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Dude should have mentioned a lot of the things he did, considering how touchy Tesla was with him before. But I find two things problematic with Tesla's perspective:
1) They insist that driving their expensive car over 55 is "cheating". I know they are actually trying to say the tester was being deceptive about his reporting (doing one thing, while reporting another), but as far as "real world consequences" a lot of this seems to come down to the fact that a Ford Fiesta can easily smoke this car for speed on a 200 mile trip.
2) In support of your parking lot statement: I used to work for a big company with many parking lots for its many buildings, but never enough parking really.
The parking structure closest to my work was about 8 levels. Often I would have to drive 8 levels up, then 8 levels down, then go hunt another lot before I could finally get an open space. No express lane "down", and the sign that says "Lot Full" outside was a POS that always read wrong.
1/2 mile of slow parking lot driving would have been a "lucky day" for me. |
I'm in my 30s now but I remember being 17 and super into cars (A topic I still enjoy) -- my whole family was, all my friends too.
I remember reading about electric car research doing some amazing things even back then. 100 mpg hybrid concepts and 11 second drag cars running on electricity and I can remember reading it all and saying, FUCK THAT. I will NEVER own an electric car. I was so sure of myself and so certain that electric cars were hokum, pussy nonsense peddled by weeping liberals intent on stealing my V8 from me.
All those idiots driving around in their silent 12 horsepower death traps. "Not me!" I thought to myself. I'll make sure that shit never happens. |
First off, take everything you read in the NYTimes with a grain of salt, but more importantly, there are some points that really aren't as clear as Elon Musk would like the logs to be.
For example, Broder drove around that parking lot looking for the charging station for several minutes. The towing company confirms the car had no juice whatsoever, and couldn't even release the E-brake. |
I cannot account for the discrepancy, nor for a later stretch in Connecticut where I recall driving about 45 m.p.h., but it may be the result of the car being delivered with 19-inch wheels and all-season tires, not the specified 21-inch wheels and summer tires.
Sounds like bullshit excuse to me. The one and only difference would have been between the performance of all-season tires vs summer tires, and that still doesn't affect speed reading. Diameter of wheels has no bearing on speed reading because it is offset by proper tire sidewall size. E.g. my car has stock 18" wheels with 245/40-18 tires (245 is width of the tire in mm, 40 is the % from the width, and is the size of the sidewall, 18 is the wheel diameter). If I were to install 19" wheels I would need to get 245/35-19 tires. The key difference is in the sidewall size. If I were to get the same sidewall size tires but of bigger diameter e.g. 245/40-19, that would screw with the speedometer and odometer (and even then not by much, you'd have to really go full retard to screw with speedometer and odometer THAT badly). |
you're sort of on to the point, now.
Except that the Tesla isn't just a mobile phone that nobody has used yet or a computer that is too slow... its more like a Beta Tape or HD-DVD or Laserdisc, its doomed to die while some better version of the technology comes out to do what it can't.
I'm not going to support electric cars like these. I will support electric cars as a whole, and the idea that we need green cars, but I'm not gonna support or fund a failing stopgap.
> and fund the improvements needed.
The reality is that this is not how it works. People don't need to buy electric cars for car companies to have the money to start making them truly competitive with gas cars. The car companies have the money to do that right now, they're just making wayyyy too much money on gasoline cars to care. |
Does Folding@home have a Google Plus or Facebook app where you can display your points yet?
People are selfish - What do they directly get in return?
I made a comment a while back about charity and motivation, and linking social media to distributed computing. I think some of the discussion applies here.
Karma and points systems can affect motivation, and may be the sole source of motivation for some people to do something charitable.
“ World Community Grid 's mission is to create the world's largest public computing grid to tackle projects that benefit humanity.”
Are people accumulating World Community Grid points because they care about solving the human genome, HIV, dengue, muscular dystrophy, cancer, influenza, rice crop yields, and clean energy or do they mainly care about their points and status? Does it matter?
Social pressure to donate
Distributed computing sites have points that you can earn and accumulate. I can display a person's World Community Grid points, Folding@home points, BOINC points, Foldit points etc.. That's only if a user wants to broadcast points, and only if I choose to display their points. You don’t have to care about someone’s Reddit karma points, but you have the option of displaying it with tools such as Reddit Enhancement Suite. You also don't have to care if someone is a Reddit gold member.
Optional display and action
At Slashdot, you can use a characteristic of a comment (tagged funny, tagged informative, comment length etc.), and give it a positive or negative weighting, causing the comment to appear higher or lower when you sort. Why not do this with points achieved through distributed computing? If someone has donated computer time to advancing cancer research, renewable energy research etc., I’d like to give that person slightly higher priority when I’m viewing comments. Being able to scan someone to view their points, and have points affect my comment sorting, might create social pressure to donate to distributed computing. Reddit already has an option to “See gilded comments”.
Cynicism
What if you’re super cynical? “This person has a lot of distributed computing points, not because they care about curing cancer, but because they only care about their status, and you assume that person is a rich, spoiled brat”. Yea.. so? The damage is done; the world has advanced further. Someone with a high amount of distributed computing points is more likely to directly benefit your life than someone with a high amount of Reddit karma points, or someone with a high amount of XBOX achievements.
The disadvantaged
What if you’re not wealthy, and you can’t afford to donate much to keep your reputation up? You feel a tad socially inadequate because you have a lower-than-average “charity” ranking, but all of a sudden, cancer research goes into overdrive, and cancer gets systematically wiped out. Having lower social status and wealth might make you feel dejected, but a bit of extra stress and sadness won't kill you; cancer can kill you. Even in the pursuit of social status alone, people worldwide will be inadvertently attacking disease and illness aggressively on a constant basis, instead of having the fight be relegated to annual charity galas, raffle events, and runs, which relies on the goodness of people’s hearts.
Combine competition with cooperation.
People by nature are status-conscious, self-interested, and competitive. Either you launch a system that allows people to satisfy their ego by spending money on the purchasing of GPUs and energy to attain points that may be used by others to varying degrees, or you let people continue to flaunt their wealth through expensive cloths, cars, jewelry, paintings etc.. Vanity isn’t going away, so you might as well shift the outlet to something that will push society forward. |
I used to work for one of large Indian outsourcing firm, couple of pointers
a) It's not easy or cheap to relocate a 10-15 years experienced Indian professional from India to US, they don't want to come because the wages and growth options are better in India than in US and, getting visa is difficult as the rejection rates are upwards of 60% and it's expensive
b) We did lot of recruitment locally last year and on-boarded 11 people in our group during Q2 of 2012, and by Q3 only 2 people were with us, and we are starting over again this year.
Typical challenges for recruiting locally
a) Many tech folks are not engineering graduates, and it impacts their up-skilling capabilities
b) We are in IT Service business, which involves managing customer expectations and being flexible to their needs , it will surprise you how many of our local recruits have caused us project cancellations due to lack of simple customer management skills |
The lack of evidence that the foreign students and workers we are recruiting offer superior talent reinforces the need to assure that programs like H-1B visa are used only to attract the best and the brightest or to remedy genuine labor shortages—not to serve as a source of cheap, compliant labor. We must eliminate employer incentives for using foreign workers as cheap labor, and we must end the practice of using green card sponsorship to render foreign workers captive to the employers who bring them into the country.
People have been complaining about H-1Bs for over a decade. I'm not opposed to them in theory, but in practice, "we can't find qualified candidates" really means "we can't find candidates that will take our crap pay and the benefits we want to offer them. Neither will they roll over when we threaten them all the time. In other words, we want indentured servants, not free-market employees." Everyone in the trenches has known about this abuse for a very long time.
It would be like a business complaining to the government that they couldn't hire by offering below the minimum wage (because it was too high to make record profits), only for H-1Bs, the government listens most of the time. "It's about them computer thingies and science-y stuff. We don't understand them, so we'll trust that you (the business owners) aren't deceiving us."
In my understanding, it's not actually the large companies like MS that are abusing salaries the most. It's the smaller ones.
EDIT: |
Efficiency, wealth decided who lived and who died in patenting up to the 7 figure mark. The new system will only allow patents to be vulnerable temporarily, greatly lowering litigation costs over the term of the patent.
However patents are still fair game to trolls in its first years, so I believe this will have the effect of shunting the costs upfront. On the economics side, this means higher investor confidence in patents who have survived the trial by fire, but slightly lower new patent lifespan (about 6 mo).
Lower overall litigation costs means less revenue for attorneys, which means attorneys can suck it.
The old patent system was designed to protect the inventor, who usually displays their prototype for some time (up to one year) before filing to either gauge demand and attract investors. In reality, any inventor who didn't dump 20,000$ or so on patenting would lose the patent to technicality anyways. And that's not counting international patents. |
From the U.S. Patent Office FAQ:
> How much does it cost to get a patent?
>Fees vary depending on the type of patent application you submit. Fees may also vary according to the way you "claim" your invention. More information on filing fees and the number and type of claims.
>There are three basic fees for utility patents:
> * The filing fee, which is non-refundable whether or not a patent is granted. (This is the cost to have your invention "examined" by the US Patent and Trademark Office - remember, you may or may not get a patent!)
> The issue fee (you pay this only if your application is allowed)
Maintenance fees (paid at 3 1/2, 7 1/2, and 11 1/2 years after your patent is granted - these fees "maintain" your legal protection).
> Additional fees may be required.
> You are strongly advised to check the [current fee schedule]( before submitting your application.
An individual or "[micro entity]( inexperienced with patents gets a 75% discount and certain fees waved, so the base price of it can come out to as little as a couple hundred dollars. Realistically, count on more like a couple thousand. |
United States Constitutional Amendment Number 4 - The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Us supreme court ruling Katz vs United states - Summarized ruling taken from wikipedia - "the Supreme Court ruled that a search occurs when 1) a person expects privacy in the thing searched and 2) society believes that expectation is reasonable."
