If "within existing laws" means having a medallion, that simply isn't possible, as there are not enough available. Up until a year or two ago, there were less than 500 medallions total in San Francisco.

There are other problems too. Various laws prevent Uber from performing a background check going back more than 7 years. As a regulated business, Taxi companies are required to (and able to) run better background checks going back 99 years.

As for pricing, taxi fares in San Francisco are ridiculous, like a 50% upcharge if you leave the city. But lets say Uber did implement it. How long until the cartel starts complaining they can't do "surge" pricing?

The truth is the taxis should have used their entrenched market position by pooling their resources and building an e-hailing app, or at least participating in the ones that exist now. Even in SF, try checking out the sites for the major cab companies. Only one has an app, the rest either don't exist or haven't been updated in over a year.

I should note another site does list an app, one that renamed itself over a year ago. That app (Flywheel) has never worked on my iOS device, so I don't know if it works or not.

Instead, cab companies used their entrenched position to keep the supply of medallions so low that people had no choice but to switch to Uber/Lyft/Sidecar. There just wasn't any way to get a cab, especially if you were west or south of Twin Peaks.

Obviously all of this applies to SF, where Uber was created to solve the very problem of not being able to get a cab. However, I'll bet all of this applies well to Paris.

While Christian religion may hold that there's a god controlling all of nature, I was focusing on the events that god explicitly takes credit for. Basically, I was assuming that if this god existed he would be an alien, rather than a being responsible for every single event in the history of the universe.

My point wasn't the death toll from a flood thousands of years ago, my point was that in the Bible, God actually claims to have caused the flood. Now, I don't think he exists, and if there was a flood it was probably a natural phenomenon over a much smaller area. However, if some all powerful being suddenly showed up and claimed to be the god of the Bible, I think I'd want to know how many people he had killed.

The Bible (supposedly the word of Abraham's God) specifically says that this god wiped out almost all of humanity in a flood, and destroyed two cities (in separate events). It doesn't necessarily claim direct responsibility for diseases or other natural events. There is of course the argument that he should have prevented such events, but there's a difference between causing something and not preventing it.

An alien species that sees an asteroid heading towards Earth might decide not to interfere with the natural progression of events (even if a bunch of dinosaurs die as a result) without committing a crime, but altering the atmosphere to cause a massive flood in order to wipe out most of the life on the planet would certainly be genocide.

If the Bible is literally true, then it would appear Abraham's god is guilty of enough crimes against humanity to warrant permanent imprisonment.

You mean for exterminating the civilian population of two cities? Yes, I would say if the lord exists he's got quite a few crimes to answer for, but really the claimed extermination of virtually all life on earth (the "deluge") would probably top the charges. An apology isn't really going to cut it.

Among the myriad of problems I have with Christianity that's a big one. The god of the Old Testament was worse than Hitler. If he ever does show up how do we justify not locking him up for eternity? We apparently have a complete written confession.

How would you expect them to filter spam without reading the messages?

Polls in the UK have over-estimated Labour support for decades. The swing to SNP in Scotland made it more obvious, since Labour lost all but one seat their, magnifying the inaccuracy of the polls in England.

Citation: http://www.bbc.com/news/election-2015-32650742

What do they (pollsters) expect?

I got a call last Saturday morning from an "unknown caller" at 8:30am (which woke me up). I ignored it. Again at 9:30, again at 10:30. Finally I was near enough the phone (actually, Google Voice on an iPad Mini) to pick up. I asked who it was and got a personal name, then I asked who they were calling from and then they admitted it was "ANZ Research" or something that sounds like that. They said they were calling to get opinions on various political topics.

There's no way in hell I'm going to give survey answers to someone who's dumb enough to call before noon on the weekend. Google Voice lets me block numbers, which I suspect is why they disabled Caller ID, so they could sneak through. I refused to even confirm my name, and told them to take my number off their list and never call again.

I figured it was probably a push poll anyway.

You're still wrong, and your arguments are non-sensical. Oh, and your software sucks, and your ideas suck.

I am not an advertiser, I'm an engineer. I don't work for advertisers, and my job has nothing to do with ads. I hate ads, including yours.

I'm not sure why you're so fixated on my sexual orientation, other than perhaps psychosis or repression. Either way, I'll enjoy dancing on your grave. I'll even put on a pride flag on it for you.

