Yup, and that is exactly why they are going after Uber in many places. It is the government's job to make sure that organizations providing livery or taxi service on public thoroughfares have the required insurance to cover them in the event of accidents or incidents which could harm their clients. And that is what they are doing, and that is why Uber is coming under fire in many jurisdictions.
It's analogous to hiring your next door neighbor's son to mow your lawn with his mower. This is idiotic.
It's analogous to hiring a random person who works for a multinational corporation of professional lawn servicemen, who are like all of the other professional lawn service businesses in every way except that this particular professional lawn service does not see fit to hold appropriate licensing or insurance, requires their employees to buy their own equipment, work at an agreed upon wage at the whim of the business but refuses to call them employees and, oh yeah, the thing that really makes them unique is that they have an app (which many of the other lawn service businesses also have).
I've noticed these coming a common topic amongst developers in Southern California. I've had a few ask me about this, just this week. Assuming this isn't just a flavor of the week (what happened to bloom boxes) my question is will the power company always tune there billing in such a way that makes this profitable. Realistically the buildings will utilize the same amount of power, but the peak loads will level out. in short Edison gets less money for the same kilo watts. How long will they let this fly before they begin adjusting there billing metric.
As they bring on more Solar and Wind Power, the bulk of their generation power will be available during the day. As we level the power consumption more and more, eventually we are putting more demand at night on a system that is able to generate more power during the day. So as we start shifting more power to wind and solar, we will eventually see peak pricing being during the nighttime hours, especially if everybody charges their EV at night.
For all the hoopla, sharks don't kill very many people. The fact that Box Jellyfish kill more people than sharks do is unimpressive. In the U.S., the country with the most shark attacks, one person is killed about every other year.
Not in my old company. In my company, QA was the ones let go and then they made a new DevOps team to replace them. I guess this is part of the great thing about DevOps. It means something different at every single company. I guess I'll go ahead and put DevOps on my resume, since I undoubtedly have done the jobs of at least 50 or so of the different definitions.
It takes two years just to provide the fundamental Physics, Math, English, general Engineering and electives of a properly constructed Engineering degree. You might be able to squeeze one or two software engineering courses in the first two years, but most of the Software Engineering happens in the last two years.
Now, if you are looking for use them up and throw them away code monkeys who can take direction from a real Software Engineer and will never climb up the ladder past Code Monkey, then absolutely, yes, you can do that.
I have wondered more and more over the years whether the traditional CS curriculum is still relevant.
So many software libraries exist that take care of the low-level details these days.
Yes, but figuring out how to get a bunch of disparate libraries to work together amicably is more difficult (and less efficient) than writing yourself the miniscule parts of those libraries needed for your particular project.
Most parking lots have lights. Adding adding a charging station to existing and/or new lots shouldn't be huge undertakings.
Adding a charging station to a an existing lot IS a huge undertaking. All of the lights in a parking lot probably take less power than a single charging station. The lights are 110V, and the charging station is going to be 240V. So new wire must be pulled, it must be thicker wire to support higher current. A high powered overhead light might draw 4 amps at 110V. A single charging station is going to draw 50 Amps at 240V. That is over 25 times as much power. Permits would have to be pulled and the parking lots breaker boxes and possibly the feed from the main electrical line would have to be upgraded. In fact, service to the neighborhood that the lot is located in may have to be upgraded.
What I see on the other coast is that many times ordinary gas cars are taking the electric car charging spots making it impossible for the electric cars to charge. The electric car spots (at least over here) are like the "parents with infant" spots and have no enforcement.
The obvious solution to this is to not make the electrical charging station a parking spot. People tend to want to park in parking spots. Make an electrical charging station look like a gas station pump island. Ticket people who walk away from their vehicle while charging.
Employers don't pay for your gas, so why should they pay for your fuel? Why should the burden be on employers to provide more electrical charging stations? Presumably they should also build a gas station. If EV drivers are going to start demanding all of these privileges at work, then employers are going to start discriminating against hiring them, or at least pay them a lot less.
If your electric car doesn't have the range to get you to work and home, you shouldn't use it.
Exactly. In fact, you really want it to be able to go back and forth to work 3 or 4 times just to be on the safe side. You should also plug it in every evening, just to be safe.
wtf, are you a 90 year old smoker on a family plan? 50+ smoker is under $500 with 3500 deductable here.
