Comment Re:Good advert for Uber (Score 1) 507
Well the protest backfired - drove more people than ever to download Uber in London
"Uber is reporting an 850% increase in app downloads today"
Oops. I thought that might happen.
Well the protest backfired - drove more people than ever to download Uber in London
"Uber is reporting an 850% increase in app downloads today"
Oops. I thought that might happen.
Commercial insurance doesn't offer any more protection or security than personal insurance does. They charge more because they can, not because it conveys any real benefit.
In a competitive market, the differences in price between "personal" and "commercial" insurance prices would depend primarily on the statistics - I would not be surprised to find that for a taxi-like business there are more insurance claims per policy per year than for personal insurance claims, if only due to the greater number of miles driven.
I wish countries would use public money to produce some ebooks for their schools. They could distribute it free as an epub file and there would be no royalties or copyright to care about, no heavy schoolbags, or parents / schools who have to buy them. Just some epubs on the end of a link, free to download and use on any tablet or ereader that supports the format.
It seems beyond bizarre that countries are able to specify in exacting detail what content books should contain and are able to write examination papers that test those subjects but they outsource the actual production (and copyright) of textbooks to somebody else.
Hear, hear! (or is that "Here, here!", or maybe "Hear, here!". Certainly not "Here, hear!", yes?)
Best calculus book ever was Calculus Made Easy. It really makes the subject as clear as possible. Everything since is filler.
That does look like a great text. 2nd edition in 1914!
Most criminals are black. That's more than just a coincidence.
Worldwide? I would guess that most criminals are Asian in "ethnicity".
I thought they just had to have a certain fleet average fuel economy,
Given that European and Japanese cars are massively more economical than American ones, it certainly isn't that. The gas 500s do 59MPG (Imp) and the diesels 76MPG (Imp).
Yeah, it looks like California has further requirements of selling a certain fraction of zero-emission vehicles, or buying appropriate offsets. Seems as though Fiat is being treated just like all the other car manufacturers, but complaining about it more.
But they dont HAVE to do any of it, except with a gun to their head. They're not an EV company, they're a car company that is extorted into making EVs. The power of the dollar and the power of the gun are not the same thing, unless I suppose you live in California.
I thought they just had to have a certain fleet average fuel economy, rather than a certain number of electric vehicles. Why are no other companies complaining about how hard this is? Did the other companies just do something else like get better fuel economies on their gas guzzlers? Is everyone else making electric cars without "losing money on each one", or are they just keeping quiet about it?
There is no regulation requiring electric alternatives be less than n% more than gas. There's no way to even enforce it. The Fiat has to be sold for $30k at a loss but the Tesla can go for $80k because the government things its so much nicer? No, Fiat just knows they are competing with the Nissan Leaf and no one would buy their car for 50% more than the Leaf is going for. He just wants to whine and make it sound like the government is ruining him, not that he's being beat in the market.
And as for that Executive Order, its directed at the California government as a goal to strive towards. You are trying to make it sound like he has passed some sort of law directed at car manufacturers which would be illegal, and impossible as there's no legal definition for "cost competitive".
http://gov.ca.gov/news.php?id=...
There is no law requiring a Fiat 500e to be sold for less than 200% the price of a regular 500.
You mean the article is misleading? Doesn't give a proper context? And a company is trying to blame someone else for their difficulties?
I am shocked! Shocked I tell you!
Charging a "nominal" amount (a quarter per ride or $10 per month) might discourage abuse of the system while still providing much of the benefits of a "free" system.
To be fair, we should also consider how much of the operating costs are involved in collecting the fares. If it is significant, there would be a stronger case for eliminating it.
Another option is to save money on enforcement and accept that there will be some "cheating". Vancouver's Skytrain system has operated for almost 30 years with no fare-gates - it has always been kind of nice to feel that people were trusted to pay their way.
Unfortunately many people felt that there were too many cheaters, so they have decided to put up expensive gates to make cheaters less able to cheat. The expected cost of the gates and related infrastructure are much greater than the estimated amounts "lost" to cheaters, but it makes some people feel better I suppose.
Vancouver seems to have less than 5% losses due to cheating across the system - about $18 million per year, and that the fare gate system will reduce this by about $7 million per year. While the new "Compass" smart-card system will be a pleasure to use in comparison with cash and paper tickets, it is not clear to me that installing turnstiles in all the stations was a cost-effective decision. I think things would have worked fine with a continuation of the historical system of trusting people to have paid their fare when they go get on the train. But I suppose this exercise does provide economic stimulation in the form of jobs for gate installers and the like...
AC travels long distances, DC doesn't without large power losses. AC you have centralized Power Stations, DC you would have Power Generating Station every where. Why would DC be better, or do you like having DC Power Generator every BLOCK?
AC and DC have the same resistive losses at the same voltages. No differences.
It has historically been much easier to transform AC to different voltages, thus has been generally easier to get AC up to the high voltages that make it economical to use it over long distances. In modern times, I think this trend has reversed and DC is now being used preferentially for long distance transmission:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
For underwater power cables, HVDC avoids the heavy currents required to charge and discharge the cable capacitance each cycle.
(They're the iPhone of electric cars - they've got the luxury market, it's not clear they'll ever get into the mass market where the real money is.)
I thought the iPhone was making something like 80%+ of the profit of the cell-phone industry?
OK it is not 80%: "Apple made more money than all of its competitors combined, taking in 56 percent of the profit in the mobile device market."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/to...
If you are making the majority of the profit from a market, you aren't doing too badly. Even if you only sell to the "luxury" segment of that market.
Are you personally involved in the Auto industry? Do you live within a 100 miles of Detroit? If the answer to either of these questions is no, with all due respect, Sir, or Madam, you are seriously mistaken.
About what?
I doubt very much that the "other party" would have done things significantly differently. Of course they would have framed it differently. And then THEIR opponents would talk about "corporate welfare" and how the working man was getting a raw deal.
As an aside, how could the UAW block such a purchase? I can only imagine they could do so if they had some financial right to how GM was disposed of, in which case you might say that one of the owners blocked the sale, which seems a perfectly reasonable thing to be allowed to do. If I had come in and said "I'll buy the assets of GM" but did not make an offer that the owners found acceptable, why should them accept it?
These are interesting issues of public policy. What rights and obligations does society have to help/protect business owners and workers? Certainly the community has an interest in who does what. Society is ill-served if large fractions of the population are under-employed or under-paid. Society is ill-served if it is too difficult or not profitable enough to invest in new and continuing businesses.
If you think that these types of interests are easy to balance then I think you aren't thinking enough.
Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue. - Seneca
