Nobody ever said it is your right to make money on the internet. If you want to post information, pay for hosting, that is your business. You are not guaranteed to make a profit doing so. The internet is there for sharing information, not for making money.
Not particularly, the piracy is merely a necessity to teach a hard lesson.
I won't actually watch it myself.
Piracy says that you like their movie but are too cheap and lacking morals to pay for it. To really send a message, don't watch it at all and don't even download it illegally.
There are serious restrictions on what can and what can not be done due to privacy laws in Europe.
For example, is it illegal to store a credit card number, even if encrypted? It ought to be.
In the United States, if you take all the precautions required under PCI, you can store the credit card, but it is far safer to only send the credit card number to the processor once and receive a token back which is a hash associated with the card AND with your merchant account so even if stolen and somehow used, it cannot be used for the benefit of the thief.
Do people actually believe that Blacks are not hired because of their race?
Blacks are not hired for a number of reasons. Prejudice might be one of them, but it is probably more than overshadowed by white guilt which makes companies want to hire them more than whites. The other reasons for not hiring are lack of applicants, and also the fact that hiring a minority is more of a financial liability for a company because minorities are more likely to file wrongful termination or discrimination lawsuits.
Black lives matter is simply pointing out the discrimination - that black lives appear to matter less than white ones in some cases. It does not seek to exclude white lives or ask for special treatment, just equal treatment.
Why don't they point out the discrimination that the whole nation goes crazy with demonstrations and public outcry when a cop kills a black guy, but when a cop kills a white guy, nobody really cares?
Actually, we call it gasoline. We can't help it if people choose to use an abbreviated version that happens to overlap with a scientific state of matter.
Also note that gasoline is dispensed as a liquid (with vapor (gas) capturing devices), but is burned as a gas.
How do you think self service gas stations work? I'll clue you in. If you don't have a credit/debit card you have to go in and pay the clerk for your gas. You give them $14 and they program the pump to deliver $14 worth of gas. That's done over a network. To do that you have to be able to write to the pump.
There is no reason that has to be done over the internet, over wireless, or even over TCP/IP. There is no reason that this shouldn't be absolutely secure from any attack other than someone having direct access to the machine communicating with the pump.
If the government would do it's job of keeping people from mugging and murdering innocent people, then we wouldn't need to carry a gun. However, we still should since the second amendment is not about protecting you from criminals, that is just a happy byproduct. It is actually intended to protect you from the government. Fortunately, the government has a lot of people on its side who would like to see guns taken away from citizens, so that the government will not have to worry about the people getting together and deciding that the government ought to work for them and not the other way around.
Uber is stealing jobs from real employees that have benefits. It is good that their Republican-style "everyone is a contractor with no rights and no benefits" model is failing. No responsible society should ever allow this sort of thing to happen.
Republican style? I would say Uber is Libertarian "to hell with rules" attitude.
Of course, having recently been extremely f*cked by a company that I was an employee of, I am more in favor of being a contractor anyway. I will do my own benefits and insurance (which I always did on my own anyway because it was cheaper). If I don't like the way a company is treating me, I'll walk. If I work over 40 hours, I get paid for it.
If illegal immigration is really what you're worried about then you can 100% fix it by having open borders.
You could also use your argument for murder. If we made murder legal, then we wouldn't have a murder problem anymore.
If you don't support open borders, then illegal immigration must not be what you are worried about. It must be immigration.
That's fine and dandy, but don't hide your xenophobia behind the law.
Don't put words in people's mouth. If GP says he doesn't like illegal immigration, then he doesn't like illegal immigration. He may not care at all about legal immigration. I know I don't. Legal immigrants contribute to the society. Illegal immigrants are a drain from society. I am married to a legal immigrant, but I am against illegal immigration.
You're spending almost $1000/month on a car and don't think that it would be possible for a service to make that cheaper? I bike most places and take taxis everywhere else and spend a fraction of that - even taking a taxi with a human driver to and from work every day and would be cheaper than you're spending. 500km/week puts you well outside the normal range for drivers, even in the US where the cities are carefully designed so that places people want to be are as far away from where people are as possible.
