Classmates.com was sued in 2008 for sending emails claiming former classmates were searching for you. Similar, but Classmates.com was actually requiring a paid subscription before telling you there wasn't actually anyone on the other end.
Simple math is all it takes to understand why this is pervasive. In the classmates.com example, they collected upwards of $75 million in revenue from this scheme, and only had to dish out $2.75 million for the settlement several years later. So for any newcomers, this type of bait is an attractive business proposition; the potential lawsuit years down the line can simply be attributed to cost of revenue. And you'll obviously only get sued if there's money to be won, which means the scheme was a success, so in other words, you want to get sued. The real problem is the judgments/settlements are an order of magnitude lower than they should be.
There's the hidden cost of permanently alienating potential customers, though, which will show up silently in reduced conversion on all subsequent advertising efforts.
The "Done" button is a toggle? Is that a side effect of this being a proof of concept, or was there some extra functionality in mind?
Edit:
Answering my own question, since it looks like this was designed for touch/pen based input, it would probably hide the keyboard: http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/keyboard.html
Well, cash flow positive until they decide to develop, test, and manufacture another model, which will again put them in the red. Building cars is a very expensive proposition.
I think the DOE loan has probably hurt Tesla's stock price more than it's helped -- the rumors about late repayment, etc. have probably depressed it from 33-35 down to 29. If Tesla hadn't taken $1 from DOE, it would be able to attack Fisker and Chevrolet and others for being Government Motors, and wouldn't have gotten name-checked in Romney's debate answer tonight.
The only money MuskCo's should be taking from the government is payment for services (like flying cargo to the ISS, Moon, Mars, selling cars or solar power to them, etc.), not using the government as VC. The government is a horrible VC or lender, and the MuskCo's could do a lot better.
96% on this program so far is possible, but there are numerous other examples of the USG investing in businesses which fail, and even worse records for state/local governments (stadiums and convention centers being the classic example)
There are numerous intangible benefits to these programs beyond the success rate of the businesses. Jobs get created, technology is invented or improved, and supply chains and support networks are created or are made more efficient. While VC's might only care about the balance sheet, the government isn't in this to make money, they are in this to make our lives better.
What is the proof for this statement? I'm not asking what are the theoretical underpinnings of this worldview; what is the evidence which compels this conclusion?
That's difficult to say, because government investments mostly go into infrastructure and enablement policies, not ventures. But let's give it a shot.
USA: Green energy investments, of which some companies have turned out to be outright fraudulent.
China: Massive infrastructure and housing overspending and bubble, with much shoddy construction. Housing and construction companies everywhere benefiting from the money only contributing to a high-probability disaster ending.
Most Olympics-hosting nations, depending on what you perceive to be an acceptable measure of return.
If I recall correctly, the DOE loan is very low interest rate, repayment is based on metric milestones, and at the time financing via traditional capital markets was fairly difficult for almost anyone.
Yeah, but the government itself is borrowing money at absurdly low interest rates right now. If you agree with the notion that government intervention to get an edge in strategic industries can be a good idea, it looks like a good loan at whatever rate they got (assuming it's higher than a 1/8 of a percent, the gov't turns a profit, too).
If you agree with the notion that government intervention to get an edge in strategic industries can be a good idea, it looks like a good loan at whatever rate they got (assuming it's higher than a 1/8 of a percent, the gov't turns a profit, too).
I agree with this notion. Why not use whatever resources available to gain a competitive edge?
Gimme a break. Every government with an auto industry to speak of has supported their auto indusstry at one time or another. And almost every government would love to have a company like tesla in exchange for a few loans that are about to be repaid.
On an related note - another nice diff flag I discovered recently is "git diff --word-diff" - which will as the name suggests, diff by word instead of line.
I don't think they've ever had a worldwide outage like this.