As a user, you can't request a taxi; taxi's are run, at least in France, by a monopoly; you can request a driver with a car, and pay for the ride.

As a DRIVER, you can request a car and pay for a ride as well.

No. Uber also adds "actually showing up" because of their ratings system, and "not obstructing traffic every time the Uber contractors decide to get pissy about something". Both of these are substantial benefits that taxis don't have.

Uber doesn't own the cars, and the taxi company owns the cars. Since, you know, they could dispatch people with mules instead of people with cars; are they now a drayage company, as well?

They were camping the Mountain Gorilla respawn point?

If they're just going to respawn, then it's not really killing, is it?

The term "genocide" only applies to people.

genocide
jensd/
noun
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

If you want a certification, buy one.

There are plenty of people who will, for $100, take the certification tests for you. The certifying "authorities" never ask for a state issued picture ID to prove you are who you say you are -- and in fact, most modern certification testing and issuing happens online. You can pretty much get a certification in nearly everything.

Even in the case of a them checking IDs, you can have the test taker be a person who "perpetually fails at these tests", and swap test sheets/booklets with them by way of writing down each others names on the materials in question, after getting in to take the test under their own name. That's how people fake the LCAT and MCAT tests to get higher scores so they can get into Ivy League colleges.

You can pretty much have as many certifications as you want.

Wanting to be a good singer... being "musically inclined... doesn't mean that you aren't tone deaf, and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

There's a heck of a lot of difference between being "technically inclined" and actually having technical ability.

To be perfectly fair, they were mostly Finnish...

The correct code word for "younger workers" this week is "digital native". Last week it was "recent graduate". We have "whippersnapper" penciled in for next Tuesday.

I'm still looking for the full version of Visual Studio on my Commodore 64...

You had me with you until you said Social Security.

You are aware that every penny put into the Social Security Trust fund is immediately "borrowed" back into the general fund via bond purchases, right?

Also: H1B workers pay into Social Security already, with no chance of ever seeing that money themselves (not like any of us will ever see it, either).

Does anyone who didn't graduate from IIT Bombay actually use the word "Mechatronics"?

Maybe you could get an apprenticeship in that?

P.S.: a DeVry Associate Degree in Web Graphic Design graduate probably is more qualified to write software than most 16 year olds.

The mission was launched in 2006 (January 19, 2006, 19:00 UTC). At the time of the launch, Pluto was still classified as a planet.

It only became a non-planet according to the IAU, who didn't want to classify Charon as a planet, too, later in August 2006.

So they launched the spacecraft at a planet.

Pylons. No grading necessary.

Nokia sold the design patents, ~8,400 of them, to Microsoft. The other patents were license to Microsoft for a limited time.

So no, Nokia did not retain all their patents.

Unless you want to land?

Or, at least, land intact, then take off again after landing?

He issued the executive order.

Which he then rescinded.

As commander in chief, he could have, in fact, just ordered the troops out, period.

Guantanamo is politically useful for its extraterritoriality. Even to Obama, who has ordered the execution of U.S. citizens, without trial, via drone strike, in Afghanistan.