Clearly you are a shill, hired by NASA, as part of the conspiracy to silence those of us not afraid to speak the truth. Pluto IS a **PLANET**, and this probe didn't go there. Look how bright the images are. There is no way a **PLANET** 7.5B km from the sun could be so bright. And the shadows are all wrong.

Maybe it made sense once. But reading TFA, what convinced me that MUMPS is really BOLLOCKS was this quote:

Hmm. That sounds almost like you're tracking relationships. Maybe you should use... (wait for it) A RELATIONAL DATABASE. Seriously, we often store object databases in relational databases. It's easy to add more properties to objects in your database with a relational db because of its very nature. You just create a new relationship, appropriately keyed. And there are lots of examples of systems backed by relational databases which permit you to add arbitrary new properties to objects. Take Drupal, for example; you can always either add a new module which will add new properties to old node types, or just add more data types to old node types. You could add, for example, a parent-child relationship. In fact, modules exist to do this already.

Maybe there is something about MUMPS which makes sense, but if there is, it wasn't articulated in this article. I tunneled down to the MUMPS/II page and found this:

So basically, nothing you can't have in perl today, with a relational database, and a table or two to track relationships between objects. But instead, it's a whole new opportunity to create problems! MUMPS is a great name for it.

I have a doctor friend who, before becoming a doctor, was a CS grad. He's in his 50's now. When I told him we hired someone from Epic Systems that knew MUMPS, he exclaimed, "They still use that?! MUMPS was going out of style back when I was an undergrad!" I believe it is also still used in older banking/financial tools.

You make a good point, but at the same time I repeat what I said to james_gnz: if you only have sloppy sources of homeopathy knowledge, you end up targeting a largely biased group of people for such knowledge. These will sell homeopathy like snake oil, and you will have no counter argument with a factual approach against (and for) it. Having serious doctors get some free credits for understanding homeopathy's point of view, and within collegiate standards nonetheless, will provide serious opinions not based on hearsay, educating population about it exponentially.

1. Pay songwriter to compose alternative song
2. Record song
3. Release recording with a Creative Commons license
4. Send postcards to every restaurant in the country, letting them know it's free to perform and encouraging them to sing it
5. ?
6. Profit!

The Star Trek economy only works with no scarcity. And while there is a surplus of labor, there is NOT a surplus or resources or energy. And energy is the big one here, as everyone keeps telling us. Sure there is solar, and wind, but they run up against some rather hard resource limitations. (Especially plastics which depend on oil...)

The whole business model competitive advantage is skipping on employee taxes and regulations and marketing it as "cool new thing", that is all.

On the other hand, most contractors are allowed to subcontract.

In any case, the IRS has provided reasonably clear guidance in the area of limousine service. If the employing company is a pure dispatch company (e.g., it doesn't control how the drivers drive and the driver is not accountable to the company), then drivers can be considered contractors. If however, the employing company is a transport service (e.g., the company provides detailed instructions to its drivers and monitors their daily performance and the driver doesn't maintain business like doing advertising or keeping logs), then the drivers must be considered employees.

If a driver accepts a particular piece of work (i.e. drive a particular customer), that work must be done at a time and place which is defined by Uber. A contractor would be able to do the work at the time and place of the contractors choosing. That's why car rides don't fit the contractor model.

The illusion that the assignment is coming from the customer is part of the confusion. The assignment comes from Uber via the app. Yes, a driver can accept for reject a particular piece of work, but the time and place (and the standards that apply to the driving) are all decided by Uber.

If you want to test my logic, just imaging that an Uber driver accepts the piece of work but then decides that he/she will perform the work half an hour later and will drive to a different place that that requested by Uber. If that is not ok, then this is not contractor work. The driver is an employee.

Straif, if you were working on my kitchen as a contractor, you would not continue to work on my kitchen after the work was finished. You would do a particular piece of work and move on. That is a sign of a contractor. Uber drivers finish a piece of work (driving a customer to a location) and then take another piece of work from Uber and another and another. That is a sign of an employee.

The critical point is that the driver is working for Uber and not the customer. So the driver has persistent employment with Uber.

What you say is true gcnaddict. But at an even more fundamental level, the app which is used by the driver is controlled by Uber. The customer may use an app to submit their request to Uber but it is Uber that passes that to the driver. There is no direct connection between customer and driver. If there were, Uber could be cut out of the revenue stream. If Uber takes the money, Uber must take responsibility for the work assignment. And if Uber is responsible for the work assignment (time and place), the driver is not a contractor.

I guess they used dick moves?

Now set some fucking precedent.

Comcast does; they just opened up about a million public WiFi hotspots in peoples houses.