If you make as little as you said would be mostly subsidized. Probably under the $180 figure. Try again.
Nope, 45 and non-smoker. No previous conditions. It's just that the plan I was on went up 500% when Obamacare kicked in.
If you make as little as you said would be mostly subsidized. Probably under the $180 figure. Try again.
I will try again at my next renewal, but by then I expect I will be working again and trying to catch up with all the bills that had to go unpaid so i could pay my insurance premiums.
You're doing something wrong. If you don't have any income, you should qualify for Medicaid. ObamaCare is for people who actually have an income.
My kids did qualify for Medicaid. After 27 years of contributing to social programs, Medicaid for my kids and 4 months of unemployment are the only things society deemed fit to give back. Social programs are a way of life for some people, but for many people that pay into them, they are rarely available as a safety net when they are needed most.
Mine went from $180 a month $7,500 deductible Major Medical plan to a $950 a month $12,500 deductible Bronze Major Medical plan. I was told that I had crap insurance before and that is why it went up, but it was with the same company and the only change was that they raised the deductible and raised the premium. After this new premium kicked in with no notice and after my bank started sending me overdraft notices due to the insurance company taking out an unapproved amount from my checking account (a process commonly known as "theft"), I immediately went searching for other insurance and got the plan down to only slightly over double what it used to be for 60% higher deductible.
A few years later, I was let go from my job and redid my application for insurance, hoping for some assistance with the premiums, but unlike the commercials for Obamacare which state "most qualify for assistance", I did NOT qualify for assistance, and did not qualify even for tax rebates. Still paying 100% of the premium, which is infinity percent of my salary. Before Obamacare, insurance was 2.5% of my salary, then it went up to 14% overnight, and now it is up to infinity percent. Still Hoping for Change.
The problem is that neighborhoods are fighting the construction of apartments and other affordable housing. Anytime someone tries to build an apartment building (even the small apodments we have here), NIMBYs show up and scream that the lower classes will spread drugs and rock and roll music over their precious streets.
Well, the NIMBYs are right, but it will take at least 10 years for that to happen. When a new apartment complex is built, it is beautiful and desirable and a bunch of people move in. Then when another apartment complex is built in a another area of time a few years later, the residents move to the new building. The owners of the old building are forced to rent for lower amounts to anyone who will sign a lease. The new tenants scare off the old tenants, and the cycle continues. The lower rents insure that no repairs are done, and within about 10 years your brand new apartments have become Crime Central.
Not sure how much of a say NIMBYs really get in Seattle, but around here, everybody within 1,500 feet must be notified of any zoning change, and that is not normally a very large number of people. They can't vote, either, they can just express their opinion. Usually a promise to build a sidewalk, a water feature. or a children's park is enough of a bribe to overcome any dissenting NIMBYs, regardless of the legitimacy of their grievance.
I prefer to consider how much the OS memory costs. When I started out, it was at a company with three 370s, and whether to buy another megabyte of memory was a decision made at the vice-presidential level. When I upgraded the memory on my first computer (somewhat later), I was paying only about $120/16K, so I filled the thing up.
How much does 4 GB cost nowadays? It's been years since I bought RAM, but back then it would be well under $50. That makes it equivalent to something under 8K when I first started with my own computer.
4 GB for my computer is about $35. If your price is from years ago, then the price difference is not really that impressive. When they say "why is RAM suddenly so cheap?", I expect that to mean the price has dropped drastically by 20 to 30% in a matter of months. In fact, by looking at this graph, it appears that RAM has dropped by 20-30% since the beginning of the year, but at the beginning of the year, RAM was TWICE as expensive as it was in 2011. The graph is logarithmic, so a little hard to read. But in fact, it looks like in 2011 there was a bottom hit, which we are still sharply above. So again, when they ask why the price has dropped drastically, yet the price is far above what it cost 4 years ago, It seems like the question is kind of moot.
is fine with 4. I put another 2 gigs in after the upgrade and didn't notice any difference. When Vista hit it was barely functional with 6. Win 7 fixed that so it worked with 4 again. Hell, I've got an old AthlonX2 5600 I play Streetfighter IV on that's only got 3. Basically, there's not a lot of demand.
I think it is disgusting that we think it is just awesome for an OS to ONLY need 4 GB.
