I wasn't disagreeing or agreeing with you. I was giving my experience in NYC. The black cars are Uber-like and have been around a long time, without major problems or complaint. Yes, they do hails (illegally) but try to do so only in a way that won't get them caught, like the ones I'd "hail" at the hotel. There were no yellow taxis waiting at the hotel. But piles at the airport. And no black cars waiting at the airport. Perhaps they were circling until a dispatch came in. I never waited long for a black car. Shorter than I wait for an Uber car in a less popular city.
If they were copyrighted after 1 Jan 1978, then someone holds the copyright until 70 years after he died. You didn't tell me when that was so I cannot answer with a specific date. Now, who holds that copyright? If you recall, I said that you, as the heir, probably do, or whoever the heir is. I said that all it would take is for you as the heir to put the material in public domain and the copyright would be ended and the books freely copyable.
Most of his time as a history professor is after that, and he died 3 years ago. Jointly my sister and I split everything from his estate, once it's settled (it hasn't been yet, for someone over 80, who never thought he'd make it to 50, he sure left a mess of an estate). And the point was more to the fact that, without records, I don't know what he owns or shares copyright over. So anything he wrote is abandoned. I could spend time and money tracking them down, but why spend time and money on something that's likely worthless?
If the copyright holder doesn't know he is, then who is going to file a lawsuit for violation of copyright law?
As has happened with games, someone sees someone else making money, and goes after them. People who didn't get clear title over something, and those sorts of things. If you make money, you become a target. If I saw something that sounded like his specialty making money, I'd look into it enough to figure out of my father was aware of it, just for general curiosity. And if he was, then I could start up trouble. Not that I think that would ever happen, but that it could, so it discourages people from building on the works of others. Copyright does the opposite of its stated purpose, and since the stated purpose is clear in the Constitution, I believe that makes all copyright law in the USA unconstitutional.
Is it really a government-granted monopoly if anyone with a chauffeur's license and proof of appropriate insurance can lease a medallion from the city government?
No. It's not a monopoly in that case. But that's not the case with medallions in NYC, Chicago, Dallas, and other places. Medallions are fixed, demand isn't. So the medallions increase in value ever year. You can't lease a medallion from the city. They are fixed in number and permanently held in private hands.
But this is the worst of both worlds. It's a governemnt created monopoly that benefits the 1% directly, with no benefit to the taxpayers for the monopoly. If the Government leased them out in monthly auctions, then the fees would be collected for the general coffers (owned by the people), not bought one-time for $20 then worth millions from the severe shortage of them.
Anchorage looked into issuing more medallions on the basis that the number was too small for the growth, but the rules say only the medallion holders can vote in new medallions, and they *never* do. So when the city looked into issuing more, or changing the rules, the cab lobby got a judge to warn the city that would be a "taking" as defined by the Constitution, and the city would be responsible for buying back all the medallions at a fair market price (being the inflated monopoly price).
Uber has succeeded in remaking the cab market and externalizing all equipment costs and liability to the drivers, all while actually even paying them (unbelievably) less than the chicken-scratch cab drivers already make, and all the while pretending they do something different than charge money for a ride somewhere.
I've never been a driver, but I know some, and listening to their moaning, they claim all the costs are already on the driver. The driver is responsible for the car while they have it (and damage, but also all the estimated wear and tear). The drivers I've talked to indicate they don't get much more than tips (if any more than tips) when they are done. It's possible to drive a shift and lose money. This is illegal in most industries. I've seen strip clubs shut down because they charged "employees" to use a changing room or locker. But it's ok for medallion owners to "employ" drivers to make less than minimum wage because it's a rental fee, not an employment contract.
The slave-owner medallion holders won't get any sympathy from me.
driving for UberX is working for free
How much base salary to you get driving a cab? Where you are, is it possible to drive a shift and lose money?
I hope Uber does replace taxis and become the only show in town, just so I can watch all the fucking Uber evangelists start bitching about how Uber actually became MUCH WORSE (already happening) than the taxi companies they replaced.
