It is true, some surgeons who are willing to treat very difficult cases would be adversely graded. But shouldn't there be some mechanism to apply brakes to the aggressive treatment? Some patients, and some of the relatives will be seeking treatment even when the situation is utterly hopeless. There are incentives for the doctors and the hospitals to pursue aggressive treatment. So, under these circs, is it really bad these grades are making them reevaluate the cases and be more realistic about the prognosis?

If start giving grades to personal injury lawyers, it should have a salutary effect. All those risk averse simple lawyers who go for really egregious violations of doctors and companies would get good grade. Those irritating aggressive ambulance chasers would get lower grades.

The doctors are chumps to operate under these rules rigged by the lawyers.

It is bad, but not so bad. At least the connection resets after 2 minutes by default.

I naturally assumed Google maps would have some way to access the settings mid navigation. But in a typical desktop application I would have been confident that the application was not designed correctly. In the phone apps I am never sure. I keep thinking, "May be if click and hold there, or swipe here or pinch over there, the menu might appear".

I am a meta engineer, who optimizes the process of optimization. If the cost of doing the optimization is more than the potential benefits, don't optimize. The cost of thinking about optimization is more than any possible improvements you might achieve after the implementation, don't even think about it.

As it is I am struggling to use most features of a smart phone. I still have not figured out a reliable way to tell which parts of the screen is active and is clickable and which parts are not. For example, today I got into the Google maps directions in the "walking" mode. 13 hours of walking to destination. Could not find a way simply change from walk to car. I have seen the icon, I know it exists. But if you are already in walk mode, switching to car mode was very non-intuitive. I am sure hundreds of young slashdotters will follow up with variations of "I am not getting off your lawn, grandpa".

Now all the key features are through gestures? How are the available gestures indicated on the screen? Or we are expected to go through the entire routine of dressing in drags and doing a hoola? Is it left right left right up up down down A B A B or right left right left up up down down A B A B?

The local taxi companies have been a protected monopoly for too long and they have grown accustomed to it. With Uben/Lyft on the horizon, eventually they will learn to compete and improve their service. Uber/Lyft also will be brought in line to make sure their vehicles and drivers are safe, pay the required access fees to cab ranks and airports that will increase their price. After the shake up the free market will do what it should do, cheaper, better, safe taxi service.

In the medium run the losers are the municipalities with their taxi company medallion tax revenues. But they too would adapt, it was not too long ago the hotels had a cash cow in the land line phones. Remember dialing a 10 digit 800 number, then a 10 digit calling card number and then a 4 digit password and then the 10 digit number of the party you wanted to call? Else pony up and pay 2$ a minute for long distance and a quarter per local call. The hotels adapted to the loss of that cash cow didn't they? Municipalities will adapt.

In the long run the danger is to the car companies. Cars are the second most expensive thing a person buys, next to home. And it remains idle 95% of the time. It loses 10 to 25% value the second you drive out of the dealer's lot and steadily loses value. Anything that makes renting cars cheaper and more convenient would bite into auto sales.

Your observations are correct. Conclusion is wrong.

It's not a bug, but a feature of the society owned and operated for the benefit of the top 0.5% by wealth.

Back in 1984 this was imagined to be the spec for a incredible pie-in-the-sky computer:

Except for the screen resolution, we beat them all several times over. Voice recognition has come a long way but still way short of the bridge of USS Enterprise NCC-1701. And Popular Mechanics has been selling flying car on its cover to gullible teenagers since 1930s. Come on Mechanical Engineers. Step up to the plate and deliver something.

Is it PC compatible?

Ages ago Microsoft and HP released a pocket PC, 8 inch screen, black and white, alpha numeric display 16 lines by 60 characters, no graphics, MS-Office built in. I think it was called the Windows CE. It crammed the full desktop (ok ok desktop of win98) UI in to that pathetic little machine. Was a fiasco, it could not do anything well.

In Windows 8 it slapped a six inch phone UI based on touch on a full fledged 28 inch desktop/laptop screen. Again a fiasco.

It used to talk about "multi-platform support", which on close examination turns out to be support for both WinNT and Win98. Now it talks about Universal Apps. But it is only Universal "Windows" Apps. Again Universal "windows" Apps but limited to Windows10. Where do they come up with names? Do they play some kind of buzzword bingo?

Next they will come up with different editions, from ultra tied down dimwitted home user edition all the way to super professional ultimate platignum azure eye-candy business corporate executive edition.

All these antics used to irritate me so much those days. Now I laugh at myself for having taken them seriously.

Already an American billionaire had figured out who the aliens are , and what they do, Got into hot water for saying it openly instead of using euphemisms.

obligatory

This is not known to many techies: Ganesha is the Lord of the Legion of ghosts and spirits. If you start all your projects with this simple prayer: " Oh, Thee clad in white clothes, with gray skin and four arms, Thee with the elephant face, we pray to Thee to remove all hindrances to project we are about to embark on. Aum! Peace, Peace, Peace to All", Ganesha will make sure there are no hindrances.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

If a fire is detected in the cargo compartment, we could release very large amount of carbon dioxide into the hold and vent all oxygen out to extinguish the fire. Cant do this to passenger cabin. But I am not sure if airplanes use such a fire suppression technique for the cargo.