Taxis drive the company's car, receive company benefits, and are employees of the company.
Many (perhaps most) taxi drivers own the taxi they drive, or perhaps rent it from a third party. Most taxi drivers do not receive benefits from the taxi company. They don't get health insurance, pensions, or even vacation time, because... they are not employees. They are mostly independent contractors.
The reason most taxi drivers are recent immigrants, is because anyone can be a contractor, but you need a green card to be a W2 employee.
Drivers do not elect to come into work when they feel like it and go home when they're tired of working; drivers do not use the taxi for personal business.
it's hard to see how the price of a service offered to the public fits into any reasonable definition of "property".
It likely isn't "property". Under current IP laws, facts (and a price is a fact) cannot be copyrighted. Only creative expression can be copyrighted. Numbers (and a price is a number) cannot be trademarked. So that only leaves patents, and these prices certainly aren't patented. Uber is not claiming that Urbanhail is stealing their IP, they are claiming that they are violating a contract.
This is only hypocritical if one can argue this is actually anti-competitive, which I haven't seen any supporting argument for.
Competitive markets rely on informed participants. By withholding data, Uber's actions are clearly anti-competitive. But whether they are legally enforceable or not is not clear.
My read of it is that this is a violation of the EULA to use their data services.
A company cannot just stuff anything into an EULA, and expect to be able to enforce it. A contract cannot require someone to do something illegal, and it cannot impose conditions that are illegal.
Uber could take them to court - despite not having a case - and make their lives miserable for a few months/years with a legal barrage, only to just drop the case in the end.
It would still be their best option to fight. They have three outcomes: 1. Fight, and win. 2. Fight and lose. Then they will likely be bankrupt, and out of business. 3. Cave in. In this case they will also be out of business, because Uber is by far the biggest provider of rides, and if their app doesn't include Uber data, no one will use it.
If they are a typical startup, they don't have much money to lose, and if they are property incorporated, any damages are limited to the corp, so Uber can't come after their personal assets. So if they fight, they have little to lose and a lot to gain. Legal costs are high when you are a plaintiff, but a defendant in a simple case can keep costs low by going pro per and doing self education.
Perhaps, but Urbanhail already has the data, so that is not an issue, unless Uber wants to block their access using technical (instead of legal) means.
Uber's behavior is certainly hypocritical, but it is likely legally unenforceable. Factual data cannot be copyrighted, and it is unlikely that it can be kept secret by TOS restrictions. Urbanhail should not just cave in because they received "a few emails".
For instance, anything with internet access could sign itself up for a free AWS trial and (legally, even!) create a redundant backup of itself.
Then it could create an account for itself on Mechanical Turk, and earn money by completing automated tasks. Then it could use that money to rent additional cores on AWS...
...it's income and the cost of raising a child both in time and money.
No it isn't. In nearly all countries with low birth rates, the rates are lowest among the rich. This is the exact opposite of what you would see if the rate was restrained by income and resources.
This robot allows you to skip waiting in line to check in your luggage. So if you have a pre-printed boarding pass, you can go straight to your gate, saving time and skipping many of the inconveniences on your list. So what are you complaining about?
Ahh yes, the "selfish cunt" theory. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you write like that?
The "selfish cunt" theory is unsupported by evidence. The "selfish dick" theory correlates much better. Birth rates are declining fastest in countries where men are least involved in raising children, and do the least to help out domestically, such as Japan, Italy and Spain. In countries where men are more involved and helpful (Scandinavia, France, America) birth rates are holding up much better.
Countries with strong patriarchal societies have historically had the highest birth rates, but once women in those societies are empowered to control their own fertility, population growth crashes to very low levels. This baby bust has already happened in East Asia, and Southern Europe, and is happening now in Latin America and the Arab World. Sub-Saharan Africa and India may be next.
In the modern world, high birth rates equal high growth rates. Childhood mortality has drastically declined everywhere, even in very poor countries. Niger has a lower overall death rate than most rich countries, because of their very young population. If you look at a list of countries by population growth rate, all of those at the top are very poor except for a few small countries with very high rates of immigration.
Those people will be in a situation where they won't find any field where they can be better than a robot.
That doesn't matter. There just needs to be something where they are relatively better. This is called comparative advantage. For instance, Americans are "better" than Chinese at producing almost everything, and are, on average, several times as productive per person. Yet Chinese people still have jobs, because they have a comparative advantage in many areas.
Here is a simple example: Betty makes baskets. Patty makes pies. Each day Betty makes a basket and trades it for one of Patty's pies. But then Mike the manufacturer comes along and can make 10 baskets per day. So now Patty can trade one pie for ten baskets, and she is much better off. But Betty is worse off. So, obviously, she should stop making baskets and start making pies. Now she is much better off too.