CISPA would allow the government to extract information from companies without the original owners permission. When we sign the Terms and services, we usually expect for the company to use our data for their personal needs and not sell it. One problem some people have with google is that they sell peoples information to other companies, on the basis of creating more targeted ads. I have my own personal opinion on this, but what's important is that the government thinks that, becuase companies like google exhibit this morally questionable behavior, we "expect" our information to be distributed without our permission. The thing is, most people still want to have some semblance of privacy on the internet. Most people dont want the post office reading their mail, so why should we have a different standards for E-mail? |
If you number all of those polls on that page up you won't even get to 30,000 people. Out of 30 million. Even if they all voted lockstep for UBCs, which they did not, that's less than 1% of the total population. Hardly a wide-sweeping, conclusive poll.
To add to that, the polls listed there aren't exactly transparent in their methods. How were the people polled? Were these random numbers out of a phone book or were they all from one location? And some of those questions are extremely vague. All in all, not stellar examples of unbiased research. |
I think it's potentially a strong touch OS. I don't particularly like WP but I can see why some people do, and I think they did a good job of transitioning the tile approach to a tablet format. I also think the side swipe gestures are incredibly fluid once you get used to them (which doesn't take long). I feel this way without even owning a Windows 8 touch device, but from just using my friend's Surface RT.
I thought it had real potential for touch from the first time I saw it, and still do, but poor app selection/lacklustre ecosystem in general make it very unappealing to me compared to Android. It also works like poo either with a mouse or a trackpad. I've got an 8 partition on my Macbook and the first thing I did was install Start8, now it's perfectly usable because I can ignore all the Modern UI stuff. |
This is how the mainstream media have acted for the last 70 years. This is how they will attempt to suppress alternative news. watch the UK, Australia, Canada try and follow suit if this is a success. US will be different because of the constitution. |
I know full well what bitcoin is.
What is this conversation about ? I am talking about restricting websites that are not licensed to the MDA. Not about bitcoin.
And which common person is going to go searching for this "download"?
Please... I do not wish to continue this conversation if you're going to keep going on about bitcoin and piracy because I just told you that I'm talking about websites. I couldn't give two hoots about bitcoin and piracy as this is not what the article is about... SINGAPOREAN WEBSITES.
And I already showed you that Singapore already has web filters already in place. They can and will block websites which are unlicensed, even if it isn't 100% effective.
Edit: further point. The fact that if I were an independent unlicensed media source, I would have to get my audience to find and install an additional product (VPN/Tor) in order to view my content is already a significant barrier of entry, which reduces competitive capability against other "legit" sources. |
I honestly hope that you are being sarcastic. I only say this as a precaution because some people actually believe this.
The truth of the matter is no government can ever be a good government. No government will ever be there to "serve the people." The point of the private sector is to offer and create services and goods. All the greatest inventions were not created nor derived by some government. The private sector strives on innovation, the government has no reason to innovate. A company needs to profit to survive the government takes from the people to survive. Government may be a necessary evil but it's role should be minimal. When people call for the government to regulate different parts of the private sector, you get situations like this. Why? People fear the government. What if a company refused to comply with these secret FISA court orders? Seeing that the orders were top secret, would contempt proceedings also be top secret? I see im going on a tangent here so I will end by saying, government will never be the answer no matter how "well intentioned" it originally was meant to be. |
Well security is a selling point for BB, I think the author missed why there's so much hate for those things.
Prior BB devices sucked. As I've had an 8830, Storm, Storm 2, and Torch 9850.
The 8830 for it's day, it was great because there was no other smartphone market and the only thing that made it suck was Vz being dicks (they locked the GPS, so to use it you had to pay for Verizon Navigator).
The Storm... The first day I had it I was in love. A few features were good (SureType keyboard), working GPS... but the plethora of issues with this thing at launch was crazy. After a few OS patches it got better (sorta). Outside OS issues, you had hardware issues of the entire freaking screen being a giant ass button, but executed poorly.
Storm 2, same verse as the first! Actually it was a lot better. The button was moved from a single button in the middle too four buttons distributed on the corners. Better screen, faster (marginally)...
Torch 9850. The new OS build was far more stable then the prior. Daily reboots now weren't required. Faster. Full touch screen (so button problem completely gone).
But while each full touch screen phone was better then it's prior, RIM (at the time) ignored competition and did NOTHING to compete. Literally they thought BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) was going to be the must have app that was going to keep all the customers. Don't get me wrong, BBM is by far the single best messenger to date on any platform. But shitty camera, 0 apps, clunky OS... they lost out. (I realize there's "apps" but, no, as a BlackBerry user, 5k flashlight apps, battery apps, signal booster... no... no. There are no 3rd party apps. The WiiU has better 3rd party support.)
RIM ignored competition. They ignored users. They ignored the market. Few to no updates to the OS so things never get improved or fixed. (It takes a minimum of 9 "clicks" to enable/disable GPS... but only 2 for Mobile Network, Wifi, Bluetooth, or Hotspot (which was added later) but GPS... you have to dig for it). They seriously seem to hate 3rd party apps. The apps they make have bugs and are slow to being fixed (if fixed at all). The app store is a perfect example of how to do app stores wrong (people are trying to get laid in the app store via reviews...).
I've played with the new BB. It was snappy and looked great. And the browser was better. But I didn't really get to play with it (BestBuy sales rep wouldn't go away, was to worried about getting a sale). Since the OS is based off of QNX and not fucking Java, it should be awesome (in theory, BB10 should out perform and be more stable then iOS or Android). Hardware specs it beats the iPhone. But I couldn't tell you much more. I don't know if 3rd party apps are going to be a thing. Or if a cross platform BBM will be a thing (rumors for years)(if it does become a thing, you'll see why BBM is awesome). If they'll actually update the damn OS or if there will be the BlackBerry makes a version, then the carrier gets to mess with it and if they feel like sending it out THEN you get updates...
Also, BlackBerry isn't impenetrable. Verizon manages to push random shit to my phone they want me to install (and I can't get rid of these icons, I can only hide them...) so the phone is remotely accessible. |
I'll be honest, I'm surprised that in a respectable sub this is the top comment.
The whole point of claiming piracy is separate from theft is that you have not stolen anything. The data still exists. They have exactly as many bytes, exactly the same code, with exactly the same effect as before. You have in no way diminished their ability to continue to have their digital good. Thus:
It is stealing money, you removed money from another person
It is buying drugs, because the illegal substance exchanged hands for money
It is reckless driving, because even if you do not hit someone, your movements and driving pattern will impact other drivers who may crash in an attempt to avoid being hit by you.
Also, this data that they are collecting: It's not ours. It belongs to the companies we do business with. You sign agreements with your providers that they may collect this information (supposedly to improve their service). Your communication on their networks belongs to them, not you. Much like at work if you start a side business through your company e-mail, your company can come in and take all the money earned from it (if they wanted to) because you "used company resources".
I'm against them collecting the data, too. However - how do you prove communication retroactively? If they do not have metadata, captured encrypted transmissions (note that unencrypted transmissions are considered to happen in public), etc. just sitting around, some of that information will be gone. Depending on what they're copying or choosing not to copy, that could be a big deal.
In the physical world, it's much like if they talked to many businesses and asked if they could just start having copies sent of the CCTV data. Business doesn't give a fuck, as long as they don't have to do anything particularly different - They think it makes their neighborhood safer so that even when a cop isn't on the beat, if a criminal is suspected to be in the area, they can figure it out after the fact and perhaps trach them down. Now that the cops have the data, they're not allowed to watch the video until a crime is committed and they can get a warrant. If they follow that rule (which is a stretch because that's a lot of data they've collected to not search), then it's not really a big deal.
The big deal is if we believe we can't trust our executive branch to follow through on their duties and the rule of law. It's OK to be skeptical, but any case arising where the data is used without being able to have record of the warrant that enabled usage of that data should make the data inadmissible. Just like if they came into your house while you weren't home and checked around without a warrant should be inadmissible. |
Exactly. I lived in Asia for a year and people would go to the movies (the english one, at least) mostly to look at the movie rather than really get into it. It was totally cool to talk through it and text, etc., because it was subtitled. The movies that had the biggest appeal were corny slapstick comedies and michael bay-esque explos'gasms. |
one day it will come to you corporate victims.
I so hope you're a wumao. If not, prepare to get educated.
One of America's biggest and more lucrative exports is intellectual property. . What does this mean for pirating? It means that, although there are "evil" corporations out there fighting against pirating, they're in actuality fighting to keep America competitive in an increasingly unfair and underhanded international market, of which China is a major unsportsmanlike player. To put it bluntly, China is waging an all-out economic war on the United States and trying to supplant the US in all areas, especially intellectual property.
China has been known to steal intellectual property from US firms and subsequently "trim the fat" and leave the US firm out to dry. . Approximately two years ago, the Ministry of Culture in China opened up new positions for the sole purpose of "spreading Chinese culture" internationally (source: I know someone who spearheaded the position). One of the things this branch of the government did was to explore options with James Cameron regarding 3D technology in China . Tie all this into the guanxi , and you have a perfect storm: Chinese government and "private" business systematically copying, modifying, and trying to supplant every aspect of American culture, including intellectual property.
If you think this is far fetched, think about this: the US did the same thing post WWII. We "stole" the best and brightest from Germany advancing American strategic advantage in the world or 2) reducing other nations competitive advantage in the international stage. If the US is capable of this, why not China? In fact, China would be stupid not to use any and all of its advantages to supplant the US as the world's number 1 economy and reestablish itself as the regional (and potentially international) powerhouse it was prior to the isolationist policies of the Ming dynasty.
So how does pirating play into this whole geo-political dance? Simple. By pirating content originating in the US, one is subsequently weakening the United States' international standing in economic matters. One of the few things the US has going for it nowadays is the "innovation economy," wherein the monetization of new ideas becomes the backbone of the US economy. By pirating these new ideas–whether international or domestic, one does not simply "stick it to the man," but sticks it to the entire foundation upon which the US economy is built: generating new ideas.
If these new ideas are not protected somehow, then the US ceases to be competitive internationally. If the US ceases to be competitive internationally, then all the perks of being an international powerhouse also dissipate with it, including high quality, imported alcohol, cheap high-tech cell phones, new, cutting edge entertainment, cheap oil, the world's most advanced military and all the civilian benefits this brings.
