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User: Maxo-Texas

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  1. Re:Or let us keep our hard-earned money on Clinton Promises 500 Million New Solar Panels · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Things are so much better since we cut taxes for the wealthy.

    The infrastructure is crumbling and college tuition which was free or nearly free now costs more than a luxury car at state universities.

    We should have more of this dog eat dog stuff until we can share the glorious french experience of 1789 to 1799.

  2. Re:Easiest question all week. on When Do Robocars Become Cheaper Than Standard Cars? · · Score: 1

    math error... $4200 for the three cars or $600 per person vs $1400 for the single driver.

  3. Re:Time to cut the cord on FCC Approves AT&T's DirecTV Purchase · · Score: 1

    They wandered off for a while but...They are putting out a huge number of science fiction and fantasy series.

    I hope folks watch
    Ascension
    Defiance
    Killjoys
    12 Monkeys
    Bitten
    Dark Matter
    Continuum (returns fall)
    Haven (returns fall)
    Helix (returns fall)
    Z-nation (September)
    Childhood's End (December)
    Lost Girl (2016)

    Not SciFi but related...
    Face Off

    Plus various one off movies... and of course Sharknado.

    Hmm. on second thought... ;-)

    http://www.syfy.com/shows

    ---

    Can't see anything good coming from this merger.
    Cable and internet rates are insane right now.

  4. Re:Robo Cars Will be More Fuel Efficient on When Do Robocars Become Cheaper Than Standard Cars? · · Score: 1

    700 watt Microwave ovens cost $300 twenty years ago.

    You can get one for $70 now. you can get a 1200 watt Microwave oven.

    Somethings do seem to be going up (like cable TV for now- it's insane).

    But where you have competition between different companies, they do sell on price.

    Customers have price options all the time.

  5. Re:Easiest question all week. on When Do Robocars Become Cheaper Than Standard Cars? · · Score: 1

    But you could see how a group of 7 people might share three cars for a total cost of $77,000 dollars or $11,000 each.
    Meanwhile, you would be paying $25,000 for the car.

    Now you were not specifying a manual car but to extend it further- in 20 years manual cars might be double the annual insurance cost (especially for the very young and the very old). So $1400 for insurance for three cars but $1400 for insurance for your one car. Or $200 each for the 7 vs $1400 for you.

    Finally, paying for parking is becoming much more common. A self driving car would incur much lower parking fees. It could go be used by another timeshare owner or it could park it self in a the cheap lots further away and probably formatted for autocars.

    There are people who pay a premium for all kinds of things. And that's cool. But a lot of people act differently when the cost differential becomes high enough.

  6. Re:Does indeed happen. on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 1

    And yet, you can see rampant examples in this thread that excuse a "youth" culture and it's becoming an issue for google because they've been so blatant about it.

  7. As a T-Mobile customer on Cell Service At US Airports Varies From 1st Class To Middle-seat Coach · · Score: 1

    The thing that kills me is that T-Mobile service is TERRIBLE at the University of Houston. Especially in the student center. Zero bars in large areas of the building.

    It's great in many other parts of town. Service absolutely sucks at the DFW Convention Center (zero bars).

    I can sort of understand DFW. Basically 2,000 business travellers for a big convention- who probably are not mostly T-Mobile users anyway.

      But why on earth would you allow 45,000 young people who are deciding what phone to use, pretty much for life, have such a terrible experience on campus?

  8. Re:It's discomfort at working alongside older peop on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 1

    I should have put /sarcasm shouldn't I?

    "we just have a youth culture" was being compared with "we just have a white male religious culture".

    One is clearly illegal .. as is the other one too.

  9. Re:It's discomfort at working alongside older peop on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 1

    You are off by 1 year. They don't apply if you are 39.

    http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types...

    Age discrimination involves treating someone (an applicant or employee) less favorably because of his or her age.

    The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) only forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. It does not protect workers under the age of 40, although some states do have laws that protect younger workers from age discrimination.

  10. Re:It's discomfort at working alongside older peop on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 1

    What the hell do you think young people who only hire less qualified young people over more qualified older people are doing?

    We had a 63 year old java programmer at our company who crushed the younger programmers in terms of delivery, elegance of solutions, maintainability, creativity, and even hours worked (regularly put in 60 hours a week). He would be turned away from Google over a less qualified candidate.

    Wouldn't it be nice if companies hired the most qualified candidate for the job?

    Age discrimination in IT has been rampant since the 1990s.