When the online gambling sites first came out, they got shut down really quick. I am not sure why the same is not the case for the these online sports gambling sites.
They got shut down when Congress passed anti-online-gambling legislation in the form of UIGEA. It specifically says that fantasy sports of this sort are exempt:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...(1) Bet or wager.— The term “bet or wager”—...
(E) does not include—...
(ix) participation in any fantasy or simulation sports game or educational game or contest in which (if the game or contest involves a team or teams) no fantasy or simulation sports team is based on the current membership of an actual team that is a member of an amateur or professional sports organization (as those terms are defined in section 3701 of title 28) and that meets the following conditions:
Wow, that must have taken a lot of dollars to get such an exemption. Some congressman somewhere must have gotten about a 100 foot yacht off of that clause.
When the online gambling sites first came out, they got shut down really quick. I am not sure why the same is not the case for the these online sports gambling sites.
Exactly. I have seen development methodologies come and go. The one thing they all have in common is that they are created for and marketed to the management. Because management is not good at, well, managing, development methodologies give them things that they can see and touch and thus believe that progress is being made. Meanwhile, every single development methodology has aspects that do not fit how development actually happens, and as such, time is wasted trying to fit how real life works into the development methodology. I have been at two different companies that used Agile. At one, I never heard the words "scrum" or "sprint" or "stand-ups". At the other I did, but the developers computers were locked down so that participation in the stand ups was difficult.
Agile, to me, almost looks like a caricature of a development methodology. It is almost like Scientology, where L. Ron Hubbard made a bet that he could create a new religion and gullible idiots would eat it up.
Uber is hardly the only cab company that has an app for hailing a cab. They are not unique in this perspective. They are unique in the perspective that they are the only company that thinks that because they have an app they are somehow magically not a cab company. I'm sorry, but in the world of regulated commerce, the laws determine what type of entity you are, you don't just get to pick one, and especially you don't get to make up a new one, especially when there is an existing type of entity that has the exact same characteristics of your supposedly new entity.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the job of the police and the DOT.
Yup, and that is exactly why they are going after Uber in many places. It is the government's job to make sure that organizations providing livery or taxi service on public thoroughfares have the required insurance to cover them in the event of accidents or incidents which could harm their clients. And that is what they are doing, and that is why Uber is coming under fire in many jurisdictions.
It's analogous to hiring your next door neighbor's son to mow your lawn with his mower. This is idiotic.
It's analogous to hiring a random person who works for a multinational corporation of professional lawn servicemen, who are like all of the other professional lawn service businesses in every way except that this particular professional lawn service does not see fit to hold appropriate licensing or insurance, requires their employees to buy their own equipment, work at an agreed upon wage at the whim of the business but refuses to call them employees and, oh yeah, the thing that really makes them unique is that they have an app (which many of the other lawn service businesses also have).
I've noticed these coming a common topic amongst developers in Southern California. I've had a few ask me about this, just this week. Assuming this isn't just a flavor of the week (what happened to bloom boxes) my question is will the power company always tune there billing in such a way that makes this profitable. Realistically the buildings will utilize the same amount of power, but the peak loads will level out. in short Edison gets less money for the same kilo watts. How long will they let this fly before they begin adjusting there billing metric.
As they bring on more Solar and Wind Power, the bulk of their generation power will be available during the day. As we level the power consumption more and more, eventually we are putting more demand at night on a system that is able to generate more power during the day. So as we start shifting more power to wind and solar, we will eventually see peak pricing being during the nighttime hours, especially if everybody charges their EV at night.
I'm not sure I understand. Is this a bitcoin article, an Uber article, a VW article, or a drone article?
For all the hoopla, sharks don't kill very many people. The fact that Box Jellyfish kill more people than sharks do is unimpressive. In the U.S., the country with the most shark attacks, one person is killed about every other year.
Not in my old company. In my company, QA was the ones let go and then they made a new DevOps team to replace them. I guess this is part of the great thing about DevOps. It means something different at every single company. I guess I'll go ahead and put DevOps on my resume, since I undoubtedly have done the jobs of at least 50 or so of the different definitions.
It takes two years just to provide the fundamental Physics, Math, English, general Engineering and electives of a properly constructed Engineering degree. You might be able to squeeze one or two software engineering courses in the first two years, but most of the Software Engineering happens in the last two years.
