's manual. Divided out, that turns out to be a better deal than the cheap Dodge you can get for half the upfront price at Uncle Al's Used Car Lot. Replacing the master brake cylinder a year in, the clutch the year after that, the ECU the next year, then the radiator, and so on... it all adds up, as does the lost use of the car while it's in the shop.
And while the average may be $34,000 (Oh, and BTW, is that the mean or the median? It kind of matters in this sort of discussion.), there are some damn fine options in the $20K range, and some very good choices even for under $20K. I bought my 2013 Mazda 3 new for $17.5K, and it's absolutely fantastic. Most MX-5s will come in under $30K, as will most models of the BRZ or FRS. Pretty much the entire Scion lineup (Toyotas by another name and about to be folded into the main brand anyway.) is in the $16-28K range. If outdoors is your thing, Subaru also has the Crosstrek and Impreza wagons running $18-25K. For in-city versatility, Honda's Fit seldom exceeds $20K. And if you want the canonical classics, Civics and Corollas start at $18K and I don't think it's even possible to configure one over $30K.
As for self-driving, I suspect the impetus will come from the insurance companies. If Google's claims about the safety of self-driving cars bears out, they will be dramatically safer than human-driven cars. And that data is easy to gather. Self-drivers are more sensor package and data recorder than they are actually cars, after all. So the only real question there is: "Is Google telling the truth?". The insurance companies will take notice of this. Their actuaries will update their tables. And the premiums will go up on human-driven cars to the point that the total cost of ownership I mentioned above makes them prohibitively expensive, except perhaps for weekend recreational driving under 5000 miles/year.
Not to say that was acceptable behavior, because it's not. But in the category of "celebrity jackassery" that little scuffle was pretty low in the hierarchy of sins. And we routinely tolerate much worse from our entertainers. Just google, for example, for those lists of celebrities who have killed people (outside of military service, that is) and see how many are not only not ostracized and blacklisted, but have been forgiven and are still actively celebrated. ('ll go ahead and toss out Caitlyn Jenner, Mathew Broderick, William S. Burroughs, Howard Hughes, and Charles S. Dutton, to start that list.)
So yeah. I'm fairly inclined, as well, to believe that the BBC execs were just waiting for an excuse to sack Clarkson; which he unfortunately gave them.
The things is though, if you goto the regular farmers' market on the outskirts of the city and not the fancy-pants one downtown, those heirloom tomatoes are cheaper, pound for pound, than the regular homogenous ones at the supermarket.
I learned that trick before I had disposable income, when I had to hunt for every bargain I could find.
Agreed.
I have no particular objection to GMOs for staple foods like rice or wheat. But I LIKE that the tomatoes I get from one vendor at the farmers market have a different flavor from those at the next. One may be better for salads and the other may be better for sauces. That's great! I like the variety of berries from one stall to the next. Some are better for pie, some are better for snacking. I like the challenge of working out what combination of ingredients will make for the best dish. If every tomato or strawberry is identical, you suffer from the culinary equivalent of the "a jack of all trades is the master of none" problem.
Tight corporate IP control and the potential for homogeneity in the food supply are both valid concerns wrt/ GMO food. But aside from the occasional, non-specific, and inarticulate rant of "Monsanto is teh evilz!"; a very tiny minority of the anti-GMO crowd addresses either of those issues.
Instead, it's nearly all incoherent rants about how "frankenfood" is not what "mother nature" intended for us to eat. They don't cite scientific research to support their arguments, they cite "alternative medicine" websites and some random person's blog. They don't use dispassionate reason and peer review, they use scare tactics and heartstrings. Sorry. But these are not the sort of people with whom I care to have any sort of conversation.
We can solve the corporate control problem with patent reform. Drop them back to the original term of 14 years, close the "change one minor thing and re-patent" loophole, and make damn sure they STAY at 14 years and don't let them ever become renewable or extended and grow out of control like copyright has. Frankly, I don't begrudge a business a 14-year monopoly on "super rice" or "Roundup Ready" whatever... Or, for that matter, a song or a movie, 14 years would be perfectly fine and respectable for copyright too... so long as everything did truly enter the public domain at the end of that term.
