I imagined in my silly little head that the SpaceX venture might be Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold The Moon" but I really, <i>really</i> should have known that it would turn out to be a Gibson dystopian corporate nightmare. So now, out ISS and lunar programs are becoming increasingly dependent on a company run by an unstable, toxic,narcissist (I know,...I know...is there any other ind really?) who is in the has spent 64 billion dollars ruining his other two major tech ventures because.... because....I don't fracking know why. Because... he can?

As much as I hate to say it, plodding old NASA along with plodding old Boeing/Lockheed/GE have one huge thing going for them that SpaceX can apparently never have under Musk's "leadership" : they are stable, reliable and (eventually) get the job done. America's future in Space should never again be made to rely on the whims of some demented, self-styled cult-of-capitalism whack job.

Y2-Ray

This will go well in my Moller Flying Car

This would actually explain both the lower scores I see from Indian passengers and the lower ratings I tend to get from them. And, just as you have proposed, I now tend to cancel on many rides where the riders have Indian names.

Driver's who have done this gig for more than a few months (i.e. not many) know to just pass on passengers with low ratings. I won't pick up anything below a 4.7 myself and that seems to be more or less the cut-off for other drivers as well. Not everyone with a low rating is awful however **most** low-rated passengers are. Furthermore you take a huge ratings hit with low rated passengers as they tend to downrate vastly more as well - so it's just not worth it anyplace where there are a reasonable number of rides available. With that said, new drivers and desperate drivers (usually undoced immigrants who can't get any other job) will take so what low-rated passengers tend to experience is both longer wait times (as the ping bounces around to several drivers until one finally accepts it) and a lowered quality of service as experience, knowledgeable drivers refuse the rides.

Anyone who has worked in customer service for any length of time knows how that kind of job will ruin your entire faith in humanity. The difference with Uber is that when a passenger acts out (spilling drinks, eating in your car, doing makeup, you don't even want to know what else) it's YOUR car they are messing up - not some company car. I've had passengers come to my car, see my USB adapter by their feet (used for my video cam and Uber phone) and try to just tear out the wiring to charge their phones (GTFO!) without so much as a "May I?" You all will hate on me for this but college kids are the *worst* when it comes to common curtesy and a bit of simple respect. I totally get that we usually haven;t socially matured until we're past undergrad age but I don't want that kind of hassle myself so I avoid college pickups too.

Uber puts all the risk on the driver and now takes a full 50% (or more) of passenger payments (2 years ago it was 20%) - so much or most of the profit here is now going to Uber instead of the workers. Drivers are fed up and frankly I think this is "new policy" is just some social media whitewash and won't be effectively enforced.

The start of my computer career was at the Shack in '82 where I was a RS Computer store manager (fml). I sold a TON of those things to LA times reporters and other reporters and writers in the area. The idea of an integrated modem and word processor that you could carry around in your backpack was (back then) utterly amazing. Once I saw the demand for those things I knew that what would eventually be called laptops would be the way the industry was headed.

8K of memory is laughable today but that's about seven or eight double spaced typed pages of copy (oh stop laughing) which, again, back in the early 80's was incredible. For comparison, just about 10 years earlier the PDP-8/s computer we used in high school had 8K of memory and was the size of a small fridge so being able to carry around something like that in your briefcase was a revolution.

Don't EVEN get me started on the Radio Shack TRS-80 pocket computer - google it :)

That's Yoda-phobic !

Disillusionment.

I truly admired how Wikileaks exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq during the Bush administration. For those too young to remember, google the Apache helicopter video. They leaked Scientology documents that exposed the organizations real agenda .They exposed the bullshit in diplomatic circles and they exposed the suppression of climate change research by the Bush administration. That and a *lot* more - they used to be heros and I really admired the organization.

And all that squandered by Assange's egotistical pairing up with Russia to aid in the corruption of an American election - because Assange felt Clinton wasn't progressive enough for him. She wasn't the most left candidate out there - but look what we have now. Thanks Julian.

It seems political heros are few and far between.

>Hell, go back to the 80's, first widely successful computer platform? Apple.

That would actually be the TRS-80 Model 1 that proceeded the Apple II. Some would even argue that it was the Commodore PET but the Model 1 raudly outsold the PET because of the Radio Shack Retail network. By the very early 80's Commodore 64's were selling at K-Mart (which is where I bought mine) for $300 while Apple IIs were in the $900 and up price range and only available at select computer stores thus making the Commodore 64 more easily accessible and more widely used than Apple for several years.

Apple gained market share by the mid 80's but by that time the IBM clones (we would call them Windows clones today) got on the market (I used to sell Dawoo clone machines) and rapidly outsold Apple reducing the overall Apple II market share considerably (back then only IBM could produce an IBM BIOS machine - clones were all pirated machines... until they weren't) .

So much for some history from someone who lived through "The Rise Of The Machines" lol

Of course :) .

It;s been ages since I posted a comment here - thanks :)

sigh.... why me can no do html any more :(

<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/13/business/technology-temp-workers-at-microsoft-win-lawsuit.html">TECHNOLOGY; Temp Workers At Microsoft Win Lawsuit</a>

or Fedex...

<a href="https://www.oasisadvantage.com/blog/risky-business-misclassifying-workers-may-be-more-costly-than-ever"> risky businessnmisclassifying workers may be more-costly-than-ever </a>

or Mears Limousine

<a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-mears-lawsuit-settlement-20180905-story.html">Mears settles lawsuit with hundreds of chauffeurs who claim they were underpaid </a>

or Apple

<a href="http://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/x/217738/employee+rights+labour+relations/Staffing+Agencies+Using+Independent+Contractors+Face+Misclassification+Liability+And+Expose+Clients+To+Undue+Risks">Staffing Agencies Using Independent Contractors Face Misclassification Liability And Expose Clients To Undue Risks </a>

I remember that one - it was my first calculator. I used it - or tried to in my college Physics class back in 74 but they refused to let me use it for exams! The made me use a slide-rule because they considered calculators "cheating". It wasn't for another couple years that you could get away with using a calculator for exams. Times have thankfully changed !

set it up in a VmWare... and it's horrid....horrible....unusable...wretched. What were they thinking!
Windows 7 was finally a stable and decent OS after the Vista fiasco and then they decided to take away the start menu and replace it with...uselessness.

It was this downhill trend that turned me from a Windows developer since Windows 3 (yes 3 LOL) to OS X. Today I downloaded the Eval copies of both the Enterprise and regular editions and I'll suppose I'll wait until next week to eval them but after wasting a day and a half on that 8.1 POS I don't have high expectations. I miss .NET but Windows just became too much of a grind.

I lived in Walnut creek - you get those all the time. Like the guy above me said - it is about as news/noteworthy as the rain.