Uber/Lyft are purely a play to disrupt the taxi industry by getting around the medallion tax.

Don't get me wrong - the taxi medallion's cost is prohibitive due to very low supply and the only justification I can see is that the city wants to limit the number of taxis to improve air quality. However, with hybrid/electric cars around now that vastly reduce or eliminate any tailpipe emissions, I think cities need to reconsider possibly having "green" medallions that are not as limited in number, and require the car driving it to have AT-PZEV (Prius 2004) emissions profile or better (not difficult; many of these kinds of cars around that still get 50 mpg+).

This isn't limited to Wal-mart either - I've noticed that all retailers do this, and manufacturers have come to support this (except for companies like Apple) by simply having thousands of different serial numbers that share the same specific model - that's what's advertised, but YMMV apparently.

This problem results in a real lack of commoditization and alignment, and prevents customers from shopping around or even getting consistent and reliable support - hell even the support rep may not know your specific video card on your laptop.

Regardless of the merits of Eich's actions, or the merits of those calling for his ouster, the fact remains that all that's going to happen is that there will be a kerfuffle and Eich will either ignore it or make some pro-LGBT concession and then things will continue on, the same way things have been going.

Does anyone doubt that the Eich is capable of handling the job? I don't hear that anywhere. Perhaps this whole thing is to focus away from the fact that he may not be the best person to head Mozilla (and remove other candidates from the spotlight by hogging all the attention)? That's a bit CT [1], but I've been accused of worse kinds of thoughtcrime.

[1] http://acronyms.thefreediction...

Riiiight - just a map overlay and gaming aspect. No mention of incident reporting, showing aggregated speeds of waze users, the ability to share your location/trip,nope. None of that takes coding or infrastructure I guess.

Waze is more useful than google maps, apple maps, or navigon for me in estimating my commute times - it simply works. It even noticed a traffic disruption that had only really lasted for about 1 hr, showing me an alternate route through residential streets such that I got to my freeway onramp with only a 5m loss rather than what I guess would have been much longer.

I don't like that Google bought it - I don't trust Google very much, but I can't stop using Waze (I kill the app when I get home/work).

Most folks not into the electric/hybrid ownership thang just don't get this - the dividends for a hybrid (and doubly so for a pure electric) are in the small things - great acceleration "curves", quieter cabin, keyless entry, reduced maintenance, no transmission changes ever, oil changes that always came back clean even when I do them yearly, etc etc. And the Tesla takes it to a whole new level.

It's not the MPG that sold me on the Prius 10 years ago (and that I still drive daily with 50+mpg), it the fact that it felt like spaceship when it "booted" and all the other things that no other car at the time could do. The new Telsa faux-mercial exemplifies this: http://www.thecarconnection.co...

Note: using solar to power your car is through offsetting your daily electricity use and powering at night - you don't actually have to use the *specific electrons collected by photonics deposits on your solar panel* to power the electric car.

The end result is the same - car gets juice (usually the cheaper variety if you're hooked up with a smart meter) and you pay less.

Hell, Musk even has a company that helps homeowners do just that - SolarCity - without all the overhead of buying the panels and installing them yourself.

Amusingly when Apple does it, most of their users either don't complain about it, or actually appreciate it.
Hmm - maybe execution and taste matter?

Meaning - Microsoft probably not only ignored it's users, it likely ignored it's own influential employees that were critical of it (especially those who weren't vocal because it would be a CLM). That's poor taste.

I wonder how this will impact online payments - how will chip/pin be supported there?
Given most of my CC activity is online, I fathom this is a huge loophole to the new security structure...

Common sense, despite all the hoopla, bitcoin really does make a poor "currency". It's really like buying commodities at a certain price, and selling them again at another price

Best example off the top of my head is Oil futures - since both that and BTC have a) a steady increase in value due to limited supplies and b) incredible volatility at times as the market itself is really controlled by big players

Exactly the type of market that Wall Street loves.

So I don't see it there, I only see Google Maps. Am I supposed to block Google Maps?

How asinine is it to expect a car to coast (no powered acceleration) but not brake? Using your model, when my car is coasting, I'd have to keep the pedal slightly depressed so it would accelerate during a long downward hill.

Also, switching around the now-standardized pedal layout (approximates automatic-drive, not manual) is a no-brainer. It would literally be a non-starter if I had to switch driving modes just because one of my cars is electric.

Let's see the equivalent of the public utility commissions, or FERC, and then we calk talk about metering. I don't trust AT&T to play straight with metered billing.

AT&T is the same company that was alleged to have randomly pushed data usage on iPhones that were off [1]. My wife who was until recently on AT&T had several months where her account would get slapped with a data charge late due to unexplained usage late in the cycle. After a year or so of this abuse and a couple of hundred dollars later we finally all switched to TMobile non-contract, and strangely (hmm) have never seen the data usage with the same pattern (not that it would matter now - at worst she'd be bumped to 2G speeds, not billed for an extra allotment of data). Couldn't be happier since the switch. TMobile is great, and compared either ATT or VZ, has much better service and aren't jerks. If you get decent TMO signal where you are, I highly recommend the switch.

To this day, AT&T still won't explain to you the data specifics - it's hard to correlate what's on the bill detail vs. what's on the phone log.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2...

Not at all - the commodity CPU customers can do beta test for the more risk-averse enterprise server CPU customers.

Conversely, when a company says that, by lowering taxes, they'll reinvest into the community, that's to be taken without any grains of salt at all.

Actually, what it likely means is that they'll just spend that untaxed money on campaign contributions (western world speak for bribes) and executive bonuses.

To add to your point, a majority of the members of congress are millionaires [1]. Keep in mind that reporting rules don't require disclosure of amounts above $1M, just that they are "over $1M". So it's getting harder to track the wealth and it's corruptive effects.

[1] http://www.opensecrets.org/new...