What is typically available in large numbers in the unemployed pool is the bottom half.
That is why you should avoid hiring unemployed people, who are just someone else's rejects. Instead, you want to steal employees from other companies, or hire people directly out of school.
I wonder more about how old of hardware is it running on.
That is a separate issue. Cobol will run just fine on modern hardware. There are open source compilers available, and yes, it runs on Linux.
Years ago, I did some work with Cobol. It is easy to learn, and for the type of application described in TFA, it is fine. I wouldn't recommend Cobol for a new project, but if you have an existing code base, there is no particular reason to stop using it, or maintaining it.
SciAm has been pretty shitty itself for a long time.
It has become considerably less shitty since John Rennie left. It has returned to science and focuses less on political advocacy. If you unsubscribed during Rennie's tenure (as many people did) you might want to take another look.
Disclaimer: My company has a subscription, so I read it at work for free.
Yes, Teslas have regenerative braking (as do hybrids), but they also have conventional brakes for when you need to stop the car quickly.
Sudden emergency stops are less than 1% of braking. So instead of lasting 40K miles, the pads last for 100*40K = 4 million miles. That is far more than most people drive in a lifetime, and far beyond the life of the car. So in practice, the brake pads never have to be replaced.
China doesn't just rely on their own education system. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are educated at American universities, and since America has an idiotic policy of denying them work visas when they graduate, they then go back to China and create companies that kick America's butt and destroy American jobs.
They could have made an investment in a new direction using these people.
Or they could make an investment in a new direction, using new people with the appropriate skill sets. The net number of jobs could be the same, and the jobs would be more stable since they would actually make sense.
When you deal with businesses, promises mean nothing unless they are contractual obligations. If they have it in writing, then they should take Microsoft to court. If they don't have it in writing, then they learned a valuable lesson, and maybe next time they will be smarter.
otherwise their Internet connections would cost potentially three orders of magnitude more
The Internet connection still costs three orders of magnitude more. It is just that someone else is paying for it.
That $200 setup fee suddenly becomes a $20,000 setup fee.
If the connection is not worth $20k, then why is it magically worth it when someone else is paying for it? If you want to subsidise rural people, why not just give them the $20k in cash, and let them spend it on what they want, rather than what you think they should want?
I have no idea how urban/suburban China is laid out
Really, really badly. American cities have been designed to accommodate traffic for a century. But in China, even 20 years ago, 95% of the people used bicycles.
but if I'm paying that much for a vehicle I want to be able to drive more if I want to.
You CAN drive more if you want. Charge to 100% if you want. Run it down to 1%. Just don't charge to 100% and leave the car sitting like that for a month, especially in a hot environment. That will stress the battery. But if you charge to 100% an hour before your trip (and you can preprogram that to happen, so you don't need to get up early) that is fine. Likewise, if you run it down to 1%, and then plug it in as soon as you reach your destination, that also will put very little stress on the battery.
Today's EVs are not for everyone. If you take a lot of long trips, an EV might not be the car for you. But for normal day-to-day driving, they are a lot more convenient than an ICE. For an occasional long trip, it is a bit inconvenient to stop and recharge every few hours, but if you plan ahead you can do that while you eat a meal in a nice restaurant, or go for a hike in a park along the way.
I was responding to a comment that you can't just simply plug it in overnight...
Except that you can "just simply plug it in". My wife's car is preprogrammed to start charging at 2am (when electricity is cheapest), and preprogrammed to charge to 80% (200 of 240 mile range). She pulls into the garage, plugs it in, and she is done.
The only time you need to do anything special is when you are preparing for a long trip. Then you tap on the screen and slide the power to max. That gives you an extra 40 miles before you need to recharge.
Oh, and you never need to go to a gas station, there is no oil to change, no radiator fluid to check, and the brake pads don't wear out. The only maintenance is to rotate the tires every 10,000 miles. Overall, that is a lot less "pampering" than an ICE.
How long does the battery pack in a Tesla last, though?
Teslas have not been available long enough to wear out many batteries. But some Priuses have more than 600k miles on their original battery pack, and 200k+ is common. Battery life actually does not depend much on "miles", and more with how you treat it. If you charge it to 100%, or run it down to near 0%, and then let it sit in the hot sun in that state, that is much harder on the battery than normal use. Tesla recommends charging it to about 80% for daily use, and not running below 20%. My wife has a Tesla Model-S, and she only boosts the battery up to 100% when she is going on a long trip, and even then only an hour or so before she leaves.
I thought it hadn't yet gone into production series, so it's still prototypes.
The Model X has been out for a while. It is the Model 3 that is still being developed. The Model 3 is a much more interesting car, because it will be affordable by normal people.
I hope this time Congress attached some performance requirements
Even better would be to just kill this subsidy program entirely. Median farm income in America is over $80k, about 30% higher than the overall median. Why should poor people be taxed to subsidize other people that are better off?
