Please educate me if I am wrong, but I understand that in most European nations, acquiring a license means you actually have to demonstrate skill with maneuvering the vehicle and it's not nearly so easy. The failure rate for license applicants is significantly higher, and since driving means we're talking life and limb, that sounds quite reasonable. If you have only driven in Europe you might even find my descriptions difficult to believe, but I promise you I see this and worse every day.
In Germany things are much more stringent (and expensive I'd wager) but ultimately a lot depends on whether it's your first license or you have gotten another one in the last couple years (eg. I got a 125cc motorcycle license and then a car license shorty after, which had changed requirements).
First you are required to first take a certain number of theoretical lessons (I think about two dozen for a car license if you don't have a previous license), followed by a standardized theoretical exam (multiple choice) where each wrong answer nets you negative points, ranging from two points for things like being mistaken about whether to shift up or down when driving up a hill to five points for anything that impacts the safety of others.
The modalities for the test vary. If you don't have a previous license you get thirty questions and fail if you get more than ten points. If you do have a previous license you only get twenty questions but fail at more than six points. Oh, and the test is more or less randomized (random selection of a set of standardized sheets) so you won't see the same questions again if you retake it. You do, however, get a stack of training sheets which work like the test sheets so you have ample opportunity to test yourself beforehand.
After the theoretical exam you have to take practical lessons. Like with the theoretical exams the exact number and details vary with the kind of license you're trying to get and whether you've gotten another license shortly before but you can expect probably at least a dozen driving sessions plus a few special conditions sessions like driving at night, driving on the highway, semi-long distance drives over regional roads etc.
Te actual practical exam involves both your driving teacher and an independent tester and boils down to driving around and submitting to their every whim for a while, preceded by a few questions of the "what does that lever do" variety. While a minor mistake might not cost you the license you will immediately fail if, for any reason, the teacher steps on the secondary brake installed on their side of the car.
Everything is billed and the tests don't come cheap, which is another incentive to learn your stuff. Examples for total costs for a car license I can offer are 2,500 EUR (2002, no retakes, slightly lowered lesson count) and 4,000 EUR (2015, one theoretical retake, all lessons required). Of course it can go even higher if you're really bad at cars.
Add to that things like mandatory first aid courses and you've got... roads that are still full of idiots but at least they're somewhat competent idiots who know what they're doing wrong. And who have the neccessary medical qualification to roll up to the site of an accident, freeze up in terror and let the 112 operator handle the rest (for the record, the law doesn't allow you to flat-out ignore an unattended accident site). But at some point they've heard of the term "recovery position" so that's at least something.
We are, yes. But we do need some functionality that, right now, is implemented as an elaborate WordPress theme that still doesn't do everything we need. A traditional CMS or blog software is really a poor match for what we're trying to do and trying to shoehorn our needs into one led to several years of frustration.
There are solutions that almost do what we need but those are all offered as services and it's not easily possible to integrate the rest of what we want with them. Plus, they're technically our competition.
The company I work for has decided to drop WordPress and develop a new CMS that does exactly what we need in-house. We mostly need static pages so there's no need to load an entire application platform (which is what WordPress is, essentially) every time anyone wants to view a page. Plus, WordPress does what it does slowly, plus we need tons of plugins (which eat even more performance) to get the functionality we need, plus many WordPress plugin authors think "best practice" is where you find a good doctor.
Sure, it's going to take some time to develop but we can take the 20% of WordPress's functionality we actually need, cover the functionality WordPress doesn't offer natively without relying on modules of questionable quality and have a web-facing dynamic codebase that's so small we can be reasonably certain it's not vulnerable. (Essentially, the only PHP code on the published website should be a simple session management script so we can put content behind a password with more flexibility than.htpasswd.)
Despite writing everything ourselves we still expect to save money in the long term, simply because WordPress generates so much work for both our employees and our server. It's okay for a basic blog if you can babysit it but anything beyond that becomes a nightmare.
If I remember correctly they actually specified the error handling in the HTML 5 spec. XHTML, for its part, didn't really take off, so chances are that much of the web would still be using HTML 4 if the W3C still insisted on XHTML. HTML 4 wasn't exactly a paragon of security, either.
Not to mention pre-order bonuses. Why the hell would anyone per-order a digital game, where there's no chance it'll sell out and they won't be able to get a copy? Dumb-ass pre-order bonuses, I guess! People buy them! What the hell, gamers?
I did that for Borderlands 2 because I liked the first part so much I was willing to gamble on the second one being good. I was not disappointed. Of course I'm aware it's a gamble, which is why I tend not to do it, but sometimes it just might be worth it. Oh, and because the first game's German release was censored I imported from the UK so pre-ordering cut down on the waiting time.
And, of course, streaming and "let's plays." Why are people sitting around watching OTHER PEOPLE play games that they themselves could be playing? But they do!
As has been pointed out, not owning the console is one thing. I'm not going to buy a 3DS for a single game. Or perhaps you no longer have the game and want to take a look at it for nostalgia's sake. Some games may also be interesting from a story perspective but uninteresting gameplay-wise - I might end up watching an LP for Mass Effect 2 and 3 but I'm certainly not going to install the second part again, much less buy the third one. Some Let's Plays are value-added like IlliterateChild's Glitchy Walkthroughs where bugs in the game are exploited for comedic effect.
Sure, playing the game is usually better. But there are games you can't or won't play but are still interested in experiencing to some degree or someone did something with their playthrough that you can't easily replicate. That's where the value in Let's Plays lies.
Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but it turned out we don't actually have any. This took us by surprise but a quick poll among our executive staff came to the result that nobody actually knows how we make money or why we're still in business. Money comes in, certainly, and from what I could gather some of it is government money so we seem to be providing some kind of service, I guess. And some of it to the government, it seems. But the exact nature of this service remains a mystery.
