It's a good practice to get both sides of the story. When I read something controversial, I always think, "Sounds pretty convincing. What's the other side?"
They didn't publish a retort from a respected scientist after publishing a some complete woo by a charlatan.
It's considered good journalistic practice to publish responses or apologies when you fuck up - not that I'm implying that WSJ deserves such high expectations.
Some of the best essays I've read were letters of rebuttal in the WSJ editorial page.
The WSJ is a useful catalog of right-wing stupidity. When they were good, they published both sides of the argument. (Once in a rare while, they were actually right.)
I used to read them religiously every day, back in the days of paper, but I stopped after Murdoch bought them. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... It was the greatest tragedy that journalism has ever suffered.
You're not giving supporting evidence. In fact, you don't seem to understand what supporting evidence is. It makes me wonder what you were teaching. You're not making a convincing argument.
One thing I have learned is that when you get both sides of the story, usually turns out to be different than it looked when you only got one side.
I wonder if there's something more to this story than "lazy teachers" and lazy parents.
If Uber violates its price contract, then Uber will answer in litigation and loss of customers.
As I understand it, on New Year's Eve, Uber announced that surge pricing was in effect. People called an Uber cab, and the driver or the app told them that they would have to pay according to a certain formula (but not what the final price would be). They agreed, but they didn't realize that by the end of the ride it would cost $100 or more for a trip that would cost $10 or $20 for a yellow cab. Economists say that this is a market failure because they don't have enough information to make an informed buying decision. If Uber told them at the beginning that it would cost $100, most of them would have turned it down.
If Uber succeeds in driving the yellow cabs out of business, along with Lyft and any other competitors, then a ride with Uber won't be optional. Uber will be the only provider. If you want to get home from a bar at 1am on New Year's Eve, or if you want to get home from the airport at 2am, you'll have a "choice" between Uber's surge pricing or nothing. In theory, competitors could move into the market, but it's hard (maybe impossible) to compete with a business that has $50 billion in capital.
This happened regularly in the 19th century. Several businesses would compete in the steel or the railroad industry, and finally one would dominate the industry and eliminate competitors by competitive pricing or mergers. Then, the dominant player could raise prices without fear of competition. That's what Uber would do if it could.
Adults who enter into an agreement with an Uber car for an unspecified price are very unhappy when that price unexpectedly turns out to be $100 or $150 for a ride that is 10 times the regulated price.
They also want to pick up a cab at an airport at 2am without paying $100 or $150. I've never come home to JFK or Laguardia without a line of regulated taxis waiting for me. And if I really want to ride share, I can find somebody to share a cab.
There is a niche market of people who can pay $100 or $150 for a limo, but they're not enough to sustain a mass market.
It turns out that people don't follow Uber's free-market theories. Make a note about that in the margin of your economics book.
Uber & Lyft offer basically the same service and very similar pricing. Formerly I used Uber because (at that time) I slightly preferred their Android app over Lyft's app. Now I mostly use Lyft because they seem like a subjectively "nicer" company.
When there are multiple companies offering equivalent services, it doesn't take a lot to sway people's loyalty.
Internet companies seem to devolve into monopolies -- Microsoft, Google, Amazon. Uber's $50 billion venture capital is a pretty high entry barrier. They can bribe governors with that. So there may not be any significant competition or consumer choice.
Surge pricing is an effective way to get drivers in the road. I am an Uber driver that only drives during surge because i can make $50 - $60 an hour. In other words, drivers are incentivised (sic) to drive on holidays, late nights and weekends because of the bump in pay. If there was no surge pricing on New Year's Eve more than half of the drivers would have been home with their families.
Unfortunately there is an enormous consumer resistance to paying $100 or $170 for a trip home from a bar, which is what Uber customers paid on New Year's in New York City. And there are very few customers who are willing or able to pay those rates.
If you only drive during the surge, you're not going to work that many hours, maybe 4-5 hours a day, and your commercial insurance, Uber's 20%, gas, maintenance and other expenses will take a big chunk of that. According to this article, http://www.businessinsider.com... Uber drivers typically make $250-300/day for a full-time shift.
When I knew a lot of cab drivers, most of them would drive a 12-hour shift, so if you're not willing to drive holidays, late nights and weekends, other people are, as long as there are riders. That's where the free market incentivises people, just with normal taxi rates, without the $100 surprises.
Maybe you figured out a way to do it, or it fits into your schedule. I'm glad for you, but I don't think it can be scaled up to a viable economic model.
One of the preconditions for a working, efficient free market is competition and consumer choice. Uber doesn't meet the conditions of a free market.
One of the problems with the Internet economy is that it tends to eliminate competition and wind up with a single service provider.
For years, Microsoft dominated the business OS and apps market. Amazon dominates book sales (and anything that can be sold like a book). Google dominates search, email, and anything that is distributed like search.
When I studied economics, they said that you need at least 3 competitors, with no competitor having more than 50% or 60% of the market, to have meaningful competition.
So it would be nice if we had Uber, and 3 or 4 uberettes to compete with it, each trying different strategies. The company that could best satisfy its consumers and market would survive and grow, and the arrogant jerks would go out of business. The electrical products industry used to be like that. If I didn't like GE, I could go to Westinghouse.
But all we've got is Uber. And they've even used unscrupulous tactics to sabotage competitors like Lyft. Their only answer to even reasonable complaints is, "Fuck you, we've got $50 billion in venture capital behind us, we're more powerful than the government, we can do what we want, and we're even collecting lobbyists and PR firms."
