We do require; the problem is many states allow an exemption for personal beliefs.
The vaccination should be required regardless of beliefs or conscientious objection by the parents, because
other People's safety is at risk.
Furthermore... if the reason for exemption is medical; this should require at least two healthcare officials to
verify it and sign off on it, and there should be a requirement to renew the certification every year.
Also, the immunization certificates should have conspicuous expiration dates before the next booster is needed
for each vaccine, and schools should be required to verify these annually.
The certificate should also be required to be admitted to an institution of higher education, to buy or own real property, to register a vehicle, to obtain airplane tickets, boarding pass, or to step into an airplane, to obtain and renew a driver's license or other ID with a stamp making it an immunization ID as well, proof of immunization (or presentation of drivers license/ID that certification is required for) should be necessary to enter publicly owned buildings where a large number of people may be present, and employers should be required to verify certificate (or require vaccination) before employing any new worker.
Obtaining social security, unemployment, welfare benefits, should also require an active immunization certificate.
In other words: there should be gates requiring citizens to have proper immunization or medical exemption from them.
Why go to all the trouble of actual pieces of paper/stamps/etc? A database keeping track of which person has which vaccine is probably the simplest database there is. I wouldn't use a SSN as a unique identifier but Name+Birthdate+Birthtown is probably sufficient. Make it open to the public on the internet so that we can check our neighbors if desired. Make some APIs so that other software packages can check easily. That kind of information is a public service/right to know. I'm all for the right to privacy but for this information, public health trumps. It boggles my mind that it hasn't been done already, even on a state level.
It's coming... Starting in Oct 2015 there will be "incentives" for vendors to have the means to accept them. It will still take a few more years, but it is coming.
Frankly it amazes me that it is so hard to find a chip and pin card in the USA now. I got a traveler-oriented credit card a couple months ago. When shopping around the chip and pin cards were really nowhere to be found, despite how useful they would be if I were to travel to Europe. It wasn't a feature high on my list though since I primarily travel to Switzerland and Japan, both of which seem to accept the chip less cards.
I thought Greed was getting kickbacks from the lobbying groups to buy your support for questionable bills.
What he has done is effectively apply game theory in deciding which coins to target and how to spread his resources. It is quite clever but applying this solution to this style of problem isn't really unexpected.
You don't get it, do you. If you were in China, this discussion wouldn't be happening, and simply for posting here you could be in jail.
In the US, we are given the illusion of freedom and transparency so that we feel superior, poke fun and insults at the systems of other systems, and don't question our own system. Propaganda is most effective when people don't realize it as such. Different methods, same result.
There are many legitimate reasons to limit the number of cars available for hire
Granted, but such a crude tool like limiting the number of medallions is one of the old methods that made sense long ago, but doesn't any more. Without services like Uber it would be nearly impossible to implement a more modern, more efficient and more useful solution.
They are pushing the boundaries and making people ask the right questions, which could lead to a "more efficient and more useful solution." My personal gripe is that people assume Uber's model is good, and deregulation is that more efficient and more useful solution. Obviously Uber does not mention the downsides themselves, and the number of people questioning their model as being good for society is typically not substantial.
To assume number of 32-bit systems in 2038 running Linux will be zero is more foolish than waiting to exhaustion before deploying IPv6.
Hmmm... 2038 is in 24 years.
24 years ago from now was 1990. That was just around the time the first 486 machines were released.
So, in the same way as nobody seriously gives a damn about ancient 486s, if you're still running 32-bit Linux in 24 years... well, that will be your damned problem.:-P
If this is an issue for you, I suggest you start pondering getting a 64-bit machine... you've got 24 years to do it.
You're missing the point. This problem hasn't been fixed yet, despite being a known problem for a long time. It could be that come 2038, we find out that the problem wasn't fixed in new machines until 2035. Then it becomes a serious headache.
Oh, and just an additional comment, from my past experience in the auto industry: this wasn't an "oops, I wasn't supposed to say that!" remark. The Japanese companies are in general very good at controlling information flow; this was clearly planned for him to say that. But the reason he said it was almost certainly not to prepare people for the coming day of flying cars; it's about perception. It's a major brand positive for an auto maker to be perceived as high tech / cutting edge / innovative, and they want to culture that.
Remember Rick Wagoner, the guy whose tenure at GM made a graph of the company's stock look like a double diamond ski slope? Of all of the things that he could have regretted, he's stated that the number one thing he regrets was axing the EV1 (late 90s electric car) program. The EV1 lost tens of thousands of dollars per unit and there weren't many made so there was major overhead on top of it; but by axing the program to save a little money, they willingly gave up the perception of being a tech innovator, right at the time the Japanese companies were introducing hybrids. Even to people who weren't considering buying a Prius or Insight - aka, the vast majority of consumers - the very perception that Toyota and Honda appeared to be high-tech innovators demonstrably influenced consumer buying decisions.
