Your comment goes to show just how far the US has fallen by accepting the ISP's line that if they are not regulated, we will get better service and faster high speed roll out. Friends of my family in Japan pay about $30 per month for 100 GB/sec speeds (yes that is 100 GibaBits/second). I've heard the Koreans are putting government funds to ensure everyone in the country is up and running at 100 GB/sec for about $10/month.
There is competition in many cities as there are many different taxi companies. If you don't think so, you are free to start your own taxi company and prove your point.
The fact is that in many kinds of markets there really is a role for government to play so that costs and consequences of business practices don't get passed off onto the public. This is one of those situations, where regulations and requiring ALL businesses to play by the same set of rules makes sense. Anarchy for the benefit of a few, isn't really a compelling argument.
Have you ever priced the cost of getting a medical degree or looked a the percentage of applicants accepted into medical schools? We are talking about the need for licensing. Once licensed, the number of drivers is a separate issue that should be determined by supply and demand.
Those "scare tactics" happen to merely be pointing out that bad things DO HAPPEN when drivers are unlicensed. Call them scare tactics and sloppy thinking if you like, but it doesn't alter the fact that there have now been many crimes perpetrated by unregulated Uber drivers and many accidents. The public has a right to protect itself from those you use sophism to evade reasonable legal requirements for doing business. In my opinion, failing to consider the consequences of anarchy, is sloppy thinking.
It will be interesting to see how the US government responds to a South Korean request for extradition of Uber corporate officers for conspiracy to break the law.
So your argument is that because insisting on doctors getting a license it creates an artificial scarcity. Well in fact it does, for very good reason. Now it just so happens that a bad driver can just as easily kill his passenger as a bad doctor, so there are very good reasons for public safety to insure that certain licensing requirements for operating such a business are in place.
So yes, it does cause a certain measure of scarcity, but there are very good reasons to believe that the trade off is worth the cost. Like virtually, everything in life, there are tradeoffs.
You also point out the weakness of your own argument by saying "we would end up back with some sort of relatively stable model", Precisely, because allowing unlicensed free-lancers in a a business that actually has significant liability and safety costs, that shifts that burden on to everyone else. This is precisely how and why we got regulated taxi services in the first place. Thousands of lives were destroyed before it happened, so necessary regulation its not a trivial matter. Societies that permit some not to play by the rules that others must follow ultimate bear the costs of broken and abused rules. Now you may not see a problem with your wife being raped by a unlicensed driver with criminal intent, or being robbed when all you wanted was to get from point A to point B, or spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair because of an accident the driver had no insurance for, and you are content to just "take your chances". However, the rest of the public doesn't need to be compelled or forced to subsidize your good luck (so far).
Its pretty clear that New York and other cities just need to simply pass a law making it a crime to drive for Uber without a taxi license, proof of fitness to drive, and proof of liability insurance and give out rewards to anyone turning in an unregistered, unfit or uninsured driver. Everyone will then get free rides from Uber and the city's transportation costs will be solved.
So obviously the all those solar arrays that power much of the economies of Germany and Denmark, not exactly known for their sunny climes, must work by magic.
If that were true, how do you account for countries like Germany and Denmark getting nearly 100% of their power during summer months from solar and still not managing to be among the world's strongest economies relative to their population size.
Think of it as the price per electron, since without electrons moving from one place to another there is no electricity.
The more you use, the more you pay. Rates should be set by law on a per electron basis, with those receiving paying those who are producing. There is no reason to permit some users to forced to pay more per electron than others. Why should users be forced to pay to make some other user's per electron cost cheaper at their expense, simply because some producers can provide fatter campaign contributions than others?
"It makes sense that in case of solar, you pay transport cost both ways."
Why does this makes sense? If the role of the consumer/producer is reversed, then so should be the charges. After Citizen-United, corporations are people, so the reverse must also apply. Why should I as a corporation have any less rights than another corporation? Why should industry sponsored politicians make it illegal for me to benefit from my energy production and at the same time make it a requirement that I should doubly subsidize another corporation for theirs?
"They pay for maintenance on the lines, which is where the cost of delivery comes from."
No, actually their customers pay for that, they just act as a middle man for a profit. The real question, with regard to public utilities is what is a reasonable fee and who should be allowed to set it.