So think about it. You blame the American-operated corporations while they try to simultaneously increase American GDP by trying to get people to pay for the content generated inside the United States to keep American competitive against a [country sporting one of the most positive GDP % growths of any in the world.]( Compare that to the US to see where the real competition is.
So when you laud the downfall of American corporations trying to keep America competitive in an increasingly hostile environment, think twice about what you're actually saying. Do you really want the United States to dwindle and die off because you think all corporations are evil entities because they represent power? Think about it from an external perspective real quickly and answer honestly. There's more world out there than just America. |
I'm kind of torn between this and the Samsung Galaxy Light.
On the one hand both the 8 ($180) and 16 GB ($200) models of the Moto G are cheaper than the Galaxy Light ($240).
But the Galaxy Light has a smaller form factor (4.78 x 2.5 x 0.4 inches) though the Moto G may be small enough but I would have to hold both to compare.
As the Moto G is Motorola's flagship and Motorola has a better reputation for build quality that give it mega points but it being a newer phone and one of the first built under their new owner (Google) it's seems too early to be certain.
The Moto G also comes with a newer version of Android and it promised a upgrade to the newest version in January. While the Galaxy Light is just new enough but since it's made for a specific carrier (T-mobile) I don't have confidence in the chances of a upgrade.
The Galaxy Light also has a Micro SD card slot. Though you may be able to bypass the memory expansion problems with USB OTG and some have already shown it working. Still can't help but feel I'm taking a chance with the Moto G here. |
Why do you sound so upset? Considering the close proximity to others around you, and that others can't escape by moving to a different area (like in a train or bus), I think this makes sense. Unless there's an ultra-urgent need for a phone call while on a plane (such as... well, I can't really think of one at the moment), I can't imagine why anybody would be too upset by not being able to make calls on the plane. This proposed ban is really just more firmly establishing what life is already like on a plane.
I am actually in favor of banning children, loud people, and obnoxious people from flights. It wouldn't really be considered discrimination (well, the children thing probably could be) as it's just like any other private location that removes people from their premises for being disruptive.
I also think it's unfair to say someone should just "DEAL WITH THINGS" (I'm assuming this includes dealing with people chatting on phones in a plane). Maybe in other public places I'd agree with you, but as mentioned above, there's nothing you can do to deal with someone else annoying you on a plane than to either ignore them, ask them to stop (which they aren't obligated to do), or call a flight attendant (and by the time you're in the air, there's not much a flight attendant can do).
And, it's not really a passing of a law; it'd a ban implemented by the DoT. That is something that, should public demand cry out for a change to allow in-flight calls, is much easier to change than a law and can be adapted much better. Additionally, I remember hearing a thing on NPR yesterday that they'd first put up the language of any proposed ban (if there is one) so that the public may review and weigh in on it, attempting to make the process as fair to all as possible. I feel like that's an adequate compromise and means that it's not just something passed down from up on high, but through the collaboration of all involved. |
Incredibly stupid and short sighted. The FCC policy change is on permitting cellular radios. You can already do in flight calling with Skype or Google Voice. I don't know why everyone still equates cellular radios with calls. WIFI and LTE ideally are extensions of the same network. Within the next couple of years all calls will be VOIP. Which method you use to place your call/get data from (cell vs WIFI) will depend only on connection quality (hell, use both at once). These ancient barriers will disappear. Do people not realize this? Anyway, the government shouldn't ban things because they are annoying. If enough think they're annoying the airlines will implement a policy. Policies should be different from regulations.
Also this whole ban lifting isn't for short term cellular use. Cell phones currently do not work in planes. They see too many towers and the cell sites change too quickly for the phone or the network to behave properly. The idea is to place a cell tower in a plane. That way your phone can connect to the cell service on board and at very low power (cell sites < 100ft away). The plane would back haul to modified cell towers. This would keep you on a robust 4G network while airborne.
The FCC worked really hard to prove that this wouldn't effect the safety of the plane. I know people that worked with the government in this..Fuck people have bitched about this forever. Now when change is in sight everyone freaks. |
I've gotten of a metro train because I was an annoying passenger. Sort of.
My wife and I went to the Panthers bar in DC (there is such a thing!) a few months ago for this first time. They have this fantastic game day drink special made of Kraken rum, butterscotch schnapps, and cola. They're too good. Seriously. Like, "give meee just waaahn more. Noreeely, I'm fiiine. Waaahnmore!" good.
The Panthers won - and won big - and I was drunk. So, of course, I was happy. Very happy. Very friendly, too. I guess I was talking to anybody and everybody on the train. Then, the next thing I know, my wife is waking me up by practically dragging me off of the train. As I come to, I said "Wait... this isn't our stop?"
"You told a baby that he was going to grow up to be a big strong patch of cabbage! (I can neither confirm, nor deny, this accusation.) Literally, word for word. Then, not even two minutes later, you're passed out in my lap. Everybody was looking at us. I had to get off that train." |
Because there is hardly any discrimination - BAM!
Yes, all this sensationalism is over this law:
Article 6.21: Anti gay-propaganda law among minors:
Propaganda is the act of distributing information among minors that:
1) is aimed at the creating nontraditional sexual attitudes,
2) makes nontraditional sexual relations attractive,
3) equates the social value of traditional and nontraditional sexual relations, or
4) creates an interest in nontraditional sexual relations.
Basically, you dont make statements / make-out where kids might see it.
Why? Russia's population is at decline, so much so, in 2005 it was said it could fall by a third by 2050, so right now Russia is doing everything to increase birth-rate, huge family supporting laws, family propaganda on national media, etc.
In a matter of fact Russia isn't NEARLY as homophobic as it is portrayed, it isn't even comparable to the situation in third world countries, it actually sent a "lesbian pair" group to Eurovision 2003, and it was super popular in Russia with their music video, where they make-out under the rain: |
But it is impossible. If you are on a low carbohydrate diet your cells will switch over to burn fatty acids preferentially. Only your brain and red cells are glucose dependent. Furthermore if you are diabetic your blood sugar level, cellular glucose levels, and caloric intake may have a wildly different relationship to one another than the norm.
A final point, even if it were possible since if the device is only 80% accurate per the inventor the error rate in the average 2200 kcal/day diet would be 440 kcal/day. An error of that magnitude could cause a weight gain/loss/misapproximation of 45 lbs/year EVEN IF the calories burned mechanism is 100% accurate. |
Won't be a problem. Netflix and Hulu is used by people who wants to get away from cable, the bills, advertisements etc. If "They would go straight to making a killing on providing internet with increased prices and capped usage", people would find a different solution - some small group of people starting up an idea for cheaper, better entertainment, much like Netflix started up. |
There are two solutions, fix the people or fix the company. You can't expect hundreds of thousands of people to just agree to stop using the internet for a month. You need to deal some sort of significant blow to comcast that will severely discredit them as a business. That would have to be one hell of a blow because comcast is already renown for being absolute shit.
Your best bet, aside from covert sabotage of all lines serviced by comcast on a massive scale (lol), would be to run a successful defacing campaign against the company. Something like that would need to be viral and leave a lasting impression on the people. It wouldn't even need to be something true so long as it convinces people that comcast is the MSG of ISPs. |
America IS the best country in the world. We have our struggles - education, poverty, diminishing freedoms online (NSA, SOPA/CISPA, etc.), healthcare, political extremism... The list goes on. America is not perfect - far from it.
But how many countries legitimately out-perform us in terms of personal and economic freedoms? In the global marketplace? Hell, how many governments have not merely lasted, but remained stable (not including the American Civil War) for 227 years? How many in terms of quality of life? Yeah, there are quite a few in each of those categories, but we're near the top in every one.
More importantly, how many countries still inspire immigrants like Shahid Khan, who came to the United States in 1968 with nothing but the clothes on his back, and worked his way up from a $1.20/hr dishwashing job to become the first immigrant - and the first member of an ethnic minority - to own a NFL team?
America provides hope. We are a nation of optimists, even in the face of a multitude of struggles. That's why we continue to produce some of the world's best thinkers and innovators, from Bill Gates to Henry Ford. It's the reason why we continue to create not only new, entrepreneurial companies, but new industries. It's the reason we have lasted so long, and will continue to prosper as a country - optimism in the face of adversity. |
How can ANY of this be fair if the government officials ( ie members of the FCC ) go work for these companies... Common sense says that he probably did Comcast's bidding while he was at the FCC in exchange for a job after he left the FCC...
I mean in what world is this not suspect? It sucks so bad that I live in a wonderful country and it seems more and more everyday that corruption gets worse and worse.
..one the other hand...I haven't gotten off my ass to do anything about it and neither have you so...I think we are to blame for letting this happen...
...if a police officer watches a crime happen and does nothing to stop it then he is condoning it. We the People are the police of our own freedom. No one else does that for us. Therefore we are condoning this to keep happening...
..now I do not know how to fix it. I'm not a political expert I'm a simple solider and not educated in suck things...
..I hear a lot of you that speak educated and have ideas on how to make things better...why not do something about it? |
No way am I even wading into those massive blocks of script. |
This is a good example of flawed security. 4 digit pins are very easy to hack (a computer can brute force it in <1 second, and a person can manually brute force it in about an hour). However, if we add in the full range of letters (capital and lower case) and numbers (not symbols or special characters, or accented characters), we move it outside the reasonable time frame of manually brute force, but not outside a scripted computer. If we put an attempt limit up - say 1/3 seconds and a time out after 3 failed attempts of 30 seconds, we push the average attempt time to ~20 seconds.
What the above really means is, instead of being ~1 second for a computer to hack it, It will take easily in the range of 2-3 years to hack - and that is presuming the brute force is only testing 30% of the possibilities. If it has to go through most of them or all of them, the time will be over 8 years to get in - you may not be even using the device any longer. |
In order to scale apps perfectly Apple usually has its new displays be multiples of a previous display. 1080p breaks that rule, but software wise they pretend the display is 1242px by 2208px (a multiple of a previous display) and downsample that on a hardware level. Also, "Downsampled is not the same with downscaled!!"