It'll be fine, so long as everyone paying does so with a credit card, and reverses the charges every time the fee is not the base fee. The number-1 horror I hear is about the fee charged being something other than the negotiated rate. But I don't know who banks that (The drivers indicate it's Uber) and how it's decided or presented. But if I were charged that, I'd reverse the charge.
I've always heard them called "travelator" though Wikipedia tells me that's the British English term for it. But I remember calling them that when I'd only seen them in US airports.
The problem is when they are stacked. Drive 10 miles at 50 mph, and you get charged for 10 miles, and 12 minutes. It's not like it was a slow trip, but you get double-charged. At least calculate the bill from the worse of the time or miles, not the sum of both.
Singapore addresses this by charging 20% more at busy times to make up for the slower traffic, but avoids the time-based fees (I think).
Private cars (Livery cars) are operating the same as Uber, and have been for many years. "Taxi" lets you stop for anyone you see on the side of the road. Uber doesn't do that, and thus, isn't a Taxi.
You can fix it. Incorporate. Sell everything you own. Buy a house (or two) in Vegas. There are some good houses going for under $100k. So $40k will get you two houses with 80% down. Rent them out. As your equity grows, borrow more from them to buy more houses in whatever market has the most depressed houses (except Detroit). Repeat until you are a millionaire.
Keep a day job to eat, but buy as much depressed housing as you can afford (more than you can afford, borrow for it). It's the only way to get ahead these days, unless you are a childless couple making $50k+ each.
What Uber did in NYC was to make the chartering process far faster than it had ever been, to the point that it was more competitive with Taxis, convenience wise, than the old school systems.
Not in practice. In practice, the private cars are everywhere. At the hotel I stayed at, right at JFK, they had a line of them, like taxis, waiting for someone to step out of the door and hail them. They also gave a card when I got to the city. Call from my mobile, and they'll have someone there in moments. I just used the public transport back, gotta live like the locals, but I don't doubt they were identical to Taxis, aside from cost (they were cheaper) and hailing. And you can't hail a Uber either, so Uber is a private car, not a taxi, and private cars have done a good job of trying to keep up. Better than the taxis.
That's the only difference, albeit just a technicality.
Same one the private car services in NYC have been using for decades without anyone caring enough to raise this level of stink over it. But *over* *the* *Internet* and suddenly it's a big deal.
Firefox was always about bloat. 5-10 years ago, I was a firm supporter of Opera. And when people talked about browsers here, someone would post a speed comparison where a minimal install of Firefox was compared with a full install of Opera, and Firefox was faster. Then, when I pointed out the mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and ad-blocking in Opera that wasn't in that test, someone else would link to a list of Firefox add-ins. So the tests were always an "unusable" minmum install against everyone else, and the feature comparisions were of all the possible add-ons against everyone else. But I tried it. After 20-30 add-ons (necessary to match the features missing from the base install) if was unusable. And even with minimal add-ons, it never equaled my use of Opera (20-70 tabs open at most times). Doing that with Firefox killed my machine. As did IE, when IE finally supported tabs many years later. I still have Opera as my search browser. I like opening 20-30 tabs for a search. multiple reviews, multiple search parameters. Then close all but one when I find what I like. Maybe bookmark it, depending on what I was doing. It's the best way to find things that aren't popular to be the first result in every search engine (code the search engines so that "a [search]" searches Ask, "b [search]" searches Bing, and so on. It comes with some common ones pre-programmed, but you can change them to whatever you like. So heavier, in-depth searches were always much easier on Opera because of the ease of doing so many searches, and then comparing the results.
But my "main" browser is Chrome because we use lots of Google things at work.
I'd bet they were tested many times in development (or are a re-package of a licensed device). They just weren't tested by the officials. It's like Marijuana in the US. It was legal, but needed a tax stamp. It's all about the tax stamp, not the "safety" of it.
You were so interested in proving every one of my statements wrong, you didn't address the point. Try again. Who holds the copyright of my father's writings? Who can re-print them? If the "rightful" copyright owner doesn't know he is, how is that not abandonware?