Car makers have slick PR teams who survey and carefully try to manipulate the public perceptions about themselves to influence buyer behavior. Expect that the decision to mention this came straight from one of them.
Yes, but companies kill various programs all the time. Even Toyota and Honda have introduced various electric cars, fuel-cell cars, natural gas cars, etc for lease and axed them just as quickly. Heck, Honda even repo'd the EV Plus and crushed the cars just like the EV1. Usually this happens without incident. The only thing unique about the EV1 is the almost cult-like following that it appeared to generate. This really appeared only after the program was canceled. It would be unreasonable to say that the manager who killed the program made a mistake. The backlash couldn't have been reasonably foreseeable given all the other programs that car companies cancel without incident all the time. Only in hindsight can we say that the canceling of the EV1 was a bad idea for GM. "Don't kill experimental programs or the public will be angry" is the wrong conclusion to arrive at with this case. The correct conclusion is to do all experimenting with new vehicle types on fleet customers or government customers, and not the general public.
No, it is the essence of competition. Every market has rules. The city limits the number of licenses in order to keep the number of taxis reasonable. Many cities also regulate the rates. These are the "rules" of the market. The fact that medallions trade for that much indicates that taxis are still profitable and new players are willing to pay that much for a medallion in order to enter the market. Medallions, in general, are fully transferrable and can be freely sold or traded. New ones are auctioned off periodically. If the market was anticompetitive, the major players would collude and not bid against each other, resulting in lower medallion costs. The fact that people can and do pay that much for one indicates that there is enough competition.
Also, their coverage is considerably higher (in dollar amount) than commercial taxis in major cities. Uber provides this for their drivers.
$1m isn't enough. Most commercial taxis are run by companies which have other assets besides 1 taxi which might be involved in a major accident. They usually have more taxis, the taxi license (which can be sold for a high price, about $1m each in NYC), an dispatcher office somewhere, etc. They also have other sources of income- if one taxi is destroyed and the driver disabled, the others still generate income. If their insurance only partly covers an accident, they can pay it off using the income from the other taxis, sell some of their (considerable) assets, get a business loan, etc.
Compare this with Joe Blow with his 1 car, 1 employee (himself), and no other significant assets. Let's assume a very serious accident involving multiple cars with multiple injuries. At best, Joe escaped the accident unharmed, and only has to buy a new car. More likely, Joe himself was probably injured in the serious accident, can't work for several days/weeks/months, and has his own medical bills to pay. His "normal" vehicle insurance won't chip in for Joe's injuries since it doesn't cover commercial use of the vehicle. The passengers' medical bills exceed $1m, which can easily happen in a very serious accident. What recourse does the passenger have? They have huge bills to pay and need to recover damages from someone, but Joe Blow might very well be destitute. Uber keeps their drivers at arms length so recovering from them is unlikely. The passenger gets screwed and has little legal recourse against a destitute Joe. Getting a $20 check from Joe every month for the next 50 years isn't going to pay their huge medical bills.
Even though the commercial taxi company has less insurance, the passenger is better protected against out of pocket accident costs.
Competition sucks. Gotta keep that privileged access to the market.
There are many legitimate reasons to limit the number of cars available for hire. Taxis drive around the city core looking for passengers, or park in the city waiting for a call. Increased competition would make this worse. In some cities, traffic is already a nightmare. I don't live in New York or any particularly dense city, but I have driven in many. Taking even a small number of cars off the road is often very desirable.
You can limit the number of delivery trucks, personal vehicles, and public/private busses on the roads only so much using financial incentives (high tolls and parking fees). At a certain point you need to use other methods to limit the number of cars, and limiting the number of taxis (and taxi-like services) is something that is easily implemented through taxi medallions. It is also reasonable because in most cities who don't license "enough" taxis, there are plenty of transportation alternatives.
Closed systems that go out of date quickly and are incompatible with anything newer.
Want an Example? BMW 525 Iphone cradle system. doesn't work with the iPhone 5, 5c or 5s.
Is this an argument against the parent? It seems like an argument for open I/O standards to me. All phones should be able to output HDMI video. All car entertainment systems should show up as input devices, and have sound I/O. These various I/O should be combined into 1 open standard wireless or wired connection. For wired connections, a standard input interface could be matched with a phone-specific dongle.
The problem historically has been that car stereo manufacturers have pandered to Apple, who can change their standards at any time, or have made up their own standards which they change at a whim. If a powerful group puts out an open standard with low or no licensing costs, this problem would be solved.
