Seen It A Million Times. Any hitchhiking horror ever. This is no different. In fact it's safer because there is SOME interaction with the driver before getting in.

The point is they don't have to. Buses run fixed routes and taxis have a well understood range - so they're both great candidates for using alternate power even today.

When did you last see a bus pull into a public filling station? So there is nothing practical tying them into gasoline.

Airbags are only ubiquitous because nobody could be bothered to wear seatbelts properly in the first place... there's an analogy in there somewhere too.

Meanwhile, I believe IPv5 was abandoned due to a design fault in the hull.

Hmmm. Good critique. So really this is about use cases. Instagram is (was?) popular because there was a) an iOS app for it b) filters.

Flickr, on the other hand, is popular because it seems to suit the way dedicated amateurs and upwards treat photos. Maybe this is why the phone apps are not compelling, it's just not FOR that use case.

Blipphoto is aimed at photo-a-day projects and is an easy way to blog about individual photos, so it's more like... tumblr?

Unless the UK government say "yeah but money," as has already happened with DVLA.

A pub in Dublin does not strike me as a good way to SAVE money...

Seeing several comments here that seem to be treating this as an either/or discussion. Thought I'd post for the benefit of US & global readers: the UK already outsources plenty to service providers, and many of those service providers either run their own data centres or in turn consume managed capacity in one form or another from their own suppliers in turn.

For instance:
DVLA (vehicle / driver licensing) - Capita
Many civil service departments, including Highways Agency and significant chunks of what is in effect the civil service WAN - ATOS
TfL (Transport for London - authority and infrastructure for London and surrounding areas) - IBM

And yes - some of this data, and the analysts, are offshore already.

One does wonder quite why the DVLA needed 39 locations onshore in the first place however...

The stupid thing is, if they shut many of the expensive London offices and moved these services to the Northeast of England, they'd achieve a good half of the saving anyway and WIN political points. I can't understand why this isn't happening.

Indeed. I know it doesn't look like it sometimes, but the purpose of Government is to prevent Tragedy of the Commons, and to my mind "buy the lowest cost irrespective of value delivered" is very much Tragedy of the Commons when discussing tax dollars.

In a similar way, current stock market behaviour actively encourages "reduce cost at all cost" and there's yer problem. Many companies in the UK have begun moving services back onshore once the revenue impact of the customer backlash started to bite. It's a pity they couldn't see that coming.

Indeed. What you said here is a universal issue with companies offering services or other intangibles - the more the customer pays the more they value the product, and they somehow project this onto the supplier. The logic seems to be that if it was actually any good you'd be charging for it.

(I do not agree with this logic)

In the UK, the Director of Public Prosecutions has stated that a retweet of an arrestable tweet is itself arrestable.

... if only he'd been able to find a smaller pen.

It's not even that good. You can search for seriously popular apps and get 20 hits with no words in common with your search term, and no sign of the app you were looking for.

Highly informative post on motives - but I think the real problem here is that Apple decided to take features and indeed basic functionality AWAY, for whatever reasons, without bothering to tell their users first.

Essentially this says "our costs are going up, so fuck you, Mr Customer," which is acceptable for cheap and cheerful brands but is against everything the Noughties Apple brand stood for.

Anyone else noticed that Windows has got better at it in every release since, whereas KDE has got worse? I love progress.