This article wouldn't have a single upvote if it didn't go with the cheeky "Apple cheats" headline. |
Ok, there are a few ways to look at this:
As far as the ISA (instruction set architecture) of each processor goes, pretty much all of them are pretty dated. x86 comes from the 70s, and the more "recent" POWER, SPARC and ARM cores come from the 80s. In a sense, x86 is the least "elegant" core here because of the age of the ISA, but backwards compatibility in processors means that in terms of the instruction set, all processors that we use today are inefficient. If you want a device with an elegant instruction set architecture, go look at modern DSPs from Analog Devices or Texas Instruments. Alternatively, there are plenty of x86 instruction set extensions (corresponding to a new hardware functional unit in the processor) which are really cool and helpful for optimizing server code.
While these processors' ISAs are handcuffed to the 80s, the microarchitecture of these devices is a different story. The modern x86, ARM and POWER share few features with their early predecessors, and all are executed very well from the standpoint of the digital circuits inside the device. The x86 you use today is almost a RISC processor on the inside, and thanks to advances like branch prediction, out of order computation and superscalar processor architectures, we can compensate pretty well for the inefficiencies in the ISA. Thanks to advances in microarchitecture and new hardware accelerators that get attached to these processors, the peak performance and performance/watt of processors is getting better and better.
Thanks to advances in manufacturing technology and microarchitecture, despite the age of their instruction sets, modern processors are really good at their jobs. The modern POWER and SPARC processors are high-end beasts, the x86 is a great general-purpose workhorse, and the ARM's power efficiency enabled the smartphone. Currently, ARM cores on the market have been slow but very power efficient, but that is changing as Intel moves toward higher performance/watt (to get part of the smartphone market) and ARM moves towards 64-bit state-of-the-art processors for servers and desktops. |
If you are asking why you can't take screenshots on your mobile app... blame the app developer. On my galaxy S4 I can just wipe my hand across the screen and screencap anything on my screen regardless of how the app is designed. |
I agree. Everyone believes in "personal responsibility", but not everyone realizes it's not reality and we have to be adults and do something about it (personal and corporate levels). The government is the people's "corporation" of what we decide to do together, as a society. Often it fails to live up to that goal, unfortunately. Removing it isn't the solution, however.
Similar concept of people screaming "abstinence works!" when it comes to teen pregnancy. Great, now that that hasn't worked, it's time to be an adult and deal with the problem and teach sex ed and promote contraceptives.
No one is an island. We are all interconnected and rely on each other. |
This is probably going to get buried, but to those who are saying "Just get off your fat ass!" and the like, I think it's important to note that the current iteration is most applicable to those who require assistance during rehabilitation training. That 7%, although it seems low, may just be enough to get a person who suffered a stroke or was bedridden for a long period of time to finally be mobile on their own again. Or at least help them work their way up there. Telling someone who would otherwise be in a wheelchair to get off their fat ass instead of using the device just isn't helpful or nice. I think it's a great step in the right direction! The crazy examples they gave for what can be done with such a device is mere speculation for future iterations and mostly mentioned to appeal to a larger audience, in my opinion. I wouldn't take those statements seriously but it is attention grabbing for sure. |
Language analysis. There are a lot of bot generated articles and not just |
You missed the point, you're talking about MODERN processes, pray tell, how do you think they came amount.
Or, |
It sounds to be a great outreach although it is a walled garden. Even if they are limited in the search engines or services they have, it will still provide benefits to that piece of the population.
Think about it. Even if your only search engine is Yahoo, you will still be able to look up illnesses and education materials. |
Point taken, but 7.1 dolby isn't truly surround sound, it's a simple illusion that immerses the listener into the artificial things happening on screen and fools their brains into thinking they are surrounded by what they see.
The whole thing is an illusion. From makeup, costumes, acting, camera moves, editing, cgi, sound design, etc. The fact that you don't think it's "worth the price tag" doesn't mean that it's not a valid technological advancement. There is a certain segment of the population, something like 10% if my memory serves me, for which stereoscopic just doesn't work. You might be included in that group, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't hold value for the rest of us. I work in the industry and I've been waiting for "good" stereoscopic for most of my life, having been monumentally disappointed by anaglyphic film making. For me, this is the real deal. No gimmicky or gratuitous pointing objects into the camera, rather a sense of depth, of foreground, midground, and background that goes beyond just visual depth cues. Something that taps into the way our brain puts images together.
I've seen the proof of concept with IR head tracking by Jonny Lee and to be honest, that is just as much a "gimmick" and "2.5D" as stereoscopic. You can't walk around the monitor and see what's behind. It's still a 3D image displayed on a 2D surface. Holographic displays are the next step, but that would also completely rewrite the rules of film making, as there would no longer be one objective viewpoint through which the experience would be filtered. but rather 360 degrees of view on any given scene. Would framing or editing play the same role as before?
Anyway |
Buried article from 2003]( on the 'new' Boeing way of doing business. |
4chan is a site for dipshits run by a dipshit.
4chan has a blanket policy that you cannot post using a proxy server or you get banned and cannot access the site for 2 weeks.
I installed Squid as a transparent caching proxy on my home network to try it out. It sits behind my WAN modem. 4chan detected my personal caching proxy and banned me (no big loss). Upon appeal the ban was upheald, because the moderator didn't understand the concept of using a proxy server as anything other than some poor attempt to hide your identity. |
They view it as a matter of integrity, but from my view of things it isn't applicable in this context because SOPA/PIPA threatens the whole of Wikipedia and its continued existence.
I think this is the key thing here. For most political debates, I think saying that Wikipedia should remain politically neutral is a completely valid argument, particularly because Wikipedia solicits donations for its existence. If someone donated money to Wikipedia because they wanted it to keep existing and then found out it was supporting a political movement they disagreed with, they'd be understandably uset.
But here, Wikipedia's whole mission is fundamentally aligned with one side of the argument, and its very existence is dependent on that side of the argument winning. It's not like someone's going to hear that Wikipedia is anti SOPA and PIPA and go "hey, I donated all this money to Wikipedia when they were asking for it, but now I hear they're protesting SOPA and PIPA? What the hell, I don't support that political stance," because anyone who is in favor of Wikipedia's continued existence is implicitly against any law that would prevent it. If someone did donate money to Wikipedia but is against SOPA and PIPA, well, then they're either horribly uninformed and the blackout will help correct that (and either end up in support of SOPA and PIPA, in which case it's all good, or against Wikipedia itself, in which case it's their fault for donating money to a cause they hadn't researched enough to find out they don't support), or they're a hypocrite, and that's their problem. |
Unlike the security risks posed by criminals, the threat from government regulation and data hoarders such as Apple and Google are more insidious because they threaten to alter the fabric of the Internet itself. They're also different from traditional Internet threats because the perpetrators are shielded in a cloak of legitimacy... the threat is often obfuscated by the tremendous technical advances the big data players have offered. |
I think it's more about access to digital content than access to physical media. The big players have partnered with Hulu and Spotify, for example, relying on ad revenue and profit sharing to make their money instead of physical media.
Their main concern is that people don't get a copy that can be distributed to others whom they are not profiting from; hence DRM and streaming-only players. For these companies, this solves the problem of vendor lock in (which is not just a problem for consumers) and the problem of ownership; customers are paying for rights to access the digital media, not ownership of a physical copy.
Streaming digital media is going to be the way of the foreseeable future, though there will still be a significant demand for physical media, which this proposal addresses. You won't just take your Blu-Ray to Best Buy and walk out with a DRM-free MP4 file. Rather, "Internet retailers like Amazon.com will email customers to offer digital copies of DVDs they previously bought. Eventually, consumers will be able to put DVDs into PCs or certain Blu-ray players that will upload a copy..." [1] .
As a consumer who uses Linux as my primary desktop OS, the DRM and Windows / mobile devices / STB only (in the case of NetFlix Streaming and other services) is a pain in my ass; but looking at it objectively, it will preserve their interests and their bottom line, so that's what I expect to happen. On the other hand, the DRM and/or streaming protocols put in place will probably be quickly circumvented and I'll still be able to consume all the media that I've paid for on Linux. At least it's a step forward from the traditional physical media-based model. |
Banks, especially credit card, are built on large amounts of insurance, and permanent monitoring by legions of monkeys.
This is why you have those annoying "I'm sorry sir, but your money has been frozen for 14 days" kind of phone calls.
Also, banks, having giant sums of money, have tremendous systems isolation. It is beyond obvious that the actual internal operations of banks are not connected in any form of trust to the client facing aspects of it. I would not be surprised if it actually went one step further: the actual internal accounts processing computers are probably not physically connected to the internet at all, and communication between clients and the master server probably go over a very narrow and limited channel. Perhaps using pigeons.
Jokes aside, you get the point. Banks have mechanisms for repudiation (c.f. STRIDE), and they, having control of your money, can do whatever they want, including calling a 15 day timeout while someone walks out of the building with a suitcase and takes a plane to Hong-Kong and back...
Btw, having observed my own banks' security protocols, I'm fairly convinced that all transactions pass through an AI filter, and that anything that looks suspicious gets looked at by humans real time.
And finally, the bank is a storage space. Simply modifying something on the bank's webserver is meaningless. The key is to steal the money. When you vote, this is not the case: the voting machine has nothing to give you...
When you compare this to online voting, you'll see that many of the luxuries a bank has, a voting system does not have.
PS. Banks have fraud divisions, and I think that fraud is considered part of normal operating expenses. So, to answer you: online banking isn't as bullet proof as you think it is. |
How do you explain the no bid contracts which have cost insane amounts of money in the Middle East? Contractors being paid, for example, $100 per load of laundry. I believe that as long as there is not sufficient outrage there is no change. On an issue like this, I believe there is no chance of change because the "Powers that Be" absolutely cannot allow anyone except their chosen batch of acceptable candidates to be elected. If the Federal Reserve were abolished, the banking and corporate stranglehold on us would release. This cannot be allowed, its why JFK and King were shot and why Ron Paul is in the blackout. |
This example is weak for reasons already covered well by perspectiveiskey. It's also easy to anecdote away: everyone has either been shorted or received a bonus $20 or been 'robbed' by an ATM at least once, or knows someone who has. The bank fixes it to make their customer happy.
If we all saw our votes miscounted once and awhile, what then? Complain to Elections, Inc? Maybe they'd send you a free gift certificate and apology. |
Its a fantastic indigenous achievement for India to be honest. India had 714 million eligible voters in 2009 General Elections, with a paper ballot the problems are just too numerous to list.