Look, I only wanted to merge with Time Warner Cable because the guys over there seem to know what kind of business they're in and I figured it could be a learning experience. Now that that plan has been kiboshed, could anyone tell me what it is that we actually do? I heard some speculation that we do something with the internet but from what I can tell we don't have anything resembling a broadband infrastructure so that can't be it. We do have call centers but when I called one they didn't know anything about the internet, either. Perhaps we're some kind of telemarketing outfit?
Seriously, if anyone has an idea what our business plan is, please drop me a line at ceo@comca.st.
I'm imagining how things would go if a widely-sampled piece like Pachelbel's Canon in D was covered by copyright. The labels would be buried under willful infringement suits over more money than the entire entertainment industry is worth. While it would be amusing to see BMG sentenced to pay someone a hundred billion Dollars I'm not certain it would be in anybody's interest.
Some sites go a reasonable middle ground: They replace the ad space with a message like this: "You're running Adblock. Please consider whitelisting us so we can pay for this website. Thank you." And I'm perfectly fine with that. Treating your visitors like human beings and politely asking them to help you out makes a good impression.
Also, Reddit's "You're not blocking ads on our site and we think you're awesome because of it" ads. If you want people to see your ads a bit of appreciation can go a lot further than a technological arms race. It's cheaper, too.
Excuse me but that sounds entirely implausible. Cooking food with a radar unit? I'll believe it when someone uses one to, say, melt a chocolate bar. Until then keep your loony theories to yourself!
I'm not certain whether using f.lux really improves my sleep (although I'm certainly not complaining if it does). What it does do is make my desktop look more like an object in the room. When a white area on the screen has the same color a white piece of paper would have in the same light that essentially makes using a computer more... immersive. It just feels more natural if the monitor forgoes accurate absolute color representation in favor of more accurate color representation within the context of local light conditions.
It's definitely one of those "try it, you might like it" things. Either it feels great for you or you toss it.
Yeah, the architecture changes screwed the entire modding world. Maybe someday they'll finally have a proper mod API and proper support.
Perhaps someone should write a mod that redundantly reimplements Minecraft on top of Minecraft with as few calls into actual Minecraft code as possible. Still dependent enough to require the actual game but with such little contact area that it's almost completely isolated from changes to the game itself.
Yeah, it'd basically be a fork that attempts to solve the rights issues by requiring the main game. You'd lose anything Mojang adds to the game later (unless it's ported over) but the API could be designed to be long-term stable...
Scientology has plenty of experience in lobbying. After Germany decided to deny them tax-exempt status (and then engaged in further actions against the CoS because some of their rhethoric and practices were uncomfortably reminiscent of Germany's past) the Scientologists spent a lot of money and effort on getting the US government to step in on their behalf, even going as far as asking for political sanctions.
I actually think they're not going to lose the tax exemptions in the first place because their lobbyists will pay off the right politicians before it can happen.
Easily solved. Just have the code in uxtheme.dll (or the modern equivalent) that locks out third-party themes GPO-controllable. Most themes are just collections of graphics files so there's not much danger involved. If you're feeling fancy you could have two settings: One that allows only simple "graphics files and settings"-style themes and one that allows themes to load their own drawing libraries to do whatever they want.
Honestly, I can't see a GPO'd uxtheme.dll as anything but a win for everyone: Corporate users can easily lock down themability and enforce a consistent workplace. Home users can unlock it and install the theme they prefer. Microsoft can evade complaints of "I don't like the flat look" by saying "then don't use it but it's not our job to make a different one".
The German Wikipedia article on generic drugs. I assumed that the English article would contain similar data. That's an assumption I really need to drop; it virtually never holds.
The cites are as follows:
2006 data: The Generic Pharmaceutical Association: ANNUAL REPORT 2008. Generics: The Right Choice for Better Health. February 7th, 2008; downloaded on December 28th, 2012.
2000 data: World Health Organisation: The World Medicines Situation. September 8th, 2004; downloaded on December 31st, 2012.
(Note: I screwed up here by overlooking a footnote in the Wikipedia article. The 45% figure is not from 2000 but from 1998.)
Actually, the United States aren't doing that bad with respect to generics. Almost 67% of all medications prescribed in 2007 were generics, up from 45% in 2000. (Those numbers are from Wikipedia but sourced.)
But yeah, healthcare in America is still way expensive and IIRC doctors are extensively marketed to by pharma companies, which doesn't help them make informed decisions about generics. Perhaps that could be better regulated. (Or perhaps some other approach might help to improve things. Perhaps that approach has even been taken already; I'm not that well informed about the American pharma market.)
I don't think anyone is trying to keep people from mixing up their own version or from marketing this stuff as a cosmetics product. They are trying to keep people from marketing it as a medical product, for obvious reasons (and no, not "because the cartel says so" but because if we allow this stuff without stringent testing we must also allow other stuff without stringent testing, which is a bad idea).
And while this may be a lotion, MRSA is enough of a problem that a large number of people are very much interested in an internal use version of this, ASAP. If it does work, of course, which will require reproduction of TFA's experiment's findings.
And while copper on the skin is not much of a problem, copper inside the body can be.
Of course drugs are way too expensive in the USA, just like everything else health-related. But still, the rules are there for a reason (and other countries have cheaper, yet similarly effective healthcare, which indicates that solutions besides deregulation of drug development and marketing are possible).
We have a combination of hundreds of substances known to work topically with unknown side effects. There's a huge number of unanswered questions.
Which parts of the garlic are actually relevant? Yes, garlic is antiseptic, but do any of its components interact with other parts of the concoction? How does the wine play into this? Does this concoction have any long-term side effects? (After all, one of the active ingredients is a heavy metal.) What if it's used repeatedly? Does its behavior differ when used internally? Which parts need to be isolated in order to achieve maximum effectiveness with the minimum number of chemical compounds? (A more complex medication means more chances for people to be intolerant to some ingredient so a chemically simpler formulation actually has benefits.) Under which circumstances should this stuff not be used despite being otherwise indicated? Are there, for instance, any adverse interactions with other medications?