Personally, I'd really love to have one of chinese android head units but I can't justify spending $500 on purchasing and installing a car stereo right now.
Now these people are using this to get cool dreams, feel bliss, or see things, while otherwise they are healthy adults, then they are misusing the drug. Aka Drug Abuse. As well many of these drugs have long term effects that build up over time. So the first time you are 99.99999% Ok, but after a while your brain gets more damaged.
You're equating changes in the brain with "brain damage". Many drugs enact changes within the brain, some permanent and some temporary. The term "brain damage" is a loaded and inflammatory term signifying that all changes as a result of drugs are bad. Some are not bad. Some might either be good or bad depending on who is defining what is desirable in a brain.
I struggled for years with depression, anger management, and had difficulty relating to people. After smoking weed for a few months, my depression and short temper have almost vanished completely. I can look at people now and have an inkling of what emotions they might be feeling, and I don't say so many insensitive things anymore. I also sleep much better. I get upset when I see people say that weed is a wonderdrug, and I don't mean to imply that. It has made my quality of life much better though. You might describe the effects on my brain as "increased feminine qualities", which sounds bad and is how this kind of change is often described. Maybe that's exactly what my brain needed though. Not all changes in brain chemistry are bad.
... which was a great idea, but extremely poorly executed.
The Moto G and Moto E is really amazing for what it is - budget phones that have all the right things - IPS screen, snappy processor, good software, respectable brand, LTE (on E and Gv2), etc. It sells extremely well in the UK and many other markets in the EU.
If they opened up a factory in the UK or somewhere else in the EU, it may be 10-15 pounds more expensive to make than in China, but still there would be plenty of takers. In fact probably more so as it is manufactured locally and in an advanced economy - a sign of quality in its own right. The Raspberry Pi is made in the UK, and they were able to pretty much match cost with the batches produced in China.
Isn't this a quirk of the nature of the Raspberry Pi product? Rasperry Pi is just a board. We assemble electronics in China because Chinese assembly is cheap. A robotic boardmaking machine costs the same everywhere. If you don't need to assemble the pieces together with a screen, battery, processor, buttons, speaker, etc, there is no advantage to making the board in China.
Not even proper joysticks, but shitty mini-analogs.
All you need to do to discover how bad an idea joystick controls on a car would be is to try to use a scissor lift. They have a lot of torque (at low top speed), and you basically have to wedge your arm into the control harness and control the stick with a stiff wrist. Otherwise, you push the stick forward, the lift accelerates, inertia jerks your arm back, and you pull back on the stick. Rinse, repeat...
Or try driving any piece of heavy equipment over any kind of rough ground. I wondered why the front-end loader driver kept revving the engine. When I drove it myself, I quickly found out that rough ground + no suspension made the operator's foot bounce on the gas pedal and create a positive feedback cycle. More bump = more bouncing off the gas pedal = even more bumping around.
1. No, but if you want to make a commercial enterprise, don't come looking to me for a free hand out to get it started.
I thought that was the whole point of kickstarter. I don't think many of them are non-profits. This is just seed money for an educational semi-startup.
Yes but it is distasteful to me that a man who is worth somewhere between $6 and 145 million (it seems odd that the range is so large) is asking people with a lot less money to give him $1m. Even if we assume his net worth is only $6m, I really think he could manage to front 20% of his net worth to start up a business. I have a net worth of around $110k. If I was starting up a business I could float 20% of my net worth ($22k) fairly easily either through loans or taking it from investments. Rich people are rich because they find ways for other people to spend money on their behalf. The fact that his cause is "good" doesn't make this practice any better.
Dyson literally built over a THOUSAND prototypes trying to come up with a better vacuum.
Then he realized that vacuums are already good enough, and people don't really need a better vacuum. So he changed tactics and spent all of his efforts on marketing and style. The business model is exactly the same as Bose. The product isn't anything special but the marketing strategy is.
Cisco could make life miserable for the NSA by warehousing its gear in countries that won't cooperate with the US. Non-US orders could be filled from the closest such warehouse.
Non-cooperating countries that spring to mind include Russia (for European orders), China (for Asia), Venezuela (for S. America) and maybe Palestine (for the Middle East and Africa). I don't believe there are any N. American countries that the US can't coerce, so maybe the affected countries should use other network vendors.
The downside is that delivery times for overseas orders might become quite long:-) and/or spendy.
Most stable countries which don't cooperate with the US are also countries in which relatively small bribes will get you into any warehouse. This would actually be worse. In the US strange people in warehouses would eventually get noticed by somebody- maybe a dockworker, inventory manager, or a forklift operator would start asking questions. In Russia, China, Venezuela, you just pay off everybody who needs paying off.