No they should leave that to the Chinese, so that all future technological developments and economic progress take place overseas. We need to use our government to protect corporate monopolies and the 1%. The last thing we need to do is invest in the future.
The reality is that those governments that fail to invest, will eventually be out competed. Solar is getting cheaper and cheaper, in large measure because the Chinese have finally figured out that it is in their best interest to be number one in solar technology and to leave the US dependent on progressively less sustainable fossil fuels and consequently, bottled up in the politics of the Middle East.
With the largest number of college graduates in science and technology, they will at the current pace overtake the US in less than 15 years, in terms of high tech. Keep in mind that already those iPhones and next gen devices aren't built here and that the cutting edge is rapidly shifting to Asia. If the Chinese invest more heavily in solar, as well as English-based university education, the US will find itself with an even more capable competitor.
The only real question now is whether or not the Chinese will be able to rapidly enough reverse the environmental destructiveness of their approach to development. Certainly, solar will provide them many benefits in this direction.
The problem with this argument is more or less the same as the problem that the US now has with ISIS, they can't get rid of them fast enough.
Churning our elected leaders only makes it easier for the wealthy and corporations to install the folks of their own choosing, since only they have the money to run two, three, four candidates, if necessary in a single contest, as well as paying to preen their bench.
The fundamental problem is that the electorate itself is too poorly educated to be able to tell which candidates are providing honest, fair, intelligent, and sustainable policies that will work in the long term. Depending on how you look it is, this may not be a problem for all that much longer, because the more the US electorate diddles, the sooner the Chinese will surpass us and tell us how we will do it. One can hardly expect the rest of the world to be patient, while US politicians get a clue.
One of the reasons they are poor is high electricity bills.
This effort on the part of utilities will only hasten the day, when solar power becomes so cheap that it won't matter if solar homes are connected to the grid. They will be able to be entirely independent of the grid by being a local area grid in their own home.
Saying bioinformatics has "standardized" on open source tools is a bit of a stretch, but there is no doubt that the tools you mention are very widely used. That said, bioinformatics is a very small fraction of the activity going on in the biological sciences.
In may ways this is a bit of a shame, as Mathematica's computational capabilities are exceed those that the other open source languages you mention can do, without tremendous programming effort. Indeed, its precisely why I pose the question, since it is an area that Mathematica should be far more visible and more widely utilized than it is.
That said, does anyone have an idea of where answers to these questions will be posted?
One of the challenges facing biological scientists is the need to develop and employ diverse data structures, as well as use analytic techniques that often require rather advanced mathematical and statistical methods and theory that span multiple disciplines. In biology there is a wide spectrum of computer languages available and used to pursue such requirements. Although Mathematica has the potential for much wider application as some of the demonstration project, training videos, and example code on the Wolfram website prove, it still remains one of the lesser used languages for this purpose.
How can Wolfram as a company find new ways to promote, organize, and expand the use of Mathematica and the emerging Wolfram/Alpha language to become more of a visible presence in the biological sciences community?
There's plenty of money. Its just that the current tax laws are designed to protect those who have it at the expense of most everyone else.
Ever ask yourself why it is fundamentally more fair for Mitt Romney to pay only 13% tax on his income, when the vast majority of Americans pay 28%?
Or better yet, ask your self it is really either fundamentally fair or wise as public policy to permit most corporations sufficient loopholes in the tax law, such that they pay no tax at all? If they are now people, why should they be getting tax rates that are often either 0% or seldom more than 5% after deductions, when the rest of us are paying 28%?
If those republicans who were REALLY interested in lower taxes for the AVERAGE American, they would pay more attention to the facts and consequences of our existing tax policies than focusing on how to further burden average Americans with cuts to governmental programs that actually benefit everyone. But of course, everyone knows its all for show, since they don't really represent AVERAGE Americans, only the 1% and the AVERAGE corporation. Thinking otherwise, is a bit like giving someone else your brain and then complaining that you can't think your way out of a paper bag.
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Sounds like you need to chow down on some that "brain fodder" my friend.
Your comment goes to show just how far the US has fallen by accepting the ISP's line that if they are not regulated, we will get better service and faster high speed roll out. Friends of my family in Japan pay about $30 per month for 100 GB/sec speeds (yes that is 100 GibaBits/second). I've heard the Koreans are putting government funds to ensure everyone in the country is up and running at 100 GB/sec for about $10/month.