The problem of very productive GMOs encouraging homogeneity in the food supply would be a bit harder and would require more nuance, and possibly regulation, to solve. But I'm sure if we disregard the scaremongers and consider things reasonably; we could work the problem and figure a solution.
In fairness, half the episodes of ANY well-regarded TV series from the 1960s are crap. And half of the episodes that are left will usually just be well-done repetitions of a reliable formula. And those are the shows that are still remembered for being good. There are dozens more that were so bloody awful that they have long since faded into well-deserved obscurity.
Even such exalted genius such as The Twilight Zone were as much miss as they were hit. We just remember the good ones because they're SO good.
You jest. But the producers of the Star Wreck series (And eventually, Iron Sky) did exactly that. The last installment before they switched to moon nazis vs. Sarah Palin (No, I did not make that up.), was "In the Pirkinning", which chronicles an adventure of the C.P.P. Potkustartti, commanded by Captain James B. Pirk, with the assistance of crew members Commander Dwarf and Commander Info.
Through various somethity hole something anomaly blah blah blah; they eventually cross over into the universe of the Babel 13 space station, commanded by Captain Johnny K. Sherrypie, with first officer Commander Susannah Ivanovitsa, and Security Chief Mikhail Garybrandy, who sometimes also have to deal with the machinations of Psy-Co officer Festerbester.
Hijinks ensue.
I know it must be hard to believe for people like you, but there are others out there who actually use and genuinely like Apple's products, and use and like Uber's, Lyft's, and Airbnb's services, and think that the shuttle busses are a fine way to get cars off our streets during commute hours, and think that Google glass was a really cool idea that should have been taken farther (A lot farther. I wanted my goddamned Predator, or at least Terminator, vision.). That doesn't make us "shills", or even "fanbois". We're just normal people who like different products and services than you, and don't believe that articles of incorporation instantly and irrevocably turn everyone associated with them into the hellspawn of satan.
I have about half a dozen Google apps on my iPhone that compete with one or another of Apple's own offerings. In the streaming realm; on the audio side Pandora, SoundCloud, and Amazon Music are unmolested by Apple. And Netflix and Amazon Video do seem to be operational as well. Presumably, if Spotify's complaint is in any way at all valid, Apple will correct this oversight and pull these from the app store as well. Yes?
Also, there's zero evidence that anyone job is really in danger. It's quite possible... I'd guess probable even... that this is just some PR flack or "social media manager" doing a "pull the heartstrings" effort to get the product's reviews up. One employee sending messages or a dozen, it's probably all one person's (poor) efforts at spin control.
So very much this. It is beyond and past time for the entire Kanye / Kardashian / Beyonce / J-Z / Jenner pantheon to just go the hell away and fade away into obscurity.
It's not even as though I seek out their vainglorious tommyrot. In fact I actively avoid it. But it keeps intruding into the spheres that I do care about. I know bad news sells more papers than good. And people mostly goto hockey games to see the fights and NASCAR to see the crashes. But hell... I feel like a dumber and all-around worse person for even knowing who those people are. And damn the media for keeping them in business. It's not as though they produce anything worthwhile besides media attention anyway. At this point, they're even worse than Tila Tequila or the Jersey Shore crowd.
I doubt that's the case with H1B immigrants who are locked into a specific sponsoring employer under pain of being kicked out of the country. It certainly is the case, though, with actual green card immigrants who, if they they are underpaid or otherwise unfairly treated, can jump ship for a new employer. So that would be my solution:
Eliminate H1B, and any other employer-restricted visas entirely. But for provably skilled and educated workers in the STEM fields, have a fast track program to get them permanent residency in short order. That way they can't be trapped by an abusive employer. And they'll be here, contributing to our economy, in the long-term rather than making a bit of money and taking it, and their skills, back overseas.
More false is the hypothetical situation itself.