Can you answer any of those questions with certainty right now? I don't think so. You may think that this stuff isn't important but a doctor would want to know whether it's known-unsafe to use this stuff on a patient who is on medications A, B and C and suffers from known medical conditions D and E.
No, big pharma is not nice. But that doesn't mean that they are completely useless and just dick around with flawless medicines in order to make them more expensive. They do a lot of rather expensive testing to make reasonably sure that this stuff is actually safe to use and its failure modes are well-understood.
It'd be nice if the next iteration of EFI had a more robust upgrade security design.
Something like this: Firmware upgrades are not possible from inside the OS. At all. Instead there's a switch on the mainboard that is only accessible when the computer has been physically opened. When that switch is on, EFI will refuse to boot any OS and all onboard SATA/SCSI controllers are physically disabled. EFI will scan every USB port* for a FAT32-formatted mass storage device containing a file with a certain filename, which is then displayed for your approval, checked and installed. While the switch is off, changing the firmware should be prevented in hardware, such as by detaching a certain line required to write to the flash chip. (Settings should be stored on an unprotected chip and can be changed while the computer is bootable.)
You're in a corporate setting and need to update 16.000 identical desktop computers all at once? Make sure the computers have an enterprise-ready mainboard that can pull the update from the network (e.g. using something similar to BOOTP). You'll still have to toggle that switch and confirm the prompt. That's as convenient as it should get; after all, if there is any chance that the firmware is modified while an OS is loaded, any successful attack on the OS leaves your firmware in a potentially compromised state.
* Yeah, I know, USB also has infectable firmware. Unfortunately, I don't know of a reasonable mass storage standard that doesn't. And making people physically swap PROM chips won't fly.
Examples of crap in the list above: taxi drivers must know the area they operate in. Really? What does it even mean to know the area? London black cab drivers have to pass an exam called The Knowledge that requires them to memorise street maps of the city, so at least it's well defined there, but this is nonsense from the pre-GPS era. There's no need for cab drivers to do it all in their heads these days, and I'd much rather they rely on the computer which will always pick the fastest route and can't decide to take a detour because the passengers looks like a tourist.
And then the GPS makes a silly mistake as they are apt to do and the driver can't tell. From my experience, car navigation systems aren't mature enough to blindly rely on.
Another example: drivers must know the radio protocols. Why?! Uber drivers receive instructions via an intuitive smartphone app. Controlling cabs via radio is an obsolete technology yet the requirement to use it lives on.
That depends on the size of the company. If you have a one-man operation that only works via Uber, yes. If you have a dozen cabs and use both Uber and regular phone lines to get customers, having a radio is really useful.
I do agree, however, that self-employed cabbies with only one car should be exempt from that one.
Yet another example: cars must be painted a particular colour. Why? Uber cars are located using modern technology, not by watching the roads for vehicles painted in a deliberately ugly colour. This is another obsolete convention progress has made irrelevant - yet it's mandated.
It's not irrelevant for when you want to identify a parking cab as a cab. Unlike you, I don't think it's wise to completely abolish traditional cabs because some random company had a neat idea. Again, though, this is one requirement they should waive for self-employed cabbies that only work through a broker like Uber.
Then we get to the more questionable things that aren't obsolete exactly, just arguable. Why is it possible to have enough driving violations to be struck off as a cab driver, but still be allowed to drive friends and family around? Surely you're either safe enough to use the public roads, or you're not, and the commercial relationships you have with the people inside make no difference?
Because you don't spend a significant amount of time driving your friends and family around. Generally, people who don't work as drivers spend relatively little time on the road. People who earn their money by driving around have many more opportunities to screw up yet again.
People with a criminal record are banned from working as drivers? ALL crimes? What about crimes that don't involve being actually dangerous, like white collar crimes? Why can't hiring decisions like this be left to the cab companies?
I'd have to talk to a lawyer for that one but my guess is that it's tied to the reliability requirement. If you can't act in the interest of society then you're not expected to act in the interests of your passengers. It's just guesswork on my part, though.
Taxi drivers must know first aid? Presumably someone injured themselves in a cab once and some regulator thought this was a good response. What if that person injures themselves on the street? Why not require everyone to be trained in first aid? This kind of arbitrary distinction doesn't make much sense until you remember that we have these regulators sitting around with nothing better to do all day than craft rules for their tiny piece of jurisdiction.
Everyone IS required to be trained in first aid. Germany has a "duty to rescue" law and you can't get a driver's license without attending a training course on basic first aid, CPR and traffic accident rescue procedures. If you come across an accident you are required by law to stop, call the emergency hotline if possible and do your best to
Isn't that exactly what happened here? Uber decides that the law doesn't apply to them because they say so; the law demonstrates what happens to people who act that way. Uber's sleaziness with respect to the law is punished.
Sure, the licensing requirements in some places might be absurd but that doesn't mean we should root for Uber. A lot of regulations for taxi drivers go beyond "has paid $N"; for instance, German taxi drivers are required to know things about traffic and transportation law that most people don't and also have to prove that they actually know the area they operate in. Uber doesn't require any of this; their drivers have a regular driver's license and that's it. Most of them probably haven't even taken a first aid class in the last five years, which taxi drivers also have to (and regular drivers are encouraged to).
If Uber wanted to compete fairly they'd get in touch with the appropriate people and lobby for an overhaul of the relevant laws to account for self-employed, third-party-brokered taxi drivers that operate on a pre-arranged flat fee bidding system. Those taxi drivers would still need licenses but some parts of the law could be streamlined or made more flexible. On Uber's part all that changes is that they ask for the taxi license number when you sign up and check every five years if it's still valid. That's the way we do things in civilized society. The way Uber does it is essentially organized crime - even if only because they're an organization that brokers deals for people who violate the taxi laws of their country.
