How easy is it to get it running well with nothing but a remote control?

I thought that most of the value-add of something like MythBuntu was making sure all the right drivers are there for hardware acceleration (on a low-power board that can only hardware decode), that lirc and such works completely out of the box, mythtv starts on boot full screen, and so on.

Sure, you can run mythtv from a X11 session trivially from any linux desktop distro. The challenge is making it work in your living room without a lot of fussing around.

Agree. The 1/100k car enthusiast who rips apart his car and replaces all the computers inside isn't really the source of our problems. You might as well outlaw wrenches if you want to stop that sort of thing.

Sure, but if they don't show that they deliver the former, people will be reluctant to pay for the latter.

It is still a big problem, but I'd say that drugs are actually far better off than the rest of healthcare. How much clinical evidence do you think there is for half the advice your doctor charged you $80 to give the last time you visited him? The pills are actually some of the better-tested stuff on the healthcare market.

I have no problem with reasonable insurance requirements for drivers. That really applies across the board, but probably moreso for commercial operators.

However, you need to keep the requirements reasonable, and of course allow self-insurance. If Uber has a better way of managing its drivers/etc and ensuring safer operations, and they can lower their insurance costs as a result, then they ought to be able to pass those savings on to customers. I am not in any way a supporter of the whole "independent contractor" theory where Uber keeps x% of the fare but if there is a crash they accept 0% of the liability. But, that is a principle I apply everywhere - if it were up to me then if you went to Memorial Hospital for a procedure then it would be illegal to get more than one bill for the procedure and it had better come from Memorial Hospital, and if anything goes wrong Memorial Hospital pays for it and they can make the argument about liability with their subcontractors themselves. Of course, if it were up to me you probably wouldn't get a bill in the first place, but whatever...

I'll agree that surge pricing is more likely to affect supply when it is predictable (which still makes it useful). During unpredictable spikes it actually can help out on the demand side. If I have 3 choices of how to get from point A to B, and one of those choices triples in cost, then I'm less likely to use it. Maybe somebody else doesn't have 3 choices, and they benefit from my not leaving a subway seat empty to use Uber.

Most commuter train systems have peak timing. In the US examples I can think off offhand include New York, DC, and Philadelphia.

Besides the peak/off-peak fare, there are often fare discount programs only available off-peak (like disabled/senior fares, or family deals). Also, in many cities and transit systems parking may be cheaper or free on weekends, which is an off-peak time.

The idea is to try to shift usage to off-peak times so that the use of the system is more balanced, which makes it far more economical to run. Kind of like a taxi service.

Charging less would just mean that he'd have to leave earlier for work to get there on time, since in addition to the million people already using the system there would be another 500k people taking the train at 8 when they don't need to. It would also mean that fares would need to be raised across-the-board to maintain the same funding for the system.

It isn't like public transit operations are huge profit centers.

I don't have any problem with making Taxi services operate like Uber. The idea of the only record of a ride being something scribbled on a piece of paper that the driver can tamper with is ridiculous.

The Taxi model made sense back before it was easy to track all your cars and passengers in realtime. The problem is that we're still trying to make it work that way today.

The thing is that demand for transportation isn't constant.

I need to go to the store sometime today. I can go at 8AM, or I can go at 10AM. If I go at 8AM I'm competing for transportation resources with all the folks trying to get to work. If I go at 10AM then I'm employing a driver who otherwise would probably bit sitting around unpaid.

If it costs me the same either way I'll go whenever I think it is most convenient for me. If I have to pay more for the trip at 8AM, I end up doing what is more convenient for everybody else. How is this not a win-win?

Sounds great. So the 1% of the population with means who are decent chipped in and helped.

Wouldn't it be better if the other 99% of the population with means who aren't so decent also chipped in and helped? Or is it better to stand up for principles and watch people die?

There is no reason for doctors not to charge more for prime time appointments. Why not charge people less on a weekday? Then people who can't go to the doctor on a weekday don't have to book six months out to get a weekend slot. Some people have flexibility, and others don't. When you charge everybody the same then it becomes more about who books the appointment first and less about who needs the appointment more.

Increasing prices has two effects:

1. It actually DOES create extra drivers. Maybe I'm a driver and it is my day off. I notice that the going fare is triple the normal rate, so I tell my wife I'll take her out to dinner tomorrow and hop in my car. More passengers get driven, and I get paid more. Win-win.

2. It also reduces demand. Maybe one of those passengers wants to run to the grocery store, but doesn't care if they do it today or tomorrow. So, they just do it tomorrow. Meanwhile, the guy who is stuck at the airport trying to get to where he is going has one less person in line ahead of him.

When you cap prices you tend to get lines. If I were given the choice of waiting in a 2 hour line for a $10 cab ride, or having a $20 cab ride RIGHT NOW, chances are I'd opt for the latter. Or, maybe I'm hungry and will have to eat dinner either before I leave or after I arrive, so I just go grab dinner now to save $10 and now there's one less person in line.

Pricing is really about information. It helps people make better decisions about allocating resources. Even if not a single extra driver started driving surge pricing would help people plan their trips such that demand is more even.

Gravity and road wear are fairly constant forces (well, road wear is higher for bigger vehicles, and surprise, states usually tax trucks more as a result).

Public transit usually has peak and off-peak rates. The idea is that if you don't care when you make the trip, then you tend to save money by doing it off-peak. Then you're one less body on the standing-room-only train.

Many argue for electric rates to be demand-based so that people will conserve electricity during peak hours, or deploy solar/etc. It doesn't cost the same per-unit amount to produce 10x baseline power as 1x baseline power, so why should people pay the same.

And the same is true for taxi services. It doesn't cost the same per-unit to service 10x the usual demand as 1x the usual demand. At the normal rate many drivers would prefer to not deal with lots of crowds or work on their planned day off. If they're offered higher pay, they are more likely to elect to service the higher demand.

Tend to agree. I think the attractiveness of swap, RAM compression, add more RAM, and add more CPU tends to go back and forth as the relative cost/speed/utilization of these various resources changes. When RAM is cheaper than CPU, you want to add RAM. When CPU is cheaper than RAM, you want to use faster compression routines. When you can have your swap across 3 SSDs then maybe you swap.

Which makes more sense? Buying more of your fully-utilized RAM, or installing a device driver that uses a few percent of your 10% utilized CPU to make that unnecessary?

If you're CPU-bound then adding RAM compression is a bad idea. If you're RAM-bound it makes a lot of sense.

Sure, you could add more RAM, but maybe you'll get more bang for the buck if you add more CPU instead. Or if you go out to dinner.