What they propose is not going to happen simply because of this:
He calls for the state government to protect critical infrastructure and sensitive data, relying on outside auditors and experts.
Outside auditors doing anything in CA government? We'll see that only when all else is lost, and people are starting to go to prison.
If somehow the cost of driving went steeply up, you (and your competitors) can switch to an alternative means of transportation and still keep doing whatever you do for a living.
If the cost of driving went substantially up, then taxis and public transport would also increase in cost. At some level of increase, no I could not do what I do.
That's not the case of uber
Why not? New service, UberRickshaw. Many Uber rides are short enough that would work.
It'a no more ridiculous a thought than you trying to create an arbitrary separation between me driving a friend across town and someone I don't know.
since their for-profit use of publicly-funded infrastructure
Which I and my rider pay for regardless of us knowing each other or not.
âoeOf all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- C.S. Lewis
You could potentially walk, bike, take public transport or a cab to get to your clients.
No, I really can't - mostly I'm driving about 30 minutes at 50-60MPH average to reach them. Considering the fact that as a consultant I get paid by the hour it would cost me vast sums of money to bike to them, and probably an hour longer each way taking any public transport (I've looked into that). A cab is not a bad idea if you live in a city but I'm working between multiple areas and also take very long road trips all the time (partly for business) so it would be stupid to also spend money on a cab when the marginal extra cost of using my car is vastly less.
it's not an absolute requirement for your business
My clients disagree which is why I drive to them. If I don't have a job because I do not drive, it's a requirement.
Your argument is way, way weak. There is no "key difference". The fact is that driving for Uber and driving friends around has zero actual difference in terms of external risk or ability. That's the core argument where you simply cannot distinguish, thus either everyone needs a commercial license or no-one does.
Even as a contractor you may not deduct mileage driving to and from clients as that is considered non-commercial commuting by the IRS
Good thing I listen to my accountant and not idiot AC posters on Slashdot:
One way to avoid the harsh commuting rule is to have a home office that qualifies as your principal place of business. In this event, you can deduct the cost of any trips you make from your home office to another business location.
From one of a billion links that tell you how the world actually works
I mean, what consultant these days is not going to have a home office? Sheesh.
Most states, for example, have a taxi drivers endorsement for their regular drivers license.
Yes they do. The point is that is as stupid as it is unnecessary; it's just a revenue collection scheme and has zero to do with keeping people safe (the supposed intent).
Because it's easy to misinterpret the question
Do you want to label foods with DNA as
Do you want to label foods with foreign DNA added from other plants, insects and animals (or even entirely created).
Yes... I'd like to know if you added peanut genes to my tomato. It may taste fine- but it would be nice to know.
You are not being paid to drive to work. You are being paid for the work you do there.
I am a contractor. I drive to clients, all of my driving to clients is directly related to the job.
I also write iOS applications, sometimes I drive around testing the GPS aspects of the apps. In those cases I am billing while driving.
Why do I need a commercial license tags for that again? How is that in any was reasonable except you simply want more money from me and that seems like a fine angle to use to extract it? It wouldn't make me any safer to have a license where I answer questions about driving tractor trailers. Insurance wise I had damn well better be covered for anyone else getting injured in my car anyway, and insurance is already calculated based in part on miles you drive per year (not to mention Lyft/Uber provide extra insurance on top of what you have).
Why would I need commercial license/tags to drive a few people around few days a week? I already do that with family and friends. Why is is so different when it's someone I don't know at the start?
Maybe the DMV should streamline the process instead of lowering the requirements?
Part of the Commercial Drivers License Test includes questions like "The phrase gross combination weight is figured by adding together what?". Is it reasonable to require you know the answer when you are just driving a person around in a passenger car?
The reason why the commercial drivers license test is way too onerous is that it's really meant for people driving trucks or other specialized vehicles. What aspect of the existing drivers license test does not cover what a person just driving a few other people around in their own car would not cover? After all, that's exactly the same as if they were simply driving friends and family around... if the test can't help you be a decent driver doing that, then improve the basic test instead of requiring you to know a truck swinging wide is called Offtracking...
Why, exactly, should Uber drivers get to drive passengers using regular non-commercial drivers' insurance?
They don't really, this is why Uber and Lyft both provide supplemental insurance for drivers.
Commercial insurance costs more because people who drive people around for a living are much more likely to cost the insurance companies more money
That's bullshit because the cost of personal insurance is partly factored in by miles driver per year, so that risk is ALREADY INCLUDED.
If you're letting them drive on non-commercial licenses than that means that regular drivers are subsidizing Uber-drivers.
No more than people who drive a lot for drives or commute already are.