(Also, someone pointed out that in NYC you can just wave down a taxi whenever you need one, which suggests an extreme taxi density compared to most other places in the world. NYC might want to limit the number of taxis on the streets, which would explain the extreme license cost - although a more elegant approach might be to simply refuse to issue new licenses until the number of active ones has dropped. This would still work against newcomers but that's inherent to the problem.)
IANAL but a bit of googling revealed that apparently German taxis are subject to at least these laws or parts of them: (I'll selectively paraphrase; there's quite a bite more in there.)
Personenbeförderungsgesetz (PBefG): Contains rules for passenger transportation with trams, trolleybuses and motor vehicles. Apparently trains are covered elsewhere. Only some of the rules apply because cars (vehicles that can transport up to six people including the driver) have a special exception.
Verordnung über den Betrieb von Kraftfahrunternehmen im Personenverkehr (BOKraft): Contains rules for passenger transportation companies that use trolleybuses or motor vehicles. This seems the most important one for taxi companies and covers things like vehicle maintenance, whether subcontracting is allowed, notification requirements, how to deal with lost property
The taxi-specific sections cover things like technical requirements, such as an alarm wired to the horn and lights that the driver can activate from their seat, a calibrated and illuminated taximeter or an optional bulletproof divider. Taxis must be painted with the color RAL 1015 of the RAL 840 HR palette and must have a "TAXI" sign of specific orientation and dimensions on top. They must display their taxi registration number in a specific style and place and also display the name and address of the company where the passenger can easily read them. Taxi drivers must take the shortest possible route to their target; if another route would be cheaper or faster, this has to be cleared with the passenger beforehand.
There's also some stuff in there that most people don't know - for instance, BOKraft-covered transport vehicles must have a copy of the laws governing pricing pnboard and must show them to the passenger upon request.
Berufszugangsverordnung für den Straßenpersonenverkehr (PBZugV): Contains rules on who is allowed to transport other people. People with a criminal record or a record of severe traffic law violations are banned from working as drivers; company-level misbehavior might disqualify an entire company. Companies must have enough money to keep their fleet in shape. They must regularly check whether all drivers are still qualified to work as taxi drivers.
Drivers (in order to be hirable) must have an understanding of the laws governing passenger transportation, of vehicle maintenance, of radio protocols, of certain accounting procedures and even of environmental guidelines on vehicle operation and maintenance. They must pass two written and optionaly one additional oral exam of one hour each with the local chamber of industry and commerce; alternatively, five years of work in a different BPZugV-covered company can be seen as equivalent.
Paragraph 48 Fahrerlaubnisverordnung (FeV): contains rules on taxi driver licenses. Examples: Taxi drivers must prove they know the area they operate in and that they have an appropriate understanding of first aid. If the driver is found unreliable, the license can be revoked (e.g. this once happened after a driver repeatedly refused to make short distance trips). Taxi driver licenses have to be reapplied for every five years.
Others, like the FPersG and FPersV, cover legal technicalities like when and how to have your license card with you etc. Additionally, municipalities may pass additional regulations.
So yeah, the law is pretty clear: None of the people who work for Uber are licensed to do so, thus they can't guarantee that they know about stuff like applying laws or where to drive. They can't even guarantee that the drivers aren't explicitly banned from working as drivers. Of course the law is going to come down hard on them.
If ridesharing is here to stay the law might adapt, but only by relaxing the signage requirements for very small companies. You'd still have to have a taxi driver's license, you'd still have to register the car and you'd still have to demonstrate an u
- You can get rid of old nuclear warheads that don't operate to spec anymore. As long as they still have enough power to vaporize a group of people sitting right next to them they're fine.
- It should be fairly painless, given that the prisoners' brains quickly transition to a gaseous state.
- It's inherently flashy so everyone looking for bloody retribution can see it being served from one state over.
- It's inherently suitable for group executions, which makes it very efficient in dealing with America's large number of criminals.
- It makes you consider whether you really want that prisoner dead. If you're not willing to nuke some part of your state you probably don't want the person's death that much.
Plus, it doesn't make you look much sillier than complaining about how nobody wants to sell you equipment for killing your own citizens.
I wonder if Valve will expand the Steam Cloud in response. Steam already warns you on game launch if your savegames don't match what's in the cloud so broken savegames can be recovered as long as you don't sync. The flaw in that is that syncing happens whenever you exit the game so you'd have to force-kill Steam if you notice that everything is corrupt. (Perhaps this only applies if your game actually saved something but some games are very save-happy.)
If Valve adds a simple versioning system, even if it just offers the current version and the one before that, crypto-ransomware will become completely useless against Steam titles.
A faster, leaner and generally less quirky alternative to Chromium-based browsers, especially on mobile. Lots of work on the standards front. Plus MDN is one of the best web development knowledgebases I know. Also Thunderbird, the only platform-independent mail client used by more then a handful of people. Oh, and they came up with asm.js, which allows massive performance gains for generated JS code.
Honestly, I have no idea what the article is talking about:
- The "waning market share" doesn't seem to wane all that much, going by international market share numbers (although I'm in Germany where Firefox is still the undisputed top dog so that may color my perception).
- The only thing close to "questions over tooling for their platform" I am aware of is that they're implementing Gecko's successor in Rust, their own programming language.
- While FirefoxOS has pretty much zero presence today it's still easy to run Firefox on Android (and I recommend it because the bundled browser is usually an antique, plus mobile Blink/WebKit ain't all that hot anyway).
- I have no idea what "Gecko-flavored JavaScript" is supposed to be and how it's supposed to deliver "standard tools" that other browser vendors somehow have.
Even if Mozilla sucked at what they're doing (cf. Microsoft, although they're at least trying these days) they'd create competition and thus drive the other players forward.
(No, I don't work for Mozilla. I'm just a web dev.)