Just do the math. It is quite obvious that Taxi Service is far and away more expensive for all but the most infrequent of drivers. I drive around 10,000 miles per year, which is less than most people drive. Taxis are relatively cheap in my market, only $2 per mile. So I would have to spend $20,000 per year on my car for breakeven. Using the government's mileage rate, I pay $5,750. By my own estimates, it is a little more. I paid $39,000 for the car, I will probably sell it in 10 years for $5,000. That's $3,400 per year. Insurance adds $1,200 per year (and that includes another vehicle). Gas is $1250. Maintenance is around $100, but I figure it may be as high as $500 toward the end. Altogether, that comes to $6,350.
There is no way that Taxi service is going to get that low, even if they were self driving, which isn't happening anytime soon. Plus, I have to know half an hour in advance that I am going to want to go somewhere, and if I am far out of the way, I have to wait additional time if there aren't any taxis near me. I can't just decide on a whim to go to the convenience store, or the hardware store, or just go for a drive, or to the hospital.
As the GP said, the convenience of owning a car makes it such that even if the costs were the same, it would not be worthwhile to take taxis everywhere.
I think the biggest difference is that Amazon didn't have to fight a retail mafia/guild on their way to the top.
Yes they did. And still are. The government is still trying to establish some sort of nationwide sales tax, and individual states have made Amazon collect sales tax if they have a presence in the state. But that is all just obeying existing laws. Uber is facing the same thing, having to obey existing laws. It is not the taxi companies trying to keep Uber down. It is the municipalities insisting that Uber's taxi service complies with the same laws and regulations as every other taxi service.
RIAA could deal 100% successfully with the problem of copyright infringement by ensuring that all its members put their music immediately in the public domain. Piracy problem solved! And everyone is happy, because these days the only people who pay for their music are those who want to.
Well, not everyone. I mean, the artists, producers, recording engineers, marketing and advertising agencies aren't. But all the people that like to listen to crappy self produced music for free are happy.
Since you didn't provide the information to back up your statement, I will provide it for you. Minimum wage has been above $10 in today's dollars for about 3 years in the late 1960s. And a resulting decade of runaway inflation was the result, with home mortgage interest rates of 15% and Credit card interest rates in the 30s. At least credit card interest was tax deductible back then.
As for the wages in other countries, in Switzerland, they pay $18.82 per hour, a Big mac costs $6.82. Wage is over 125% higher, and a Big Mac is 42% higher.
In Norway, the wage is $15.40 and the cost of a Big Mac is 20% higher.
In Sweden, the wage is $12.32 and the cost of a Big Mac is 7% higher.
In Denmark, the wage is $14.00 and the cost of a Big Mac is 6% higher.
Some places, the wage is less than in the U.S.
In Israel, the wage is $6.05 and the cost of a Big Mac is 4% less.
The data is pretty consistent. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the cost of goods and services.
One thing that often is missing from discussions about raising minimum wage / minimum salary is what to do with those already making more than the new value. I (like most engineers) make more than minimum wage. I've seen minimum wage go up by 40% since I entered the work force, but my own salary has only gone up by 25% in that same period. Minimum wage goes up, but my buying power goes down.
Exactly. To take an extreme example, if a person makes $15 an hour, and they raise the minimum wage from $8 to $15, then the high school dropout just got almost a 100% raise, and the guy getting $15 an hour gets a 0% raise. That hardly seems fair. On top of that the companies who are now forced to pay a higher minimum wage must either raise prices, fire workers, or if neither of those options is viable, go out of business. Most likely what will happen, since everybody has to pay the new minimum wage, is that prices will rise to match. So, instead of paying an exorbitant $12 for a burger fries and coke at Chili's, it will be more like $20. However, since nobody making $15 or more an hour will get a raise, few people will be able to afford to buy a $20 burger, and most of these places will go out of business.
A lot of people are going to choke on the idea of paying full price. $199 every 3-4 years doesn't seem like a big deal. $700 for a new iPhone sounds fucking horrible.
Well, it should be easier to stomach when the price of the plan goes down by $30 a month because you are not subsidizing a phone. Wait, the price of the plan doesn't change? Oh, nevermind, they are just screwing us then.
I'm currently paying roughly $100/month for the entire bill - two phones (an iPhone 5 and a flip phone), unlimited talk/text, 4GB data. Verizon lowered my bill around the start of the year when they dropped "New every two" and officially made it that you were paying for the cost of your phone as part of the bill, and later upped my data from 2GB to 4 as part of a loyalty bonus.
I'm paying $168 for two smart phones and a dumb phone. The base plan is $40, each of the smartphones is $40, although Verizon advertises that it is only $15, and the dump phone is $30, even though Verizon advertises that it is $10.