This wiki on the [Indian EVM's]( is quite thorough.
Few points to note,
Single EVM can record a maximum of 3840 votes.
an EVM is programmed to record only five votes in a minute.
The Control Unit can store the result in its memory for 10 years and even more
Article lists the potential security issue based on [this]( research.
Program is hardwired into the chip of EVM, it cant be tampered with by just rewriting the code, that is not possible and hasn't been demonstrated till date,
Even that research paper could only falsify a result by manually changing the chips inside and by adding an additional circuit to the machine, both of which is impractical in real world when voting is held.
Every system is vulnerable to insider playing foul but in India the Election Commission is an independent body with tremendous powers, even the incumbent Govts. are shit scared of them.
They employ more than 1 million polling officers and that many people are not going to be all corrupt, the elections in India are more fair and accurate for the size of the country.
Most if not 99% Indians are extremely proud of the elections that take place here and everything around them.
Indians have become sort of experts on conducting elections so to speak. |
This device should be unable to tell who the owner of each device is so it can't really be used to track specific people. Best it should be able to do is say, "I'm detecting some wifi device over in this spot + or - some error".
To know who you are, it would have to sniff data transmitted, and decompose the data, which I'm pretty sure is not only a tough problem (depending on what type of communication security cell-phones use), but would also be illegal. (wire-tapping) |
Does anyone else think he's doing this for Google PageRank? The more online content that uses the phrase "FunnyJunk" the higher his PageRank will become. With so many new sources mentioning the name, it will be considered authoritative. Google algorithms don't know whether the context is good or bad.
I think this is all an experiment. Find a low cost/least effort way to create news about yourself, measure the difference of traffic before/after, and see if there's enough of a gain in advertising revenue to justify continuing forward. If Charles Carreon continues down this path, I believe the answer is yes. It's obvious his efforts are half-assed. It's easy work for him, maybe even interns, and as traffic rises, so does his paycheck..hence the initial incentive. |
Please someone |
Oh. TIL: Nothing. Thanks for the |
I've been convinced that everything we as a profession do regarding passwords is wrong for years.
In my own mind, I'm absolutely sure that most password policies are driven by knee-jerk decisions. They start out reasonably sensible (let's say "minimum 5 characters").
Then someone hears about how any password with less than 7 characters can be cracked in under a minute (we shall gloss over the minor point that if you're letting people get anywhere with bruteforcing your network you should be shot, and if someone gets hold of a file containing passwords you should be shot twice) and demands a new minimum: 7 characters.
This minimum is set in stone by upper management. It will never be reviewed because the rationale behind it never got written into the policy.
Then there's an article published about how Windows NT's password hash works by splitting a password up into two separate hashes of 7 characters each - so a 7 character password can actually be more secure than a 9 character password because if it's based on a real word, those last two characters can be gleaned very quickly, drastically cutting the size of the dictionary required. (This was actually true back in the days of NT 4).
New policy: passwords must be precisely 7 characters, no more, no less. Again, the rationale doesn't get written up anywhere so it never gets reviewed.
Now we hear about rainbow tables. Oooh dearie me - get a whole list of passwords in a couple of seconds. But such tables are huge and require a lot of RAM to use; it's typically easier to use a smaller table that concentrates on dictionary attacks. (They also require access to the file containing people's password hashes, which we've already discussed should be a capital offence. But we'll let that slide...)
New policy: Passwords must be precisely 7 characters, consist of upper and lowercase characters, punctuation, numbers and may not be based off dictionary words. A rather expensive third-party package that integrates with Windows' own security at the lowest level is bought in to enforce this policy. This third-party package logs everything it does extensively, including what passwords it's allowed people to use, and it places those logs somewhere that's world-readable by default. But nobody thinks to check the logs that closely because - hey, when you spend £thousands on a fancy security application, it just doesn't occur to you that something as boneheaded as that would be left in.
Anyway, a few years pass. All the old NT4 based systems have been retired, and the sysadmins have taken advantage of this opportunity to turn off NTLM hashing - which eliminates the "7 character hash split" issue and mitigates the rainbow tables issue.
But remember, we're not recording the rationale behind any of these policy decisions. So nobody can say with 100% certainty that the reasoning for the original policy is still sound, because they don't know what the reasoning was. They can have an educated guess, but that's as far as it goes. The policy remains.
Now a new system is bought in. It's web-based and integrates neatly with the shiny new active directory domain. Woohoo!
Unfortunately, it's been written with the sort of quality we've come to expect of certain enterprise applications and any password containing any of the following characters: ' " ; , - causes it to keel over horribly.
New policy: Passwords must be precisely 7 characters, contain upper and lowercase characters and numbers but may not contain punctuation. |
Legality isn't about whether it is specifically banned or not, but whether it's coverred at all and, if it is, under what conditions it is coverred.
So yes, there's nothing specifically banning Bitcoins or other alternative currencies, but there's also nothing protecting their use. This puts it in a risky position because there's nothing stopping governments from drafting up new laws about alternative currencies.
Until such a time as the law specifically has sanctions in place for alternative currencies, their legality is ambiguous. |
The second they do, the shitfest would blot out the sun. Also traditionally they have been very protective of user data. Apple is trying to enter the enterprise market (and are succeeding) so data privacy is extremely important. |
I was an intern at Governor Chris Christie's (NJ) last year. I worked in the Office of Constituent Relations aka mailroom and responding to constituent calls. We respond on his behalf 99%of the letters he does not read. However we collect data about the number of letters and about which issue. Then we choose 10 reasonably argued positions on the various issues for him to read each week-- and he does read them. You may think that just because they can't possibly read all the letters/emails people send, but they do have an influence-- especially when they are high in volume. |
So here's what I've gathered from these comments: Redditors believe some shadowy group of people want to control every aspect of their lives.
Basically the |
You didn't read it very well, then. This is an account of a company doing a usability study - they're asking people to perform tasks with the computer, and studying their response and how long it takes them. Case in point: Shutting down. There's also UI efficiency analysis - Microsoft's advice to Metro app developers is focused on creating a very low information density, which is the exact opposite of how, say, web sites are laid out these days. |
It] ... doesn't bother your experience at all.
This is exactly the opposite of what is true for desktops. Imagine sitting at a desk with all of your papers nicely arranged. Let's pretend you need to get that report from the desk drawer.
In previous versions of Windows, you could easily pick up your 3x5 index card that you keep handy on your desk, go through an organized tree structure, and find exactly where the report is, and then grab it.
In Windows 8, this 3x5 index card is now replaced with a 22x28 poster board that materializes on top of your desk, blocking all of your other papers from view. But it's okay, because with live tiles you can see a wonderful collage of things you weren't looking for. Better yet, because at least 60% of the screen is whitespace (depending on resolution), you can easily scroll through your collage to find that report.
'Don't be an idiot,' I can hear you say. 'No one actually tries to find anything with the live tiles, they just start typing and it pulls up what you are looking for.' That's right, because it would be a usability nightmare to try and find something by scrolling through a mess of live tiles. A system-wide search for what you are looking for is more intuitive; which is exactly what the Windows Vista/7 start menu provided without being a nuisance. Search results rarely return more than 5 items, so having an entire fullscreen to show you that is pointless.
>Frankly, the Win7/Vista start menu was a steaming pile of shit from a usability perspective. Small hitboxes with ultra-small margins and not much to focus your eyes on. A usability nightmare.
This is the dumbest argument I have ever read. Do you also have problems hilighting text in an editor? I have never heard anyone complain about hitbox size for the start menu. It's not like the menu you hover over disappears if you go off onto the desktop. It's not like there is inconsistency with hitbox size for the programs menu either. If I can use a laptop mousepad accurately, you should be able to use a mouse with at least that same accuracy. Unless you have arthritis or epilepsy you should be able to use a mouse. Adjust your dpi/sensitivity.
>not much to focus your eyes on.
Grab your bifocals, grandma. Programs->Accessories->Accessibility->Magnifier
Windows 8 is designed terrifically for mobile devices in several ways. The downside is that each of these design choices is less optimal for a desktop GUI. Bigger hit boxes with live tiles is great for the fat fingers we use on a phone or tablet. Full screen Metro applications are great for mobile devices because there isn't a lot of screen space you could use otherwise. A full screen home menu is great for mobile devices because what the fuck else are you going to use your phone to do?
All of these design choices are great for tablets and phones, but turn into a gigantic waste of desktop real estate when you apply them to higher resolutions. It probably isn't as apparent on a 1024x768 laptop, but on a 1920x1080 monitor it's disgusting. Live tiles are gimmicky, and were already mostly solved with Gadgets. No one used those because they are just as stupid as live tiles. |
You don't think there's a chance people are downvoting the tone of the post rather than the content?
> |
Sorry about the douchebag thing. It gets a bit frustrating sometimes trying to clear up the same misconceptions over and over, and I was genuinely a bit confused as to what got misunderstood. You mentioned rain and clouds, and understood the link to lower power production. I mentioned reduced AC demand... I thought that was clear enough, but I was mistaken. My own lack of clarity is no excuse to be a dick.
> in a warmer climate such as yours that PV cells operate at much less than nominal efficiency.
PV efficiency is reduced somewhat in high temperatures, but the effect is very small. With our array, daily production in summer is nearly double our wintertime production, despite a temperature difference of about 50F from coldest to warmest. The panels do have a small efficiency drop when warm, but the loss is overwhelmed by the longer days.
> A cloudy day would merely increase our electric load, if anything.
If you use electric heat, absolutely. That's a minority of homes in the US, even in new construction, which is why I mentioned air conditioning. On average in the US, [air conditioning accounts for 22% of total residential]( electricity consumption. It's the single largest use. Heating only accounts for 6%, or 15% if you include water heating.
These are averages, and like all questions about residential energy use, the specifics are highly local. But in general, in the US, air conditioning is the larger electric load, and the case that gets addressed first.
Edit: |
There is no such thing as a free market. There never was and never will be. It's an outdated concept that was used as an ideal to describe very crude economic models from ages ago.
