The "traditional" Uber - Uber Black - is almost certainly what's being used by politicians. It provides a nice black car (complete with a registered driver who already holds all of the necessary permits, etc) for slightly more than the cost of a Taxi and in my experience has always been great. UberX is the "new" Uber, where random people are driving. Don't confuse the two.

Personally, for the money I'll take "Uber Black" any day. It doesn't command a very significant premium and gives a generally nicer and more professional experience all around.

Its also worth remembering that we tried unregulated taxis - in fact, that model has been tried many times all over the world, and every time its tried it doesn't work very well and we end up approximately where we are today. Tossing those gains away after so many failed attempts should require a fairly substantial set of claims that those problems won't just pop up again (especially when early feedback on things like surge pricing and destination-based fair refusal shows that they're far from gone).

Except that, in this case, they also gave you the option of leaving their private property with your wallet intact, which is in fact what Google chose to do. That's a bit different than a random mugging on a public street - much closer to choosing not to pay a cover charge.

So have them sign the software as part of the build (self-signed is fine, you'd only have to add the cert once). Still not an issue for the vast majority of users out there.

And if you did, Phonegap gives it to you basically for free. Even if there's some bleeding edge API you absolutely must have that they don't support, writing wrappers is fairly trivial (just a Java or ObjC file with no business logic that says, "Expose this API call as this JS call" a few times, basically).

Or if it comes to that then, as a developer, you can just sign the app, you know. The fact that other OSs have had these features for years with none of these issues just makes your complaints look even more ridiculous.

How often do you install new un-signed software that you didn't compile locally yourself that right-clicking only on the first time that an app is executed is a problem?

The way that OS X solves the issue is that unsigned apps can still be run, but they require a more explicit first-time-only execution (right-click -> open which then displays a confirmation dialog indicating the app name and the website it was downloaded from) as opposed to signed apps that just run like normal. Its very unobtrusive, never even happens for most people, and works very well in the "least amount of tech to solve the problem" sense.

HBO Now doesn't require a cable subscription either. That was the whole point of its creation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Well, the Apple watch will happily chat to your phone anywhere its on the same wifi network, to bring the conversation back around to the subject at hand, so there's at least one (or 1 million) right there...

As an expat living in the 'States, the only times that I miss 240V is boiling water and the fact that the flymo will never seem to exist over here. Mainly boiling water.

If there weren't any problems, they wouldn't need to hire you...

That's likely to fail, because your conditions have nothing to do with your value. Your best-world case should, if you have the track record and experience to justify it, include the fact that with you along they're likely to ship that new product 6 months faster producing an extra $2mm in cash flow next year (or whatever the scenario is), making hiring you at a high rate something that's actually good business sense for the company. You'll find that people are far more willing to talk about compensation under those terms than you might think.

If you're going to just be another cog in a big machine with no real direct impact as to whether or not the company earns back your salary .5X or 50X, then expect to get paid what all of the other cogs are getting paid +/- 2%, at least at first.

So in this scenario you'd also be getting a different titleor pay grade, which would include public recognition that the company does indeed consider you better than those who in the current situation are seen by people on other teams as your "peers". Is that so bad?

Are you kidding? Hiring, especially in the high-tech space, is really hard. Finding good people takes a very long time and can be painfully expensive, in actual costs, training costs, and opportunity costs while you don't have someone in that space. I'd much rather pay someone a few thousand more and let them use whatever gear will make them most productive than nickel and dime them so that they can be lured away by someone willing to respect them.