Why can the US no longer compete?
What are we as consumers going to do about it?
There is competition in many cities as there are many different taxi companies. If you don't think so, you are free to start your own taxi company and prove your point.
The fact is that in many kinds of markets there really is a role for government to play so that costs and consequences of business practices don't get passed off onto the public. This is one of those situations, where regulations and requiring ALL businesses to play by the same set of rules makes sense. Anarchy for the benefit of a few, isn't really a compelling argument.
"Are the number of doctors limited in a city?"
Have you ever priced the cost of getting a medical degree or looked a the percentage of applicants accepted into medical schools? We are talking about the need for licensing. Once licensed, the number of drivers is a separate issue that should be determined by supply and demand.
Those "scare tactics" happen to merely be pointing out that bad things DO HAPPEN when drivers are unlicensed. Call them scare tactics and sloppy thinking if you like, but it doesn't alter the fact that there have now been many crimes perpetrated by unregulated Uber drivers and many accidents. The public has a right to protect itself from those you use sophism to evade reasonable legal requirements for doing business. In my opinion, failing to consider the consequences of anarchy, is sloppy thinking.
It will be interesting to see how the US government responds to a South Korean request for extradition of Uber corporate officers for conspiracy to break the law.
So your argument is that because insisting on doctors getting a license it creates an artificial scarcity. Well in fact it does, for very good reason. Now it just so happens that a bad driver can just as easily kill his passenger as a bad doctor, so there are very good reasons for public safety to insure that certain licensing requirements for operating such a business are in place.
So yes, it does cause a certain measure of scarcity, but there are very good reasons to believe that the trade off is worth the cost. Like virtually, everything in life, there are tradeoffs.
You also point out the weakness of your own argument by saying "we would end up back with some sort of relatively stable model", Precisely, because allowing unlicensed free-lancers in a a business that actually has significant liability and safety costs, that shifts that burden on to everyone else. This is precisely how and why we got regulated taxi services in the first place. Thousands of lives were destroyed before it happened, so necessary regulation its not a trivial matter. Societies that permit some not to play by the rules that others must follow ultimate bear the costs of broken and abused rules. Now you may not see a problem with your wife being raped by a unlicensed driver with criminal intent, or being robbed when all you wanted was to get from point A to point B, or spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair because of an accident the driver had no insurance for, and you are content to just "take your chances". However, the rest of the public doesn't need to be compelled or forced to subsidize your good luck (so far).
Exactly. Who needs a licensed brain surgeon anyway?
Looks like an exciting business opportunity awaits in Uber-Medicine.
Its pretty clear that New York and other cities just need to simply pass a law making it a crime to drive for Uber without a taxi license, proof of fitness to drive, and proof of liability insurance and give out rewards to anyone turning in an unregistered, unfit or uninsured driver. Everyone will then get free rides from Uber and the city's transportation costs will be solved.
So obviously the all those solar arrays that power much of the economies of Germany and Denmark, not exactly known for their sunny climes, must work by magic.
If that were true, how do you account for countries like Germany and Denmark getting nearly 100% of their power during summer months from solar and still not managing to be among the world's strongest economies relative to their population size.
Think of it as the price per electron, since without electrons moving from one place to another there is no electricity.
The more you use, the more you pay. Rates should be set by law on a per electron basis, with those receiving paying those who are producing. There is no reason to permit some users to forced to pay more per electron than others. Why should users be forced to pay to make some other user's per electron cost cheaper at their expense, simply because some producers can provide fatter campaign contributions than others?
"It makes sense that in case of solar, you pay transport cost both ways."
Why does this makes sense? If the role of the consumer/producer is reversed, then so should be the charges. After Citizen-United, corporations are people, so the reverse must also apply. Why should I as a corporation have any less rights than another corporation? Why should industry sponsored politicians make it illegal for me to benefit from my energy production and at the same time make it a requirement that I should doubly subsidize another corporation for theirs?
"They pay for maintenance on the lines, which is where the cost of delivery comes from."
No, actually their customers pay for that, they just act as a middle man for a profit. The real question, with regard to public utilities is what is a reasonable fee and who should be allowed to set it.
" Hydro makes everything easier. "
Not for fish and other aquatic organisms.
"You know, we would have a healthier society, if I actually did have veto power over what my money got used for."
