i wouldn't subject my business to amazon's policies, pricing rules, commissions, or the very real possibility of having my business trashed in reviews by shady competitors.
You already have that risk with Yelp and similar services.
My guess is that with Amazon, they won't let non-customers review you. Why should they? So even if your competitors go to the trouble of actually hiring you for something and then giving you a bad review, how many bad reviews could they realistically generate compared to all of your good reviews from real customers?
I'm not saying that BS reviews are a nonissue, but I think that you are overestimating size of the issue.
For one thing, standardized prices imply consistent quality. That might happen when you're making widgets. For labor with any degree of skill - I'm rather doubtful that this is the case.
I'm not even so concerned about consistent price as the fact that I think Amazon will increase quality.
A service provider who is dealing only with individuals doesn't lose much if he/she botches an assignment. I mean, how much do you really spend on a plumber or electrician in your lifetime? But an Amazon service provider who generates a lot of customer complaints is going to get booted from the program which presumably feeds them a lot of business, so there is a higher incentive to do each job right.
Exercise is good for the body and all, but if you want to lose weight, you should not increase your exercise. This is because exercise will increase your appetite and you will, statistically speaking, wind up eating more in extra food than you would burn off through the increased exercise.
If you want to improve your physical fitness, then by all means exercise. But weight loss does not happen in the gym in the real world. It happens in the kitchen.
So I don't meant this confrontationally at all, the geek in me really wants to do some cool home automation, but what are some real life use cases where home automation does add convenience?
I mean beyond the simple stuff. I already have automated thermostats and universal remotes for my TVs. What else could I do that would make my life easier?
The truly funny part is that women wanted absolutely nothing to do with computers until there was money to be made.
This is utterly untrue. You're just too young to remember life before the 1980s.
It used to be that professionals in computing skewed female. A lot of the early advances in computer were made by women. That trend completely reversed itself in the 80s, though. I'm not sure why, but anyway, the history is of us intruding on women's territory, not them intruding on ours! Maybe it was we who realized that there was money to be made and that is what attracted us to the field?
if this socially moronic project rockets to the top in popularity on GitHub, what have you learned about the prevailing culture?
That people want to see what all of the controversy is about?
Look, the Internet has actual pornography on it, and I'm told it is very popular. But do you have to look at it if you do not like it? No, you do not. Same goes for the DICSS project. You can go your entire programming life without actually looking at the DICSS project.
Indeed, I intend to go my entire programming life without looking at the DICSS project. I did not click the link, and I am not going to. And it's not because I'm offended by dicks or dick jokes. It's because my sense of humor has changed a bit since middle school, and I just don't see any reason to bother.
As for your frat house arms race - yeah, that's going overboard, ala my 'dick jokes all day' example. Extremism is bad, everything in moderation(including moderation).
Well, the DICSS project is definitely all dicks, all the time, so it definitely fits under the "going overboard" category. That being said, DICSS is a joke project, so anyone who isn't in the mood for phallic humor can easily avoid it. If a workplace were like that, it wouldn't be so easy to avoid.
Anyway, I'm a dude, and I don't really like office environments where everyone walks around all day with their potty mouths set to "maximum potty". It's unprofessional and is a distraction from actual work. In my mind, the best policy is for everyone to make their best effort to keep things professional and in exchange, for people who might be offended to just chill out when there is an occasional, inevitable slip-up.
In what fucking language. Pretty sure boxes is the pl. of box.
A long, long, long, long time ago, system administrators of the various Unix-like OS's pluralized Unix-like machines as "boxen" instead of boxes. It was just sort of a quirky, geeky thing. Now, it sounds just really fucking stupid.
Cars must be inspected 3 times a year. This includes safety and cleanliness, and accessibility.
Fat lot of good that does. The dirtiest Uber I've ever been was is still 10x cleaner than the cleanest licensed taxicab I've ever been it. I guess driving a car for 18+ hours per day takes its toll.
Most of the regulations you speak of are from a bygone era. An accurate taximeter? Try GPS. Braille rate cards? The rider already has an accessible mobile device. You get the idea.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a problem with the standard taxicab experience. If taxicabs were better than Ubers, then there would be no such thing as Uber.
I tried to access the site, and I got "Couldn't connect to the database. Please doublecheck your settings in dbconfig.php All pending operations halted." Soooo... yeah, that doesn't inspire much confidence.
I can't find the renewal pricing for cheap-domainregistration.com. I'm guessing that there is a good reason for that, and the reason is that I wouldn't be happy with what I found!