And $50 billion is quite an entry barrier.
If Uber manages to take over our entire urban transportation system, they can wind up making our bureaucratic and arbitrary government look good by comparison. If I have a noise complaint, I can call my state assemblyman. If I have a complaint about Uber, I can wind up leaving unanswered messages on their answering machine. Now they're on their best behavior. What will they be like after they've driven out the other competition?
So Uber isn't an example of the free market. They're an example of an unaccountable monopoly, that dictates its terms and doesn't leave you with any choices (after they've creatively destroyed the legacy taxi system). That's the kind of monopolies we had in the 19th century, and that's what led to government intervention in the form of regulation in the first place.
Hospitals and doctors already have access to records, however the systems holding the records are the target.
So why can't those systems be secure and available?
There was a study a few years ago in which a hospital tried an electronic records system in a pediatric ICU, and the death rate went up. The system was too hard to use. Instead of just writing a prescription on a prescription pad, they had to log into the system and go through screens.
Yeah I don't buy that at all, and you give no link to back up your claim. I worked in a hospital that had an electronic records system and a computer in each room, but the drugs for the patients were also listed in a book at the nurses station. And each nurse/doctor knew what thier patients needed, most certainly in an ICU. Especially this part
Instead of just writing a prescription on a prescription pad, they had to log into the system and go through screens.
Sounds like bullshit to me.
It's a frequently-cited study. The message is, you can't just throw computers at something and make it better.
Let's see what somebody could find with a Google search, if they weren't so lazy:
At Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, mortality rates increased after the implementation of an electronic records system from Cerner in 2002, according to a study published in 2005 in the journal Pediatrics.
During the 18 months examined, the mortality rate increased to 6.6 percent in the five months after the system was installed, from 2.8 percent in the 13 months before, according to the study.
Delays in treating patients may have contributed to the deaths, the researchers said. Those delays were caused by several issues, including the number of clicks required to submit prescription orders and by restrictions imposed by the software on when doctors could order medications for incoming patients.
electronic medical records were basically mandated by insurance companies and hospital executives in an effort to reduce overhead in paper, postage, and ancillary staff related to records processing.
And as I understand it, they were designed for the convenience of the insurance companies, with the primary task of billing, and handling the other information, like patient administration and clinical data was retrofitted later.
So if you went through the list of insurance company requirements, you'd have it all. If you went through the list of doctors' requirements, not so much.
easy and fast access to medical information often trumps security."
That's the attitude of a lot of corporations, and that's why there is so much successful hacking going on.
In a medical situation, that might be the right decision. If your patient turns up unconscious in the ER at 2am, or if you're covering for your partner and his patient turns up unconscious in the ER at 2am, easy and fast access might trump security.
There was a study a few years ago in which a hospital tried an electronic records system in a pediatric ICU, and the death rate went up. The system was too hard to use. Instead of just writing a prescription on a prescription pad, they had to log into the system and go through screens.
I don't think there's a practicing pediatrician in the country who would let a patient die in order to improve security.
The internet, that source of reliable, dependable, unbiased information about drugs.
The internet, the place where you can read what the manufacturer of the drug has to say about it, and the abstracts of studies which indicate that it's dangerous. Oh wait, you wanted to not have to think? That's called death. In a hurry?
I make my living writing about medicine, so I read that stuff every day.
I do write abstracts of studies about the dangers of drugs, and they are on the Internet.
If you read what I wrote above, you will see that I called the FDA to find out the adverse effects of gabapentin. That's because at that time the manufacturer didn't put it in the official product specifications (the Product Label) or anywhere else, and because it wasn't reported in the abstracts of papers. It was in an FDA database that wasn't online and that I had to call the FDA about specifically. (And yes, the manufacturer did get sued and lost a few million dollars, and wrote it off as a cost of doing business.)
You couldn't find that adverse effect anywhere on the Internet, and if you did find it, you wouldn't know what to make of it. All drugs have hundreds or sometimes thousands of reported potential adverse effects, and you have no way of knowing which adverse effects are real and significant and which are not.
I write for doctors. I leave a lot out because doctors already know it. They already know the major adverse effects of drugs.
That's what you find on the Internet. I'm telling you that you can't depend on my stuff (or anybody else's stuff) on the Internet to figure out the dangers of the drugs you're taking.
You're betting your life that the information you got is accurate and complete, and that you understood it correctly.
You need a competent doctor to explain it to you (and it's not easy to find a competent doctor).
You don't believe me? I can't stop you.
If you want to engage in thinking, the first thing you should do is learn how little you know.
I believe you, but I don't understand what result they got from the blood test that led to your getting convicted of drunken driving. Blood tests are supposed to be more accurate.
Patient counseling info for such drugs almost without exception specifically and explicitly mention the possibility of this very side effect, and the doctor or pharmacist, or both, tells you to NEVER combine it with alcohol
My doctor prescribed Ambien to me. I tried it for a month and it didn't work. Nobody warned me about the "sleep walking" or any of the other exotic side effects.
A friend of mine was taking gabapentin (Neurontin). A co-worker at work started a fight, he fought back, and they both got fired (from their non-union job). It was in the depths of the recession and he couldn't get another job; he wound up in bad shape. I called the FDA to find out if this could be due to the gabapentin, and a doctor looked it up their database and said yes, they had a few reports of gabapentin associated with aggression. I don't think it was in the patient information then, but it (sometimes) is now. The warning isn't prominent http://www.drugs.com/cons/gaba...http://www.fda.gov/downloads/D... and they emphasize the effect in children, not adults.