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Please educate me if I am wrong, but I understand that in most European nations, acquiring a license means you actually have to demonstrate skill with maneuvering the vehicle and it's not nearly so easy. The failure rate for license applicants is significantly higher, and since driving means we're talking life and limb, that sounds quite reasonable. If you have only driven in Europe you might even find my descriptions difficult to believe, but I promise you I see this and worse every day.
In Germany things are much more stringent (and expensive I'd wager) but ultimately a lot depends on whether it's your first license or you have gotten another one in the last couple years (eg. I got a 125cc motorcycle license and then a car license shorty after, which had changed requirements).
First you are required to first take a certain number of theoretical lessons (I think about two dozen for a car license if you don't have a previous license), followed by a standardized theoretical exam (multiple choice) where each wrong answer nets you negative points, ranging from two points for things like being mistaken about whether to shift up or down when driving up a hill to five points for anything that impacts the safety of others.
The modalities for the test vary. If you don't have a previous license you get thirty questions and fail if you get more than ten points. If you do have a previous license you only get twenty questions but fail at more than six points. Oh, and the test is more or less randomized (random selection of a set of standardized sheets) so you won't see the same questions again if you retake it. You do, however, get a stack of training sheets which work like the test sheets so you have ample opportunity to test yourself beforehand.
After the theoretical exam you have to take practical lessons. Like with the theoretical exams the exact number and details vary with the kind of license you're trying to get and whether you've gotten another license shortly before but you can expect probably at least a dozen driving sessions plus a few special conditions sessions like driving at night, driving on the highway, semi-long distance drives over regional roads etc.
Te actual practical exam involves both your driving teacher and an independent tester and boils down to driving around and submitting to their every whim for a while, preceded by a few questions of the "what does that lever do" variety. While a minor mistake might not cost you the license you will immediately fail if, for any reason, the teacher steps on the secondary brake installed on their side of the car.
Everything is billed and the tests don't come cheap, which is another incentive to learn your stuff. Examples for total costs for a car license I can offer are 2,500 EUR (2002, no retakes, slightly lowered lesson count) and 4,000 EUR (2015, one theoretical retake, all lessons required). Of course it can go even higher if you're really bad at cars.
Add to that things like mandatory first aid courses and you've got... roads that are still full of idiots but at least they're somewhat competent idiots who know what they're doing wrong. And who have the neccessary medical qualification to roll up to the site of an accident, freeze up in terror and let the 112 operator handle the rest (for the record, the law doesn't allow you to flat-out ignore an unattended accident site). But at some point they've heard of the term "recovery position" so that's at least something.
We are, yes. But we do need some functionality that, right now, is implemented as an elaborate WordPress theme that still doesn't do everything we need. A traditional CMS or blog software is really a poor match for what we're trying to do and trying to shoehorn our needs into one led to several years of frustration.
There are solutions that almost do what we need but those are all offered as services and it's not easily possible to integrate the rest of what we want with them. Plus, they're technically our competition.
The company I work for has decided to drop WordPress and develop a new CMS that does exactly what we need in-house. We mostly need static pages so there's no need to load an entire application platform (which is what WordPress is, essentially) every time anyone wants to view a page. Plus, WordPress does what it does slowly, plus we need tons of plugins (which eat even more performance) to get the functionality we need, plus many WordPress plugin authors think "best practice" is where you find a good doctor.
.htpasswd.)
Sure, it's going to take some time to develop but we can take the 20% of WordPress's functionality we actually need, cover the functionality WordPress doesn't offer natively without relying on modules of questionable quality and have a web-facing dynamic codebase that's so small we can be reasonably certain it's not vulnerable. (Essentially, the only PHP code on the published website should be a simple session management script so we can put content behind a password with more flexibility than
Despite writing everything ourselves we still expect to save money in the long term, simply because WordPress generates so much work for both our employees and our server. It's okay for a basic blog if you can babysit it but anything beyond that becomes a nightmare.
If I remember correctly they actually specified the error handling in the HTML 5 spec. XHTML, for its part, didn't really take off, so chances are that much of the web would still be using HTML 4 if the W3C still insisted on XHTML. HTML 4 wasn't exactly a paragon of security, either.
Not to mention pre-order bonuses. Why the hell would anyone per-order a digital game, where there's no chance it'll sell out and they won't be able to get a copy? Dumb-ass pre-order bonuses, I guess! People buy them! What the hell, gamers?
I did that for Borderlands 2 because I liked the first part so much I was willing to gamble on the second one being good. I was not disappointed. Of course I'm aware it's a gamble, which is why I tend not to do it, but sometimes it just might be worth it. Oh, and because the first game's German release was censored I imported from the UK so pre-ordering cut down on the waiting time.
And, of course, streaming and "let's plays." Why are people sitting around watching OTHER PEOPLE play games that they themselves could be playing? But they do!
As has been pointed out, not owning the console is one thing. I'm not going to buy a 3DS for a single game. Or perhaps you no longer have the game and want to take a look at it for nostalgia's sake. Some games may also be interesting from a story perspective but uninteresting gameplay-wise - I might end up watching an LP for Mass Effect 2 and 3 but I'm certainly not going to install the second part again, much less buy the third one. Some Let's Plays are value-added like IlliterateChild's Glitchy Walkthroughs where bugs in the game are exploited for comedic effect.
Sure, playing the game is usually better. But there are games you can't or won't play but are still interested in experiencing to some degree or someone did something with their playthrough that you can't easily replicate. That's where the value in Let's Plays lies.
When my friends need new losses there's only one word I tell them, Lossy. http://tiffzhang.com/startup/i...
Bonus points for having one team member with the job description "Product". At least now I know what^Wwho they're selling...
Today, we move on. Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but it turned out we don't actually have any. This took us by surprise but a quick poll among our executive staff came to the result that nobody actually knows how we make money or why we're still in business. Money comes in, certainly, and from what I could gather some of it is government money so we seem to be providing some kind of service, I guess. And some of it to the government, it seems. But the exact nature of this service remains a mystery.
