I don't think so. The problem is as always: lawyers. This is quite likely a very legitimate program started with someone's good idea. But when they went to publish it the legal team would have skimmed through and reworded everything so they can't ever be held liable for anything.

I work for a very large corporation and we do the same. We legitimately run such programs but advertise them with weazel words just in case something doesn't go quite right, so someone doesn't then hold us to account on a stuff-up.

So the same can be said for anything right? Why does uber and commercial insurance come into it?

In Australia we have personal liability insurance, but that does sweet-f-a if I hit a Ferrari in my beat-up pick-up, and yet every driver on the road is not legally required to carry anti-Ferrari insurance.

What you can and can't do is a question of wealth and risk and there should be other legal avenues in place to deal with that rather than mandating insurance. If the insurance is mandated then it should be universally so and thus Uber should be treated no differently than some underpaid McDonalds worker who could equally mame someone on the way home.

Because shrugging and declaring bankruptcy is some magical panacea that is easy to do and gets everyone out of every obligation for free?

I don't think you quite understand what it means.

Many MACs are adjustable in the drivers.

And yet some are not and are hardcoded. I.e. The Surface Pro series has a MAC that isn't adjustable. The registry hacks don't work because the registry keys don't exist and if you use some software to spoof the MAC you end up in a BSOD loop.

I bought shares in a company should I be compensated when the company folds? Every investment carries risk. Leaving my money in the bank in a savings account carries risk too, just a lower risk with a lower reward.

Why are people always entitled to compensation? Why are companies entitled to go bust and get bailed out? What happened to just letting things run its course?

I don't understand why this comes back to insurance. There is a concept of self insurance, or no insurance.

We run risks every day of doing something where come company won't come and bail us out. Why should someone suddenly be *forced* to have insurance to do something?

We don't need to. After use in a modern nuclear cycle the final waste products decay to safe levels quickly enough that it becomes an almost non issue. By comparison the waste produced by a coal power plant is significantly worse.

But we won't get there because of an interim stage of the cycle. OMG PLUTONIUM THE COMMIE TERRORISTS WILL GET US.

That was their fuckup. It didn't need to be a worse mouse experience. Note that I'm not talking about metro here which is just a plain bad experience.

I'm talking about other small fine tuned details like the borders which are significantly larger, the larger hit area on icons, the introduction of the checkbox on explorer icons allowing multi-select without needing a keyboard. I'd mention the ribbon too but someone will lynch me for it.

In general none of these had a negative impact on the mouse, just a negative impact on the eyes as some people really hate the window border. Yet they were ultimately product breaking features if you used Windows on a convertible tablet.

Actually I think you'll find it's more to do with the cost of licensing when it comes to recording TV. From what I've read the licensing fees are absolutely extortionate which is why none of the very awesome open source media centres which in every other way shit over MS's product have this feature. It's a handy little way for cable companies to maintain a monopoly on PVRs capable of recording their channels and likewise a way to ensure that these PVRs don't record protected content.

The reason the medallion system was implemented has nothing to do with how it ultimately ended up being run. It's a government granted monopoly to the rich with an obscene barrier to entry disguised as a regulated but open industry.

Whatever reasons various governments had for implementing the system they had doesn't change the fact that the free market is attempting to offer a competing service with dramatically improved customer experience. Most people wouldn't complain if local taxis offered what uber does, and I'm not just talking about the obscene prices of taxi services in some cities, often caused by the obscene cost of the medallion.

That's nice. I'll voice the opposite opinion. Windows 8 tries to greatly improve the completely non-existent touch screen interface that exists in Windows 7. Windows 8 is borderline navigatable on touchscreen and I'm not talking about the metro UI (which is an abortion).

Isn't that a function of a TV sensing a sudden state change of the HDMI input?

And the ability to share the file and send it to anyone else? Were you not reading a word of what I said? How does telling someone to register a phone as a developer phone, download the SDK, and compiling a program from source compare to say installing something you made by clicking on a link and hitting okay?

Do you defend every company which charges premium prices for a product where they limit your ability to do something every computer has been able to do for the last 50 years, or do you have some self destructive affinity for Apple?

What do you do with GPS data?

The module itself is inconsequential compared to an app that keeps the CPU awake to process a continuous stream of GPS data. The module is only a very small part of the equation.

Wrong again. What kills batteries is what the phone does with the GPS. Active routing is barely done unless you're completely ignoring your GPS and even then routing on the most common apps is offloaded to Google or Apple and not done on the phone itself. Also the phones will flatten while the screen is off too only at a slightly lower rate.

GPS on implies it is doing something with the data. Processing takes effort and it is the apps preventing the CPU from sleeping that is what ultimately kills the battery. You're getting a continuous feed of GPS data that implies there is an app sitting in the foreground keeping the phone alive.