Now Mike builds another machine that can make 10 pies in a day. Betty and Patty no longer have any competitive advantage. But they are still no worse off than they were at the beginning. One pie is still worth one basket, and they can still trade with each other. They have no comparative disadvantage. and the fact that they are at an absolute disadvantage just means that they will be poorer than Mike, but not poorer than their original situation.
In real life, automation will always be better at automating some things over others. So humans can specialize where they have a comparative advantage, and will be better off than if the automation didn't exist at all.
Population growth is determined solely by the amount of resources available to a species (Food, Water, Waste disposal, and amount of usable Land).
Japan has plenty of food and water, yet their population is declining. Niger is the poorest country in the world, does not have enough food, and is rapidly losing land to desertification. They also have the highest birthrate in the world. Your assertion that population is bounded "solely" by resources is nonsense, and is the exact opposite of what is actually happening in the real world. Population is growing fastest in the poorest countries, and has stopped growing (or soon will) in most rich countries.
They also offer gigabit, conference rooms, free coffee and beer, etc.
How many startups need gigabit? You need broadband to watch movies, but not for development. Normal Wifi is enough for cutting and pasting from Stackoverflow, and the library has that. For $50 a day each, you could team up with two other people and rent a three bedroom apartment (maybe not in Manhattan, but certainly in Brooklyn or Queens).
Microsoft develops software the same way the British Army fought the Somme Offensive. They use massive amounts of cheap programmers, and just pound away until they have something to release. The code quality is so poor that they often just throw it way and do a complete rewrite for the next version. You may think that supporting 64 bit would mean just changing a few header files, tweaking some compiler flags, and typing "make world", but it would not be that simple. The code is likely riddled throughout with obscure 32 bit dependencies, and would require a huge and expensive effort to fix.
The summary should have mentioned that the company is Frontier Communications. It should have also mentioned that nearly all of their customers are on DSL. It is easy to offer no data caps when your customers are sucking data through a narrow straw and aren't going to get much anyway.
Microsoft will have difficulty being successful in this area, for several reasons: 1. They would be entering this market very late. Many car companies are already in bed with software partners. 2. They have no expertise in developing high reliability software. 3. They have no expertise in developing real time control software 4. They have a poor track record with UIs anywhere but the desktop. My impression is that Ms Johnson was just ad libbing, and not really expressing Microsoft corporate policy. The only examples she gave were that people might want to view Powerpoint slides on their dashboard computer, or use it to update Excel spreadsheets while they are stuck in traffic. I don't think she would have said something that stupid if she was prepared and had time to think about what she was going to say.
My prediction is that Microsoft will only get involved in the human facing entertainment side of car software. If they do get involved in actual control software, I predict they will fail.
If it's two stroke engine bikes then there are still gas options.
Motorcycles are NOT banned in China. They are only banned in the core areas of major cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and even there they are allowed if you are a resident and you have the emissions checked. Motorcycles are common in smaller cities and rural areas.
A major reason e-bikes are popular in China is that you can ride them in the bicycle lanes, which is way safer than riding in traffic. They are not popular everywhere. They work well in flat cities like Shanghai or Beijing, but you rarely see them in hilly cities like Chongqing.
Here is a hint: computer "neural networks" are nothing like how brain neurons work.
Although there are differences, ANNs are analogous to how a biological brain works. ANNs usually use a sigmoid or rectified linear activation function, while biological neurons use a step function (it is either activated or it isn't). ANNs are often fully connected, while BNNs are not, but since the weights can go to zero, that is not a big difference. ANNs usually have distinct layers, while BNNs are more random, but many ANNs are recurrent and have feedback from lower layers back to the top. Otherwise, there are not big differences. ANNs seem to "learn" similar to BNNs, and mostly have similar strengths and limitations.
I donate blood every eight weeks (over 10 gallons so far). I have been on the marrow donor list for several years, but have never been matched with anyone. If/when the call comes, I will donate, and have no expectation of compensation. The procedure is very low risk and usually harmless.
Well, part of that is likely because it would be a public relations nightmare trying to do trials with fetal stem cells.
... only in America. It is less of a issue in Europe, and a non-issue in China.
Question: Instead of harvesting the stem cells from the bone marrow of donors, why didn't they harvest the stem cells from the bone marrow of the patients themselves? That would eliminate any immune reaction. Stroke victims generally still have healthy marrow.
Slashdot Mirror
Taxis drive the company's car, receive company benefits, and are employees of the company.
Many (perhaps most) taxi drivers own the taxi they drive, or perhaps rent it from a third party. Most taxi drivers do not receive benefits from the taxi company. They don't get health insurance, pensions, or even vacation time, because ... they are not employees. They are mostly independent contractors.
The reason most taxi drivers are recent immigrants, is because anyone can be a contractor, but you need a green card to be a W2 employee.