It's not possible for a patient to be aware of these things in a country where doctors' appointments are 15 minutes or less, they don't get paid for phone advice, and primary care practitioners are prescribing these drugs.
Verizon in NYC had a similar help line escalation.
When I moved to a new apartment, and switched my phone, it didn't work and they couldn't get it working for a month. (Probably because they were trying to get rid of their land lines in favor of fiber optic, so they let their twisted pair maintenance crew decline.)
I was dealing with the usual tech support hell (on hold for half an hour, transferred call and dropped, supervisors who promised to return my call and never did, etc.).
Finally I called somebody by mistake in Staten Island who gave me the number of the "President's hot line". I called them up, got somebody who was actually helpful, made some calls for me, and got it working again. (Apparently their digital switches were malprogrammed. Give me the old solenoids back.)
A while later I was having trouble again so I called the President's hot line again. It wasn't working any more.
(Pro tip: When I really got fed up, I called my state assemblyman, Dick Gottfried, on the theory that Verizon is regulated by and accountable to the State. One of his staffers called Verizon, and straightened it out, even though it was Friday evening before the weekend.
So maybe that's the kind of thing that was going on with Comcast. If the service is federally regulated, your congressman should be able to call them up in your behalf and hold them accountable. And they can do it for themselves. I don't think it's outrageous for a politician to get that favor as long as they use it for their constituents too.)
Or, "Charge me or let me go. I'm calling a lawyer."
If they're calling in someone, I'm calling in someone too. And if they don't let me without me formally being under arrest for a charge, then I'm suing their asses.
Well, yeah, that's the right answer, but it doesn't always work. And it's pretty hard to sue their asses. Some states have sovereign immunity. So that family whose infant was horribly burned by a flash-bang explosive in a no-knock warrant can't sue the state, and is stuck in bankruptcy with a million dollars in medical bills.
Monica Lewinsky also said she wanted to call her lawyer, but they wouldn't let her do it.
All they have to do is take away your cell phone. And if you resist their illegal seizure of your cell phone, that's a felony.
A friend of mine in college was busted for pot, and the cops gave him the Miranda line, including, "You have a right to a lawyer." He said, "OK, I want a lawyer." The pigxxxcop said, "Shut the fuck up, you're not getting any lawyer." They wanted him to rat on the biggest dealer at Stony Brook, whom I will only refer to as "Howie X."
As a practical matter, you can assert your rights and the pigsxxxxcops can ignore you, and keep threatening you. They can lie and plant drugs and guns on you. There were a series of cases in New York City where the pigsxxxxcops were arresting innocent people on the street, and planting guns on them. They had a choice between staying in jail indefinitely, and risking a 15-year felony, or pleading guilty to a misdemeanor, and getting 6 or 12 months, which was usually the time served. One guy managed to fight it on principle, and he was lucky enough to find a lawyer who was also willing to fight it on principle.
Even when I get stopped by the pigsxxxxcops, I'm not sure what to do. Do I have a legal obligation to identify myself? Do I have to show them identification? What would happen if they just lie in court?
It's too bad the Soviet Union didn't survive under Gorbachev. I think you would prefer Gorbachev to Putin, and probably to Yeltsin.
When Gorbachev came in, Ogarkov was out. Gorbachev didn't have any problems making computers, or free speech, widely available.
I've never been able to understand why the Soviet people (with the encouragement of the West) threw Gorbachev out. It's as if for 70 years the Soviet leaders weren't willing to take a risk of more freedom, because they were afraid the West would stab them in the back. Finally, along came Gorbachev, who was willing to take a risk for peace and freedom. Sure enough, the Westeners stabbed him in the back.
I read samisdat. They were circulating in the U.S. for a while after the thaw. One of the problems was that they were too long and didn't get to the point. That's why, when Solzhenitsyn finally came to free market America, he complained that, under capitalism, nobody wanted to read his books. When they finally had freedom of speech, nobody was interested in them.
Yes, they can reprint out-of-print books that are more than 100 years old, but they can no longer reprint out-of-print books that are 30 years old, which is how they started in the 1950s. I still can't get the Dover books that I read in the 1960s, because they're orphaned, copyrighted books.
They couldn't even reprint the 1917 edition of Growth and Form. http://store.doverpublications... They had to get permission and pay royalties to Cambridge.
I did do a bit of research on this because I work in the publishing industry, and I know a couple of publishers who have reprinted out-of-print books. I found out that some of the classics were out of print, and I thought it would be a good idea to reprint them.
One of them was Yevgeney Perelman's Physics for Entertainment, which is part of a series, which wasn't even copyrighted because the Soviet Union didn't believe in copyright at that time. Perelman died in the siege of Leningrad. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they went out of print. I talked to some librarians and copyright researchers, and it was impossible to track down who had the ownership under the new copyright law. Was it Russia? Was it his surviving heirs? Were there contracts? A lot of publishers didn't even keep their old contracts after the 26-year copyright expired, and now suddenly the copyright was extended to 100 years after the author's death. Publishers went out of business, and their files were destroyed. They signed contracts based on a 26-year term, so it's not clear who owns the rights afterwards. A lot of times you can't even find out when or if the author died. Every so often somebody will publish Perelman's books, but it's illegal. A publisher explained to me that if he were to get caught, which is unlikely, he would just pay royalties. People have also posted Perelman's books on the Internet, but that's also illegal. (Although the copyright law is so complicated, especially for international works, that it would cost thousands of dollars or more in legal fees to figure out what copyright law applies.) The problem with just doing it illegally is that a library can't make their collection illegally available on the Internet. That's why Google books has gaps.