Yep. Wal-Mart sucks that way. The Levis you get there are badged the same, but are cheaper material than elsewhere. They do the same with lawn mowers and such (there's a book written by a mower maker that turned down Wal-Mart that goes into details).
All sorts of shenanigans are done in the goal of profits. Look at game consoles. They sell for a (small) loss day-1, and replace everything they can that won't break game compatibility with cheaper pieces. Eventually the loss is turned into a profit. Others have learned from that and do the same, replacing everything they can in their toys, as often as they can. That's why consumer desktop models don't restore to the same model. You could buy the first PC of a line and the last, and a backup from one wouldn't restore on the other. But the business lines would try to keep the compatibility up. Turns out that worked the other way. A 5 year old chip costs more than a 6 month old one (because the demand is so low, you have to pay extra so the chip maker doesn't re-purpose the fab). So that's one reason why business computers cost more.
Most cases square out the phone. If your worry is not being able to set it on its side, I think that plenty of cases can fix your problem without having to throw away your expensive new camera.
Strange. Where from? I know Best Buy generally tries to get special deals. I bough a washer-dryer combination there for a lot less than elsewhere, but they weren't directly comparable. The one at Best Buy was XXX-XX-XX-BB and the one at Sears was XXX-XX-XX-SR, or something like that. They code them like a different color, with extra part numbers on the end, do make price-matching impossible. But the units were physically identical. They even had the same part number on the manual and for the manual. But the manufacturer codes were different in stores so that price matching was impossible.
The only problem with my Sharp TV (My only big Black Friday purchase, ever) was that the electrical specs weren't printed by the power port. The manual says is could be "world" or "USA only" power. But there's no way to know. I can plug it into my 240v 50Hz and see if it catches fire. Other than that, they can't say. Seems they used "world" power supplies in some TVs and USA-only in others. Mixed in the same product line with the same part numbers, with no identifiers for anyone to figure it out. From what support told me, even if I opened up the TV, I wouldn't know (or they don't know how I would tell). But that was a standard Sharp feature at the time, not special to the Friday deal.
No, it was to guarantee a maximum to increase profits of the few who won the medallion lottery. The theory was that if anyone could do it, without artificial scarcity imposed, then the barriers would be too low. In a purely free-market taxi system, you'd have too many at 5 p.m. fighting for the busy time, and none at 5 a.m. when the chance of a fare was lower.
With too few taxis at all times, the ones that are allowed to operate generally work 24/7, leading to a surplus of taxis at 5 a.m. and a shortage at 5 p.m. This was by design, and "controlling congestion" was never the reason (though it may have been given as a reason for later medallion makers).
Yeah, the guy has millions in medallions (even at today's bargain prices), and wants us to feel sad for him and his losses, because they used to be worth twice that. And the 1% doesn't get why people hate them. Whining about bankruptcy for only being worth a few hundred times what the average person makes in a lifetime. Sucks to be him.
I think I'm pretty reasonable. I was looking for a TV. So I waited until Black Friday. Got a $3000 TV from Sears for $700 (46" 8 years ago or so). Still compares well to new TVs (full HD, but not LED).
Though for a home PC, I'd look more into a KVM over IP or long-distance video over Cat-5/6. I've seen some that will do HD over CAT-5. You just need to buy extra hardware on both ends. And it was VGA only, not HDMI or Display port. There are lots of ways to throw video over a home network.
Many TVs will accept a VGA cable. As the VGA standard isn't, you can sell a 50 foot cable that doesn't work, but put an HDMI tag on a 50' cable and you are committing fraud, as you can't meet the HDMI standards with a 50' cable. A VGA cable that's too long will have image problems. Color mis-match (looks like a 3D movie without the glasses), and other things that could be described as "tearing". OR perhaps he found a place that sold HDMI cables that didn't work, and they failed that way. I've run VGA about 100' (required powered splitters,and multiple segments and such), but I've never tried to violate the HDMI standards so blatantly.