What happens here is an industry that expects its government/the population of its country to regulate markets in a way that allows it to stay in business.
Although corporate capitalism is rampant in the US: It's an industry that rejects not only competition (which is normal under corporate capitalist systems) but also progress that other corporations engage in and as such is allowed to fail. |
This article is great but it exaggerates the toll on the utility companies by a bit. I've worked in the generator field and through both Sandy, Irene and the Snowtober of 2011 so I have some insight.
The main issue with utilities is covered right in the first paragraph, they haven't changed in 50 years. Sadly this includes not only the way they work but for the most part their technology, or at least until very recently. Fraking has started an energy revolution but that's another story in and of itself.
There are 3 major setbacks to solar panels.
They are not yet cost effective. I forget the exact numbers but awhile back I did an analysis and energy savings vs. cost ends up being greater than the average ownership of a home. As these products become cheaper and more efficient that will obviously change and it doesn't account for the "feel good" feeling of the product.
They are not always reliable. Cloudy days happen and not everywhere is is a good location for solar panels. If you look at remote cell towers they will generally have solar power and then some kind of generator to make sure there is always power, it's a necessity if you want power at your command.(Bonus map:
Battery banks. This is where the feel good feeling goes to die. Unfortunately if you are powering a house you need battery banks to store the energy so you can use it when the sun isn't shining. This means lots of ugly, acid filled batteries. Now you can recycle them but they are also pretty costly to buy them frequently. Many people use several car batteries and if you've ever had to replace one you know they aren't cheap.
Now that said solar will improve and these barriers will be lessened greatly and will eventually affect the utility companies. There will come a time when they have to realize that they need to begin catering as a secondary power source rather than a primary but I'm sure they will do so kicking and screaming. I surely can't blame them for that but that's what happens when lack of innovation and infrastructure upkeep become the norm for several decades. |
I'm so sick of these tirades that these MASSIVE companies make.
The fact of the matter is that they may not be able to operate where and how they do today, but this doesn't mean that everyone living everywhere will setup their own solar panels. Older folks may not bother as it could be more effort that they want to deal with. People like myself that live in an apartment or rent property won't be able to install it as we will be stuck with what our landlords provide. Business may not have the ability to invest in this technology or won't want to perform the necessary upkeep that comes with having your own solar panels.
Lets stop making wild generalizations and get back to making our existence on this planet as awesome as we can without destroying everything in our way. |
That's not really how it would work... Think of the power grid like a faucet. When you turn off the faucet, no water comes out. There's pressure, but you aren't consuming anything and you aren't paying for anything. This is what it's like when everything in your home is turned off. You aren't wasting anything because you aren't consuming anything. No power is dissipated when everything is turned off, except more maybe minimal leakage.
What you're suggesting is like putting a barrel under the faucet that can store the water when it's cheap, and have some way for the utility company to buy back that water by pumping it back into their own supply. Now imagine that the barrel is leaky, unreliable and can only store a very limited amount of water for an equally limited amount of time, and on top of that now you need to install a way for the utility to get the water back without screwing with the rest of the neighborhood's plumbing.
Every step that makes it more complex also creates more leakage. |
This comment and shows you really don't understand what utilities do. Utilities are an infrastructure company who's business plan based less around generation of power than it is upon reliability and economies of scale.
See, the situation now is that Public Utilities must charge a fixed rate that is justified by the state Public Utilities Commission (government a rate payer's advocacy group that is incredibly serious about keeping costs to rate payers down) based on actual and expected costs incurred by the utility.
What solar does is decentralize power generation. We expect the power to always be on and always stay reliable. This is where solar screws this up:solar cells aren't generating power during peak consumption hours.
This messes up the cost per kWh. Every kWh provided by the utility includes infrastructure fees. This goes towards maintenance / replacement or expansion of the current system (reliability measures) which is currently billed as a percentage of consumption. Utilities currently have to have the infrastructure on hand to generate all the electricity you need even if you aren't going to use it and that costs them a pretty penny having that peak demand on hand. None of this is paid if you generate your own electricity.
What does this mean? You're electricity bill will look more like you're cable bill: a massive fixed cost that you get nailed for (even if you don't use it) which will also include additional line items for actual consumption. You will now pay for reliability rather than consumption . Realistically, we will be looking at tiered pricing and energy curtailments to maintain reliability to customers willing to pay a premium (or charge everyone more an make people go who want cheaper electricity to go to second tier service). |
Well I think that can be summed up in one sentence. Nobody can please everybody.
To expand, in virtually any from of rule, from a dictatorship to anarchy, the will of the some people is enforced on the rest. In a dictatorship or other totalitarian regime will of the minority is enforced on the majority, and in anarchistic or even democratic societies the will of the majority is enforced on the minorities. For example, LGBT rights are finally gaining attention and gay marriage is finally becoming legal. Before the (largely religious) majority was preventing homosexuals from enjoying the same rights as everyone else. This can be seen all throughout history. Racial oppression, sexual oppression, religious persecution, the list goes on and on. People denying rights to others simply because they are in power.
But as a society we're working on that right? Once we legalize gay marriage and get LGBT people treated as equals, who's even oppressed anymore! Women are equal to men, homosexuals equal to heterosexuals, blacks equal to whites, right?
Well what about people who you are morally opposed to? Polygamists? Zoophiles? Pedophiles? Where are their rights? Why are you morally opposed to them? Let's look at them one by one to see if the ideals of the majority should be enforced on them.
Starting with Polygamists. People who want to have multiple husbands or wives. Actually fairly common in the middle east I believe, with husbands oppressing many wives. Yeah that might be wrong. Men shouldn't have absolute power over women whether they're married or not. But imagine a scenario where I love Paul and Sue, Sue loves Paul and me, and Paul loves Sue and me. Where's the victim? Why is this in any way immoral? In this instance the only victims I can see are the governments pockets (taxes and whatnot) and religious sensibilities.
Next Zoophiles. This is actually a really interesting topic here on Reddit. Most of the time when I see it come up people saying it's animal abuse are downvoted, while people saying it's morally bankrupt but not abuse are upvoted. Now why would it be morally bankrupt if it's not abusive to the animals? Animals don't share the same taboos about sex as we do. For them sex is sex, as long as they're showing indications of consent why is it wrong?
Of course there's a simple answer for that. It's morally wrong to take advantage of a position of power for sex. If the CEO of a company has sex with his secretary it's wrong. It's an abuse of power, and the consent wouldn't be there if it weren't for that power, right? Well ethics were never my thing so I can't really answer that for sure, but it's definitely something to think about.
Finally Pedophiles. Now these are truly the scum of the Earth right? Honestly I'm not really sure if I can make a case for them "just being oppressed by the system". To the best of my knowledge pedophilia often leads to psychological problems in children, and I can see why. In addition this is once again someone taking advantage of their position of power over another. But I think we can agree some laws surrounding age of consent are ridiculous. If an 18 year old has sex with a 17 year old depending on the state it could be considered statutory rape. In some places if a 16 year old has sex with a 16 year old it's still statutory rape! I think we can all agree that that's ridiculous can't we?
Anyway to sum it up, no matter who is in charge, someone is going to be oppressed, whether it's justified or not depends on your view of morality. And since morality is subjective rather than objective, the ruling classes morality is forced upon the rest of the population, no matter what form of government. |
26 letters + 10 numbers * 2 (upper case and special characters) = 72 character possibilities. 72 ^ 20 = 1.4 X 10 ^ 37 (number of possible passwords).
Assuming that each password on the rainbow table takes up 1 byte (an unrealistically generous assumption) and that you can get 10^12 bytes of data onto a terabyte drive, you would need about 10^24 terabytes of information to hold this hypothetical rainbow table.
If each person on Earth had a trillion terabyte drives that still wouldn't be enough space. |
Take security cameras (installed in stores by owners, or on streets by governments). These have "changed privacy norms" but they are under the control of private, or even "shadowy" people/organizations that might gain something by "collecting". And that "something" might not be in our favor....
Now, on the other hand, take cell-phone and other portable cameras, another "surveillance revolution" of recent years, but how many times have we seen the ubiquity of these cameras work in our favor ? Lots . Here's just two that come to mind:
--[Times Square NYC, cop attacks cyclist](
--[London protestor "unlawfully killed" by riot police](
My point is that as long as the surveillance is distributed / democratic, it can work in our favor.
Google glass seems like this kind of surveillance (unless google is doing something particularly nasty and secretly "sharing" your photos/vids with someone). |
Yes, hurting them.
MS has not only garnered horrible publicity from IE, but both Chrome and Firefox gave Google ad the default search engine. Microsoft would LOVE IT if people used IE because that would make it much easier to make them use Bing.
Furthermore, things like ChromeOS are a threat to Windows.
Basically, failure to retain their browser share has bitten MS in the ass and they desperately want to regain share. The idea that they would just repeat the disastrous cycle if they regained share is just one more example of the foolish anti-MS views around here that don't make sense unless you assume that MS values being evil over making money. |
So comments are bad for science when they're made on PopSci.
I would have done the same thing. The actual articles on the site have real information (theoretically) backed up by real data. Comments on that interpretation of the data are not something you would want shown on an official source, as you can have anyone say anything, and there is no good infrastructure in place to filter out the bad from the good. The fact that the comment is on popsci and is on the actual article may give it credibility to some people which could easily mislead many to believe things which are pure speculation. That is the opposite of evidence based knowledge.
There are places where you can have informed debates, but they generally aren't in the limelight because there aren't usually a lot of people who are informed on every subject. Even on reddit, I have seen very helpful and informed discussion on different topics some of the smaller, more dedicated subs, and the fact that there are no random trolls trying to get attention from the <500 people on there makes it easier to discuss finer implications of theories and ideas without having to sift through the trolls and speculators. |
I really wish more sites would disable comments. |
The phenomenon of natural monopoly, while an interesting theoretical case, never actually happens in a free market.