I can't research Dover's catalog and give you a definitive answer, but Project Guttenberg ran into this problem and wrote about it in detail. I've talked to librarians. The copyright laws have made it impossible to exchange published works that were in the public domain before. That was the purpose of the Sony Bono Copyright Act.
If you're a copyright lawyer and you know otherwise, I'd be happy to know how I can publish those orphaned works.
As someone who did not study math in higher education but now wants to learn more it is quite difficult to find out which math text books have the best content. Would someone please suggest some books and authors of great texts I can then search for?
I would ideally like to build up a bookshelf of great maths texts to go alongside the computing books I already have.
You know, I used to have a good answer, but because of New York City Mayor Bloomberg, I can't give you an answer any more. He destroyed the library with the greatest collection of introductory math books that I've ever seen.
We used to have a library in Manhattan, on a prime piece of real estate opposite the Museum of Modern Art, called the Donnell. It had collections of books for young adults, which in library-speak means high school students and above. They had librarians who understood the subjects, and worked with high school teachers to develop excellent collections of books with good content that would grab you when you took them off the shelf and started to read.
They had a collection of science books and a collection of math books in two big bookcases. Those bookcases contained every great math book I read or wanted to read in high school. Sometimes I'd find a book in the library, and buy a copy in the bookstore.
The Donnell was a beautiful library, in the 1930s style of Rockefeller Center, a fitting match for the Museum of Modern Art, where you could sit and read by huge picture windows. It was a hangout for teenagers from around the city, who used to come there to do their homework and their research. They also had an auditorium where they held poetry readings. It was a New York institution.
After 80 years, the Donnell could have used some repairs and upgrading to its heating and air conditioning system and so forth. Instead of paying for the repairs, Bloomberg decided to tear down the library. He had connections to a real estate company that came up with a plan to build a hotel on the site. They would have a much smaller library down in the basement. But it wouldn't have the same young adult science, math and other collections (which were scattered among other libraries around the City). The real estate company would make a lot of money, the City would get some, and use the money to "improve" the library system and buy more computers. It was controversial, people fought it, but Bloomberg was a billionaire and he won. They fired all the expert librarians, and tore down the Donnell.
Then the real estate market collapsed, so Bloomberg's real estate friends couldn't deliver what they promised.
I've talked to many science librarians in the public library. There is no longer any place in the City where you can find a collection of science and math books like that. They couldn't even give me a bibliography of books like that. It's gone. In fact, they fired most of the expert librarians, and replaced them with computer specialists. They don't really know the subject. You ask them a question and they look in a database.
The best thing I could recommend now is to find a math teacher. It used to be that you could go to a college campus, walk over to the math department, and find somebody who would be happy to give you advice. Now, with all the security, you might not be able to get in the door any more without an ID card. Or you might be able to find a good librarian. If you find a good bibliography, let me know.
(The classics that I remember, BTW, were The World of Mathematics, which was a historical collection of sources, Courant's Introduction to Mathematics, and Polya's How to Find It. There were so many more. If it wasn't for the Copyright Act, you could get them all free on line today.)
This is known as anecdotal evidence, and a datapoint of 1. It's a fallacious argument, since you can use it to prove anything.
People have lots of habits, and people wind up in devastating situations. Sometimes they are the same people. You could substitute anything for "cannabis," and (falsely) draw the same conclusions -- comic books, the Internet, teenage sex, masturbation, TV, rock 'n roll, negroes, Mexicans, the military, and religion, were all blamed for having devastating effects on teenagers. If I had somebody close to me who was religious, and turned into a schizophrenic, can I therefore conclude that religion causes schizophrenia?
Conversely, when I was in college, some of the most successful students, including the valedictorians, were heavy users of marijuana (and rock 'n roll). So obiously many people escape the evil effects of marijuana, and if I use your logic of anecdotal evidence it caused their success.
This person close to you might have had just as much of a decline without cannabis. How do you know he wouldn't have? Lots of people with marijuana were very successful, and lots of people without marijuana turned out terribly.
People claim all the time that you can't use randomized, controlled trials on marijuana, but we've done similar trials many times in the past. (When we finally did a RCT with estrogen replacement therapy, it turned out that ERT was a major cause of breast cancer.)
If in the 1980s, when the highly suggestive evidence of the benefits of marijuana started to appear, we had started RCTs of marijuana for conditions like AIDS wasting syndrome and epilepsy, we incidentally would have had data on the adverse effects of marijuana, and we'd know whether it ever has these devastating consequences that you claim.
But instead the DEA refused to allow studies even from legitimate, respected scientists.
You can debate marijuana all you want, and there may well be some rare or minor adverse effects, but the DEA and other prohibitionists don't have enough scientific evidence that it's dangerous enough to justify putting people in jail.
And you don't have enough evidence to claim that you have the "truth" and that everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a good practice to get both sides of the story. When I read something controversial, I always think, "Sounds pretty convincing. What's the other side?"
They didn't publish a retort from a respected scientist after publishing a some complete woo by a charlatan.
It's considered good journalistic practice to publish responses or apologies when you fuck up - not that I'm implying that WSJ deserves such high expectations.
Some of the best essays I've read were letters of rebuttal in the WSJ editorial page.
The WSJ is a useful catalog of right-wing stupidity. When they were good, they published both sides of the argument. (Once in a rare while, they were actually right.)