Rumor has it that Nest thermostats will soon be displaying advertisements on its display.
Wait, a thermostat that you paid 10 times as much for as a regular thermostat is also going to display ads at you?
Lucky for us nobody spends more than 2 seconds a day looking at their thermostat. I suspect their ad revenue will be on the order of dozens of dollars a year.
I have a feeling that we are going to hear lots more complaints about the "free" version of Windows as people have more experience with it. I also expect that if they get a few million complaints, they might make it so that you can pony up the $130 obligatory dollars per copy to make the "FREE" ad-based Windows into a paid-for, ad free version.
Yes, and then just like the cable companies, the ads will also sneak into the $130 fully paid version.
Avoid companies that are there just to IPO
on
Silicon Valley's Big Lie
·
· Score: 5, Informative
If you believe in the product you are creating, don't build it at a company whose vision is to build the company just to sell it or to IPO it. They don't care about the product, only selling the company. They will shortchange everywhere they can, cut corners, not test or QA, and eventually, once you have the product built, they will let you go before you get a chance to cash in.
10 million installs, 260 million drivers. So 1 in 26 drivers has this app. I find that hard to believe. It seems like if it was that popular, that I would have heard about it. On a similar note, one of our local news channels has local gas prices on their website.
Can someone explain the value of collecting data on battery strength, phone temperature, etc. ?
Seriously, they must be able to monetize that (why else risk alienating customers) but how?
What is the monetary value in knowing my phone temp?
I can only guess that they are using the phone temperature, location and the battery strength to estimate the radius of available gas choices that they should show you. Temperature effects the battery life, although it would be easier to snapshot the battery life at regular intervals than guess the temperatures effect on the battery. Location by itself at least established the location around which they should show gas prices, but location over time gives speed and helps them anticipate where to show next, or maybe a radius of how far out to show based on speed. I don't have the app or know how it presents the data, so I am just guessing here.
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Nobody ever said it is your right to make money on the internet. If you want to post information, pay for hosting, that is your business. You are not guaranteed to make a profit doing so. The internet is there for sharing information, not for making money.
Not particularly, the piracy is merely a necessity to teach a hard lesson.
I won't actually watch it myself.
Piracy says that you like their movie but are too cheap and lacking morals to pay for it. To really send a message, don't watch it at all and don't even download it illegally.
There are serious restrictions on what can and what can not be done due to privacy laws in Europe.
For example, is it illegal to store a credit card number, even if encrypted? It ought to be.
In the United States, if you take all the precautions required under PCI, you can store the credit card, but it is far safer to only send the credit card number to the processor once and receive a token back which is a hash associated with the card AND with your merchant account so even if stolen and somehow used, it cannot be used for the benefit of the thief.
Linux! It's called Linux you fucking morons. And I don't mean Ubuntu "not smart enough to configure Debian" Linux.
It's always entertaining to me to watch as the toy unix users lord it over each other as to which distribution has the smartest users.
Do people actually believe that Blacks are not hired because of their race?
Blacks are not hired for a number of reasons. Prejudice might be one of them, but it is probably more than overshadowed by white guilt which makes companies want to hire them more than whites. The other reasons for not hiring are lack of applicants, and also the fact that hiring a minority is more of a financial liability for a company because minorities are more likely to file wrongful termination or discrimination lawsuits.
Black lives matter is simply pointing out the discrimination - that black lives appear to matter less than white ones in some cases. It does not seek to exclude white lives or ask for special treatment, just equal treatment.
Why don't they point out the discrimination that the whole nation goes crazy with demonstrations and public outcry when a cop kills a black guy, but when a cop kills a white guy, nobody really cares?
FTA: "..Or changing the pump volume could result in tanks being underfilled"
Yeah, because Hackers would never do the opposite.
What is a pump volume? Do they mean the rate of flow through the pump? Or do they mean the volume of the tank from which the pump gets the gasoline?
I thought you were talking about natural gas pumping stations. Jeremy Clarkson on American English.
Actually, we call it gasoline. We can't help it if people choose to use an abbreviated version that happens to overlap with a scientific state of matter.
Also note that gasoline is dispensed as a liquid (with vapor (gas) capturing devices), but is burned as a gas.
How do you think self service gas stations work? I'll clue you in. If you don't have a credit/debit card you have to go in and pay the clerk for your gas. You give them $14 and they program the pump to deliver $14 worth of gas. That's done over a network. To do that you have to be able to write to the pump.
