The skills that one has to demonstrate to get a commercial drivers license is higher than to get a regular car drivers license. Same goes for a motorcycle license. Why shouldn't one need to demonstrate a higher level of skills in order to be allowed to get paid to drive other people around.

I don't trust Uber to verify that their drivers have the skills needs to drive me around safely. Uber's background check that somehow missed one of their drivers was a sex offender.

Where are mod points when I need them?

I was productive at my first job out of college after a month. My group has hired a lot of new grads in the last year or so and they have all gotten up to speed pretty quickly.

Both of these are very true.

What he said!

I shoot B&W film, but scan in the negs and make prints on a printer. There is density that you can get with B&W film and playing with processing time that is hard to reproduce with a DSLR.

I had a 12" Powerbook G4 that I sold a couple of years ago. It was just too slow to running the applications that I needed to run.

I still have a Powerbook 540c (from 1995) that I play SimTower on. I also use it as a serial console for my collection of Sun lunchbox systems and Axil 320 SPARCstation 20 clone. They still all still run (despite PROM battery failures), but I don't use them frequently.

My primary work laptop is a 2007 MacBook. When the time came that the company would buy me a replacement, Apple products were no longer on the list of corporate approved laptops, so I have just continued to use the MacBook. It has been pretty much trouble-free. Had to replace the battery and the power adapter and that's it.

'Shades of Grey' was on its own plane of awful. Nothing else comes close. When I try to think of other bad episodes, 'Shades of Grey' just crowds all of the others out.

Uh, I should proofread better before posting. That should be "It is not based on actual accident statistics."

Citing the National Safety Council's own material:

It is not based actually accident statistics. It is a guess.

If you want to watch the latest Top Gear (or Fifth Gear), go here - http://www.finalgear.com/

I disagree. The major studios have production facilities, access to capital for getting films made and know the business end of distribution, which are all things that a major film needs that the people "doing all the hard work" might not be able to provide. And it isn't like the studio always makes money. Look at what R.I.P.D. did last year. Studios have failed or have had to reorganize effectively because of the poor box office performance of a small number of films.

Note that studios don't do actual distribution of digital films to theaters now. It is done by a small number of companies like AccessIT and Technicolor. I believe that streaming distribution will continue to follow a similar model.

Streaming can be hard, particularly if everyone is trying to watch at the same time. Witness what happened to HBOGo the night that they made the season finale of 'True Detective' available.

From what I can tell, the major studios do not want to be in the content delivery business. I don't see an 'inevitable future' of the major studios streaming their own content. I think branded portals to the studio content, outsourced to a small number of content delivery companies, is more likely.

I did the 30-day free trial of Netflix in Dec-Jan. I got bored with the choices available before the end of the free trial.

Also, don't bother to apply if you got your 4-year degree more than a few years ago, work experience notwithstanding. The application process requires recommendations and the online recommendation form is completely oriented towards coursework. If your recommenders aren't former classmates or professors, it will be hard for them to complete the form.

Because they were intended to help kids learn, not turn them into office drones. There were all sorts of interesting educational apps. Also, the OLPC laptops run Linux and you can open a terminal shell if so inclined.