I used to read them religiously every day, back in the days of paper, but I stopped after Murdoch bought them. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12... It was the greatest tragedy that journalism has ever suffered.
People are asking you for your supporting evidence. (like this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...)
You're not giving supporting evidence. In fact, you don't seem to understand what supporting evidence is. It makes me wonder what you were teaching. You're not making a convincing argument.
One thing I have learned is that when you get both sides of the story, usually turns out to be different than it looked when you only got one side.
I wonder if there's something more to this story than "lazy teachers" and lazy parents.
Then don't use Uber. It's optional.
If Uber violates its price contract, then Uber will answer in litigation and loss of customers.
As I understand it, on New Year's Eve, Uber announced that surge pricing was in effect. People called an Uber cab, and the driver or the app told them that they would have to pay according to a certain formula (but not what the final price would be). They agreed, but they didn't realize that by the end of the ride it would cost $100 or more for a trip that would cost $10 or $20 for a yellow cab. Economists say that this is a market failure because they don't have enough information to make an informed buying decision. If Uber told them at the beginning that it would cost $100, most of them would have turned it down.
If Uber succeeds in driving the yellow cabs out of business, along with Lyft and any other competitors, then a ride with Uber won't be optional. Uber will be the only provider. If you want to get home from a bar at 1am on New Year's Eve, or if you want to get home from the airport at 2am, you'll have a "choice" between Uber's surge pricing or nothing. In theory, competitors could move into the market, but it's hard (maybe impossible) to compete with a business that has $50 billion in capital.
This happened regularly in the 19th century. Several businesses would compete in the steel or the railroad industry, and finally one would dominate the industry and eliminate competitors by competitive pricing or mergers. Then, the dominant player could raise prices without fear of competition. That's what Uber would do if it could.
Adults who enter into an agreement with an Uber car for an unspecified price are very unhappy when that price unexpectedly turns out to be $100 or $150 for a ride that is 10 times the regulated price.
They also want to pick up a cab at an airport at 2am without paying $100 or $150. I've never come home to JFK or Laguardia without a line of regulated taxis waiting for me. And if I really want to ride share, I can find somebody to share a cab.
There is a niche market of people who can pay $100 or $150 for a limo, but they're not enough to sustain a mass market.
It turns out that people don't follow Uber's free-market theories. Make a note about that in the margin of your economics book.
Uber & Lyft offer basically the same service and very similar pricing. Formerly I used Uber because (at that time) I slightly preferred their Android app over Lyft's app. Now I mostly use Lyft because they seem like a subjectively "nicer" company.
When there are multiple companies offering equivalent services, it doesn't take a lot to sway people's loyalty.
Internet companies seem to devolve into monopolies -- Microsoft, Google, Amazon. Uber's $50 billion venture capital is a pretty high entry barrier. They can bribe governors with that. So there may not be any significant competition or consumer choice.
Surge pricing is an effective way to get drivers in the road. I am an Uber driver that only drives during surge because i can make $50 - $60 an hour. In other words, drivers are incentivised (sic) to drive on holidays, late nights and weekends because of the bump in pay. If there was no surge pricing on New Year's Eve more than half of the drivers would have been home with their families.
Unfortunately there is an enormous consumer resistance to paying $100 or $170 for a trip home from a bar, which is what Uber customers paid on New Year's in New York City. And there are very few customers who are willing or able to pay those rates.
If you only drive during the surge, you're not going to work that many hours, maybe 4-5 hours a day, and your commercial insurance, Uber's 20%, gas, maintenance and other expenses will take a big chunk of that. According to this article, http://www.businessinsider.com... Uber drivers typically make $250-300/day for a full-time shift.
When I knew a lot of cab drivers, most of them would drive a 12-hour shift, so if you're not willing to drive holidays, late nights and weekends, other people are, as long as there are riders. That's where the free market incentivises people, just with normal taxi rates, without the $100 surprises.
Maybe you figured out a way to do it, or it fits into your schedule. I'm glad for you, but I don't think it can be scaled up to a viable economic model.
There are already phone apps for licences taxi companies.
For example Curb.
Yeah, but gocurb.com doesn't have $50 billion in venture capital from Google and Goldman Sachs. They're not even in New York City.
One of the preconditions for a working, efficient free market is competition and consumer choice. Uber doesn't meet the conditions of a free market.
One of the problems with the Internet economy is that it tends to eliminate competition and wind up with a single service provider.
For years, Microsoft dominated the business OS and apps market. Amazon dominates book sales (and anything that can be sold like a book). Google dominates search, email, and anything that is distributed like search.
When I studied economics, they said that you need at least 3 competitors, with no competitor having more than 50% or 60% of the market, to have meaningful competition.
So it would be nice if we had Uber, and 3 or 4 uberettes to compete with it, each trying different strategies. The company that could best satisfy its consumers and market would survive and grow, and the arrogant jerks would go out of business. The electrical products industry used to be like that. If I didn't like GE, I could go to Westinghouse.
But all we've got is Uber. And they've even used unscrupulous tactics to sabotage competitors like Lyft. Their only answer to even reasonable complaints is, "Fuck you, we've got $50 billion in venture capital behind us, we're more powerful than the government, we can do what we want, and we're even collecting lobbyists and PR firms."
And $50 billion is quite an entry barrier.