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I wasn't disagreeing or agreeing with you. I was giving my experience in NYC. The black cars are Uber-like and have been around a long time, without major problems or complaint. Yes, they do hails (illegally) but try to do so only in a way that won't get them caught, like the ones I'd "hail" at the hotel. There were no yellow taxis waiting at the hotel. But piles at the airport. And no black cars waiting at the airport. Perhaps they were circling until a dispatch came in. I never waited long for a black car. Shorter than I wait for an Uber car in a less popular city.
If they were copyrighted after 1 Jan 1978, then someone holds the copyright until 70 years after he died. You didn't tell me when that was so I cannot answer with a specific date. Now, who holds that copyright? If you recall, I said that you, as the heir, probably do, or whoever the heir is. I said that all it would take is for you as the heir to put the material in public domain and the copyright would be ended and the books freely copyable.
Most of his time as a history professor is after that, and he died 3 years ago. Jointly my sister and I split everything from his estate, once it's settled (it hasn't been yet, for someone over 80, who never thought he'd make it to 50, he sure left a mess of an estate). And the point was more to the fact that, without records, I don't know what he owns or shares copyright over. So anything he wrote is abandoned. I could spend time and money tracking them down, but why spend time and money on something that's likely worthless?
If the copyright holder doesn't know he is, then who is going to file a lawsuit for violation of copyright law?
As has happened with games, someone sees someone else making money, and goes after them. People who didn't get clear title over something, and those sorts of things. If you make money, you become a target. If I saw something that sounded like his specialty making money, I'd look into it enough to figure out of my father was aware of it, just for general curiosity. And if he was, then I could start up trouble. Not that I think that would ever happen, but that it could, so it discourages people from building on the works of others. Copyright does the opposite of its stated purpose, and since the stated purpose is clear in the Constitution, I believe that makes all copyright law in the USA unconstitutional.
Is it really a government-granted monopoly if anyone with a chauffeur's license and proof of appropriate insurance can lease a medallion from the city government?
No. It's not a monopoly in that case. But that's not the case with medallions in NYC, Chicago, Dallas, and other places. Medallions are fixed, demand isn't. So the medallions increase in value ever year. You can't lease a medallion from the city. They are fixed in number and permanently held in private hands.
But this is the worst of both worlds. It's a governemnt created monopoly that benefits the 1% directly, with no benefit to the taxpayers for the monopoly. If the Government leased them out in monthly auctions, then the fees would be collected for the general coffers (owned by the people), not bought one-time for $20 then worth millions from the severe shortage of them.
Anchorage looked into issuing more medallions on the basis that the number was too small for the growth, but the rules say only the medallion holders can vote in new medallions, and they *never* do. So when the city looked into issuing more, or changing the rules, the cab lobby got a judge to warn the city that would be a "taking" as defined by the Constitution, and the city would be responsible for buying back all the medallions at a fair market price (being the inflated monopoly price).
Uber has succeeded in remaking the cab market and externalizing all equipment costs and liability to the drivers, all while actually even paying them (unbelievably) less than the chicken-scratch cab drivers already make, and all the while pretending they do something different than charge money for a ride somewhere.
I've never been a driver, but I know some, and listening to their moaning, they claim all the costs are already on the driver. The driver is responsible for the car while they have it (and damage, but also all the estimated wear and tear). The drivers I've talked to indicate they don't get much more than tips (if any more than tips) when they are done. It's possible to drive a shift and lose money. This is illegal in most industries. I've seen strip clubs shut down because they charged "employees" to use a changing room or locker. But it's ok for medallion owners to "employ" drivers to make less than minimum wage because it's a rental fee, not an employment contract.
The slave-owner medallion holders won't get any sympathy from me.
driving for UberX is working for free
How much base salary to you get driving a cab? Where you are, is it possible to drive a shift and lose money?
I hope Uber does replace taxis and become the only show in town, just so I can watch all the fucking Uber evangelists start bitching about how Uber actually became MUCH WORSE (already happening) than the taxi companies they replaced.