  11. Re:Does indeed happen. on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 1

    Thanks man,
    As we move further from the implementation, it's getting harder to find those pages.

    Also, as I recall, part of the difference was young people were able to take catastrophic care while the elderly had to have insurance that would cover medication. on similar plans the premium difference was more like 6:1. This is complicated by cafeteria plans at businesses where the older and sick employees had to opt in for the extra $1200 to $1400 a year in premiums while young healthy people did not.

  12. Re:It's discomfort at working alongside older peop on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 2

    We have a culture of white 50 year old christian guys.

    We don't feel comfortable hiring anyone who isn't a white male 40+ years old who wants to go to our church weekly.

    it's AGE DISCRIMINATION.

    The root cause doesn't matter. If you ONLY hire 20 to 28 year olds- you are practicing age discrimination.

    Your candor is admirable, but we didn't fight this crap for 40 years (and countless deaths even) against old white religious males to give it all up to a bunch of young males.

    I don't see where they are coming from and I hope this crap gets torn out by the roots- they get massive fines AND they get a rolling fine based on their age demographics going forward.

    20 year olds have no more right to discriminate against 50 year olds than men do against women, whites do against blacks, Hispanics, Asians, etc, or religious people do against non-religious people, or non-religious people do against religious people.

    If you meet the requirements of the job, your age doesn't matter. Google wouldn't be calling you if you didn't meet the requirements for the job.

    What's so terribly funny is that with 2 to 4 year job duration these days (if that), age doesn't matter like it used to when companies were hiring people for 20 years.

  13. Re:Does indeed happen. on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While older people feel comfortable working with younger people- the reverse is not true.

    I've had younger people specifically tell me they hired a team like them that they could hang out with after work.

    It feeds on itself once you have a younger team in place. Back in 2009, Scotus gutted age discrimination protection and it's exploded since then.

    PRE- ACA, increasing insurance premiums were a cause for not hiring- and for laying off large groups of older employees as they reached 50 to 55.

    Back then- an older person's insurance could be 12x the cost of a younger person's insurance (now it's 3x).

  14. Re:Does indeed happen. on Woman Recruited By Google Four Times and Rejected Now Joins Age Discrimination Suit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Infosys cuts the chase. When I forwarded the resume of a friend of mine to them, they kicked it back saying they *required* the high school graduation year. Not proof of graduation (tho why high school graduation should matter to someone with a degree plus experience anyway...).

    You see, college degrees might be obtained at any age. But highschool degrees are mostly earned at 18. So they are asking for the applicants age.

  15. Re:He might be right on the point of law here... on IT Workers Training Their Foreign Replacements 'Troubling,' Says White House · · Score: 1

    And yet, many corporations have just such laws in place for consumers.

    You can't legally buy products sold cheaper in other countries and resell them here for a slight markup.

    Which means they want to use cheap labor- but force consumers here to pay top dollar.

    When I can buy movies for $2.49 instead of $15 and when I can legally buy meds for 10 cents instead of $4.35 (blood pressure meds), etc. etc. etc. then I'll be a bit more open to this crap.

  16. Re:It's not the H1B - it's something else... on IT Workers Training Their Foreign Replacements 'Troubling,' Says White House · · Score: 1

    Armed police *still* patrol the ground three years later.

  17. Re:It's not the H1B - it's something else... on IT Workers Training Their Foreign Replacements 'Troubling,' Says White House · · Score: 1

    Oh, so you don't want your $18,000 severance? I mean we know you have no real savings outside of your 401k so this would be nice to help keep you afloat while you look for a new job.

    By the way, you also have to sign this non-disclosure agreement if you want your severance too.

    It's been a pleasure.

  18. Simple solution: H1B's supposed to be special rare on IT Workers Training Their Foreign Replacements 'Troubling,' Says White House · · Score: 2

    They are supposed to be highly skilled and possess talents which can't be located in the local market after a reasonable search.

    Now, you can write lots of words but lawyers just sharpen their teeth on that kind of thing.

    Simply set a dollar amount equal to the current top 10% income in the country. Right now, that's about $100,000.

    So you can't bring an H1B in for less than $100,000. Minimum salary in their pocket- not the contracting house.

    Right now almost 40,000 of the 65,000 slots are taken up by large indian contracting houses which have been directly replacing existing american workers (which is illegal per the text of the law which is why some companies are walking this back when caught). This means that companies like Microsoft and Google that need genuinely rare talent have less than a 50/50 chance of getting some brilliant mathematician or cutting edge software engineer.

