Comment Re:better than what we have now (Score 4, Insightful) 249
I hate to get in the way of a good rant, but the players in this little drama are all Canadian.
As you may know, Canadians are notorious for ignoring the US Constitution.
I hate to get in the way of a good rant, but the players in this little drama are all Canadian.
As you may know, Canadians are notorious for ignoring the US Constitution.
No, without trademark protection, anyone could write Superman comics and sell them as such. I think you're thinking of copyright protection.
I'm pretty sure he was thinking of the sixty four year long legal battle between S-Cape Artists Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel and DC Comics over just who owned Superman, without which DC comics could write Superman comics and sell them as such without paying a dime to the original creators.
You have the same amount of "skin in the game", whether the man is driving a paying fare or giving a free ride to a friend.
No, frequency and other conditions are different. It's not an accident that you can bring your friends with you in your small aircraft with just an ordinary (sport) pilot license. If you want to take a paying passenger then you need a transport pilot license.
Same with boats.
Why are taxis different?
The wherewithal comes simply from experience --- not from a license.
And that's (drum roll) one of the conditions of a taxi (i.e. commerical) license in my country. Having sufficient experience that is. The license is there to (among other things) show that you have that experience.
And why must "higher level of skills" be a requirement â" even for the customers, who are perfectly satisfied with average level of skills?
Well, the customers are not the only ones with skin in the game. The rest of us have to share the roads with these "taxis" as well. The major reason that other commercial drivers (or air line pilots for that reason) isn't that they'll necessarily will kill their passengers, but that they will kill a bystander or other motorists. The rules for getting a bus driving license and a heavy truck driving license are the virtually the same, here in Sweden at least, and in one of those cases we're clearly not worried by the safety of the passengers.
It's the same at sea and in the air, if you want to transport paying passengers you have to show a higher level of competence. One reason mentioned in those cases is that you for example have to have the wherewithal to be able to stand up to a pissed off customer when you deem conditions to be unsafe, something that's more difficult (legally/financially) than when you have another passenger.
The judge made the assumption that anyone who wants to be untraceable to law enforcement must be a criminal, which is actually not such a huge stretch.
That's true. Except for the people who are not criminals, 100% of people using TOR are criminals.
In Georgia it's illegal to pass a car stopped at a pedestrian crosswalk, but how many people do you suppose knows that?
That depends. How many people can read?
To be fair, that was a smaller problem in telecoms. We never change anything, in any way, if we can help it.
But I hear ya, and in the general case of course you're as right as can be.
Who did _you_ think was paying for them?
Also, did you know that you can charge your phone faster by enabling debug mode over USB? I read that on a flyer taped to one of those new benches in Boston...
And also something I came to value when working in industry and developing both cli and GUI admin tools for telecoms equipment:
You can easily document, email and (to a lesser extent) talk about a cli. A GUI not so much. When you've tried to walk someone through finding the hidden option in a GUI over the phone for the tenth time you're ready to tear your hair out. With a cli you can just email some commands and that's that. Documenting a GUI invariably devolved to a lot of screenshots which makes any workflow tens of pages long, instead of ten lines of commands which you then have ample space to explain and comment on. It's also much easier to read and follow along as you're e.g. installing, than leafing through screenshot after screenshot.
It verges on astounding. I've read for years that Germany has ceded sovereign control of its land to Russia for natural gas, and that German citizens would freeze by the tens of thousands if Putin turned off the taps.
And that's largely still true as a matter of fact. HOWEVER, Germany relies less on Putin's gas than Putin relies on Germany's money for that gas. (I.e. the value of Germany's gas imports as a part of their energy expenditure is small compared to the overall hard currency income that Putin receives from selling gas to Europe). Hence we're witnessing the situation with gas used as a weapon against the Ukraine and Belarus, but not against Germany.
That's not to say that it won't happen. Just that it takes more will on the Russian side than what they've been able to muster so far. Don't for a minute think that it doesn't factor in the decisions of Frau Merkel when it comes to sanctions against Russia for their part in the Ukraine debacle though. We would probably be tougher from the European side if it weren't for that gas...
Oh, then I'm sure you'll find an insurance company that will cover the risk of Fukushima-style accidents. Oh wait, no you don't, because such an insurance would make nuclear energy totally uneconomic.
OTOH, the largest hydro electric dam failures have killed thousands (tens of thousands for the very largest) and you know what: They largest dams are typically insured "by the government" in the same way that nuclear is.
Now, you can actually buy hydro dam insurance on the open market, while that is generally impossible for nuclear, but they don't typically pay without bounds for incidental damage which is the major cost we're facing. Instead relying on government for that part, so while there is some difference, the scenarios are quite similar.
HOLY MACRO!