Just how the hell does this group of 10 people get themselves in front of a car such that it's only options are to plow through and kill them, or swerve into a wall and kill the driver/rider? We're not talking about a single kid unexpected chasing a ball out into a street in a residential zone, where the speed limit is already lower and it's usually not even practical to drive as fast as the speed limit anyway. This isn't a "school zone" situation where there are crossing guards and the car is already traveling at 15mph while the yellow lights flash. Nor do peds rush into a crosswalk en masse totally against traffic. Sometimes groups will go before they have the "walk" light but after crossing traffic; but we don't rush out in groups when said crossing traffic is going at full bear.
The most realistic group of 10 people I'm picturing would be a pack of drunk clods being asses by playing chicken in traffic on a major thoroughfare or something. (Don't scoff. This happens across the bay in Oakland quite a lot. Worse, they have what they call "sideshows" there, where the collections of drunk idiots include some that are playing in traffic whilst driving.) Hell, we're not even talking about drunks fresh out of the bars and clubs here. The bars and nightclubs districts are all 35mph limit zones where the realities of traffic, stop lights, stop signs, alleys, parallel parking, and et cetera make for a realistic top speed of 20mph, which you won't even attain around closing time because of the constellation of Ubers, Lyfts, and taxis making pickups in the area. And if you're an ass who thinks tracking over to one of the fast-traveling roads and playing in traffic is fun, I don't have a lot of sympathy for you.
So, my question is "Who is where they are supposed to be when they are supposed to be there?". Program the car to save that/those live(s).
Of course, I'm assuming the robot car is correctly programmed and that it obeys traffic laws, including speed limits, school zones, right of way, cross walks, stop signs and lights, and adjusts speed downward if the posted speed limit is unsafe under the conditions at the time.
Actually, no. The ordinance in question is 20151217-075:
https://www.austintexas.gov/ed...
And it applies only to "Transportation Network Companies" such as Uber and Lyft, NOT legacy taxi companies. Also, there's a lot more in there than just background checks. There's a host of other restrictions and requirements in there, including: restrictions on dynamic (surge) pricing, geofencing restricting them from providing service to special events, a money grab, a demand social "outreach events", and a requirement for access to their customer and user data.
> But you bring up an interesting point â" just what is
> it, that the city needs to know in addition to what
> AirBNB tells everyone? Or is this registration
> requirement simply a way of collecting $50 fees?
That, and by throwing obstacles in the way of people who want to host on Airbnb, they're protecting the entrenched business interests of Hilton, Marriott, Westin, and the like. Just like the various municipal attacks against Uber and Lyft are to the benefit of Yellowcab, Checker Cab, Luxor Cab, and et cetera. It's a government failure mode known as "regulatory capture".
Cripes, that was incoherent. What I meant to type was:
"San Francisco is trying to place the onus of enforcing the registration fee on Airbnb (With no compensation for doing so.) and to fine the company, not the user, $1000/user/day for any who don't register."
It's not the registration fee itself. San Francisco is trying to place the of enforcing the registration fee (With no compensation for doing so.) and to fine the company, not the user, $1000/user/day for any who don't register.
Seriously. If those sketches and doodles of a vaguely iPhone-ish/iPad-ish device are cause for action, then the producers of Star Trek: The Next Generation have a massive case of prior art and out to totally destroy this guy. Hell, Star Trek didn't stop at drawings either, they built full-size mockups and put them on television.
Section 230... which probably should be its own law rather than part of the CDA, but whatever... explicitly shields internet services from liability for illegal actions by their users.
The problem is not so much San Francisco imposing requirements on hosts to register with the city. Though the city is doing so in a fairly half-witted way. There is really no excusing the necessity to trudge down to city hall with actual pulp paper, rather than using a web form. The problem is that San Francisco is trying to shuffle its responsibility for enforcing that requirement onto Airbnb, and proposes to fine the company, rather than the users, if those users break the law.
It should also be noted that a very similar law was actually voted on as a ballot initiative last year. It was rejected by the electorate. And the board of supervisors is now trying to end-run their way around the voters' decision. That's tangental, of course, but City Hall is definitely not acting in good faith here.
> If you allow drug use, you are going to see a lot of
> overdosing, addiction, ruined health and early death.
And this differs from the rest of the entertainment industry... how exactly? Or should I knock up a list of actors, musicians, and etc. who've suffered ODs, addiction, ruined health, and death?