It'll be fine, so long as everyone paying does so with a credit card, and reverses the charges every time the fee is not the base fee. The number-1 horror I hear is about the fee charged being something other than the negotiated rate. But I don't know who banks that (The drivers indicate it's Uber) and how it's decided or presented. But if I were charged that, I'd reverse the charge.
I've always heard them called "travelator" though Wikipedia tells me that's the British English term for it. But I remember calling them that when I'd only seen them in US airports.
The problem is when they are stacked. Drive 10 miles at 50 mph, and you get charged for 10 miles, and 12 minutes. It's not like it was a slow trip, but you get double-charged. At least calculate the bill from the worse of the time or miles, not the sum of both.
Singapore addresses this by charging 20% more at busy times to make up for the slower traffic, but avoids the time-based fees (I think).
Private cars (Livery cars) are operating the same as Uber, and have been for many years. "Taxi" lets you stop for anyone you see on the side of the road. Uber doesn't do that, and thus, isn't a Taxi.
You can fix it. Incorporate. Sell everything you own. Buy a house (or two) in Vegas. There are some good houses going for under $100k. So $40k will get you two houses with 80% down. Rent them out. As your equity grows, borrow more from them to buy more houses in whatever market has the most depressed houses (except Detroit). Repeat until you are a millionaire.
Keep a day job to eat, but buy as much depressed housing as you can afford (more than you can afford, borrow for it). It's the only way to get ahead these days, unless you are a childless couple making $50k+ each.
Or, move out of the US.
Lynx?
What Uber did in NYC was to make the chartering process far faster than it had ever been, to the point that it was more competitive with Taxis, convenience wise, than the old school systems.
Not in practice. In practice, the private cars are everywhere. At the hotel I stayed at, right at JFK, they had a line of them, like taxis, waiting for someone to step out of the door and hail them. They also gave a card when I got to the city. Call from my mobile, and they'll have someone there in moments. I just used the public transport back, gotta live like the locals, but I don't doubt they were identical to Taxis, aside from cost (they were cheaper) and hailing. And you can't hail a Uber either, so Uber is a private car, not a taxi, and private cars have done a good job of trying to keep up. Better than the taxis.
That's the only difference, albeit just a technicality.
Same one the private car services in NYC have been using for decades without anyone caring enough to raise this level of stink over it. But *over* *the* *Internet* and suddenly it's a big deal.
https://www.google.co.nz/searc...
Firefox was always about bloat. 5-10 years ago, I was a firm supporter of Opera. And when people talked about browsers here, someone would post a speed comparison where a minimal install of Firefox was compared with a full install of Opera, and Firefox was faster. Then, when I pointed out the mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and ad-blocking in Opera that wasn't in that test, someone else would link to a list of Firefox add-ins. So the tests were always an "unusable" minmum install against everyone else, and the feature comparisions were of all the possible add-ons against everyone else. But I tried it. After 20-30 add-ons (necessary to match the features missing from the base install) if was unusable. And even with minimal add-ons, it never equaled my use of Opera (20-70 tabs open at most times). Doing that with Firefox killed my machine. As did IE, when IE finally supported tabs many years later. I still have Opera as my search browser. I like opening 20-30 tabs for a search. multiple reviews, multiple search parameters. Then close all but one when I find what I like. Maybe bookmark it, depending on what I was doing. It's the best way to find things that aren't popular to be the first result in every search engine (code the search engines so that "a [search]" searches Ask, "b [search]" searches Bing, and so on. It comes with some common ones pre-programmed, but you can change them to whatever you like. So heavier, in-depth searches were always much easier on Opera because of the ease of doing so many searches, and then comparing the results.
But my "main" browser is Chrome because we use lots of Google things at work.
So you use Opera now?
These things being untested/uncertified and all.
I'd bet they were tested many times in development (or are a re-package of a licensed device). They just weren't tested by the officials. It's like Marijuana in the US. It was legal, but needed a tax stamp. It's all about the tax stamp, not the "safety" of it.
You were so interested in proving every one of my statements wrong, you didn't address the point. Try again. Who holds the copyright of my father's writings? Who can re-print them? If the "rightful" copyright owner doesn't know he is, how is that not abandonware?