There is no reason that has to be done over the internet, over wireless, or even over TCP/IP. There is no reason that this shouldn't be absolutely secure from any attack other than someone having direct access to the machine communicating with the pump.
Can't leave the house without a gun.
If the government would do it's job of keeping people from mugging and murdering innocent people, then we wouldn't need to carry a gun. However, we still should since the second amendment is not about protecting you from criminals, that is just a happy byproduct. It is actually intended to protect you from the government. Fortunately, the government has a lot of people on its side who would like to see guns taken away from citizens, so that the government will not have to worry about the people getting together and deciding that the government ought to work for them and not the other way around.
Uber is stealing jobs from real employees that have benefits. It is good that their Republican-style "everyone is a contractor with no rights and no benefits" model is failing. No responsible society should ever allow this sort of thing to happen.
Republican style? I would say Uber is Libertarian "to hell with rules" attitude.
Of course, having recently been extremely f*cked by a company that I was an employee of, I am more in favor of being a contractor anyway. I will do my own benefits and insurance (which I always did on my own anyway because it was cheaper). If I don't like the way a company is treating me, I'll walk. If I work over 40 hours, I get paid for it.
If illegal immigration is really what you're worried about then you can 100% fix it by having open borders.
You could also use your argument for murder. If we made murder legal, then we wouldn't have a murder problem anymore.
If you don't support open borders, then illegal immigration must not be what you are worried about. It must be immigration.
That's fine and dandy, but don't hide your xenophobia behind the law.
Don't put words in people's mouth. If GP says he doesn't like illegal immigration, then he doesn't like illegal immigration. He may not care at all about legal immigration. I know I don't. Legal immigrants contribute to the society. Illegal immigrants are a drain from society. I am married to a legal immigrant, but I am against illegal immigration.
You're spending almost $1000/month on a car and don't think that it would be possible for a service to make that cheaper? I bike most places and take taxis everywhere else and spend a fraction of that - even taking a taxi with a human driver to and from work every day and would be cheaper than you're spending. 500km/week puts you well outside the normal range for drivers, even in the US where the cities are carefully designed so that places people want to be are as far away from where people are as possible.
Just do the math. It is quite obvious that Taxi Service is far and away more expensive for all but the most infrequent of drivers. I drive around 10,000 miles per year, which is less than most people drive. Taxis are relatively cheap in my market, only $2 per mile. So I would have to spend $20,000 per year on my car for breakeven. Using the government's mileage rate, I pay $5,750. By my own estimates, it is a little more. I paid $39,000 for the car, I will probably sell it in 10 years for $5,000. That's $3,400 per year. Insurance adds $1,200 per year (and that includes another vehicle). Gas is $1250. Maintenance is around $100, but I figure it may be as high as $500 toward the end. Altogether, that comes to $6,350.
There is no way that Taxi service is going to get that low, even if they were self driving, which isn't happening anytime soon. Plus, I have to know half an hour in advance that I am going to want to go somewhere, and if I am far out of the way, I have to wait additional time if there aren't any taxis near me. I can't just decide on a whim to go to the convenience store, or the hardware store, or just go for a drive, or to the hospital.
As the GP said, the convenience of owning a car makes it such that even if the costs were the same, it would not be worthwhile to take taxis everywhere.
As soon as they automate driving...
So Uber is good for at least 20 years. ;)
At least until after the Moller Air Car comes out.
I think the biggest difference is that Amazon didn't have to fight a retail mafia/guild on their way to the top.
Yes they did. And still are. The government is still trying to establish some sort of nationwide sales tax, and individual states have made Amazon collect sales tax if they have a presence in the state. But that is all just obeying existing laws. Uber is facing the same thing, having to obey existing laws. It is not the taxi companies trying to keep Uber down. It is the municipalities insisting that Uber's taxi service complies with the same laws and regulations as every other taxi service.
RIAA could deal 100% successfully with the problem of copyright infringement by ensuring that all its members put their music immediately in the public domain. Piracy problem solved! And everyone is happy, because these days the only people who pay for their music are those who want to.
Well, not everyone. I mean, the artists, producers, recording engineers, marketing and advertising agencies aren't. But all the people that like to listen to crappy self produced music for free are happy.
Since you didn't provide the information to back up your statement, I will provide it for you. Minimum wage has been above $10 in today's dollars for about 3 years in the late 1960s. And a resulting decade of runaway inflation was the result, with home mortgage interest rates of 15% and Credit card interest rates in the 30s. At least credit card interest was tax deductible back then.