Even if we assume that government could solve this problem (which is a big "if"! How much money do, say, 419 fraud victims normally get returned to them? Or eBay escrow fraud victims? Good luck!), it would still be cheaper to the victims to operate in the black market.
By way of example, let's say a vendor does $1000/day in Evolution market sales and let's say that money is typically held in escrow for 14 days (I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but they seem pretty reasonable). Let's also assume that these transactions are subject to a 5% sales tax (which is almost certainly very low, considering how heavily intoxicating substances are taxed in the real world!). That would mean that the vendor would expect to have $14,000 held in escrow at any given time, and that they would be collecting $18,250 in sales tax annually. Money that would otherwise go to the vendor. As we can see, government pulls more money out of the market than it is able to provide in protection, assuming that it provided any protection at all, which I doubt it would.
The risks of trading on the Darknets are well-understood and are accepted. Trading in illegal goods carries risk. Film at 11.
I would pose the same question back to you? How many times has the "affluenza" defense worked? I only know of one. And how many crooked judges are there?
Wealthy people have more resources to defend themselves with, no doubt. But they can't just throw money at any given problem to make it go away.
It is probably an emotional response to seeing some rich **** flaunt the law with zero consequence to themselves,
I know some people think that, but it's just not the case. Just ask pro baseball player Jayson Werth. I realize that doing jail time for speeding isn't going to hurt the guy in the long run, but "zero consequences"? Not so.
And when the rich get too many tickets, they lose their license, just like you or I would. I get that the fine is pretty meaningless to them (my last ticket was for $150, and it was a bummer, but it didn't cause me to miss my rent payment or anything), but losing your license just sucks, I don't care who you are.
Slashdot Mirror
i wouldn't subject my business to amazon's policies, pricing rules, commissions, or the very real possibility of having my business trashed in reviews by shady competitors.
You already have that risk with Yelp and similar services.
My guess is that with Amazon, they won't let non-customers review you. Why should they? So even if your competitors go to the trouble of actually hiring you for something and then giving you a bad review, how many bad reviews could they realistically generate compared to all of your good reviews from real customers?
I'm not saying that BS reviews are a nonissue, but I think that you are overestimating size of the issue.
For one thing, standardized prices imply consistent quality. That might happen when you're making widgets. For labor with any degree of skill - I'm rather doubtful that this is the case.
I'm not even so concerned about consistent price as the fact that I think Amazon will increase quality.
A service provider who is dealing only with individuals doesn't lose much if he/she botches an assignment. I mean, how much do you really spend on a plumber or electrician in your lifetime? But an Amazon service provider who generates a lot of customer complaints is going to get booted from the program which presumably feeds them a lot of business, so there is a higher incentive to do each job right.
Maybe the homeowner had to sell his house twice.
Damn you, Comcast!!!!!
This is a repost.
By "Fresh potatoes" do you mean raw potatoes? I thought raw potatoes would not taste good, but I guess I've never tried them.
Actually, this is not true.
Exercise is good for the body and all, but if you want to lose weight, you should not increase your exercise. This is because exercise will increase your appetite and you will, statistically speaking, wind up eating more in extra food than you would burn off through the increased exercise.
If you want to improve your physical fitness, then by all means exercise. But weight loss does not happen in the gym in the real world. It happens in the kitchen.
average person would be lucky to need maybe 1200-1300 calories as their TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure)
This is just not true. Not unless you're talking about the average sub-5'-tall postmenopausal woman.
As a sedentary middle aged dude, I need about 1900 calories, and will lose weight if I consume less. 1300 calories would be starvation-level for me.
It adds some convenience and security
So I don't meant this confrontationally at all, the geek in me really wants to do some cool home automation, but what are some real life use cases where home automation does add convenience?
I mean beyond the simple stuff. I already have automated thermostats and universal remotes for my TVs. What else could I do that would make my life easier?
who's going to open up the white boys club?
What "white boys club"? I don't know where you work, but most of my colleagues are Indian or Chinese.
The truly funny part is that women wanted absolutely nothing to do with computers until there was money to be made.
This is utterly untrue. You're just too young to remember life before the 1980s.
It used to be that professionals in computing skewed female. A lot of the early advances in computer were made by women. That trend completely reversed itself in the 80s, though. I'm not sure why, but anyway, the history is of us intruding on women's territory, not them intruding on ours! Maybe it was we who realized that there was money to be made and that is what attracted us to the field?
if this socially moronic project rockets to the top in popularity on GitHub, what have you learned about the prevailing culture?
That people want to see what all of the controversy is about?
