There is no reason why Uber can't have work rules for employee drivers that fit the current Uber business model. They just don't want to pay for benefits and offer employment protection like unemployment compensation and minimum wage. Uber wants to take the profits while transferring all the risk to the driver.

There is no question that the current taxi system is a relic of another time and should be dismantled. But that can be done without dis-empowering the workers. The current trend in the courts is to classify drivers as employees rather than contractors since it is Uber that decides (via their app) when and where the work can be done. A contractor is free to decide when and where the work is done. So Uber does not fit the contractor model.

They want to make rhino horn so they are sequencing the genes? These two ideas have almost nothing to do with each other. If they were raising funds for chemical analysis of horn material or for purchasing 3D printers, it might make sense. They are unlikely to get much helpful information from a genetic analysis that will help with making fake horns. Seems like the person who posted this story was not paying attention.

It's a good idea to contact the credit reporting agencies and place a security freeze on your accounts. That prevents anyone from taking out loans etc using your personal information. You can temporarily lift the freeze for a particular company if you need to allow a credit check for your own purposes.

You can use Hangouts for Google Voice calls without moving SMS to Hangouts. Just keep the SMS messages in Gmail. They appear as emails and you can reply to them as emails. The only trick is that to initiate a new SMS you have to go to https://www.google.com/voice#s... but after that first one, all the rest are treated as emails.

Apparently the human mind is also lacking in the grammar department. " bequeathed unto we humans" contains a prepositional phrase, the object of which should be in the ... wait for it.... objective case. Thus the correct version is "bequeathed unto us humans". Get the simple stuff right and the more complex will follow.

Yeah, judges are sloppy sometimes. Copyright "holder" would be a better term. In our super-capitalist country, people are conditioned to think in terms of property and ownership. The common good gets short shrift.

And this is the problem with industry thinking. It is NOT stealing. Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are separate types of law. They are NOT property law. If they were, we would not need a separate part of the Constitution (Art. 1, Sec 8) to define what they mean.

Violating copyright is NOT stealing because the copyright is NOT property. The term "intellectual property" is an intentional obfuscation designed to blur the difference between universal ideas of property ownership and the proposition that ideas can be owned. Ideas can NOT be owned. Copyrights are just temporary monopolies for the purpose of encouraging the arts and sciences. They do NOT exist because "Hey, that's mine". They do not exist for the benefit of the copyright holder. They exist for the benefit of society as a whole. Don't believe me? Read Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution.

"Hearing 'White cop kills yet another unarmed black man' is enough."

Absolutely not. Cops have been killing unarmed black men for a long, long time. It is only now, when video is frequently available and the media has decided to pursue the matter, that we see a national awakening to the problem. It is hard for most Americans to imagine what it's like to be a young black man living under the control of a brutal police force. We all want to believe that the police are there to protect and serve. It is only when we can see the evil with our own eyes that it becomes real and becomes intolerable.

It's 8 years old. I don't know if you can still buy them. It has had one battery change about 3 years ago and works great. It's a CDMA phone on the Verizon network. I pay $5.94 (including tax and fees) per month for 20 minutes of talk time. I have disabled voice mail and text messaging on the phone. So the phone rings and I talk, but not for long. In an emergency I can make calls... short calls. That's all I need in a mobile phone.

I should mention that I have a google voice number that rings my cell phone and my computer (Google Talk/ Hangouts). With a Plantronics headset, that computer-phone is the best sound quality I've ever had on a phone call. And it's free assuming you already have a wifi connection. Google records voice mail and allows free texting. So I have all the features of a quality smart phone for a very low cost.

Cooper tried to split the difference by being against Amendment 1 banning gay marriage and being against gay marriage at the same time. The Attorney General is charged with upholding the law. The highest law is the US Constitution and the NC Constitution makes that clear. After the Windsor decision, there was no excuse for any state official to defer to state law because it was clear that the US Constitution (equal protection and due process clauses) confer equal rights on everyone. And state law did not prevent the Attorneys General from Colorado and other similarly situated states from moving ahead on gay marriage.

I'm a Democrat living in North Carolina. Roy Cooper is the Democratic Attorney General who plans to run for Governor in two years. He is interested in campaign contributions from the telecom industry. That's why he opposes municipal broadband even when private companies have no intention of offering it to an area. He thinks regular voters are not paying attention so there is only upside for him in this. This is the same Att. Gen. Cooper who opposed gay marriage in NC until the courts forced it to happen. He is not impressing me. Hope he has some competition in the 2017 Democratic Primary for Governor.

becasue you love peace and quiet, well screw you. Is it ok to hit folks in low population areas with a shocking, loud noise. Helpful hint: NO, it is not.

what percentage of valid mobile 911 calls are made from NIS phones? Strangely, that number does not appear in the federal report. Saying that 30% of NIS calls are valid focuses on the problem. But if 1% (or more) of valid mobile 911 calls come from NIS phones, that is a valuable service that definitely should not be terminated without a plan for cost-free replacement.

Also, the blather about how inexpensive mobile phones are is seriously flawed. I recently dropped my full featured Verizon plan and changed instead to a minimal pre-paid plan. What I discovered is that Verizon plays lots of dirty tricks to cheat poor people of their money. For example, they tell you that you must pay monthly, but what they mean is every 30 days. If you set up auto-pay via credit card based on their web site, you will be ok until there is a month with 31 days. Then they cancel your service and seize the balance in your account, which could be hundreds of dollars. Even if you owe only $5, they take all the money in your account.

If you read the Linux Kernel Mailing List http://lkml.org/ for a while, you will see why Linux was successful. Over and over again, Linus Torvalds over-rides the antics of his minions and explains to them (again) that the changes they made must be backed out because they break something that users actually need. Linux is elegant and beautiful, but not just because it's a work of art. Linux is the most functional piece of code in existence. It is the beauty of function.

Snowden disclosed illegal activity on the part of his employer and the US government. He should be protected by the whistle-blower law. Petraeus gave classified material to his biographer (and lover). In addition to displaying his machismo to his female, he was also trying to provide background info for the book about him. Petraeus was motivated by self-serving benefit. Snowden was doing a service to his country. In a just world, Petraeus should be the one hiding in Russia to avoid life imprisonment or a death sentence.