If Uber manages to take over our entire urban transportation system, they can wind up making our bureaucratic and arbitrary government look good by comparison. If I have a noise complaint, I can call my state assemblyman. If I have a complaint about Uber, I can wind up leaving unanswered messages on their answering machine. Now they're on their best behavior. What will they be like after they've driven out the other competition?
So Uber isn't an example of the free market. They're an example of an unaccountable monopoly, that dictates its terms and doesn't leave you with any choices (after they've creatively destroyed the legacy taxi system). That's the kind of monopolies we had in the 19th century, and that's what led to government intervention in the form of regulation in the first place.
I don't see why they can't have both.
Hospitals and doctors already have access to records, however the systems holding the records are the target.
So why can't those systems be secure and available?
There was a study a few years ago in which a hospital tried an electronic records system in a pediatric ICU, and the death rate went up. The system was too hard to use. Instead of just writing a prescription on a prescription pad, they had to log into the system and go through screens.
Yeah I don't buy that at all, and you give no link to back up your claim.
I worked in a hospital that had an electronic records system and a computer in each room, but the drugs for the patients were also listed in a book at the nurses station.
And each nurse/doctor knew what thier patients needed, most certainly in an ICU.
Especially this part
Instead of just writing a prescription on a prescription pad, they had to log into the system and go through screens.
Sounds like bullshit to me.
It's a frequently-cited study. The message is, you can't just throw computers at something and make it better.
Let's see what somebody could find with a Google search, if they weren't so lazy:
At Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, mortality rates increased after the implementation of an electronic records system from Cerner in 2002, according to a study published in 2005 in the journal Pediatrics.
During the 18 months examined, the mortality rate increased to 6.6 percent in the five months after the system was installed, from 2.8 percent in the 13 months before, according to the study.
Delays in treating patients may have contributed to the deaths, the researchers said. Those delays were caused by several issues, including the number of clicks required to submit prescription orders and by restrictions imposed by the software on when doctors could order medications for incoming patients.
electronic medical records were basically mandated by insurance companies and hospital executives in an effort to reduce overhead in paper, postage, and ancillary staff related to records processing.
And as I understand it, they were designed for the convenience of the insurance companies, with the primary task of billing, and handling the other information, like patient administration and clinical data was retrofitted later.
So if you went through the list of insurance company requirements, you'd have it all. If you went through the list of doctors' requirements, not so much.
easy and fast access to medical information often trumps security."
That's the attitude of a lot of corporations, and that's why there is so much successful hacking going on.
In a medical situation, that might be the right decision. If your patient turns up unconscious in the ER at 2am, or if you're covering for your partner and his patient turns up unconscious in the ER at 2am, easy and fast access might trump security.
There was a study a few years ago in which a hospital tried an electronic records system in a pediatric ICU, and the death rate went up. The system was too hard to use. Instead of just writing a prescription on a prescription pad, they had to log into the system and go through screens.
I don't think there's a practicing pediatrician in the country who would let a patient die in order to improve security.
Isn't there also a requirement under the state licensing laws that require doctors to keep adequate medical records?
This link and this one for what Newton gave us.
Let's not forget the guy Newton got his optics and celestial mechanics from. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/781...
The internet, that source of reliable, dependable, unbiased information about drugs.
The internet, the place where you can read what the manufacturer of the drug has to say about it, and the abstracts of studies which indicate that it's dangerous. Oh wait, you wanted to not have to think? That's called death. In a hurry?
I make my living writing about medicine, so I read that stuff every day.
I do write abstracts of studies about the dangers of drugs, and they are on the Internet.
If you read what I wrote above, you will see that I called the FDA to find out the adverse effects of gabapentin. That's because at that time the manufacturer didn't put it in the official product specifications (the Product Label) or anywhere else, and because it wasn't reported in the abstracts of papers. It was in an FDA database that wasn't online and that I had to call the FDA about specifically. (And yes, the manufacturer did get sued and lost a few million dollars, and wrote it off as a cost of doing business.)
You couldn't find that adverse effect anywhere on the Internet, and if you did find it, you wouldn't know what to make of it. All drugs have hundreds or sometimes thousands of reported potential adverse effects, and you have no way of knowing which adverse effects are real and significant and which are not.
I write for doctors. I leave a lot out because doctors already know it. They already know the major adverse effects of drugs.
That's what you find on the Internet. I'm telling you that you can't depend on my stuff (or anybody else's stuff) on the Internet to figure out the dangers of the drugs you're taking.
You're betting your life that the information you got is accurate and complete, and that you understood it correctly.
You need a competent doctor to explain it to you (and it's not easy to find a competent doctor).
You don't believe me? I can't stop you.
If you want to engage in thinking, the first thing you should do is learn how little you know.
It's not possible for a patient to be aware of these things in a country where doctors' appointments are 15 minutes or less,
...unless they have internet access. Whoops! Like we all do.
The internet, that source of reliable, dependable, unbiased information about drugs. We don't even need doctors any more.
I believe you, but I don't understand what result they got from the blood test that led to your getting convicted of drunken driving. Blood tests are supposed to be more accurate.
Patient counseling info for such drugs almost without exception specifically and explicitly mention the possibility of this very side effect, and the doctor or pharmacist, or both, tells you to NEVER combine it with alcohol
My doctor prescribed Ambien to me. I tried it for a month and it didn't work. Nobody warned me about the "sleep walking" or any of the other exotic side effects.
