Comment Re:Cool .... But (Score 1, Redundant) 103
You think Nine Inch Nails is a lame, sucky, douchebag band?
Submission + - Teachers Union Boycotts LA Times Over Evaluations (newsweek.com)
Atypical Geek writes: According to Newsweek, the local teachers union is infuriated over the disclosure of teacher performance metrics.
Do parents have the right to know which of their kids' teachers are the most and least effective? That's the controversy roaring in California this week with the publication of an investigative series by the Los Angeles Times's Jason Song and Jason Felch, who used seven years of math and English test data to publicly identify the best and the worst third- to fifth-grade teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The newspaper's announcement of its plans to release data later this month on all 6,000 of the city's elementary-school teachers has prompted the local teachers' union to rally members to organize a boycott of the newspaper.
According to the linked Times article, United Teachers Los Angeles president A.J. Duffy said the database was "an irresponsible, offensive intrusion into your professional life that will do nothing to improve student learning."
Comment As explained by TFA: (Score 1) 911
Offenders caught driving without an interlock -- by driving a buddy's car or renting a vehicle, for example, could land in jail for up to a year. Those who try to help an offender by blowing into an interlock are subject to the same penalty. Most models will be equipped with a camera.
Emphasis mine. And yes, I must be new here.
Comment You've never heard of XMLHTTP? (Score 1) 271
Right now I can't see anything that the dominance of IE have left us.
Microsoft IE 5 included XMLHTTP, the foundation for AJAX.
Comment Don't record your life, live it. (Score 5, Insightful) 527
Honestly, you are wasting your time behind a camera. There is no innovative technological solution to immortalizing the dead. Everyone who suffers that kind of loss winds up forgetting, and later recalling little moments.
Take a cue from the movie 'Up'. Keep photos and cherished items. Use the tokens you preserve to jog your memory once in a while. But spend the time you have left with your wife fully engaged and enjoying every tiny slice of life as much as you can.
Submission + - U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers
An anonymous reader writes: A federal agency is providing $22 million to train Java specialists and other IT workers in South Asia to help them become more adept at handling tech work and other jobs farmed out from the U.S, InformationWeek reports. Word of this comes despite Obama's pledge to keep more hi-tech work on American shores.
Comment Submitter here. Summary is incomplete, misleading. (Score 2, Interesting) 589
When I submitted the article, the summary included the following:
Of all the findings in Deloitte's market research, the most poignant was its profile of electric car "non-adopters." They have average household incomes of $54,000, live in the suburbs and rural areas, and depend heavily on their cars. There are millions and millions of non-adopters all across America. They are the middle class.
Put simply, the is no large market for production of all-electric cars to scale up to, because all-electric vehicles do not - and likely will not - meet the needs of the vast majority car buyers. Because the subsidy will not stimulate widespread demand, and because early adopters are likely to be affluent, it is misguided.
Comment My bad. It's not in TFS. (Score 1) 589
Seems the summary I wrote for the story has been truncated.
Comment There are no economies of scale. RTFS. (Score 1) 589
From the FS:
Of all the findings in Deloitte's market research, the most poignant was its profile of electric car "non-adopters." They have average household incomes of $54,000, live in the suburbs and rural areas, and depend heavily on their cars. There are millions and millions of nonadopters all across America. They are the middle class.
In case you are missing the point, the middle class represents the vast majority of those who buy cars, and all electric vehicles do not - and will not- meet their needs. So unless you are going to force them to buy, there is no large scale market to drive down costs.
Comment Please RTFA. Or the entire summary... (Score 1) 589
The summary I included mentions that those who earn around 200k are those who are interested in purchasing an electric vehicle now and that the market is expected to expand a bit to include those making around 100k.
The summary also states (at the end) that the vast majority of car buyers are not likely to adopt electric vehicles.
Comment Anecdotes are not data. And please RTFA. (Score 1) 589
Your personal experience with hybrid vehicle owners contributes nothing to the argument of whether the demographic data for potential buyers of all electric vehicles are accurate.
Also, the article never states that only those making 200k or more will purchase electric vehicles. Only that demographic studies indicate that those are the buyers interested now. A slightly wider market is expected to emerge later, but would still be limited to those making about 100k per year.
The article suggests the largest group of car buyers (middle class suburbanites) is least likely to adopt all electric vehicles, because of issues with range, performance and price. Hybrids are far more competitive with traditional vehicles in those areas.
And so that you are aware in the future, your stated income puts you well outside of middle class.
Submission + - Electric Car Subsidies Are Handouts for the Rich (slate.com)
Atypical Geek writes: Charles Lane, writing for Slate, argues that subsidies for electric cars are an example of 'limousine liberalism'; a lavish gift for well-off Americans to buy expensive cars for the sake of appearing green. From the article:
How rarefied is the electric-car demographic? When Deloitte Consulting interviewed industry experts and 2,000 potential buyers, it found that from now until 2020, only "young, very high income individuals" — from households making more than $200,000 a year — would even be interested in plug-in hybrids or all-electric cars.
Lane also takes issue with the billions of dollars in subsidies offered to automakers for the manufacture of batteries, arguing that research (warning, PDF) concludes that the money will not help in jump-starting the economies of scale that will drive down prices. At least, not as much or as quickly as the President has argued.
The Obama administration claims that offering subsidies for early adopters will open a wider market for electric vehicles, bringing costs down to mass-market levels. Lane counters that such a market does not exist because the majority of Americans have no interest in purchasing electric cars.
Of all the findings in Deloitte's market research, the most poignant was its profile of electric car "non-adopters." They have average household incomes of $54,000, live in the suburbs and rural areas, and depend heavily on their cars. There are millions and millions of non-adopters all across America. They are the middle class.
Comment Correction... (Score 1) 147
However, the MAIN reason for inefficiency is that politicians craft 'solutions' that are actually problems.
Fixed that for you.
Comment Your net income is what is determined by taxes (Score 1) 691
You are implying that if that tax rate was lessened, I would somehow have had "more money" to spend.
Fixed that for you.
Taxes reduce earning power by depriving of a percentage of your wages. Every dollar that the government withholds from your pay is a dollar that you no longer have available to spend on goods and services of your choice. The parent was arguing that if taxes were lessened, you would have money to pay the plumber and some left over.
Taxes reduce your spending power because they are a cost that is factored into everything you spend what remains of your wages on. The plumber may continue charging the same rate for services if his taxes were lower, but he could charge less and make the same profit because his overhead has been reduced. Understand?
Comment Re:Nokia is making a mockery of all Finns (Score 4, Informative) 137
You do realize that those are Apple's patents, right? Nokia actually holds patents on nearly every wireless technology known to man.