Look, I only wanted to merge with Time Warner Cable because the guys over there seem to know what kind of business they're in and I figured it could be a learning experience. Now that that plan has been kiboshed, could anyone tell me what it is that we actually do? I heard some speculation that we do something with the internet but from what I can tell we don't have anything resembling a broadband infrastructure so that can't be it. We do have call centers but when I called one they didn't know anything about the internet, either. Perhaps we're some kind of telemarketing outfit?
Seriously, if anyone has an idea what our business plan is, please drop me a line at ceo@comca.st.
I'm imagining how things would go if a widely-sampled piece like Pachelbel's Canon in D was covered by copyright. The labels would be buried under willful infringement suits over more money than the entire entertainment industry is worth. While it would be amusing to see BMG sentenced to pay someone a hundred billion Dollars I'm not certain it would be in anybody's interest.
Some sites go a reasonable middle ground: They replace the ad space with a message like this: "You're running Adblock. Please consider whitelisting us so we can pay for this website. Thank you." And I'm perfectly fine with that. Treating your visitors like human beings and politely asking them to help you out makes a good impression.
Also, Reddit's "You're not blocking ads on our site and we think you're awesome because of it" ads. If you want people to see your ads a bit of appreciation can go a lot further than a technological arms race. It's cheaper, too.
Excuse me but that sounds entirely implausible. Cooking food with a radar unit? I'll believe it when someone uses one to, say, melt a chocolate bar. Until then keep your loony theories to yourself!
I'm not certain whether using f.lux really improves my sleep (although I'm certainly not complaining if it does). What it does do is make my desktop look more like an object in the room. When a white area on the screen has the same color a white piece of paper would have in the same light that essentially makes using a computer more... immersive. It just feels more natural if the monitor forgoes accurate absolute color representation in favor of more accurate color representation within the context of local light conditions.
It's definitely one of those "try it, you might like it" things. Either it feels great for you or you toss it.
Yeah, the architecture changes screwed the entire modding world. Maybe someday they'll finally have a proper mod API and proper support.
Perhaps someone should write a mod that redundantly reimplements Minecraft on top of Minecraft with as few calls into actual Minecraft code as possible. Still dependent enough to require the actual game but with such little contact area that it's almost completely isolated from changes to the game itself.
Yeah, it'd basically be a fork that attempts to solve the rights issues by requiring the main game. You'd lose anything Mojang adds to the game later (unless it's ported over) but the API could be designed to be long-term stable...
Scientology has plenty of experience in lobbying. After Germany decided to deny them tax-exempt status (and then engaged in further actions against the CoS because some of their rhethoric and practices were uncomfortably reminiscent of Germany's past) the Scientologists spent a lot of money and effort on getting the US government to step in on their behalf, even going as far as asking for political sanctions.
I actually think they're not going to lose the tax exemptions in the first place because their lobbyists will pay off the right politicians before it can happen.
Easily solved. Just have the code in uxtheme.dll (or the modern equivalent) that locks out third-party themes GPO-controllable. Most themes are just collections of graphics files so there's not much danger involved. If you're feeling fancy you could have two settings: One that allows only simple "graphics files and settings"-style themes and one that allows themes to load their own drawing libraries to do whatever they want.
Honestly, I can't see a GPO'd uxtheme.dll as anything but a win for everyone: Corporate users can easily lock down themability and enforce a consistent workplace. Home users can unlock it and install the theme they prefer. Microsoft can evade complaints of "I don't like the flat look" by saying "then don't use it but it's not our job to make a different one".
The German Wikipedia article on generic drugs. I assumed that the English article would contain similar data. That's an assumption I really need to drop; it virtually never holds.
The cites are as follows:
2006 data: The Generic Pharmaceutical Association: ANNUAL REPORT 2008. Generics: The Right Choice for Better Health. February 7th, 2008; downloaded on December 28th, 2012.
2000 data: World Health Organisation: The World Medicines Situation. September 8th, 2004; downloaded on December 31st, 2012.
(Note: I screwed up here by overlooking a footnote in the Wikipedia article. The 45% figure is not from 2000 but from 1998.)
Actually, the United States aren't doing that bad with respect to generics. Almost 67% of all medications prescribed in 2007 were generics, up from 45% in 2000. (Those numbers are from Wikipedia but sourced.)
But yeah, healthcare in America is still way expensive and IIRC doctors are extensively marketed to by pharma companies, which doesn't help them make informed decisions about generics. Perhaps that could be better regulated. (Or perhaps some other approach might help to improve things. Perhaps that approach has even been taken already; I'm not that well informed about the American pharma market.)
I don't think anyone is trying to keep people from mixing up their own version or from marketing this stuff as a cosmetics product. They are trying to keep people from marketing it as a medical product, for obvious reasons (and no, not "because the cartel says so" but because if we allow this stuff without stringent testing we must also allow other stuff without stringent testing, which is a bad idea).
And while this may be a lotion, MRSA is enough of a problem that a large number of people are very much interested in an internal use version of this, ASAP. If it does work, of course, which will require reproduction of TFA's experiment's findings.
And while copper on the skin is not much of a problem, copper inside the body can be.
Of course drugs are way too expensive in the USA, just like everything else health-related. But still, the rules are there for a reason (and other countries have cheaper, yet similarly effective healthcare, which indicates that solutions besides deregulation of drug development and marketing are possible).
We have a combination of hundreds of substances known to work topically with unknown side effects. There's a huge number of unanswered questions.
Which parts of the garlic are actually relevant? Yes, garlic is antiseptic, but do any of its components interact with other parts of the concoction? How does the wine play into this? Does this concoction have any long-term side effects? (After all, one of the active ingredients is a heavy metal.) What if it's used repeatedly? Does its behavior differ when used internally? Which parts need to be isolated in order to achieve maximum effectiveness with the minimum number of chemical compounds? (A more complex medication means more chances for people to be intolerant to some ingredient so a chemically simpler formulation actually has benefits.) Under which circumstances should this stuff not be used despite being otherwise indicated? Are there, for instance, any adverse interactions with other medications?