Sounds like a candidate for elective office. Now all you have to do is be convincing.
No they should leave that to the Chinese, so that all future technological developments and economic progress take place overseas. We need to use our government to protect corporate monopolies and the 1%. The last thing we need to do is invest in the future.
The reality is that those governments that fail to invest, will eventually be out competed. Solar is getting cheaper and cheaper, in large measure because the Chinese have finally figured out that it is in their best interest to be number one in solar technology and to leave the US dependent on progressively less sustainable fossil fuels and consequently, bottled up in the politics of the Middle East.
With the largest number of college graduates in science and technology, they will at the current pace overtake the US in less than 15 years, in terms of high tech. Keep in mind that already those iPhones and next gen devices aren't built here and that the cutting edge is rapidly shifting to Asia. If the Chinese invest more heavily in solar, as well as English-based university education, the US will find itself with an even more capable competitor.
The only real question now is whether or not the Chinese will be able to rapidly enough reverse the environmental destructiveness of their approach to development. Certainly, solar will provide them many benefits in this direction.
"Churn the *uckers."
The problem with this argument is more or less the same as the problem that the US now has with ISIS, they can't get rid of them fast enough.
Churning our elected leaders only makes it easier for the wealthy and corporations to install the folks of their own choosing, since only they have the money to run two, three, four candidates, if necessary in a single contest, as well as paying to preen their bench.
The fundamental problem is that the electorate itself is too poorly educated to be able to tell which candidates are providing honest, fair, intelligent, and sustainable policies that will work in the long term. Depending on how you look it is, this may not be a problem for all that much longer, because the more the US electorate diddles, the sooner the Chinese will surpass us and tell us how we will do it. One can hardly expect the rest of the world to be patient, while US politicians get a clue.
One of the reasons they are poor is high electricity bills.
This effort on the part of utilities will only hasten the day, when solar power becomes so cheap that it won't matter if solar homes are connected to the grid. They will be able to be entirely independent of the grid by being a local area grid in their own home.
"So at least in this case, "the fossil fuel industry" is acting in the interests of the little guy."
LOL. Yeah, by making planet Earth unihabitable for their children and their children's children, assuming they will be able to afford having any.
Saying bioinformatics has "standardized" on open source tools is a bit of a stretch, but there is no doubt that the tools you mention are very widely used. That said, bioinformatics is a very small fraction of the activity going on in the biological sciences.
In may ways this is a bit of a shame, as Mathematica's computational capabilities are exceed those that the other open source languages you mention can do, without tremendous programming effort. Indeed, its precisely why I pose the question, since it is an area that Mathematica should be far more visible and more widely utilized than it is.
That said, does anyone have an idea of where answers to these questions will be posted?
One of the challenges facing biological scientists is the need to develop and employ diverse data structures, as well as use analytic techniques that often require rather advanced mathematical and statistical methods and theory that span multiple disciplines. In biology there is a wide spectrum of computer languages available and used to pursue such requirements. Although Mathematica has the potential for much wider application as some of the demonstration project, training videos, and example code on the Wolfram website prove, it still remains one of the lesser used languages for this purpose.
How can Wolfram as a company find new ways to promote, organize, and expand the use of Mathematica and the emerging Wolfram/Alpha language to become more of a visible presence in the biological sciences community?
Just wait until these get left behind in Iraq and Syria. Look out!
Don't confuse computer skills with writing code.
There's plenty of money. Its just that the current tax laws are designed to protect those who have it at the expense of most everyone else.
Ever ask yourself why it is fundamentally more fair for Mitt Romney to pay only 13% tax on his income, when the vast majority of Americans pay 28%?
Or better yet, ask your self it is really either fundamentally fair or wise as public policy to permit most corporations sufficient loopholes in the tax law, such that they pay no tax at all? If they are now people, why should they be getting tax rates that are often either 0% or seldom more than 5% after deductions, when the rest of us are paying 28%?
If those republicans who were REALLY interested in lower taxes for the AVERAGE American, they would pay more attention to the facts and consequences of our existing tax policies than focusing on how to further burden average Americans with cuts to governmental programs that actually benefit everyone. But of course, everyone knows its all for show, since they don't really represent AVERAGE Americans, only the 1% and the AVERAGE corporation. Thinking otherwise, is a bit like giving someone else your brain and then complaining that you can't think your way out of a paper bag.