Human level AI? I would rather not, most human drivers are bad. Try to use the cruise control on a crowded highway and you know what I mean. Just maintaining uniform speed is an impossible task for most drivers. Oh there is a minor bend in the road, I need to slow down, there is a minor hill, I need to slow down, look an accident on the other side of the road, I need to slow down.
In almost all cases a computer will be able to react way faster and with more precision than a human can. Yes there will be some minor flaws in the first systems, they will be systemic and patched out. With human drivers it is a gamble each time they get on the road.
Don't forget that absolute consistency is inefficient. I could make a cruise controller that kept the speed to within 0.01miles/hour, but that wouldn't be the best controller I could make. Cruise controllers should not be so strict- it is more efficient to let speed increase a couple of mph when going down hills, and let it to drop slightly when going up hills. The best cruise controller would be aware of the upcoming terrain and calculate the most fuel-efficient throttle position to take, considering the characteristics of the engine, vehicle drag, etc.
There actually has been talk of replacing the 8 50's era engines of the B52 with 4 modern engines (the same that Boeing puts on the 767)
Such an upgrade would give the B52 more thrust, better range, and a much more robust supply chain for spares.
As far as I know it has never gotten out of the proposal stage.
It would likely require changes to the wing/nacelle interface. It could very well be that the existing engine mounting points can't take the weight/thrust load so a more radical change to the wing might be required. If you're going that far, you might as well redesign the whole plane. Sometimes upgrades just aren't worth the cost, despite radical advancements in technology.
Yeah. At some point, no one is going to want to be CEO/CFO.
Massive CEO/CFO churn is a sign of a company in deep, serious trouble. Companies can handle occasional sudden losses of key personnel, but if it happens on a regular basis - that company is fucked.
It's also going to be bad for morale if the CEO/CFO keep getting whacked. Now, in the short term the company might have enough succession/disaster recovery plans to keep continuity going, but if the CEO/CFO in a company keep dying (as do the CEOs/CFOs of all other companies in the same industry), the employees are eventually going to say, "Fuck this, time for a career change."
You're equating terrorist organizations too much with a western-style company. Companies exist to create new products, market them, sell them, support them, and make sure existing customers become repeat customers. Most products are too complicated for a single person to make, let alone do all these other things.
Terrorists don't have to do any of these complicated things. All they have to do is acquire guns/explosives/knives and attack something. The "product" is so simple that illiterate children can do it. Spreading the message (marketing) can be done by anyone without any particular special skill. Repeatedly killing the "CEO" is a bit pointless- it may stop the franchise from creating more complex "products" (attacks) which require coordination and strategy, but in the end, (and I hate to use such a cliche) you can't kill an idea. Even worse, by killing these people from on high with missiles that often cause collateral damage, we are perpetuating and reinforcing the "idea".
I also don't own my own place, but I have found clever solutions over the years. When I lived in places with hot water heating, I would drill small holes under the radiators. These are unnoticeable if they are drilled within the safety shroud / housing of the radiator. Be extremely careful not to nick a water pipe.
Currently the place I rent has forced hot air. My router is in the basement but I have a PC on the main level. Forced air registers are fitted into appropriately-sized rectangular holes cut into the floors. However, the holes are not perfect, and are slightly oversized. I managed to sneak a CAT6 wire through this space. The space was small enough that I had to run the wire THEN crimp a connector on the end. I was prepared (but didn't need to) drill a hole directly in the air duct- when you move out, just tape it over with silver tape. Furnace maintenance people do this drill-and-tape trick commonly when they test natural gas units for CO/CO2.
Depending on the heating arrangement, this kind of solution may not be possible. However, in many cases, some creative thinking can find a non-destructive path for a temporary wire.
Was Google aware at the time that this policy was granting essentially the entire pocket personal media player market to Apple?
Probably, but Google's whole thing is always connected, cloud dependent appliances. Searching, streaming, and advertising/tracking wouldn't consistently work, which would make that whole market less interesting to them.
They don't really sell many physical products, like Apple, so there's no big push for Android on standalone devices. Then again, in the 2.x days they were still desperate for Android market penetration, so it is a little surprising that they didn't chase any market they could.
It is a silly rule. There's no reason that such standalone devices couldn't use bluetooth to connect to a smartphone data plan. I'm dying to get my hands on a good car stereo based on Android, but all of the chinese units have flaws or are more expensive than what I want to pay for a chinese brand with no support. Putting a cell modem into a car stereo is prohibitively expensive and dumb when most people in such a market have a smartphone anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Pretty useless for all but very very niche purposes.
Do you have a use for 1200 images per second which is not a very niche purpose?
We do require; the problem is many states allow an exemption for personal beliefs.
The vaccination should be required regardless of beliefs or conscientious objection by the parents, because other People's safety is at risk.