Now, if you are looking for use them up and throw them away code monkeys who can take direction from a real Software Engineer and will never climb up the ladder past Code Monkey, then absolutely, yes, you can do that.
I have wondered more and more over the years whether the traditional CS curriculum is still relevant.
So many software libraries exist that take care of the low-level details these days.
Yes, but figuring out how to get a bunch of disparate libraries to work together amicably is more difficult (and less efficient) than writing yourself the miniscule parts of those libraries needed for your particular project.
Are you aware of how long it takes to charge a car?
Yes, and that is not my problem. The EV owner made a choice knowing the drawbacks.
Most parking lots have lights. Adding adding a charging station to existing and/or new lots shouldn't be huge undertakings.
Adding a charging station to a an existing lot IS a huge undertaking. All of the lights in a parking lot probably take less power than a single charging station. The lights are 110V, and the charging station is going to be 240V. So new wire must be pulled, it must be thicker wire to support higher current. A high powered overhead light might draw 4 amps at 110V. A single charging station is going to draw 50 Amps at 240V. That is over 25 times as much power. Permits would have to be pulled and the parking lots breaker boxes and possibly the feed from the main electrical line would have to be upgraded. In fact, service to the neighborhood that the lot is located in may have to be upgraded.
What I see on the other coast is that many times ordinary gas cars are taking the electric car charging spots making it impossible for the electric cars to charge. The electric car spots (at least over here) are like the "parents with infant" spots and have no enforcement.
The obvious solution to this is to not make the electrical charging station a parking spot. People tend to want to park in parking spots. Make an electrical charging station look like a gas station pump island. Ticket people who walk away from their vehicle while charging.
Employers don't pay for your gas, so why should they pay for your fuel? Why should the burden be on employers to provide more electrical charging stations? Presumably they should also build a gas station. If EV drivers are going to start demanding all of these privileges at work, then employers are going to start discriminating against hiring them, or at least pay them a lot less.
If your electric car doesn't have the range to get you to work and home, you shouldn't use it.
Exactly. In fact, you really want it to be able to go back and forth to work 3 or 4 times just to be on the safe side. You should also plug it in every evening, just to be safe.
wtf, are you a 90 year old smoker on a family plan? 50+ smoker is under $500 with 3500 deductable here.
If you make as little as you said would be mostly subsidized. Probably under the $180 figure. Try again.
Nope, 45 and non-smoker. No previous conditions. It's just that the plan I was on went up 500% when Obamacare kicked in.
If you make as little as you said would be mostly subsidized. Probably under the $180 figure. Try again.
I will try again at my next renewal, but by then I expect I will be working again and trying to catch up with all the bills that had to go unpaid so i could pay my insurance premiums.
You're doing something wrong. If you don't have any income, you should qualify for Medicaid. ObamaCare is for people who actually have an income.
My kids did qualify for Medicaid. After 27 years of contributing to social programs, Medicaid for my kids and 4 months of unemployment are the only things society deemed fit to give back. Social programs are a way of life for some people, but for many people that pay into them, they are rarely available as a safety net when they are needed most.
Mine went from $180 a month $7,500 deductible Major Medical plan to a $950 a month $12,500 deductible Bronze Major Medical plan. I was told that I had crap insurance before and that is why it went up, but it was with the same company and the only change was that they raised the deductible and raised the premium.
After this new premium kicked in with no notice and after my bank started sending me overdraft notices due to the insurance company taking out an unapproved amount from my checking account (a process commonly known as "theft"), I immediately went searching for other insurance and got the plan down to only slightly over double what it used to be for 60% higher deductible.
A few years later, I was let go from my job and redid my application for insurance, hoping for some assistance with the premiums, but unlike the commercials for Obamacare which state "most qualify for assistance", I did NOT qualify for assistance, and did not qualify even for tax rebates. Still paying 100% of the premium, which is infinity percent of my salary. Before Obamacare, insurance was 2.5% of my salary, then it went up to 14% overnight, and now it is up to infinity percent. Still Hoping for Change.
The problem is that neighborhoods are fighting the construction of apartments and other affordable housing. Anytime someone tries to build an apartment building (even the small apodments we have here), NIMBYs show up and scream that the lower classes will spread drugs and rock and roll music over their precious streets.