    Tellingly, Cognizant (over 9000 H1B's) has no offices in Silicon valley but have offices in most major american cities. Their target is not rare and special but people who simply have a 4 year degree and a few years experience.

  19. Re:even stopping it won't stop it. on IT Workers Training Their Foreign Replacements 'Troubling,' Says White House · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Our infosys contractors rotated every 6 to 9 months. It was a *selling* point to management. They actually believed that all knowledge was seamlessly transferring via documents to the new people and that the new people didn't suffer 3 to 9 months of reduced productivity because they had no clue about the big picture.

    Combine that with the fact that the quality of Infosys candidates has dropped enormously since 2005 and it's a recipe for disasters.

  20. Re:11 rear enders on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    Excellent point why automated driving will be better for long drives where people tend to zone out.

  21. Re:Something wrong there on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    I had a dodge durango (huge SUV) from 1998 to 2005 and it was rear ended while stopped at a red light ("I thought the light had changed") AND front ended when the person in front of me at a red light put their truck into reverse and peeled into me (apparently decided they wanted to make a left turn).
    I was also rear ended in a brilliant blue element (smaller SUV) when cars behind me had an accident and the air bag stunned the driver.
    I was also rear ended in a white toyota after sitting at a red light for at least 10 to 15 seconds by 3 drunken young idiots in a truck.

    It's not that your car is black. It's that they are idiots.

    Three of the times I was rear ended were by trucks. I often observe passenger truck drivers being complete idiots on the road. Especially the larger trucks.

  22. Re:11 rear enders on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    Watched the linked video. It makes it very clear.

    The google car comes to a normal stop at a safe distance. The car behind it doesn't even slow down at all and has at least 4 car lengths to do so.

    Something was going on with the other driver. They spilled their coffee, were doing their makeup, or most likely- were on their cell phone- perhaps even texting or reading a text for bonus points.

  23. Re:11 rear enders on Google Self-Driving Car Rear-Ended In First Injury Accident · · Score: 1

    It's still not their fault. The person behind was too close and failed to control speed.

    In this case tho- the video clearly shows the other car doesn't even slow down. I'm guessing they were on a cell phone.

    In this case also, the google car has been at a complete stop for a couple seconds before it is hit by the other car and it's behind another car at a proper distance and it's at a red light.

  24. Re:Here's the problem... on Robots Appear To Raise Productivity Without Causing Total Work Hours To Decline · · Score: 1

    Absolutely. And likely less than half the population is capable of that high skill work even IF you paid for training.

    And many of those who can and do train- find a new system eliminates their position before they cover their training costs.

    We need inexpensive focused training.

    But even so- half the population has below average intelligence.

    To be more precise tho...about 12% are capable of doing the high skilled labor- 3% are grossly overqualified for most "high" skilled labor. On the flip side of lower intelligence/impulse control/etc. 15% are barely functional and at least 17% are not functional enough to do high skilled labor even with a lot of help.

    32% of the not so smart population could do a lot of damage if they are left to starve.

  25. Re:I've said it before on Robots Appear To Raise Productivity Without Causing Total Work Hours To Decline · · Score: 1

    What you say is correct. And beside the point.

    Robots (despite the recent DARPA challenge which made them look incapable) are rapidly replacing a certain class of human workers.

    Automation is replacing another class.

    Both are happening faster than people can earn enough to retrain.

    And that was the key challenge of the luddites. They didn't want to stop the machines- they wanted training on the new machines and the owners (capital) refused. So many of the luddites died homeless of exposure and starvation- pretty much as they correctly assessed. And the next generation forgot about them and closed ranks.

    Robots are rapidly replacing jobs which simply require that you have eyes and hands and can perform a manual tax.

    Automation is replacing jobs where you follow any kind of predictable procedure.

    Will all jobs go away? Never. But we already see decreasing workforce engagement by working age citizens from 16 to 67. It's masked by the way they do the numbers for unemployment, but the reality is that the number of working age citizens who can't find work has risen for the last 15 years.

    If we shared the wealth via some kind of basic income- we'd probably fine. But instead, all that extra productivity benefit is filtered to 10% (and really 2%) of the population who then says "get a job" to the people they won't hire. Hungry people get violent. There is a direct correlation between low employment and lack of benefits in 2nd world countries. We need to address the issues in the 1st world before we have mass riots.

    It's much cheaper to provide assistance ($19k) vs imprison people ($31k) annually.