Furthermore... if the reason for exemption is medical; this should require at least two healthcare officials to verify it and sign off on it, and there should be a requirement to renew the certification every year.
Also, the immunization certificates should have conspicuous expiration dates before the next booster is needed for each vaccine, and schools should be required to verify these annually.
The certificate should also be required to be admitted to an institution of higher education, to buy or own real property, to register a vehicle, to obtain airplane tickets, boarding pass, or to step into an airplane, to obtain and renew a driver's license or other ID with a stamp making it an immunization ID as well, proof of immunization (or presentation of drivers license/ID that certification is required for) should be necessary to enter publicly owned buildings where a large number of people may be present, and employers should be required to verify certificate (or require vaccination) before employing any new worker. Obtaining social security, unemployment, welfare benefits, should also require an active immunization certificate.
In other words: there should be gates requiring citizens to have proper immunization or medical exemption from them.
Why go to all the trouble of actual pieces of paper/stamps/etc? A database keeping track of which person has which vaccine is probably the simplest database there is. I wouldn't use a SSN as a unique identifier but Name+Birthdate+Birthtown is probably sufficient. Make it open to the public on the internet so that we can check our neighbors if desired. Make some APIs so that other software packages can check easily. That kind of information is a public service/right to know. I'm all for the right to privacy but for this information, public health trumps. It boggles my mind that it hasn't been done already, even on a state level.
It's coming... Starting in Oct 2015 there will be "incentives" for vendors to have the means to accept them. It will still take a few more years, but it is coming.
Frankly it amazes me that it is so hard to find a chip and pin card in the USA now. I got a traveler-oriented credit card a couple months ago. When shopping around the chip and pin cards were really nowhere to be found, despite how useful they would be if I were to travel to Europe. It wasn't a feature high on my list though since I primarily travel to Switzerland and Japan, both of which seem to accept the chip less cards.
I thought Greed was getting kickbacks from the lobbying groups to buy your support for questionable bills.
What he has done is effectively apply game theory in deciding which coins to target and how to spread his resources. It is quite clever but applying this solution to this style of problem isn't really unexpected.
"The 10.5-inch device weighs just 467g and measures a mere 6.6mm in thickness" ...
Not really that amusing. Screen sizes in even the most solidly metric countries are often measured in inches.
You don't get it, do you. If you were in China, this discussion wouldn't be happening, and simply for posting here you could be in jail.
In the US, we are given the illusion of freedom and transparency so that we feel superior, poke fun and insults at the systems of other systems, and don't question our own system. Propaganda is most effective when people don't realize it as such. Different methods, same result.
There are many legitimate reasons to limit the number of cars available for hire
Granted, but such a crude tool like limiting the number of medallions is one of the old methods that made sense long ago, but doesn't any more. Without services like Uber it would be nearly impossible to implement a more modern, more efficient and more useful solution.
They are pushing the boundaries and making people ask the right questions, which could lead to a "more efficient and more useful solution." My personal gripe is that people assume Uber's model is good, and deregulation is that more efficient and more useful solution. Obviously Uber does not mention the downsides themselves, and the number of people questioning their model as being good for society is typically not substantial.
Hmmm ... 2038 is in 24 years.
24 years ago from now was 1990. That was just around the time the first 486 machines were released.
So, in the same way as nobody seriously gives a damn about ancient 486s, if you're still running 32-bit Linux in 24 years ... well, that will be your damned problem. :-P
If this is an issue for you, I suggest you start pondering getting a 64-bit machine ... you've got 24 years to do it.
You're missing the point. This problem hasn't been fixed yet, despite being a known problem for a long time. It could be that come 2038, we find out that the problem wasn't fixed in new machines until 2035. Then it becomes a serious headache.
Oh, and just an additional comment, from my past experience in the auto industry: this wasn't an "oops, I wasn't supposed to say that!" remark. The Japanese companies are in general very good at controlling information flow; this was clearly planned for him to say that. But the reason he said it was almost certainly not to prepare people for the coming day of flying cars; it's about perception. It's a major brand positive for an auto maker to be perceived as high tech / cutting edge / innovative, and they want to culture that.
Remember Rick Wagoner, the guy whose tenure at GM made a graph of the company's stock look like a double diamond ski slope? Of all of the things that he could have regretted, he's stated that the number one thing he regrets was axing the EV1 (late 90s electric car) program. The EV1 lost tens of thousands of dollars per unit and there weren't many made so there was major overhead on top of it; but by axing the program to save a little money, they willingly gave up the perception of being a tech innovator, right at the time the Japanese companies were introducing hybrids. Even to people who weren't considering buying a Prius or Insight - aka, the vast majority of consumers - the very perception that Toyota and Honda appeared to be high-tech innovators demonstrably influenced consumer buying decisions.