Well, the NIMBYs are right, but it will take at least 10 years for that to happen. When a new apartment complex is built, it is beautiful and desirable and a bunch of people move in. Then when another apartment complex is built in a another area of time a few years later, the residents move to the new building. The owners of the old building are forced to rent for lower amounts to anyone who will sign a lease. The new tenants scare off the old tenants, and the cycle continues. The lower rents insure that no repairs are done, and within about 10 years your brand new apartments have become Crime Central.
Not sure how much of a say NIMBYs really get in Seattle, but around here, everybody within 1,500 feet must be notified of any zoning change, and that is not normally a very large number of people. They can't vote, either, they can just express their opinion. Usually a promise to build a sidewalk, a water feature. or a children's park is enough of a bribe to overcome any dissenting NIMBYs, regardless of the legitimacy of their grievance.
I prefer to consider how much the OS memory costs. When I started out, it was at a company with three 370s, and whether to buy another megabyte of memory was a decision made at the vice-presidential level. When I upgraded the memory on my first computer (somewhat later), I was paying only about $120/16K, so I filled the thing up.
How much does 4 GB cost nowadays? It's been years since I bought RAM, but back then it would be well under $50. That makes it equivalent to something under 8K when I first started with my own computer.
4 GB for my computer is about $35. If your price is from years ago, then the price difference is not really that impressive. When they say "why is RAM suddenly so cheap?", I expect that to mean the price has dropped drastically by 20 to 30% in a matter of months. In fact, by looking at this graph, it appears that RAM has dropped by 20-30% since the beginning of the year, but at the beginning of the year, RAM was TWICE as expensive as it was in 2011. The graph is logarithmic, so a little hard to read. But in fact, it looks like in 2011 there was a bottom hit, which we are still sharply above. So again, when they ask why the price has dropped drastically, yet the price is far above what it cost 4 years ago, It seems like the question is kind of moot.
is fine with 4. I put another 2 gigs in after the upgrade and didn't notice any difference. When Vista hit it was barely functional with 6. Win 7 fixed that so it worked with 4 again. Hell, I've got an old AthlonX2 5600 I play Streetfighter IV on that's only got 3. Basically, there's not a lot of demand.
I think it is disgusting that we think it is just awesome for an OS to ONLY need 4 GB.
They got shut down when Congress passed anti-online-gambling legislation in the form of UIGEA. It specifically says that fantasy sports of this sort are exempt:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... (1) Bet or wager.— The term “bet or wager”— ...
(E) does not include— ...
(ix) participation in any fantasy or simulation sports game or educational game or contest in which (if the game or contest involves a team or teams) no fantasy or simulation sports team is based on the current membership of an actual team that is a member of an amateur or professional sports organization (as those terms are defined in section 3701 of title 28) and that meets the following conditions:
Wow, that must have taken a lot of dollars to get such an exemption. Some congressman somewhere must have gotten about a 100 foot yacht off of that clause.
When the online gambling sites first came out, they got shut down really quick. I am not sure why the same is not the case for the these online sports gambling sites.
Nothing scales linearly, but some things scale more linearly than others.
Exactly. I have seen development methodologies come and go. The one thing they all have in common is that they are created for and marketed to the management. Because management is not good at, well, managing, development methodologies give them things that they can see and touch and thus believe that progress is being made. Meanwhile, every single development methodology has aspects that do not fit how development actually happens, and as such, time is wasted trying to fit how real life works into the development methodology. I have been at two different companies that used Agile. At one, I never heard the words "scrum" or "sprint" or "stand-ups". At the other I did, but the developers computers were locked down so that participation in the stand ups was difficult.
Agile, to me, almost looks like a caricature of a development methodology. It is almost like Scientology, where L. Ron Hubbard made a bet that he could create a new religion and gullible idiots would eat it up.
Uber is hardly the only cab company that has an app for hailing a cab. They are not unique in this perspective. They are unique in the perspective that they are the only company that thinks that because they have an app they are somehow magically not a cab company. I'm sorry, but in the world of regulated commerce, the laws determine what type of entity you are, you don't just get to pick one, and especially you don't get to make up a new one, especially when there is an existing type of entity that has the exact same characteristics of your supposedly new entity.
Why is civil disobedience acceptable for people but not for corporations?
Who says civil disobedience is acceptable for people? In a civilized society, that is not how we change things.