Yep. Wal-Mart sucks that way. The Levis you get there are badged the same, but are cheaper material than elsewhere. They do the same with lawn mowers and such (there's a book written by a mower maker that turned down Wal-Mart that goes into details).
All sorts of shenanigans are done in the goal of profits. Look at game consoles. They sell for a (small) loss day-1, and replace everything they can that won't break game compatibility with cheaper pieces. Eventually the loss is turned into a profit. Others have learned from that and do the same, replacing everything they can in their toys, as often as they can. That's why consumer desktop models don't restore to the same model. You could buy the first PC of a line and the last, and a backup from one wouldn't restore on the other. But the business lines would try to keep the compatibility up. Turns out that worked the other way. A 5 year old chip costs more than a 6 month old one (because the demand is so low, you have to pay extra so the chip maker doesn't re-purpose the fab). So that's one reason why business computers cost more.
Most cases square out the phone. If your worry is not being able to set it on its side, I think that plenty of cases can fix your problem without having to throw away your expensive new camera.
Strange. Where from? I know Best Buy generally tries to get special deals. I bough a washer-dryer combination there for a lot less than elsewhere, but they weren't directly comparable. The one at Best Buy was XXX-XX-XX-BB and the one at Sears was XXX-XX-XX-SR, or something like that. They code them like a different color, with extra part numbers on the end, do make price-matching impossible. But the units were physically identical. They even had the same part number on the manual and for the manual. But the manufacturer codes were different in stores so that price matching was impossible.
The only problem with my Sharp TV (My only big Black Friday purchase, ever) was that the electrical specs weren't printed by the power port. The manual says is could be "world" or "USA only" power. But there's no way to know. I can plug it into my 240v 50Hz and see if it catches fire. Other than that, they can't say. Seems they used "world" power supplies in some TVs and USA-only in others. Mixed in the same product line with the same part numbers, with no identifiers for anyone to figure it out. From what support told me, even if I opened up the TV, I wouldn't know (or they don't know how I would tell). But that was a standard Sharp feature at the time, not special to the Friday deal.
No, it was to guarantee a maximum to increase profits of the few who won the medallion lottery. The theory was that if anyone could do it, without artificial scarcity imposed, then the barriers would be too low. In a purely free-market taxi system, you'd have too many at 5 p.m. fighting for the busy time, and none at 5 a.m. when the chance of a fare was lower.
With too few taxis at all times, the ones that are allowed to operate generally work 24/7, leading to a surplus of taxis at 5 a.m. and a shortage at 5 p.m. This was by design, and "controlling congestion" was never the reason (though it may have been given as a reason for later medallion makers).
Yeah, the guy has millions in medallions (even at today's bargain prices), and wants us to feel sad for him and his losses, because they used to be worth twice that. And the 1% doesn't get why people hate them. Whining about bankruptcy for only being worth a few hundred times what the average person makes in a lifetime. Sucks to be him.
I think I'm pretty reasonable. I was looking for a TV. So I waited until Black Friday. Got a $3000 TV from Sears for $700 (46" 8 years ago or so). Still compares well to new TVs (full HD, but not LED).
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/fo...
Just one of many examples.
Though for a home PC, I'd look more into a KVM over IP or long-distance video over Cat-5/6. I've seen some that will do HD over CAT-5. You just need to buy extra hardware on both ends. And it was VGA only, not HDMI or Display port. There are lots of ways to throw video over a home network.
Many TVs will accept a VGA cable. As the VGA standard isn't, you can sell a 50 foot cable that doesn't work, but put an HDMI tag on a 50' cable and you are committing fraud, as you can't meet the HDMI standards with a 50' cable. A VGA cable that's too long will have image problems. Color mis-match (looks like a 3D movie without the glasses), and other things that could be described as "tearing". OR perhaps he found a place that sold HDMI cables that didn't work, and they failed that way. I've run VGA about 100' (required powered splitters,and multiple segments and such), but I've never tried to violate the HDMI standards so blatantly.