Car makers have slick PR teams who survey and carefully try to manipulate the public perceptions about themselves to influence buyer behavior. Expect that the decision to mention this came straight from one of them.
Yes, but companies kill various programs all the time. Even Toyota and Honda have introduced various electric cars, fuel-cell cars, natural gas cars, etc for lease and axed them just as quickly. Heck, Honda even repo'd the EV Plus and crushed the cars just like the EV1. Usually this happens without incident. The only thing unique about the EV1 is the almost cult-like following that it appeared to generate. This really appeared only after the program was canceled. It would be unreasonable to say that the manager who killed the program made a mistake. The backlash couldn't have been reasonably foreseeable given all the other programs that car companies cancel without incident all the time. Only in hindsight can we say that the canceling of the EV1 was a bad idea for GM. "Don't kill experimental programs or the public will be angry" is the wrong conclusion to arrive at with this case. The correct conclusion is to do all experimenting with new vehicle types on fleet customers or government customers, and not the general public.
Maybe the problem is not with Uber, but with the cost of being licensed. Is ~200,000 Euros really justified?
200k EU is cheap compared to NYC's $1M medallians.
It's blatently anti-competitive.
No, it is the essence of competition. Every market has rules. The city limits the number of licenses in order to keep the number of taxis reasonable. Many cities also regulate the rates. These are the "rules" of the market. The fact that medallions trade for that much indicates that taxis are still profitable and new players are willing to pay that much for a medallion in order to enter the market. Medallions, in general, are fully transferrable and can be freely sold or traded. New ones are auctioned off periodically. If the market was anticompetitive, the major players would collude and not bid against each other, resulting in lower medallion costs. The fact that people can and do pay that much for one indicates that there is enough competition.
Yes, and the solution is to eliminate that requirement.
That requirement exists for reasons besides money.
Also, their coverage is considerably higher (in dollar amount) than commercial taxis in major cities. Uber provides this for their drivers.
$1m isn't enough. Most commercial taxis are run by companies which have other assets besides 1 taxi which might be involved in a major accident. They usually have more taxis, the taxi license (which can be sold for a high price, about $1m each in NYC), an dispatcher office somewhere, etc. They also have other sources of income- if one taxi is destroyed and the driver disabled, the others still generate income. If their insurance only partly covers an accident, they can pay it off using the income from the other taxis, sell some of their (considerable) assets, get a business loan, etc.
Compare this with Joe Blow with his 1 car, 1 employee (himself), and no other significant assets. Let's assume a very serious accident involving multiple cars with multiple injuries. At best, Joe escaped the accident unharmed, and only has to buy a new car. More likely, Joe himself was probably injured in the serious accident, can't work for several days/weeks/months, and has his own medical bills to pay. His "normal" vehicle insurance won't chip in for Joe's injuries since it doesn't cover commercial use of the vehicle. The passengers' medical bills exceed $1m, which can easily happen in a very serious accident. What recourse does the passenger have? They have huge bills to pay and need to recover damages from someone, but Joe Blow might very well be destitute. Uber keeps their drivers at arms length so recovering from them is unlikely. The passenger gets screwed and has little legal recourse against a destitute Joe. Getting a $20 check from Joe every month for the next 50 years isn't going to pay their huge medical bills.
Even though the commercial taxi company has less insurance, the passenger is better protected against out of pocket accident costs.
Competition sucks. Gotta keep that privileged access to the market.
There are many legitimate reasons to limit the number of cars available for hire. Taxis drive around the city core looking for passengers, or park in the city waiting for a call. Increased competition would make this worse. In some cities, traffic is already a nightmare. I don't live in New York or any particularly dense city, but I have driven in many. Taking even a small number of cars off the road is often very desirable.
You can limit the number of delivery trucks, personal vehicles, and public/private busses on the roads only so much using financial incentives (high tolls and parking fees). At a certain point you need to use other methods to limit the number of cars, and limiting the number of taxis (and taxi-like services) is something that is easily implemented through taxi medallions. It is also reasonable because in most cities who don't license "enough" taxis, there are plenty of transportation alternatives.
Closed systems that go out of date quickly and are incompatible with anything newer.
Want an Example? BMW 525 Iphone cradle system. doesn't work with the iPhone 5, 5c or 5s.
Is this an argument against the parent? It seems like an argument for open I/O standards to me. All phones should be able to output HDMI video. All car entertainment systems should show up as input devices, and have sound I/O. These various I/O should be combined into 1 open standard wireless or wired connection. For wired connections, a standard input interface could be matched with a phone-specific dongle.