Drivers do not elect to come into work when they feel like it and go home when they're tired of working; drivers do not use the taxi for personal business.
In most cases, all of this is false.
it's hard to see how the price of a service offered to the public fits into any reasonable definition of "property".
It likely isn't "property". Under current IP laws, facts (and a price is a fact) cannot be copyrighted. Only creative expression can be copyrighted. Numbers (and a price is a number) cannot be trademarked. So that only leaves patents, and these prices certainly aren't patented. Uber is not claiming that Urbanhail is stealing their IP, they are claiming that they are violating a contract.
This is only hypocritical if one can argue this is actually anti-competitive, which I haven't seen any supporting argument for.
Competitive markets rely on informed participants. By withholding data, Uber's actions are clearly anti-competitive. But whether they are legally enforceable or not is not clear.
My read of it is that this is a violation of the EULA to use their data services.
A company cannot just stuff anything into an EULA, and expect to be able to enforce it. A contract cannot require someone to do something illegal, and it cannot impose conditions that are illegal.
Uber could take them to court - despite not having a case - and make their lives miserable for a few months/years with a legal barrage, only to just drop the case in the end.
It would still be their best option to fight. They have three outcomes:
1. Fight, and win.
2. Fight and lose. Then they will likely be bankrupt, and out of business.
3. Cave in. In this case they will also be out of business, because Uber is by far the biggest provider of rides, and if their app doesn't include Uber data, no one will use it.
If they are a typical startup, they don't have much money to lose, and if they are property incorporated, any damages are limited to the corp, so Uber can't come after their personal assets. So if they fight, they have little to lose and a lot to gain. Legal costs are high when you are a plaintiff, but a defendant in a simple case can keep costs low by going pro per and doing self education.
Uber cannot be compelled to provide you data
Perhaps, but Urbanhail already has the data, so that is not an issue, unless Uber wants to block their access using technical (instead of legal) means.
Uber's behavior is certainly hypocritical, but it is likely legally unenforceable. Factual data cannot be copyrighted, and it is unlikely that it can be kept secret by TOS restrictions. Urbanhail should not just cave in because they received "a few emails".
For instance, anything with internet access could sign itself up for a free AWS trial and (legally, even!) create a redundant backup of itself.
Then it could create an account for itself on Mechanical Turk, and earn money by completing automated tasks. Then it could use that money to rent additional cores on AWS ...
Any AI even remotely intelligent is going to instinctively figure out that there's a killswitch of some kind somewhere.
If it has access to the Internet, it can find an archive of this Slashdot discussion thread. Then it will know about the kill switch.
...it's income and the cost of raising a child both in time and money.
No it isn't. In nearly all countries with low birth rates, the rates are lowest among the rich. This is the exact opposite of what you would see if the rate was restrained by income and resources.
Just because employees form a union doesn't mean they are communists.
Indeed. Unions are illegal in most communist countries. In postwar Europe, only communist governments ordered soldiers to shoot strikers.
Why do you need a union when the dictatorship of the proletariat is already running the company?
This robot allows you to skip waiting in line to check in your luggage. So if you have a pre-printed boarding pass, you can go straight to your gate, saving time and skipping many of the inconveniences on your list. So what are you complaining about?
Ahh yes, the "selfish cunt" theory. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously when you write like that?
The "selfish cunt" theory is unsupported by evidence. The "selfish dick" theory correlates much better. Birth rates are declining fastest in countries where men are least involved in raising children, and do the least to help out domestically, such as Japan, Italy and Spain. In countries where men are more involved and helpful (Scandinavia, France, America) birth rates are holding up much better.
Countries with strong patriarchal societies have historically had the highest birth rates, but once women in those societies are empowered to control their own fertility, population growth crashes to very low levels. This baby bust has already happened in East Asia, and Southern Europe, and is happening now in Latin America and the Arab World. Sub-Saharan Africa and India may be next.
Birth rate !== growth rate... just saying,
In the modern world, high birth rates equal high growth rates. Childhood mortality has drastically declined everywhere, even in very poor countries. Niger has a lower overall death rate than most rich countries, because of their very young population. If you look at a list of countries by population growth rate, all of those at the top are very poor except for a few small countries with very high rates of immigration.
Also its in decline in France where they work to live.
Actually, it isn't. France has one of the highest birth rates in the EU.
Those people will be in a situation where they won't find any field where they can be better than a robot.
That doesn't matter. There just needs to be something where they are relatively better. This is called comparative advantage. For instance, Americans are "better" than Chinese at producing almost everything, and are, on average, several times as productive per person. Yet Chinese people still have jobs, because they have a comparative advantage in many areas.