Can you answer any of those questions with certainty right now? I don't think so. You may think that this stuff isn't important but a doctor would want to know whether it's known-unsafe to use this stuff on a patient who is on medications A, B and C and suffers from known medical conditions D and E.
No, big pharma is not nice. But that doesn't mean that they are completely useless and just dick around with flawless medicines in order to make them more expensive. They do a lot of rather expensive testing to make reasonably sure that this stuff is actually safe to use and its failure modes are well-understood.
It'd be nice if the next iteration of EFI had a more robust upgrade security design.
Something like this: Firmware upgrades are not possible from inside the OS. At all. Instead there's a switch on the mainboard that is only accessible when the computer has been physically opened. When that switch is on, EFI will refuse to boot any OS and all onboard SATA/SCSI controllers are physically disabled. EFI will scan every USB port* for a FAT32-formatted mass storage device containing a file with a certain filename, which is then displayed for your approval, checked and installed. While the switch is off, changing the firmware should be prevented in hardware, such as by detaching a certain line required to write to the flash chip. (Settings should be stored on an unprotected chip and can be changed while the computer is bootable.)
You're in a corporate setting and need to update 16.000 identical desktop computers all at once? Make sure the computers have an enterprise-ready mainboard that can pull the update from the network (e.g. using something similar to BOOTP). You'll still have to toggle that switch and confirm the prompt. That's as convenient as it should get; after all, if there is any chance that the firmware is modified while an OS is loaded, any successful attack on the OS leaves your firmware in a potentially compromised state.
* Yeah, I know, USB also has infectable firmware. Unfortunately, I don't know of a reasonable mass storage standard that doesn't. And making people physically swap PROM chips won't fly.
Examples of crap in the list above: taxi drivers must know the area they operate in. Really? What does it even mean to know the area? London black cab drivers have to pass an exam called The Knowledge that requires them to memorise street maps of the city, so at least it's well defined there, but this is nonsense from the pre-GPS era. There's no need for cab drivers to do it all in their heads these days, and I'd much rather they rely on the computer which will always pick the fastest route and can't decide to take a detour because the passengers looks like a tourist.
And then the GPS makes a silly mistake as they are apt to do and the driver can't tell. From my experience, car navigation systems aren't mature enough to blindly rely on.
Another example: drivers must know the radio protocols. Why?! Uber drivers receive instructions via an intuitive smartphone app. Controlling cabs via radio is an obsolete technology yet the requirement to use it lives on.
That depends on the size of the company. If you have a one-man operation that only works via Uber, yes. If you have a dozen cabs and use both Uber and regular phone lines to get customers, having a radio is really useful.
I do agree, however, that self-employed cabbies with only one car should be exempt from that one.
Yet another example: cars must be painted a particular colour. Why? Uber cars are located using modern technology, not by watching the roads for vehicles painted in a deliberately ugly colour. This is another obsolete convention progress has made irrelevant - yet it's mandated.
It's not irrelevant for when you want to identify a parking cab as a cab. Unlike you, I don't think it's wise to completely abolish traditional cabs because some random company had a neat idea. Again, though, this is one requirement they should waive for self-employed cabbies that only work through a broker like Uber.
Then we get to the more questionable things that aren't obsolete exactly, just arguable. Why is it possible to have enough driving violations to be struck off as a cab driver, but still be allowed to drive friends and family around? Surely you're either safe enough to use the public roads, or you're not, and the commercial relationships you have with the people inside make no difference?
Because you don't spend a significant amount of time driving your friends and family around. Generally, people who don't work as drivers spend relatively little time on the road. People who earn their money by driving around have many more opportunities to screw up yet again.
People with a criminal record are banned from working as drivers? ALL crimes? What about crimes that don't involve being actually dangerous, like white collar crimes? Why can't hiring decisions like this be left to the cab companies?
I'd have to talk to a lawyer for that one but my guess is that it's tied to the reliability requirement. If you can't act in the interest of society then you're not expected to act in the interests of your passengers. It's just guesswork on my part, though.
Taxi drivers must know first aid? Presumably someone injured themselves in a cab once and some regulator thought this was a good response. What if that person injures themselves on the street? Why not require everyone to be trained in first aid? This kind of arbitrary distinction doesn't make much sense until you remember that we have these regulators sitting around with nothing better to do all day than craft rules for their tiny piece of jurisdiction.
Everyone IS required to be trained in first aid. Germany has a "duty to rescue" law and you can't get a driver's license without attending a training course on basic first aid, CPR and traffic accident rescue procedures. If you come across an accident you are required by law to stop, call the emergency hotline if possible and do your best to
Isn't that exactly what happened here? Uber decides that the law doesn't apply to them because they say so; the law demonstrates what happens to people who act that way. Uber's sleaziness with respect to the law is punished.
Sure, the licensing requirements in some places might be absurd but that doesn't mean we should root for Uber. A lot of regulations for taxi drivers go beyond "has paid $N"; for instance, German taxi drivers are required to know things about traffic and transportation law that most people don't and also have to prove that they actually know the area they operate in. Uber doesn't require any of this; their drivers have a regular driver's license and that's it. Most of them probably haven't even taken a first aid class in the last five years, which taxi drivers also have to (and regular drivers are encouraged to).
If Uber wanted to compete fairly they'd get in touch with the appropriate people and lobby for an overhaul of the relevant laws to account for self-employed, third-party-brokered taxi drivers that operate on a pre-arranged flat fee bidding system. Those taxi drivers would still need licenses but some parts of the law could be streamlined or made more flexible. On Uber's part all that changes is that they ask for the taxi license number when you sign up and check every five years if it's still valid. That's the way we do things in civilized society. The way Uber does it is essentially organized crime - even if only because they're an organization that brokers deals for people who violate the taxi laws of their country.