The problem historically has been that car stereo manufacturers have pandered to Apple, who can change their standards at any time, or have made up their own standards which they change at a whim. If a powerful group puts out an open standard with low or no licensing costs, this problem would be solved.
Personally, I'd really love to have one of chinese android head units but I can't justify spending $500 on purchasing and installing a car stereo right now.
Now these people are using this to get cool dreams, feel bliss, or see things, while otherwise they are healthy adults, then they are misusing the drug. Aka Drug Abuse. As well many of these drugs have long term effects that build up over time. So the first time you are 99.99999% Ok, but after a while your brain gets more damaged.
You're equating changes in the brain with "brain damage". Many drugs enact changes within the brain, some permanent and some temporary. The term "brain damage" is a loaded and inflammatory term signifying that all changes as a result of drugs are bad. Some are not bad. Some might either be good or bad depending on who is defining what is desirable in a brain.
I struggled for years with depression, anger management, and had difficulty relating to people. After smoking weed for a few months, my depression and short temper have almost vanished completely. I can look at people now and have an inkling of what emotions they might be feeling, and I don't say so many insensitive things anymore. I also sleep much better. I get upset when I see people say that weed is a wonderdrug, and I don't mean to imply that. It has made my quality of life much better though. You might describe the effects on my brain as "increased feminine qualities", which sounds bad and is how this kind of change is often described. Maybe that's exactly what my brain needed though. Not all changes in brain chemistry are bad.
... which was a great idea, but extremely poorly executed.
The Moto G and Moto E is really amazing for what it is - budget phones that have all the right things - IPS screen, snappy processor, good software, respectable brand, LTE (on E and Gv2), etc. It sells extremely well in the UK and many other markets in the EU.
If they opened up a factory in the UK or somewhere else in the EU, it may be 10-15 pounds more expensive to make than in China, but still there would be plenty of takers. In fact probably more so as it is manufactured locally and in an advanced economy - a sign of quality in its own right. The Raspberry Pi is made in the UK, and they were able to pretty much match cost with the batches produced in China.
Isn't this a quirk of the nature of the Raspberry Pi product? Rasperry Pi is just a board. We assemble electronics in China because Chinese assembly is cheap. A robotic boardmaking machine costs the same everywhere. If you don't need to assemble the pieces together with a screen, battery, processor, buttons, speaker, etc, there is no advantage to making the board in China.
Not even proper joysticks, but shitty mini-analogs.
All you need to do to discover how bad an idea joystick controls on a car would be is to try to use a scissor lift. They have a lot of torque (at low top speed), and you basically have to wedge your arm into the control harness and control the stick with a stiff wrist. Otherwise, you push the stick forward, the lift accelerates, inertia jerks your arm back, and you pull back on the stick. Rinse, repeat...
Or try driving any piece of heavy equipment over any kind of rough ground. I wondered why the front-end loader driver kept revving the engine. When I drove it myself, I quickly found out that rough ground + no suspension made the operator's foot bounce on the gas pedal and create a positive feedback cycle. More bump = more bouncing off the gas pedal = even more bumping around.
Also Saab tried a joystick control in one of their prototypes . Top Gear tried it out in one episode, it didn't work very well at all.
1. No, but if you want to make a commercial enterprise, don't come looking to me for a free hand out to get it started.
I thought that was the whole point of kickstarter. I don't think many of them are non-profits. This is just seed money for an educational semi-startup.
Yes but it is distasteful to me that a man who is worth somewhere between $6 and 145 million (it seems odd that the range is so large) is asking people with a lot less money to give him $1m. Even if we assume his net worth is only $6m, I really think he could manage to front 20% of his net worth to start up a business. I have a net worth of around $110k. If I was starting up a business I could float 20% of my net worth ($22k) fairly easily either through loans or taking it from investments. Rich people are rich because they find ways for other people to spend money on their behalf. The fact that his cause is "good" doesn't make this practice any better.
Dyson literally built over a THOUSAND prototypes trying to come up with a better vacuum.
Then he realized that vacuums are already good enough, and people don't really need a better vacuum. So he changed tactics and spent all of his efforts on marketing and style. The business model is exactly the same as Bose. The product isn't anything special but the marketing strategy is.
Cisco could make life miserable for the NSA by warehousing its gear in countries that won't cooperate with the US. Non-US orders could be filled from the closest such warehouse.
Non-cooperating countries that spring to mind include Russia (for European orders), China (for Asia), Venezuela (for S. America) and maybe Palestine (for the Middle East and Africa). I don't believe there are any N. American countries that the US can't coerce, so maybe the affected countries should use other network vendors.
The downside is that delivery times for overseas orders might become quite long :-) and/or spendy.