A friend of mine was taking gabapentin (Neurontin). A co-worker at work started a fight, he fought back, and they both got fired (from their non-union job). It was in the depths of the recession and he couldn't get another job; he wound up in bad shape. I called the FDA to find out if this could be due to the gabapentin, and a doctor looked it up their database and said yes, they had a few reports of gabapentin associated with aggression. I don't think it was in the patient information then, but it (sometimes) is now. The warning isn't prominent http://www.drugs.com/cons/gaba... http://www.fda.gov/downloads/D... and they emphasize the effect in children, not adults.
It's not possible for a patient to be aware of these things in a country where doctors' appointments are 15 minutes or less, they don't get paid for phone advice, and primary care practitioners are prescribing these drugs.
Show me how do you measure what a great programmer is?
By their score on the programmer's standardized test.
Verizon in NYC had a similar help line escalation.
When I moved to a new apartment, and switched my phone, it didn't work and they couldn't get it working for a month. (Probably because they were trying to get rid of their land lines in favor of fiber optic, so they let their twisted pair maintenance crew decline.)
I was dealing with the usual tech support hell (on hold for half an hour, transferred call and dropped, supervisors who promised to return my call and never did, etc.).
Finally I called somebody by mistake in Staten Island who gave me the number of the "President's hot line". I called them up, got somebody who was actually helpful, made some calls for me, and got it working again. (Apparently their digital switches were malprogrammed. Give me the old solenoids back.)
A while later I was having trouble again so I called the President's hot line again. It wasn't working any more.
(Pro tip: When I really got fed up, I called my state assemblyman, Dick Gottfried, on the theory that Verizon is regulated by and accountable to the State. One of his staffers called Verizon, and straightened it out, even though it was Friday evening before the weekend.
So maybe that's the kind of thing that was going on with Comcast. If the service is federally regulated, your congressman should be able to call them up in your behalf and hold them accountable. And they can do it for themselves. I don't think it's outrageous for a politician to get that favor as long as they use it for their constituents too.)
* * *
I like copper wire. So sue me.
Or, "Charge me or let me go. I'm calling a lawyer."
If they're calling in someone, I'm calling in someone too. And if they don't let me without me formally being under arrest for a charge, then I'm suing their asses.
Well, yeah, that's the right answer, but it doesn't always work. And it's pretty hard to sue their asses. Some states have sovereign immunity. So that family whose infant was horribly burned by a flash-bang explosive in a no-knock warrant can't sue the state, and is stuck in bankruptcy with a million dollars in medical bills.
Monica Lewinsky also said she wanted to call her lawyer, but they wouldn't let her do it.
All they have to do is take away your cell phone. And if you resist their illegal seizure of your cell phone, that's a felony.
A friend of mine in college was busted for pot, and the cops gave him the Miranda line, including, "You have a right to a lawyer." He said, "OK, I want a lawyer." The pigxxxcop said, "Shut the fuck up, you're not getting any lawyer." They wanted him to rat on the biggest dealer at Stony Brook, whom I will only refer to as "Howie X."
As a practical matter, you can assert your rights and the pigsxxxxcops can ignore you, and keep threatening you. They can lie and plant drugs and guns on you. There were a series of cases in New York City where the pigsxxxxcops were arresting innocent people on the street, and planting guns on them. They had a choice between staying in jail indefinitely, and risking a 15-year felony, or pleading guilty to a misdemeanor, and getting 6 or 12 months, which was usually the time served. One guy managed to fight it on principle, and he was lucky enough to find a lawyer who was also willing to fight it on principle.
Even when I get stopped by the pigsxxxxcops, I'm not sure what to do. Do I have a legal obligation to identify myself? Do I have to show them identification? What would happen if they just lie in court?
It's too bad the Soviet Union didn't survive under Gorbachev. I think you would prefer Gorbachev to Putin, and probably to Yeltsin.
When Gorbachev came in, Ogarkov was out. Gorbachev didn't have any problems making computers, or free speech, widely available.
I've never been able to understand why the Soviet people (with the encouragement of the West) threw Gorbachev out. It's as if for 70 years the Soviet leaders weren't willing to take a risk of more freedom, because they were afraid the West would stab them in the back. Finally, along came Gorbachev, who was willing to take a risk for peace and freedom. Sure enough, the Westeners stabbed him in the back.
I read samisdat. They were circulating in the U.S. for a while after the thaw. One of the problems was that they were too long and didn't get to the point. That's why, when Solzhenitsyn finally came to free market America, he complained that, under capitalism, nobody wanted to read his books. When they finally had freedom of speech, nobody was interested in them.
Yes, they can reprint out-of-print books that are more than 100 years old, but they can no longer reprint out-of-print books that are 30 years old, which is how they started in the 1950s. I still can't get the Dover books that I read in the 1960s, because they're orphaned, copyrighted books.
They couldn't even reprint the 1917 edition of Growth and Form. http://store.doverpublications... They had to get permission and pay royalties to Cambridge.
I did do a bit of research on this because I work in the publishing industry, and I know a couple of publishers who have reprinted out-of-print books. I found out that some of the classics were out of print, and I thought it would be a good idea to reprint them.