(Also, someone pointed out that in NYC you can just wave down a taxi whenever you need one, which suggests an extreme taxi density compared to most other places in the world. NYC might want to limit the number of taxis on the streets, which would explain the extreme license cost - although a more elegant approach might be to simply refuse to issue new licenses until the number of active ones has dropped. This would still work against newcomers but that's inherent to the problem.)
IANAL but a bit of googling revealed that apparently German taxis are subject to at least these laws or parts of them: (I'll selectively paraphrase; there's quite a bite more in there.)
Personenbeförderungsgesetz (PBefG): Contains rules for passenger transportation with trams, trolleybuses and motor vehicles. Apparently trains are covered elsewhere. Only some of the rules apply because cars (vehicles that can transport up to six people including the driver) have a special exception.
Verordnung über den Betrieb von Kraftfahrunternehmen im Personenverkehr (BOKraft): Contains rules for passenger transportation companies that use trolleybuses or motor vehicles. This seems the most important one for taxi companies and covers things like vehicle maintenance, whether subcontracting is allowed, notification requirements, how to deal with lost property
The taxi-specific sections cover things like technical requirements, such as an alarm wired to the horn and lights that the driver can activate from their seat, a calibrated and illuminated taximeter or an optional bulletproof divider. Taxis must be painted with the color RAL 1015 of the RAL 840 HR palette and must have a "TAXI" sign of specific orientation and dimensions on top. They must display their taxi registration number in a specific style and place and also display the name and address of the company where the passenger can easily read them. Taxi drivers must take the shortest possible route to their target; if another route would be cheaper or faster, this has to be cleared with the passenger beforehand.
There's also some stuff in there that most people don't know - for instance, BOKraft-covered transport vehicles must have a copy of the laws governing pricing pnboard and must show them to the passenger upon request.
Berufszugangsverordnung für den Straßenpersonenverkehr (PBZugV): Contains rules on who is allowed to transport other people. People with a criminal record or a record of severe traffic law violations are banned from working as drivers; company-level misbehavior might disqualify an entire company. Companies must have enough money to keep their fleet in shape. They must regularly check whether all drivers are still qualified to work as taxi drivers.
Drivers (in order to be hirable) must have an understanding of the laws governing passenger transportation, of vehicle maintenance, of radio protocols, of certain accounting procedures and even of environmental guidelines on vehicle operation and maintenance. They must pass two written and optionaly one additional oral exam of one hour each with the local chamber of industry and commerce; alternatively, five years of work in a different BPZugV-covered company can be seen as equivalent.
Paragraph 48 Fahrerlaubnisverordnung (FeV): contains rules on taxi driver licenses. Examples: Taxi drivers must prove they know the area they operate in and that they have an appropriate understanding of first aid. If the driver is found unreliable, the license can be revoked (e.g. this once happened after a driver repeatedly refused to make short distance trips). Taxi driver licenses have to be reapplied for every five years.
Others, like the FPersG and FPersV, cover legal technicalities like when and how to have your license card with you etc. Additionally, municipalities may pass additional regulations.
So yeah, the law is pretty clear: None of the people who work for Uber are licensed to do so, thus they can't guarantee that they know about stuff like applying laws or where to drive. They can't even guarantee that the drivers aren't explicitly banned from working as drivers. Of course the law is going to come down hard on them.
If ridesharing is here to stay the law might adapt, but only by relaxing the signage requirements for very small companies. You'd still have to have a taxi driver's license, you'd still have to register the car and you'd still have to demonstrate an u
Just nuke them. It has a lot of advantages:
- You can get rid of old nuclear warheads that don't operate to spec anymore. As long as they still have enough power to vaporize a group of people sitting right next to them they're fine.
- It should be fairly painless, given that the prisoners' brains quickly transition to a gaseous state.
- It's inherently flashy so everyone looking for bloody retribution can see it being served from one state over.
- It's inherently suitable for group executions, which makes it very efficient in dealing with America's large number of criminals.
- It makes you consider whether you really want that prisoner dead. If you're not willing to nuke some part of your state you probably don't want the person's death that much.
Plus, it doesn't make you look much sillier than complaining about how nobody wants to sell you equipment for killing your own citizens.
I wonder if Valve will expand the Steam Cloud in response. Steam already warns you on game launch if your savegames don't match what's in the cloud so broken savegames can be recovered as long as you don't sync. The flaw in that is that syncing happens whenever you exit the game so you'd have to force-kill Steam if you notice that everything is corrupt. (Perhaps this only applies if your game actually saved something but some games are very save-happy.)
If Valve adds a simple versioning system, even if it just offers the current version and the one before that, crypto-ransomware will become completely useless against Steam titles.
A faster, leaner and generally less quirky alternative to Chromium-based browsers, especially on mobile. Lots of work on the standards front. Plus MDN is one of the best web development knowledgebases I know. Also Thunderbird, the only platform-independent mail client used by more then a handful of people. Oh, and they came up with asm.js, which allows massive performance gains for generated JS code.
Honestly, I have no idea what the article is talking about:
- The "waning market share" doesn't seem to wane all that much, going by international market share numbers (although I'm in Germany where Firefox is still the undisputed top dog so that may color my perception).
- The only thing close to "questions over tooling for their platform" I am aware of is that they're implementing Gecko's successor in Rust, their own programming language.
- While FirefoxOS has pretty much zero presence today it's still easy to run Firefox on Android (and I recommend it because the bundled browser is usually an antique, plus mobile Blink/WebKit ain't all that hot anyway).
- I have no idea what "Gecko-flavored JavaScript" is supposed to be and how it's supposed to deliver "standard tools" that other browser vendors somehow have.
Even if Mozilla sucked at what they're doing (cf. Microsoft, although they're at least trying these days) they'd create competition and thus drive the other players forward.
(No, I don't work for Mozilla. I'm just a web dev.)