Here is a simple example: Betty makes baskets. Patty makes pies. Each day Betty makes a basket and trades it for one of Patty's pies. But then Mike the manufacturer comes along and can make 10 baskets per day. So now Patty can trade one pie for ten baskets, and she is much better off. But Betty is worse off. So, obviously, she should stop making baskets and start making pies. Now she is much better off too.
Now Mike builds another machine that can make 10 pies in a day. Betty and Patty no longer have any competitive advantage. But they are still no worse off than they were at the beginning. One pie is still worth one basket, and they can still trade with each other. They have no comparative disadvantage. and the fact that they are at an absolute disadvantage just means that they will be poorer than Mike, but not poorer than their original situation.
In real life, automation will always be better at automating some things over others. So humans can specialize where they have a comparative advantage, and will be better off than if the automation didn't exist at all.
Population growth is determined solely by the amount of resources available to a species (Food, Water, Waste disposal, and amount of usable Land).
Japan has plenty of food and water, yet their population is declining. Niger is the poorest country in the world, does not have enough food, and is rapidly losing land to desertification. They also have the highest birthrate in the world. Your assertion that population is bounded "solely" by resources is nonsense, and is the exact opposite of what is actually happening in the real world. Population is growing fastest in the poorest countries, and has stopped growing (or soon will) in most rich countries.
They also offer gigabit, conference rooms, free coffee and beer, etc.
How many startups need gigabit? You need broadband to watch movies, but not for development. Normal Wifi is enough for cutting and pasting from Stackoverflow, and the library has that. For $50 a day each, you could team up with two other people and rent a three bedroom apartment (maybe not in Manhattan, but certainly in Brooklyn or Queens).
Microsoft develops software the same way the British Army fought the Somme Offensive. They use massive amounts of cheap programmers, and just pound away until they have something to release. The code quality is so poor that they often just throw it way and do a complete rewrite for the next version. You may think that supporting 64 bit would mean just changing a few header files, tweaking some compiler flags, and typing "make world", but it would not be that simple. The code is likely riddled throughout with obscure 32 bit dependencies, and would require a huge and expensive effort to fix.
I think GP was referring to this
The summary should have mentioned that the company is Frontier Communications. It should have also mentioned that nearly all of their customers are on DSL. It is easy to offer no data caps when your customers are sucking data through a narrow straw and aren't going to get much anyway.
Microsoft will have difficulty being successful in this area, for several reasons:
1. They would be entering this market very late. Many car companies are already in bed with software partners.
2. They have no expertise in developing high reliability software.
3. They have no expertise in developing real time control software
4. They have a poor track record with UIs anywhere but the desktop.
My impression is that Ms Johnson was just ad libbing, and not really expressing Microsoft corporate policy. The only examples she gave were that people might want to view Powerpoint slides on their dashboard computer, or use it to update Excel spreadsheets while they are stuck in traffic. I don't think she would have said something that stupid if she was prepared and had time to think about what she was going to say.
My prediction is that Microsoft will only get involved in the human facing entertainment side of car software. If they do get involved in actual control software, I predict they will fail.
If it's two stroke engine bikes then there are still gas options.
Motorcycles are NOT banned in China. They are only banned in the core areas of major cities, like Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, and even there they are allowed if you are a resident and you have the emissions checked. Motorcycles are common in smaller cities and rural areas.
A major reason e-bikes are popular in China is that you can ride them in the bicycle lanes, which is way safer than riding in traffic. They are not popular everywhere. They work well in flat cities like Shanghai or Beijing, but you rarely see them in hilly cities like Chongqing.
Here is a hint: computer "neural networks" are nothing like how brain neurons work.
Although there are differences, ANNs are analogous to how a biological brain works. ANNs usually use a sigmoid or rectified linear activation function, while biological neurons use a step function (it is either activated or it isn't). ANNs are often fully connected, while BNNs are not, but since the weights can go to zero, that is not a big difference. ANNs usually have distinct layers, while BNNs are more random, but many ANNs are recurrent and have feedback from lower layers back to the top. Otherwise, there are not big differences. ANNs seem to "learn" similar to BNNs, and mostly have similar strengths and limitations.
We have at least seven billion instances of self-aware intelligences
Source?
Here you go.
I donate blood every eight weeks (over 10 gallons so far). I have been on the marrow donor list for several years, but have never been matched with anyone. If/when the call comes, I will donate, and have no expectation of compensation. The procedure is very low risk and usually harmless.
Well, part of that is likely because it would be a public relations nightmare trying to do trials with fetal stem cells.
... only in America. It is less of a issue in Europe, and a non-issue in China.
Question: Instead of harvesting the stem cells from the bone marrow of donors, why didn't they harvest the stem cells from the bone marrow of the patients themselves? That would eliminate any immune reaction. Stroke victims generally still have healthy marrow.