One of them was Yevgeney Perelman's Physics for Entertainment, which is part of a series, which wasn't even copyrighted because the Soviet Union didn't believe in copyright at that time. Perelman died in the siege of Leningrad. After the fall of the Soviet Union, they went out of print. I talked to some librarians and copyright researchers, and it was impossible to track down who had the ownership under the new copyright law. Was it Russia? Was it his surviving heirs? Were there contracts? A lot of publishers didn't even keep their old contracts after the 26-year copyright expired, and now suddenly the copyright was extended to 100 years after the author's death. Publishers went out of business, and their files were destroyed. They signed contracts based on a 26-year term, so it's not clear who owns the rights afterwards. A lot of times you can't even find out when or if the author died. Every so often somebody will publish Perelman's books, but it's illegal. A publisher explained to me that if he were to get caught, which is unlikely, he would just pay royalties. People have also posted Perelman's books on the Internet, but that's also illegal. (Although the copyright law is so complicated, especially for international works, that it would cost thousands of dollars or more in legal fees to figure out what copyright law applies.) The problem with just doing it illegally is that a library can't make their collection illegally available on the Internet. That's why Google books has gaps.
I can't research Dover's catalog and give you a definitive answer, but Project Guttenberg ran into this problem and wrote about it in detail. I've talked to librarians. The copyright laws have made it impossible to exchange published works that were in the public domain before. That was the purpose of the Sony Bono Copyright Act.
If you're a copyright lawyer and you know otherwise, I'd be happy to know how I can publish those orphaned works.
As someone who did not study math in higher education but now wants to learn more it is quite difficult to find out which math text books have the best content. Would someone please suggest some books and authors of great texts I can then search for?
I would ideally like to build up a bookshelf of great maths texts to go alongside the computing books I already have.
You know, I used to have a good answer, but because of New York City Mayor Bloomberg, I can't give you an answer any more. He destroyed the library with the greatest collection of introductory math books that I've ever seen.
We used to have a library in Manhattan, on a prime piece of real estate opposite the Museum of Modern Art, called the Donnell. It had collections of books for young adults, which in library-speak means high school students and above. They had librarians who understood the subjects, and worked with high school teachers to develop excellent collections of books with good content that would grab you when you took them off the shelf and started to read.
They had a collection of science books and a collection of math books in two big bookcases. Those bookcases contained every great math book I read or wanted to read in high school. Sometimes I'd find a book in the library, and buy a copy in the bookstore.
The Donnell was a beautiful library, in the 1930s style of Rockefeller Center, a fitting match for the Museum of Modern Art, where you could sit and read by huge picture windows. It was a hangout for teenagers from around the city, who used to come there to do their homework and their research. They also had an auditorium where they held poetry readings. It was a New York institution.
After 80 years, the Donnell could have used some repairs and upgrading to its heating and air conditioning system and so forth. Instead of paying for the repairs, Bloomberg decided to tear down the library. He had connections to a real estate company that came up with a plan to build a hotel on the site. They would have a much smaller library down in the basement. But it wouldn't have the same young adult science, math and other collections (which were scattered among other libraries around the City). The real estate company would make a lot of money, the City would get some, and use the money to "improve" the library system and buy more computers. It was controversial, people fought it, but Bloomberg was a billionaire and he won. They fired all the expert librarians, and tore down the Donnell.
Then the real estate market collapsed, so Bloomberg's real estate friends couldn't deliver what they promised.
I've talked to many science librarians in the public library. There is no longer any place in the City where you can find a collection of science and math books like that. They couldn't even give me a bibliography of books like that. It's gone. In fact, they fired most of the expert librarians, and replaced them with computer specialists. They don't really know the subject. You ask them a question and they look in a database.
The best thing I could recommend now is to find a math teacher. It used to be that you could go to a college campus, walk over to the math department, and find somebody who would be happy to give you advice. Now, with all the security, you might not be able to get in the door any more without an ID card. Or you might be able to find a good librarian. If you find a good bibliography, let me know.
(The classics that I remember, BTW, were The World of Mathematics, which was a historical collection of sources, Courant's Introduction to Mathematics, and Polya's How to Find It. There were so many more. If it wasn't for the Copyright Act, you could get them all free on line today.)
This is known as anecdotal evidence, and a datapoint of 1. It's a fallacious argument, since you can use it to prove anything.
People have lots of habits, and people wind up in devastating situations. Sometimes they are the same people. You could substitute anything for "cannabis," and (falsely) draw the same conclusions -- comic books, the Internet, teenage sex, masturbation, TV, rock 'n roll, negroes, Mexicans, the military, and religion, were all blamed for having devastating effects on teenagers. If I had somebody close to me who was religious, and turned into a schizophrenic, can I therefore conclude that religion causes schizophrenia?
Conversely, when I was in college, some of the most successful students, including the valedictorians, were heavy users of marijuana (and rock 'n roll). So obiously many people escape the evil effects of marijuana, and if I use your logic of anecdotal evidence it caused their success.
This person close to you might have had just as much of a decline without cannabis. How do you know he wouldn't have? Lots of people with marijuana were very successful, and lots of people without marijuana turned out terribly.
People claim all the time that you can't use randomized, controlled trials on marijuana, but we've done similar trials many times in the past. (When we finally did a RCT with estrogen replacement therapy, it turned out that ERT was a major cause of breast cancer.)
If in the 1980s, when the highly suggestive evidence of the benefits of marijuana started to appear, we had started RCTs of marijuana for conditions like AIDS wasting syndrome and epilepsy, we incidentally would have had data on the adverse effects of marijuana, and we'd know whether it ever has these devastating consequences that you claim.
But instead the DEA refused to allow studies even from legitimate, respected scientists.
You can debate marijuana all you want, and there may well be some rare or minor adverse effects, but the DEA and other prohibitionists don't have enough scientific evidence that it's dangerous enough to justify putting people in jail.
And you don't have enough evidence to claim that you have the "truth" and that everybody who disagrees with you is wrong.