They were unwilling to pick you up until surge pricing kicked in. Don't see nothing wrong with that. Waiting for 10 minutes for an Uber car that is 2 minutes away is unfortunately normal too. Until they have taken away ability to track driver you can cancel as soon as you see driver doing something funny. I recently got a warning from Uber that for cancelling after 5 mins I will get charged, despite driver going in circles around my location. Cancel before 5 mins is up :)

Seriously, taxis is a public transport? Why not stretch limos? Private yachts? Please get back to us when you have a private yacht serving every citizen of your imaginary country.

Why should you get X because you have money to pay for X? Because supply of X is limited, while number of your friends who want X is linfinite, and that is why we invented money! If you don't like that, you can go to Soviet Russia, where all prices are fixed and everything is rationed. Only Communist Party members can "get a ride". Not because they are rich but because they have a moral high ground over you. Oh wait, you cannot go to Soviet Russia because it failed? I do believe Cuba and North Korea are still intact. And you you happen to be posting this from either, congrats on having access to internet!

Manning did not sell hardware, he released a video of mass execution of civilians from a helicopter by someone who sounded like a teenager... among other fascinating stuff

This is THE BEST STRATEGY for "keeping foreign powers from getting to the many greedy and gullible people", because now every time the "foreign powers" make their move, the gullible will think twice before selling out.

Not to mention China probably already has all the plans through some simple hacking of DOD Windows networks.

While I agree that safeguarding national secrets is not entrapment, your example is. If you are really good at convincing and the person you are stalking is of low intellect/poor mental health -- you will always find some poor shlobs to agree to that -- a crime they would otherwise never commit. That IS entrapment. ...not to mention that some wives had it coming.

Both Snowden and Manning disclosed internal affairs of serious government institutions. In both cases the information was secret and in both cases affairs had been unethical. I fail to see why your personal preference so so skewed.

http://www.microsoft.com/investor/reports/ar13/financial-review/balance-sheets/index.html

Based on this discussion I gather that the optimal solution is to send midget women without legs.

We had the same problem before web for millenia. We did fine. 99% of low grade websites that would dissapear due to lack of ad sales should not have existed in the first place. Anything of value will find means to stay afloat.

Do not want. Neither television nor web becoming like television.

Find a way to monetise it, post it free, or charge for it. No awesome works of art will be lost if some "content" posters quit to do something useful instead.

Ubuntu with Gnome2 worked for my computer-challenged familty members for years.

- No annoying pop-ups that normally plague Windows.

- No trojans and self-installing crap to speak of

- Adblock? (or his stricter brother Noscript)

- I still grant admin access because there are some cases where a simple command needs to be run

- Remote SSH admin access can be routed through any unblocked port

I would hold very little faith in tales told by military brass at a boot camp. They are too far and remote from actual military decision makers, and impossibly far from military historians. Being a boot camp they are also not very accountable for the shit they make up. Try to pull your head from your arse from time to time.

It will take more effort to squelch consumption than screwing free market: Once upon a time a Russian Tzar passed a law of selling vodka exclusiely in large bottles to prevent people getting drunk and passing out on the street. This gave birth to a tradition of buying a bottle for a group of three and passing out collectively. This tradition is still alive today.