Look, the Internet has actual pornography on it, and I'm told it is very popular. But do you have to look at it if you do not like it? No, you do not. Same goes for the DICSS project. You can go your entire programming life without actually looking at the DICSS project.
Indeed, I intend to go my entire programming life without looking at the DICSS project. I did not click the link, and I am not going to. And it's not because I'm offended by dicks or dick jokes. It's because my sense of humor has changed a bit since middle school, and I just don't see any reason to bother.
As for your frat house arms race - yeah, that's going overboard, ala my 'dick jokes all day' example. Extremism is bad, everything in moderation(including moderation).
Well, the DICSS project is definitely all dicks, all the time, so it definitely fits under the "going overboard" category. That being said, DICSS is a joke project, so anyone who isn't in the mood for phallic humor can easily avoid it. If a workplace were like that, it wouldn't be so easy to avoid.
Anyway, I'm a dude, and I don't really like office environments where everyone walks around all day with their potty mouths set to "maximum potty". It's unprofessional and is a distraction from actual work. In my mind, the best policy is for everyone to make their best effort to keep things professional and in exchange, for people who might be offended to just chill out when there is an occasional, inevitable slip-up.
People pay for dictionaries? You must be really, really old.
In what fucking language. Pretty sure boxes is the pl. of box.
A long, long, long, long time ago, system administrators of the various Unix-like OS's pluralized Unix-like machines as "boxen" instead of boxes. It was just sort of a quirky, geeky thing. Now, it sounds just really fucking stupid.
From this, it looks like Uber has $1M in insurance during paid trips.
If Uber sucks so much, then no one will use it. And nobody's using it, right?? Right??
Cars must be inspected 3 times a year. This includes safety and cleanliness, and accessibility.
Fat lot of good that does. The dirtiest Uber I've ever been was is still 10x cleaner than the cleanest licensed taxicab I've ever been it. I guess driving a car for 18+ hours per day takes its toll.
Most of the regulations you speak of are from a bygone era. An accurate taximeter? Try GPS. Braille rate cards? The rider already has an accessible mobile device. You get the idea.
Maybe, just maybe, there is a problem with the standard taxicab experience. If taxicabs were better than Ubers, then there would be no such thing as Uber.
Statistically the man in the middle is most likely to be The Man.
Given the prevalence of open WiFi, I feel like the most likely attack vector would be an eavesdropper than MITM.
I tried to access the site, and I got "Couldn't connect to the database. Please doublecheck your settings in dbconfig.php
All pending operations halted." Soooo... yeah, that doesn't inspire much confidence.
I can't find the renewal pricing for cheap-domainregistration.com. I'm guessing that there is a good reason for that, and the reason is that I wouldn't be happy with what I found!
Even if we assume that government could solve this problem (which is a big "if"! How much money do, say, 419 fraud victims normally get returned to them? Or eBay escrow fraud victims? Good luck!), it would still be cheaper to the victims to operate in the black market.
By way of example, let's say a vendor does $1000/day in Evolution market sales and let's say that money is typically held in escrow for 14 days (I'm pulling these numbers out of my ass, but they seem pretty reasonable). Let's also assume that these transactions are subject to a 5% sales tax (which is almost certainly very low, considering how heavily intoxicating substances are taxed in the real world!). That would mean that the vendor would expect to have $14,000 held in escrow at any given time, and that they would be collecting $18,250 in sales tax annually. Money that would otherwise go to the vendor. As we can see, government pulls more money out of the market than it is able to provide in protection, assuming that it provided any protection at all, which I doubt it would.
The risks of trading on the Darknets are well-understood and are accepted. Trading in illegal goods carries risk. Film at 11.
I would pose the same question back to you? How many times has the "affluenza" defense worked? I only know of one. And how many crooked judges are there?
Wealthy people have more resources to defend themselves with, no doubt. But they can't just throw money at any given problem to make it go away.
Or they could go to jail. That's right. For speeding.
It is probably an emotional response to seeing some rich **** flaunt the law with zero consequence to themselves,
I know some people think that, but it's just not the case. Just ask pro baseball player Jayson Werth. I realize that doing jail time for speeding isn't going to hurt the guy in the long run, but "zero consequences"? Not so.
And when the rich get too many tickets, they lose their license, just like you or I would. I get that the fine is pretty meaningless to them (my last ticket was for $150, and it was a bummer, but it didn't cause me to miss my rent payment or anything), but losing your license just sucks, I don't care who you are.
It's easier to calculate income than it is to calculate net worth and assets are easier to hide.
Where did that yacht go? Oh, it sank. I didn't just reflag it in Vanuatu, honest.