As for the wages in other countries, in Switzerland, they pay $18.82 per hour, a Big mac costs $6.82. Wage is over 125% higher, and a Big Mac is 42% higher.
In Norway, the wage is $15.40 and the cost of a Big Mac is 20% higher.
In Sweden, the wage is $12.32 and the cost of a Big Mac is 7% higher.
In Denmark, the wage is $14.00 and the cost of a Big Mac is 6% higher.
Some places, the wage is less than in the U.S.
In Israel, the wage is $6.05 and the cost of a Big Mac is 4% less.
The data is pretty consistent. The higher the minimum wage, the higher the cost of goods and services.
One thing that often is missing from discussions about raising minimum wage / minimum salary is what to do with those already making more than the new value. I (like most engineers) make more than minimum wage. I've seen minimum wage go up by 40% since I entered the work force, but my own salary has only gone up by 25% in that same period. Minimum wage goes up, but my buying power goes down.
Exactly. To take an extreme example, if a person makes $15 an hour, and they raise the minimum wage from $8 to $15, then the high school dropout just got almost a 100% raise, and the guy getting $15 an hour gets a 0% raise. That hardly seems fair. On top of that the companies who are now forced to pay a higher minimum wage must either raise prices, fire workers, or if neither of those options is viable, go out of business. Most likely what will happen, since everybody has to pay the new minimum wage, is that prices will rise to match. So, instead of paying an exorbitant $12 for a burger fries and coke at Chili's, it will be more like $20. However, since nobody making $15 or more an hour will get a raise, few people will be able to afford to buy a $20 burger, and most of these places will go out of business.
A lot of people are going to choke on the idea of paying full price. $199 every 3-4 years doesn't seem like a big deal. $700 for a new iPhone sounds fucking horrible.
Well, it should be easier to stomach when the price of the plan goes down by $30 a month because you are not subsidizing a phone. Wait, the price of the plan doesn't change? Oh, nevermind, they are just screwing us then.
I'm currently paying roughly $100/month for the entire bill - two phones (an iPhone 5 and a flip phone), unlimited talk/text, 4GB data. Verizon lowered my bill around the start of the year when they dropped "New every two" and officially made it that you were paying for the cost of your phone as part of the bill, and later upped my data from 2GB to 4 as part of a loyalty bonus.
I'm paying $168 for two smart phones and a dumb phone. The base plan is $40, each of the smartphones is $40, although Verizon advertises that it is only $15, and the dump phone is $30, even though Verizon advertises that it is $10.
Rumor has it that Nest thermostats will soon be displaying advertisements on its display.
Wait, a thermostat that you paid 10 times as much for as a regular thermostat is also going to display ads at you?
Lucky for us nobody spends more than 2 seconds a day looking at their thermostat. I suspect their ad revenue will be on the order of dozens of dollars a year.
I have a feeling that we are going to hear lots more complaints about the "free" version of Windows as people have more experience with it. I also expect that if they get a few million complaints, they might make it so that you can pony up the $130 obligatory dollars per copy to make the "FREE" ad-based Windows into a paid-for, ad free version.
Yes, and then just like the cable companies, the ads will also sneak into the $130 fully paid version.
If you believe in the product you are creating, don't build it at a company whose vision is to build the company just to sell it or to IPO it. They don't care about the product, only selling the company. They will shortchange everywhere they can, cut corners, not test or QA, and eventually, once you have the product built, they will let you go before you get a chance to cash in.
10 million installs, 260 million drivers. So 1 in 26 drivers has this app. I find that hard to believe. It seems like if it was that popular, that I would have heard about it. On a similar note, one of our local news channels has local gas prices on their website.
Can someone explain the value of collecting data on battery strength, phone temperature, etc. ? Seriously, they must be able to monetize that (why else risk alienating customers) but how? What is the monetary value in knowing my phone temp?
I can only guess that they are using the phone temperature, location and the battery strength to estimate the radius of available gas choices that they should show you. Temperature effects the battery life, although it would be easier to snapshot the battery life at regular intervals than guess the temperatures effect on the battery. Location by itself at least established the location around which they should show gas prices, but location over time gives speed and helps them anticipate where to show next, or maybe a radius of how far out to show based on speed. I don't have the app or know how it presents the data, so I am just guessing here.