There are lots of problems with this design. It doesn't deal with pedestrians, bicycles, and scooters that use the space between cars. It also doesn't handle trucks, or roof racks, that stick up above the height of a normal car. I cannot go under bridges or overpasses, or through intersections with suspended traffic lights. It doesn't even deal with people opening car doors to enter or exit. The design is just silly, and nobody should take it seriously.
It is a great way to make money. Find out something about a company, sort the stock, and the broadcast.
There are organizations that do exactly that, such as Muddy Waters.
Or just make something up.
... and go to prison. Making money on shorts by spreading false rumors is a serious crime. Joe Kennedy (JFK's dad) made the family fortune by doing it, but that was back before the SEC existed.
3. Use polling data to determine the candidates popularity. Release funds weekly where a candidates given share of the pot is equal to their polling percentage.
Which polls are included? Who gets to run the polls? Who decides who gets to run the polls? Who pays the deciders? Can the deciders accept contributions?
it's about time that bad security finally start hurting companies in a real way.
This is not hurting companies. It is hurting crooked managers. The company belongs to the shareholders, and transparency helps shareholders. Sure, the stock price went down, but the stock price would have fallen even more if the reckoning had been delayed.
The simplest way to reform the American political process would be to fund campaigns with tax money.
There are two ways to do this, and neither is acceptable: 1. Give most of the funding to incumbents and major parties, which helps lock-in the status quo. 2. Give equal money to challengers, which means David Duke gets funded with tax dollars, along with every other kook who registers to run.
Currently we have a hybrid system where candidates get matching funds for what they raise privately. There is little political will to go any further.
COPPA doesn't apply to millennials. Millennials are people that came of age around the year 2000, so they are adults now. COPPA applies to kids under the age of 13. In much of the English speaking world, a zero is referred to as "naught", so these kids born during the 00 decade are called "naughties".
"stop and think" is not taught in schools anymore (if it ever was).
It never was. There is no evidence that people were smarter in the past. By most measures, kids are smarter today than ever before. Surveys like TFA are poor measures of dumbness because they are comparing young people to older people who have learned more of life's lessons. A more meaningful comparison would be to compare young people today to how dumb we were when we were young (in my case, pretty dumb).
Slashdot Mirror
What is typically available in large numbers in the unemployed pool is the bottom half.
That is why you should avoid hiring unemployed people, who are just someone else's rejects. Instead, you want to steal employees from other companies, or hire people directly out of school.
I wonder more about how old of hardware is it running on.
That is a separate issue. Cobol will run just fine on modern hardware. There are open source compilers available, and yes, it runs on Linux.
Years ago, I did some work with Cobol. It is easy to learn, and for the type of application described in TFA, it is fine. I wouldn't recommend Cobol for a new project, but if you have an existing code base, there is no particular reason to stop using it, or maintaining it.
SciAm has been pretty shitty itself for a long time.
It has become considerably less shitty since John Rennie left. It has returned to science and focuses less on political advocacy. If you unsubscribed during Rennie's tenure (as many people did) you might want to take another look.
Disclaimer: My company has a subscription, so I read it at work for free.
Yes, Teslas have regenerative braking (as do hybrids), but they also have conventional brakes for when you need to stop the car quickly.
Sudden emergency stops are less than 1% of braking. So instead of lasting 40K miles, the pads last for 100*40K = 4 million miles. That is far more than most people drive in a lifetime, and far beyond the life of the car. So in practice, the brake pads never have to be replaced.
China doesn't just rely on their own education system. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese are educated at American universities, and since America has an idiotic policy of denying them work visas when they graduate, they then go back to China and create companies that kick America's butt and destroy American jobs.
Perhpas they could pass a law to make corporations keep their word or risk substantial penalties?
They already have that. It is called "contract law". Except MS didn't sign a contract with Finland, so they didn't actually "promise" anything.
Perhaps the Finnish shouldn't have sold Nokia in the first place.
If they hadn't, these people would have lost their jobs long ago. It's not like Nokia was prospering before the MS takeover.
They could have made an investment in a new direction using these people.
Or they could make an investment in a new direction, using new people with the appropriate skill sets. The net number of jobs could be the same, and the jobs would be more stable since they would actually make sense.
If you promise something you should do it.
When you deal with businesses, promises mean nothing unless they are contractual obligations. If they have it in writing, then they should take Microsoft to court. If they don't have it in writing, then they learned a valuable lesson, and maybe next time they will be smarter.
otherwise their Internet connections would cost potentially three orders of magnitude more
The Internet connection still costs three orders of magnitude more. It is just that someone else is paying for it.
That $200 setup fee suddenly becomes a $20,000 setup fee.
If the connection is not worth $20k, then why is it magically worth it when someone else is paying for it? If you want to subsidise rural people, why not just give them the $20k in cash, and let them spend it on what they want, rather than what you think they should want?
I have no idea how urban/suburban China is laid out
Really, really badly. American cities have been designed to accommodate traffic for a century. But in China, even 20 years ago, 95% of the people used bicycles.
but if I'm paying that much for a vehicle I want to be able to drive more if I want to.
