Really, I don't see why Sony should be considered any *less* legitimate than North Korea. There's even a fairly good argument that pretty much ANY publicly-traded corporation's governance is actually significantly MORE legitimate than North Korea's... or that of ant other dictatorship.

Corporate leadership is, after all, at least somewhat answerable to its public, in the form of annual shareholder motions and elections which do occasionally change board of directors membership and force actions upon said board, and therefore the corporation.

Uber is usually more expensive, true. But unlike taxis, they:

- Reliably show up when and where you summon them.
- Will take you out to the avenues without pitching a hissy fit.
- Will actually pick you up in the avenues.
- Don't try to pull the: "My credit card reader is broken, cash only." scam.
- Are paid for entirely through the app with no fumbling for cash OR credit card.
- Have nicer, cleaner, cars.
- Are not infested with bedbugs. (Seriously... last year one of the cab companies here (San Francisco) had a bed bug infestation in their cabs.)
- Do not stink of smoke, vomit, or pee.

Yeah... I've never been taken by surprise bu surge pricing. It's always been announced in the app. Though, if I recall correctly, originally you didn't have to explicitly acknowledge and approve of it before summoning an Uber.

Also, they publish an API that other app developers can use to integrate with Uber. And surge pricing is usually in effect only in certain areas. Sometimes, only a block or two is the difference between normal pricing and up to a 4x surge... when major events like concerts of ball games end, for example. So, there are apps available that will show you where to walk from your current location so that surge pricing will not be in effect, and even summon your car to that location for you independent of Uber's own app.

You might want to look up the term "de facto", and contrast its meaning to "de jure". Assuming that you're not being deliberately obtuse to troll the thread, I think you will find that the definition will clear up your confusion.

NY's system is one of the most infamous, with Chicago's corrupt system at their heels with Washington D.C. in there too, vying for "Most Corrupt & Broken US Taxi System". Many others are equally bad, heck, I haven't even mentioned anything west of the Mississippi, and there are no lack of bad & corrupt taxi systems!

Well, it's pretty telling that Uber got it's start in San Francisco. Our taxi system is just as corrupt, and the taxi companies and cabbies just as sleazy, as any that you mentioned. And they're engaged in the same sort of anti-Uber shenanigans as these frenchies. Just a few weeks ago, actually, they blockaded the airport.

I, for one, will never get into a taxi again. A pox upon their house and all their works. It's Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar across the board for me. And pretty much everyone I know thinks of the taxis the same way. Hell, even if by some freak chance the axis win and get the government to ban the ride-sharing services, I'll brave MUNI's owl service (About the only time I need a car service anyway is going home from a bar or club late-night.) before I get in a taxi again.

Easy enough. The question to ask is what does more good for more people? The government is a tool, nothing more or less. And like any tool, it's suitable for some purposes, and unsuitable for others.

The legacy taxis are just utterly terrible services on so many levels. About the only thing they're useful is for trips between the downtown hotels and the airport. That's fine for tourists; but if you actually live here, taxi's are all but useless. Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar show up on time where you need them, don't bitch about trips to or from the avenues, don't play the "the credit card machine is broken, cash only" game, and don't stink of smoke, pee, or vomit. None of that is true of taxis. So breaking the government supports for the legacy taxis is good.

Internet monopolies harm the consumer and stifle the economic development of new and innovative businesses. Obvious and iconic example is the extortion of Netflix by Comcast and Verizon, resulting at first in crippled performance of the service and eventually an increase in the price. That's direct and measurable harm to millions of consumers and an innovative and useful startup business, and hardly the only case of consumers or new businesses bering harmed. The bandwidth monopolies are causing harm and need to be broken. And if government action is what it takes, then so be it.

And on the cops thing, I think what people want is accountability. "Evil and racist pigs" do make it through whatever screening processes the police have for their recruits. When discovered, they need to be punished: thrown off the force and locked away. And when the "good cops" cover for the "evil and racist pigs", refuse to remove the bad ones from the force, and make sure that they are not punished for their crimes and abuse, the "good cops" cease to be good. "One bad apple spoils the whole barrel", as the proverb goes. The bad apples need to be purged before they are able to spoil that barrel.

The headline could be confusing. The garage was significant. My point is that people extend the concept in their heads and imagine a lot more than it really was. That is the myth part.

Sure it won't be quite the unanimity it was before, but the few dissenters won't prevent it from being renewed again. Only one Republican voted for this bill, most of them were loudly against weakening the PATRIOT Act in any way; come renewal time they'll extend it for another five years happily.

Why would you assume that it will go any differently in 2015 than it did in 2005, 2006 and 2011? The Republicans came out against this bill with accusations that it would help ISIS and risk another 9/11, and when the time for renewal is up in May (not January as I said), they will be in control of both houses and looking towards the primaries and the election after that - they're not going to let it expire

I don't see any chance that it won't be renewed. I'm sure there will be lots of drama, name-calling and stirring speeches, but in the end, little or no substantive changes to the act itself, and it will be 2020 before all this comes up again.

The problem is, that the dumb rules are enforced and the good rules are routinely ignored.

Illegal turns, failure to yield the right-of-way, improper merging, passing on the right, and puttering along in the passing lane (which provokes people to pass on the right), and various other forms of careless driving are all more dangerous than speeding. Single occupancy cars in the HOV lane or cars in general in the bus/rail lanes muck up the flow of traffic a lot more than speeding does. And then there are those pricks who drive into an intersection when there isn't room for them on the other side and stop in the crosswalk, or even in a crossing traffic lane; turning a traffic slowdown into a traffic jam.

But much of the above is routinely ignored and unpunished, while the vast bulk of traffic enforcement is based on catching speeders; often on the freeways, where the potential for them to harm themselves or others or to disrupt the flow of traffic is at the minimum. It's ludicrous.

It extended 3 out of 100 provisions of the PATRIOT Act until 2017. And actually, the vote was to put it up for discussion and amendment, so it could have been possible to get rid of that.

Now the entire act will be renewed in January, all 100 provisions. Not a win.

In addition to said shenanigans, some of Best Buy's employees are just flat-out dense.

One time, I had a case where the in-store price was higher than the internet price on Best Buy's own website. I don't know if it was an error in their database, or if stores in more expensive areas (This was in San Francisco.) have the ability to set their prices higher. Regardless, they refused to price match their own internet price. The excuse they gave was that bestbuy.com was not on the list of sites they price match. I was told this by both a sales associate and his manager, when I asked to kick it up a level.

Thing is, bestbuy.com allows you to place an order online and pick it up in-store from their inventory. So I just placed my order on my iPhone, took off for lunch somewhere, about 45 minutes later got the email that my order was ready for pickup, and dropped by the same store on my way home and grabbed the thing at the lower price from the customer service counter.

Stupid and obtuse behavior across the board on their part.

But it's easier to parse HTML5 than it was any previous version of HTML, as there is now an actual specification which details the process exactly rather than relying on each browser's interpretation. It can't be that difficult given the number of working parsers and validators out there for HTML5.

Plus, HTML5 can already be written using XML syntax, aka XHTML5. And searching for xhtml5.xsd or xhtml5.rng gave me plenty of links to schemas for validating XML-syntax HTML5.

If you need to store validated documents, then you shouldn't be storing them in HTML format! Store them as XML documents with well-defined schemas (Relax NG of course!), and then use XSLT or possibly XQuery to turn them into HTML fragments for display.

You won't get them if your karma is too high or too low, or if you browse /. too often or too infrequently. Possibly also if you post often enough you won't get them either, there are a few different factors. I went years getting none, now I get 5 points every five or six days, and occasionally 15 points instead.