People love to point to utilities like electricity and plumbing as examples of commodities where the barrier to entry is too great to encourage competition. They say that having 21 power lines directed to your house is impractical, and thus electricity could never be a privately supplied commodity. Here are just some examples of how utilities can be privately owned and succeed:
Direct rivalry between two competing firms has existed for very long periods of time — for over 80 years in some cities;
The rival electric utilities compete vigorously through prices and services;
Customers have gained substantial benefits from the competition, compared to cities were there are electric utility monopolies;
Contrary to natural-monopoly theory, costs are actually lower where there are two firms operating;
Contrary to natural-monopoly theory, there is no more excess capacity under competition than under monopoly in the electric utility industry:
The theory of natural monopoly fails on every count: competition exists, price wars are not "serious," there is better consumer service and lower prices with competition, competition persists for very long periods of time, and consumers themselves prefer competition to regulated monopoly; and
Any consumer satisfaction problems caused by dual power lines are considered by consumers to be less significant than the benefits from competition.
Source:
The problem with natural monopoly lies within the assessment of what would be a natural monopoly. Throughout the history of capitalism there has been no field where the barrier to entry discourages competition. Even the transcontinental railroad - a government-subsidized railroad - failed to be competitive with a privately owned railroad owned by James Hill. Clearly railroads weren't a natural monopoly. Cable TV and telephone services are also not natural monopolies. And look at what's happening today. Companies are planning on making space a new frontier, at what I would argue could compete with NASA and their government infusions. The only limit to competition is the ingenuity of its participators. |
Their TV viewership may even be worse than that. I technically have Comcast TV and it hasn't appeared once on my screen. In my area they have this stupid deal (scam) where they make it cheaper to get 50mbps internet w/ TV than without (even after the intro rate wears off). They try and up-sell you super hard during/after purchase, but the kicker is that it's an old school set top box with old connections, and I assume an awful picture quality. I guess they were hoping people would call and upgrade after seeing the crappy TV setup they just received. I just gave up and went to my computer to watch stuff. The box is still sitting there now... watching me. |
My freshman year of college Time Warner was having a legal battle with Fox in my region. I don't remember the details too well but I think it had something to do with TWC not wanting to pay Fox for the right to provide their content. Going out on an even further limb, I think it was on the logic that the one major city in my region which was 100 miles away had a free analog Fox broadcast over the air and thus TWC should be entitled to transmitting their digital signal to the rest of the region free of charge. Next thing you know, TWC no longer has Fox and Fox has Super Bowl rights and it's late January. You would think the biggest yearly television event in the world would be something all providers provide. But TWC did not that year and you better believe I still had a full price bill. |
The reasoning behind the allowance of ISP monopolies is the theory that to save the public from the costs of duplicate infrastructure, one company should be given an exclusive right to a certain area. For example, you wouldn't want two water utilities operating at the same time on their own separate pipelines because it would double the cost and not help society in any real way. Similarly, you wouldn't want two private road companies operating in the same area. This is why in many areas in the U.S. and other developed countries electricity and water utilities are owned by municipalities or state/regional agencies.
It is the same for most American roads. Municipal/regional/state ownership of utilities has a long history of success. There is no logical, purely economic reason why telecommunication infrastructure should not be similarly owned by regional/state agencies. In fact, one of the few municipal telecommunication agencies in the U.S. is in Chattanooga, Tennessee of all places and it enjoys the same 1GBit speeds of Google Fiber at a very similar pricetag. Keep in mind that Chattanooga is able to accomplish this with a lot less money behind it than Google has at its disposal.
The costs of private infrastructure are clear. In the past, when many electricity utilities were privately owned, companies would not extend power to the countryside and even as late as the 1940s there were still many rural areas that did not have electricity or running water. Similarly, these days, it is rural areas which suffer the most from extremely slow internet connectivity.
So why would a place as random as Chattanooga have something that seems, as the GOPers would call it, so socialist? The region Chattanooga is located in was one of those areas which did not have electricity because private electrical utilities did not believe there was enough profit to by made by extending power lines to the area. So during the New Deal, the publicly-run Tennessee Valley Authority was created to run the electrical utilities and bring power to the countryside. It was wildly successful. The growth of public utilities in the South literally helped power the Southern economic revival in the post-World War II era.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have only the well-funded words of privatization-is-freedom-hawks echoing in their heads, mislead into the belief that capitalism is only capitalism if it's laissez-faire capitalism and can only think of competition as the answer, pointing to Google as the way ahead. What they don't consider is how infrastructure is different than a hamburger. If you have two people selling hamburgers, it is better for society. If you have two huge competing water pipelines or two competing subway systems in a the city owned by two different companies, it is a burden to the economy. Sure, it might sound good to have more than one company competing for your business. Fiberoptic lines are thin, right? But tell me, is anyone really satisfied with their massive, data-capped cell phone bills? There's about four major companies competing and still our cell phone bills are $100/month (if you're lucky) with data-caps. And this isn't brand new technology. This stuff has been around for a couple decades.
Everyone admires the speed and affordability of South Korea (1Gbit up/down for about $36/month) but they don't consider how South Korea achieved this, which was basically through a huge government intervention into telecommunications infrastructure through ( GASP ) taxes ( GASP ) redistributing wealth. Are you willing to give up your laissez-faire FREEDOM for fast internet? Hell no! Freedom forever! |
The Pirate Bay, however, is not in the US. There is no international law illegalizing metadata which can be used to download copyrighted files. To my knowledge the only nations with such laws are the US, UK, Australia and Canada. The Pirate bay is not hosted in any of these. Therefore, short of passing laws illegalizing the above, any nation that pulls TPB's domain is bending to businesses exerting US political pressure, and engaging in extralegal and extrajudicial activity. |
Not that corporations and governments care, but only a few countries have passed laws against what TPB actually does, which is host metadata that allows users to connect to other users who are torrenting a particular file or set of files. There is no international law that expressly prohibits this either, though the existing laws are often wrongly cited as doing so.
Pulling TPB's domain in a country without such a law is extralegal activity. Normally someone affected by a government's illegal activity can sue, but few courts (see: judges) understand computer technology well enough to get the distinction between file hosting and metadata hosting. Even if they do, it still requires a judge that will make an impartial decision rather than fallaciously reduce it to "businesses and government are legitimate, so their overextension of the law is justified". |
Anti-gunners want to ultimately ban guns, which would remove them from lawful citizens rendering society defensless. That's their agenda.
Pro-gunners want to keep their rights, that's their "agenda".
If you want unbiased facts, then you have to get down to statistical analysis, there is no other way. I can link you a study or two, some 600+ pages of it. I can also link " |
No, they don't.
They do. Every single action of their doing inevitably leads to it, there is no need to be snide. It's fairly obvious, nobody is trying to hide it.
Some gun control in general is a good thing. Keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals and mentally unstable as well as ensuring supervised private sales all lend to the safety of society. Banning weapons based on their looks, magazine size or function accomplishes nothing of value. And yet that's precisely what is happening.
As for the links, [More Guns Less Crime (2010 edition)]( is the most comprehensive unbiased study ever performed about gun control issues. If you don't want to pay for this, it's available on P2P networks, just make sure to get year 2010 release, because it fixes several problems with analysis of previous release.
Now, an anti-gun person reading 600+ pages of serious statistical analysis that debunks myths related to his conviction is practically unheard of, so here is |
Unfortunately it looks like the author of the news article botched the description of entanglement, implying incorrectly that entanglement works as some sort of Quantum Mechanical voodoo doll. It's really not that mystical at all.
In essence, to capture the major bits, the talk of "teleportation" just refers to moving the qubit, the quantum information, and it doesn't really teleport at all. The key parts involve creating a pair of entangled particles, comparing one of those entangled particles to the qubit you want to "teleport", and using the results of that comparison to modify the other entangled particle so that it is now the qubit you started with.
This does now allow communication faster than light, as the "teleportation" requires the information from the comparison you made, which travels at the speed of light at the fastest.
I do not mean to understate their accomplishment. Actually doing the things I described are more challenging in practice than they are to understand in principle, and their are a number of nuances of QM that makes it more difficult. But that is the essence of what is going on. |
The 60kWh battery is the smallest battery Tesla currently makes that has a range of 208 miles. Sure they make larger batteries that have longer ranges; however, when you consider the costs of the batteries themselves it is not feasible to have a larger battery at that price point.
Also, from what I can recall of Tesla's talks on the roadster, the largest they claimed (pre-production) the model S range would be was 300 miles. After they tested the prototypes they dropped the range to 220 miles or so.
For comparison the Roadster's battery was around 53kWh compared to the 60kWh the Model S uses to achive the 208 mile range. You should also consider that Tesla spent a great effort to keep the weight of the vehicle down with carbon fiber parts and other expensive ultra-lightweight materials. With the Model III they will be using heavier materials to cut down on costs to keep the car affordable. |
Why do you need to witness your planet as a dot – for perspective? Why can’t you quarry these insights from your own imagination? They would be seriously better off, all 700 of these mega-rich masses (and just incidentally, I have never been more disappointed in Angelina Jolie), buying the collected poems of John Donne for £4.99.
[ |
Moralizing this is both shallow and intellectually dishonest. The fact is technology has changed the face of the market. They're no longer selling a physical product, they're selling data that can be replicated into infinity. Until they adapt to the market rather than cherry picking this fantasy of digital distribution with old style pricing and restrictions, piracy will not stop.
Trying to appeal to some abstract suffering artists isn't going to change anybody's mind, and the fact is the predicament of the artist signed with a corporation has very little to do with piracy and the independent artist is already adapting to the market. If you don't believe me, check out Steam. That is what the new market looks like, and independent artists have never done better. |
iMesh was a boatload of extra adware bloatware and viruses. |
what pirated means.
The term is already twisted. Pirates didn't steal reproductions (except coins). They stole original items. The master if you will. Not the reproductions/copies which constitute digital goods.
Can you imagine a pirate coming across 10 copies of the Mona Lisa? They'd burn that with the ship it was on. The copies are only worth the paper they're printed on, and digital goods don't even get that.