You CAN drive more if you want. Charge to 100% if you want. Run it down to 1%. Just don't charge to 100% and leave the car sitting like that for a month, especially in a hot environment. That will stress the battery. But if you charge to 100% an hour before your trip (and you can preprogram that to happen, so you don't need to get up early) that is fine. Likewise, if you run it down to 1%, and then plug it in as soon as you reach your destination, that also will put very little stress on the battery.
Today's EVs are not for everyone. If you take a lot of long trips, an EV might not be the car for you. But for normal day-to-day driving, they are a lot more convenient than an ICE. For an occasional long trip, it is a bit inconvenient to stop and recharge every few hours, but if you plan ahead you can do that while you eat a meal in a nice restaurant, or go for a hike in a park along the way.
I was responding to a comment that you can't just simply plug it in overnight...
Except that you can "just simply plug it in". My wife's car is preprogrammed to start charging at 2am (when electricity is cheapest), and preprogrammed to charge to 80% (200 of 240 mile range). She pulls into the garage, plugs it in, and she is done.
The only time you need to do anything special is when you are preparing for a long trip. Then you tap on the screen and slide the power to max. That gives you an extra 40 miles before you need to recharge.
Oh, and you never need to go to a gas station, there is no oil to change, no radiator fluid to check, and the brake pads don't wear out. The only maintenance is to rotate the tires every 10,000 miles. Overall, that is a lot less "pampering" than an ICE.
How long does the battery pack in a Tesla last, though?
Teslas have not been available long enough to wear out many batteries. But some Priuses have more than 600k miles on their original battery pack, and 200k+ is common. Battery life actually does not depend much on "miles", and more with how you treat it. If you charge it to 100%, or run it down to near 0%, and then let it sit in the hot sun in that state, that is much harder on the battery than normal use. Tesla recommends charging it to about 80% for daily use, and not running below 20%. My wife has a Tesla Model-S, and she only boosts the battery up to 100% when she is going on a long trip, and even then only an hour or so before she leaves.
I thought it hadn't yet gone into production series, so it's still prototypes.
The Model X has been out for a while. It is the Model 3 that is still being developed. The Model 3 is a much more interesting car, because it will be affordable by normal people.
I hope this time Congress attached some performance requirements
Even better would be to just kill this subsidy program entirely. Median farm income in America is over $80k, about 30% higher than the overall median. Why should poor people be taxed to subsidize other people that are better off?
Just not as practical as building an elevated train, which is much cheaper than a subway.
A dedicated lane for self-driving buses, vans, and taxis would be even cheaper.
There are lots of problems with this design. It doesn't deal with pedestrians, bicycles, and scooters that use the space between cars. It also doesn't handle trucks, or roof racks, that stick up above the height of a normal car. I cannot go under bridges or overpasses, or through intersections with suspended traffic lights. It doesn't even deal with people opening car doors to enter or exit. The design is just silly, and nobody should take it seriously.
It is a great way to make money. Find out something about a company, sort the stock, and the broadcast.
There are organizations that do exactly that, such as Muddy Waters.
Or just make something up.
... and go to prison. Making money on shorts by spreading false rumors is a serious crime. Joe Kennedy (JFK's dad) made the family fortune by doing it, but that was back before the SEC existed.
3. Use polling data to determine the candidates popularity. Release funds weekly where a candidates given share of the pot is equal to their polling percentage.
Which polls are included? Who gets to run the polls? Who decides who gets to run the polls? Who pays the deciders? Can the deciders accept contributions?
Maybe things aren't quite so strict in China, if you know the right auditors...
Auditing is often corrupt in China, but these shares were traded in Hong Kong, which has much stricter rules than the mainland.
it's about time that bad security finally start hurting companies in a real way.
This is not hurting companies. It is hurting crooked managers. The company belongs to the shareholders, and transparency helps shareholders. Sure, the stock price went down, but the stock price would have fallen even more if the reckoning had been delayed.
The simplest way to reform the American political process would be to fund campaigns with tax money.
There are two ways to do this, and neither is acceptable:
1. Give most of the funding to incumbents and major parties, which helps lock-in the status quo.
2. Give equal money to challengers, which means David Duke gets funded with tax dollars, along with every other kook who registers to run.
Currently we have a hybrid system where candidates get matching funds for what they raise privately. There is little political will to go any further.
COPPA doesn't work very well.
COPPA doesn't apply to millennials. Millennials are people that came of age around the year 2000, so they are adults now. COPPA applies to kids under the age of 13. In much of the English speaking world, a zero is referred to as "naught", so these kids born during the 00 decade are called "naughties".
"stop and think" is not taught in schools anymore (if it ever was).
It never was. There is no evidence that people were smarter in the past. By most measures, kids are smarter today than ever before. Surveys like TFA are poor measures of dumbness because they are comparing young people to older people who have learned more of life's lessons. A more meaningful comparison would be to compare young people today to how dumb we were when we were young (in my case, pretty dumb).