Of course we can. We repair the things every year. The fact you don't appear to notice shows how good we are at it.

That's BS. There are plenty of homes missing now from that era and castles that went to shit too. Saffron Walden in the UK has a castle but you'd probably not notice since it's just a small pile of remains. Famous structures like Ely Cathedral still stand because it gets repaired on an annual basis. There are plenty of bits on it that are only a couple years old at most. They've even got scaffolding all up the side it right now. They've also been digging at the foundation. You underestimate how much effort goes into keeping old buildings going. I've lived in Victorian homes and new build and the maintenance costs are like night and day. My current home might not be around in 500 years but I don't care and why should it? It's not special and there will be far better ways to build homes in that time. Maybe by then all those old Victorian homes will finally be rid bad technology like lead pipes.

It would be Tumblr. They can't drop in quality because they're already at the bottom.

Yeah because hardly anyone uses Safari on Windows. They're primarily a hardware company so providing software to a competing system that has no hardware benefit for them and no one uses would be a dumb move. Also, no one made you upgrade. My 4S is still on 7 and I still see people using 6. You jumped on the bandwagon early, shit broke and you got upset. Likewise you can't blame them when 3rd party software is coded in a way that easily breaks between versions. Most of my software worked on my iphone 6 just fine. There were just a couple games that were busted. When your app store model has people expect to get free upgrades for life just because they paid $5 once for the app then you get app developers that might not do a great job or won't be fussed to upgrade quickly. Yet if these developers wanted payments for major versions you, like many others, would probably complain.

Works fine for me. Probably a user error.

I tip if I like the cabbie or they did a good job because the difference between £4.00 and £5.00 isn't that big, I don't use them daily and I think it's the right thing to do and they return the favour. Cabbies here are more likely to round the cost down if you're a decent person or if I'm short they'll accept that. But likewise fares are regulated. At the beginning of a new fare season that's ok but if petrol keeps going up they have to eat the cost on short runs. That's not their fault.

I tip but then I don't take a taxi on a daily basis. If I did that's probably a sign I need a car or bike.

Maybe where you live but the taxis here are waiting at key points like the train station and shopping centres so my only wait is few seconds it takes to get off the train or leave the shop. most City centres are like that. If there is a wait it's because it's rush hour. Uber adding, as an example, 20 more cabs, wouldn't completely fix it and if they were so good they'd put the others out of business it would just as bad if not worse.

It's not like they invented regulations to block Uber. They're simply making Uber play by the same rules which is fair. If Uber rather quit offering services to an area rather than comply with the law they're welcome to do that.

Patents don't later forever so unless some miracle happens where someone else makes the technology a success within 20 years then it's pointless. This is assuming Google keeps up with the increasing maintenance costs. It's not just an inflation increase either. The patent system makes it more costly as you work your way through the 20 year term. Assuming Google keeps all their patents for the full 20 years I can't imagine anyone is going to make something similar to driverless cars or google glass a success for at least 10 years. The problem with driverless cars, as an example, isn't just whether the customers are there or not but the cost and size of lidar. Nearly half the cost of Google's driverless car is the lidar unit on the top. That is one hurdle that doesn't look like anyone is close to being able to tackle.

You mean like BP being taken to court over mistakes that were likely caused by contractors? Sorry but people are only in his car based on trust in the Uber brand and the driver still works for Uber. They have some responsibility for hiring bad drivers. They've not done their job to protect their customers properly.

why is Uber astro-turfing slashdot? The site shouldn't be big enough to warrant such tactics.

It's the only logical option. We know the scams aren't legit so if you can't tell the difference then they're all scams.

You can't have anything you dislike removed. However if you're a lazy corporation or a corporation that relies on spying on people then it's in your interest to undermine the law and remove anything requested so the law looks stupid and you can avoid it all together. It doesn't take a genius to see what's happening.