Well it's been many, many years since I've used it, which was back in the late 80s and early 90s. My impression from this time is that C++ is unquestionably a work of genius, but that I didn't particularly like it. Part of that is that we didn't really know how to use it effectively. In that era most object oriented programmers used concrete inheritance way too much. Part of that is due to aspects of what we thought an OO language should have that turned out to add complexity while being only marginally useful in practice (e.g. multiple concrete inheritance and operator overloading).
But in terms of meeting its design goals C++ is a tour de force of ingenuity -- even if some of those goals are questionable by today's standards. The very fact that we know some of those features aren't necessarily ideal is because they were taken out of the realm of academic noodling and put into a practical and highly successful language that could tackle the problems of the day on the hardware of the day. It's hard to overstate the practical impact of C++ on the advancement of both theory and practice of software development.
Any prize for contributions to OO programming pretty that didn't include Stroustrup in its first recipients would be dubious.
I have an even better idea: let's find a way to fix human beings so that they're perfectly consistent in their behavior.
While certainly taking demonstrably bad drivers off the road is a no-brainer, even good drivers have lapses. My teenaged son is learning to drive, and whenever someone does something like cut us off I make a point of saying we can't assume the driver did it on purpose, or did it because he was an inconsiderate or bad person. Even conscientious and courteous drivers make mistakes or have lapses of attention.
It's the law of large numbers. If you spend a few hours on the road, you'll encounter thousands of drivers. A few of them will be really horrible drivers who shouldn't be on the road. But a few will be conscientious drivers having a bad day, or even a bad 1500 milliseconds.
May
However the shirt may be just fine. And the shirt you pay $25 for
The software may be good- or it may be a piece of ill designed crap written by a 1st world citizen who is a better huckster than programmer.
But the money is in your hand.
Yes. I worked with an office which had 400 indian programmers and 400 american programmers. They laid off 350 of the american programmers and did just fine.
I worked directly with the indian coders. They had some very solid coders who were better coders than the standard american programmer. And at a business that isn't focused on IT, it's pretty hard for them to retain really good programmers. Heck- it's hard to hire them in the first place.
Back in 2002, the indians were very good- I think it was mostly their masters degree candidates. By 2005, they sucked pretty bad. But by 2010, they were decent again. The only issue was the turnover and the failure to say "no" to management (instead saying "I'll do my best"). The other issues you mention were on the wane since 2008.
I've used AVG and Avast plus malwarebytes and the microsoft cleaner.
They are free.
It's been 20 years since I got a virus but I've had several caught attempts.
I left AVG a couple years ago and went to Avast. It's a little pushing on upselling lately.
I've had to clean virii off of friends computers. Malwarebytes is good for that.
Avast is also good for that.
Avast has a "web page reputation" feature.. but to be honest, the only thing it ever flagged for me is the site that records all DMCA filings (which I knew was safe which mean the corporations had corrupted Avast's rating system for that page).
I'm not sure how the hell my friends get them. I has to be lol cats or something like that. I got to a few porn sites now and then and never had a problem.
Malwarebytes has been effective for cleaning a machine that was infected already.
I don't keep the microsoft cleaner on disk but download it as needed so I always have to look it up.
I guess Adam Smith was wrong, competition is not good.
Competition is great. For the customer. For awhile. Not so good for the businesses that are competing. Perhaps you've heard of the term "dumping"? That's when a "competitor" can afford to sell below cost just to drive his competition out of business. Great for the customer, until the competition goes away and prices go back up.
We used to have a great small local magazine shop in this town. Borders moved in. They had books and magazines and a coffee shop and
Before you lecture me on how I should have shopped at the local dealer to support them, I did, and it wasn't enough to keep them alive.
Cable companies aren't like Borders. People don't buy services from more than one cable company at a time and if they aren't cable customers by now they likely won't become one just because competition moves in. At best, a new cable company can split the existing customer base. That's not enough to cover the fixed costs for plant, and certainly not enough to provide return on investment for over-building the existing system. The incumbent has a significant advantage because he's likely paid off a lot of the investment in the plant and equipment and can cut his prices to keep the new guy from making any money at all. Yes, that's good for the customer, except the customers of the new guy, and only as long as it takes for the new guy to give up and go away.
I bet Adam Smith would have understood that. I bet he'd understand when a company does a business plan and sees that there is no money to be made from competing in a limited, existing marketplace with high startup costs. I bet he'd understand why it takes a company the size of Google to do that kind of thing, and even then they're not rushing into the market.
So, the fact remains, it isn't the few percent skimmed from the cable companies in franchise fees that prevents competition. It's the ability to predict a negative return on investment for any new competitor, especially for the first few years, that keeps them from wasting their time and money.
If you disagree, you are free to dump a few million into competing with Comcast in our fair city and prove me wrong. I doubt I'd switch service to a start-up with no track record, but show me your list of services and we'll see.
I find you lack of faith in the forth dithturbing. - Darse ("Darth") Vader