I don't think pirates would have subscribed at all to the idea where you have goods, you make a copy of those goods, you sell that copy and you keep the original. If anything the pirates would have considered such acts to be beneath the pirate code. |
Yes. The one thing that almost every ISP (there are exceptions) don't want you doing is serving content. If residential lines could get the kind of upstream that corporate customers could, there would be no reason to pay for the corporate package. That's why the upstream and downstream speeds are always very different on residential lines. Most ISP's have separate packages for people who want to host things on their own line. Thankfully, many of the smaller ISP's like mine (WOW!) don't give a rat's ass about what you do with your line. They still have separate packages, and the speed ratios are still off (I get 30 down and 6 up), but they have never cut off my line or sent me nasty emails and I seed and host game servers quite regularly. Time Warner, however, threw an absolute fit just because I was hosting a Vent server with 6 people on it back when I had them. |
Perhaps.
But what I'm saying is that, I can't think of one unique piece of content TPB had that other trackers didn't. With DHT and PEX these are essentially the same torrents. It doesn't matter what database you find it on unless it's a private tracker (which usually forbids DHT and PEX), which will actually have unique content. |
What's the |
My mom came to visit me in JP a little while ago for my wedding and we ended up having a very long, stressful day sightseeing which ended with a 2hr train ride home.
She works for the RCMP - Canada's version of the FBI - and I made the simple mistake of shit talking law enforcement.
Halfway into the train ride, and for the next 4 hours we were engaged in a screaming match about all manner of things... but it all started when I insulted the justice system, which she takes a lot of pride in.
My brother is a cop and my mother works in "planning". I was asking her what "planning" meant and kept getting very vague answers, where she'd say things like "ensuring effective use of our resources to meet projected outcomes and assessing departmental efficiency"... which, basically means nothing.
so finally I just said -
"So, what you really do is set quotas for what tickets to give out and where?"
This set her off.
Was I inaccurate? no - that's exactly what she does. But the problem is that in the mind of law enforcement, they see ticket quotas differently. They don't see it like the rest of us do - an excuse to justify their own existence; glorified revue collection and extension of the self fulfilling prophecy that the public needs to be protected.
I raised the point that if she really was doing a public service with ticket quotas, then police officers were set up speed traps in the most dangerous areas of the highway or at intersections with the highest number of accidents... but they don't. They set up shop behind the bushes, at blind crests, over hills, etc. because the objective isn't to reduce the number of people speeding (people will always speed), and it certainly isn't to create a safer road - it's to make sure you catch X number of people.
The point I'm making with that long-winded story is that organizations like the FBI, the RCMP, CSIS, Interpol (yes, I'm gettin on all the lists) or whatever else, cannot admit that placing a tracking device on a random suspect with an Arabic name was wrong when it's been proven he was not a National Security risk.
On the contrary, it reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy that they're doing whatever it takes to "keep the public safe". |
The idea isn't that they're giving you money because they wronged you though. They're giving you money simply because they don't want it to go to court (where they know they'll get stuck in a legal battle and possibly end up losing more than they're offering you.) So they say basically say "take this money to STFU." It isn't an admission of guilt - They simply want to keep it as far away from a courtroom as possible. |
Jesus dude it's a little wordy don't you think? Here you go: |
Even more condensed |
A few years ago some friends and I went to the St. Louis Oktoberfest. We decided to take the metrolink for reasons unknown, not knowing the the last train westbound leaves at about 1:30. Well at Oktoberfest they had shuttles to and from the metrolink station, so at the end of the night we picked up the shuttle and even though he took some roundabout route home talking to every single person on the street we didn't complain until we got to the station and realized that we had just missed the last train home by about 10 minutes.
Cue taxi company, I think it was yellow cab. In St. Louis taxis are pretty uncommon outside of major sporting events or conventions, so you have to call for one and most of the time they are fairly speedy. Well we called them up and they said it would about a half hour before they could get one out to use and we just sucked it up and said ok. Well the half hour came and went, and then another half hour and a random Suburban taxi from a different cab company showed up. We waved him down, but he was dropping another fare off, then came around and picked us up. It was about a 30 minute drive to our cars, but the fare wasn't too bad split 6 ways. Then about 3-4 hours later, when we're all home and passed out the cab company who we called originally called to let us know the cab was on its way. |
Its not just about driving up the price of the medallion. It is about protecting the income for the worker. The reason those medallions were worth so much is because they had a big return on investment.
I drove for Lyft. It was great, helped me get through a rough financial time. However, I wouldn't consider it to be a career move like driving a cab can be. For instance, my best nights were Friday and Saturday. Makes sense right? getting the bar crowd going to and from wherever they want to go, plus people are going into and out of the city to see shows and other events.
The best I could hope for on a Saturday, the busier of the two days, in the middle of winter was $200. For 10 hours of work that doesn't sound too bad does it? Now lets factor some things in. I paid between $45-$60 dollars in gas just to drive. I also had to set roughly a third of what I made aside for taxes. So at the end of the night I got between $80 and $100 I could put towards bills, food and rent. Then you have to factor in oil changes, tire changes, and general wear and tear on the car. Plus car cleaning expenses (outside and inside). Sure I could recoup some of that money from my taxes, but not all of it. I'm not alone in this either. I made many friends with drivers in my area and they all experienced the same thing. Hell, go to one of the rideshare subreddits and you can read about it.
On top of that Uber could sometimes be more expensive than a cab. I was headed from a party to a bar downtown with a group of friends. One friend called a cab another an Uber. The guy who called a cab ended up paying $40 for the ride. The one who called an Uber ended up paying $70. The reason being is tat Uber/Lyft really jack up the price during prime time.
Well why didn't you make a lot of money if cabs and cheaper than Uber/Lyft some of you may be asking. The reason is that Prime time rates are dependent on the amount of request volume. If a bunch of people request a ride at the same time then the price gets jacked up. The problem is, by the time I get to the rider, pick them up, and drop them off Prime time is often over. All those people who were requesting rides have gotten to where they need to go and I only got one or two rides in.
Sometimes I would drive during a weekday. Generally the rides were more consistent during this time, but there was hardly every any prime time. I would give anywhere between 15-20 rides over an 8 hour period and make about $90 (again subtract fuel, taxes and other costs from this total). During this time period Cabs are more expensive than a Rideshare app. That is why they end up making more than a Rideshare driver, and it is only getting worse. I only drove for a short period of time, and during that period of time my rates dropped 15 cents a mile.
In the end, Ridesharing is great for consumers and for people who just need a little financial help in the short term, or people who just want a little extra spending cash. But it is bad for people who depend on their cabs for a living. Ridesharing is essentially taking away a career path for some people.
Uber, and Lyft are also not afraid to treat their drivers like crap, because they know there are more drivers out there to take their place, and the market is already saturated with drivers. When there were stricter regulations on cars being pushed down a couple of my friends were told that their car would be "grandfathered" in since they were already in the program. A month later they got an email telling them that their account was disabled because their car would be too old. I understand that is a government call, I'm not arguing that. What I am arguing is how Lyft/Uber handled the situation. Instead of telling these drivers that they would be disabled unless they got a new car in 30 days they provided false assurance that they would have a job. Some of these guys may have went out and got a new car, found a new job, or made other preparations.
Oh and the belief that Ridesharing is "safer" is laughable. A lot of the drivers in my area are also cab drivers. So you are getting the same driver, it's just his own personal vehicle now instead of his cab. A personal vehicle that is not subject to the same vehicle inspections as a cab. There are also [numerous]( cases of [sexual assault]( resulting from [Uber](
Anyways, I enjoyed my time with Lyft, and I am thankful that they were able to help me through a rough patch. I met a lot of great people both passengers and drivers. However, that line of work will never be considered a career path like being a cab driver was. |
Maybe medical schools have such a high successful graduate rate because they're very particular about who gets accepted? It's a careful balance between putting out a quality product (well trained doctors going into their residency placement) and high graduation rates to attract the highest quality candidate. Too far in either direction and your program suffers problems with either their placement or their enrollment. These schools have done far more analysis than we understand as to what they should be considering the bar for entry. It's not arbitrary and I doubt it's a conspiracy to artificially keep salaries high. Doctors are paid well because there are few people who can really do what they do, even though there will always be people who fall through the crack each year.
Additionally, I think you may be forgetting that there's a limited number of spots for a limited number of residencies with an already severely limited amount of money to pay residents the paltry salary they get. Even IF we increased the number of people entering medical school, there are still limitations on the number of residency placements you can have after graduating medical school. There are people who graduate but don't get into a residency because they didn't have the performance necessary to get placed, but they were high enough to graduate.
These barriers, in my opinion, are necessary because the highest tier of the medical field SHOULD require those who are the best of the best to make it. I don't think poor people deserve worse doctors, because worse doctors kill people. Many physicians don't work in the poorest areas not because they're "too good" or are paid too much, but simply because those areas have no money to even pay them at all. Medicare and Medicaid are notorious for abysmal payment systems and the US healthcare system balances out trying to take care of as many patients equally as possible by increasing prices on those that can afford it.
The US healthcare system is fucked up for sure. I don't agree that flooding the system with more doctors than it can handle will magically drive the price down. I don't agree that we have a major shortage of physicians related to medical schools being too difficult. We may have a shortage, but that's because the system chases out doctors who are currently in the field because the support system and background is not conducive to providing quality healthcare. |
You get to know what's new in your(or not your, but local at the moment) area. Or whatever you are interested in. It's like reading news or facebook, but without the need to actually read.
I especially like that feature of taxis when I return home from 2+ month long trips - gives prety neat |
I used to be a Ron Paul fan, and then I turned into an admirer. Now I only respect him.
This is why I changed: the Constitution was written when the US was not the most powerful nation in the world and technology was different. Sending an army overseas was an ENORMOUS project.
Now, the US is much more powerful than any other nation in a way the founders could never have imagined. With this much power comes responsibility. If the US could have easily helped, don't you think they should have stopped the slaughter around Darfur from happening?
This moral imperative is only heightened since it no longer takes months of travelling at risk of disease and death to quell an uprising anymore: it only takes a fleet of airplanes to drop a few bombs in many cases.
The US founders were amazingly forward-looking, but even they were just a couple of smart dudes (and we've likely got people alive who are just as smart now in various universities) and couldn't predict how future technology would reshape the world of human society and rewrite the rules of the game. The founders can be right on some things, and wrong on others. They weren't gods, no matter how beautiful you sculpt their statues. It's up to each generation to update the tradition while keeping the "spirit" of the original alive. |
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