Most stable countries which don't cooperate with the US are also countries in which relatively small bribes will get you into any warehouse. This would actually be worse. In the US strange people in warehouses would eventually get noticed by somebody- maybe a dockworker, inventory manager, or a forklift operator would start asking questions. In Russia, China, Venezuela, you just pay off everybody who needs paying off.
Human level AI? I would rather not, most human drivers are bad. Try to use the cruise control on a crowded highway and you know what I mean. Just maintaining uniform speed is an impossible task for most drivers. Oh there is a minor bend in the road, I need to slow down, there is a minor hill, I need to slow down, look an accident on the other side of the road, I need to slow down.
In almost all cases a computer will be able to react way faster and with more precision than a human can. Yes there will be some minor flaws in the first systems, they will be systemic and patched out. With human drivers it is a gamble each time they get on the road.
Don't forget that absolute consistency is inefficient. I could make a cruise controller that kept the speed to within 0.01miles/hour, but that wouldn't be the best controller I could make. Cruise controllers should not be so strict- it is more efficient to let speed increase a couple of mph when going down hills, and let it to drop slightly when going up hills. The best cruise controller would be aware of the upcoming terrain and calculate the most fuel-efficient throttle position to take, considering the characteristics of the engine, vehicle drag, etc.
There actually has been talk of replacing the 8 50's era engines of the B52 with 4 modern engines (the same that Boeing puts on the 767) Such an upgrade would give the B52 more thrust, better range, and a much more robust supply chain for spares. As far as I know it has never gotten out of the proposal stage.
It would likely require changes to the wing/nacelle interface. It could very well be that the existing engine mounting points can't take the weight/thrust load so a more radical change to the wing might be required. If you're going that far, you might as well redesign the whole plane. Sometimes upgrades just aren't worth the cost, despite radical advancements in technology.
Yeah. At some point, no one is going to want to be CEO/CFO.
Massive CEO/CFO churn is a sign of a company in deep, serious trouble. Companies can handle occasional sudden losses of key personnel, but if it happens on a regular basis - that company is fucked.
It's also going to be bad for morale if the CEO/CFO keep getting whacked. Now, in the short term the company might have enough succession/disaster recovery plans to keep continuity going, but if the CEO/CFO in a company keep dying (as do the CEOs/CFOs of all other companies in the same industry), the employees are eventually going to say, "Fuck this, time for a career change."
You're equating terrorist organizations too much with a western-style company. Companies exist to create new products, market them, sell them, support them, and make sure existing customers become repeat customers. Most products are too complicated for a single person to make, let alone do all these other things.
Terrorists don't have to do any of these complicated things. All they have to do is acquire guns/explosives/knives and attack something. The "product" is so simple that illiterate children can do it. Spreading the message (marketing) can be done by anyone without any particular special skill. Repeatedly killing the "CEO" is a bit pointless- it may stop the franchise from creating more complex "products" (attacks) which require coordination and strategy, but in the end, (and I hate to use such a cliche) you can't kill an idea. Even worse, by killing these people from on high with missiles that often cause collateral damage, we are perpetuating and reinforcing the "idea".
I also don't own my own place, but I have found clever solutions over the years. When I lived in places with hot water heating, I would drill small holes under the radiators. These are unnoticeable if they are drilled within the safety shroud / housing of the radiator. Be extremely careful not to nick a water pipe.
Currently the place I rent has forced hot air. My router is in the basement but I have a PC on the main level. Forced air registers are fitted into appropriately-sized rectangular holes cut into the floors. However, the holes are not perfect, and are slightly oversized. I managed to sneak a CAT6 wire through this space. The space was small enough that I had to run the wire THEN crimp a connector on the end. I was prepared (but didn't need to) drill a hole directly in the air duct- when you move out, just tape it over with silver tape. Furnace maintenance people do this drill-and-tape trick commonly when they test natural gas units for CO/CO2.
Depending on the heating arrangement, this kind of solution may not be possible. However, in many cases, some creative thinking can find a non-destructive path for a temporary wire.
Was Google aware at the time that this policy was granting essentially the entire pocket personal media player market to Apple?
Probably, but Google's whole thing is always connected, cloud dependent appliances. Searching, streaming, and advertising/tracking wouldn't consistently work, which would make that whole market less interesting to them.
They don't really sell many physical products, like Apple, so there's no big push for Android on standalone devices. Then again, in the 2.x days they were still desperate for Android market penetration, so it is a little surprising that they didn't chase any market they could.
It is a silly rule. There's no reason that such standalone devices couldn't use bluetooth to connect to a smartphone data plan. I'm dying to get my hands on a good car stereo based on Android, but all of the chinese units have flaws or are more expensive than what I want to pay for a chinese brand with no support. Putting a cell modem into a car stereo is prohibitively expensive and dumb when most people in such a market have a smartphone anyway.