Well, as I said in this message, I'm not replying to APK anymore. In the comment above this he suggests he somehow chased me off Slashdot.

It was really fun imagining him typing furiously hoping that somehow his inane rants would anger me. Obviously I managed to piss him off pretty bad. A more thorough effort might actually get him angry enough that his ancient body finally gives out, thus finally freeing us of this bigoted, attention-seeking, spammer.

OTOH, he might feed off this kind of attention, spamming the internet about his shitty software is obviously all he has left in life.

I'll enjoy watching you continue to shit yourself over this, but this will be my last reply to you (though I'm thinking of making this my sig):

We hereby petition the government of the United States of America to review our proposal for putting Alexander Peter Kowalski (i.e. APK) to death by any means available. This individual is a menace to society and has proven himself to be a drain on the productivity for the millions of IT workers worldwide that spend so much time uncontrollably laughing at APK and his antics. We estimate that this phenomena is costing businesses in the US at least 100 million dollars on an annual basis. Given that APK only has APKTools to justify existence we have no problem recommending him for immediate execution. If at all possible, we would like the execution to be slow and painful.

It's clear your solution can't block ads and annoyances nearly as well as uBlock. I also have no idea why anyone would run an executable made by a bigoted spammer. Chrome has thankfully started warning users who try to download it.

Guess I'm not the first one to want this guy dead.

From 2006:
"We hereby petition the government of the United States of America to review our proposal for putting Alexander Peter Kowalski (i.e. APK) to death by any means available. This individual is a menace to society and has proven himself to be a drain on the productivity for the millions of IT workers worldwide that spend so much time uncontrollably laughing at APK and his antics. We estimate that this phenomena is costing businesses in the US at least 100 million dollars on an annual basis. Given that APK only has APKTools to justify existence we have no problem recommending him for immediate execution. If at all possible, we would like the execution to be slow and painful."

One thing is true, this guy claims to have history going back decades. For any of you who thought he was some idiot kid, it seems he's actually a sad old man (well, physically anyway, mentally he obviously never made it past 13). It does explain the homophobic comments though.

Can you imagine, if what he's saying is true, he spends his retirement spamming Slashdot. I'd be on a beach somewhere drinking mai-tais.

AIDS riddled brain, really? Well, whatever else you are at least we know you're a bigot that sees being gay (which I am) as equivalent to having AIDS. Good to know, Alexander Peter Kowalski.

I haven't run from anything as you well know. You do seem to be running from some things:
- Your app uses 37MB of RAM
- A 2 million+ line hosts file uses much more RAM than that, but of course that memory isn't attributed to your app. At 100 bytes per line that would be 200MB. How big is that hosts file anyway? Is it loaded by each application separately or is the OS at least efficient enough to use shared memory?

I'll be sure to let Hilton Hotels know what kind of person they're hiring.

Hey Alexander Peter Kowalski, two questions for you:
- Why don't you sign your posts with your full name, don't you want future employers to find all your wonderful ideas when they google your name?

- Why does your page show that your application uses 37MB of RAM (not 6), which is actually more than uBlock? What was that about doing more with less?

I've got to say, it's great for once to see a spammer work himself into a puddle. When you (for instance) mark an e-mail as spam you just don't get this kind of satisfaction.

The toolbars on Wikia and auto-playing videos on Bloomberg are served from the same host as the main content. Hosts blocking won't work.

I tried blocking javascript, but I don't feel like spending 5 minutes on every site figuring out which scripts to let through. Besides, uBlock and ghostery stop the worst ones.

As for your "doing less with more" claim: my question is, which blocks more ads? Answer: uBlock/Adblock, your system blocks fewer ads and I'm more than happy to spend an extra 1% of my computer's power to block far more ads than your shitty idea does.

As for your other comment that you seem to think I "ran" from (I can barely parse your rants): Why the fuck would a standalone e-mail program need an ad blocker? Do you actually have your e-mail set to allow remote content?

Here's a question, if there's a part of a page I don't like (sidebar, toolbar, "join our mailing list" nag), can your hosts solution let me right click on it and block it forever? No?

Again, why should I trust an adblocker made by a spamvertiser?