Actually, in most of these services, the driver has been vetted by all of his previous passengers and complaints are public (same goes with riders). Get a bad reputation for inappropriate behavior, you're not getting any more business. Furthermore, there becomes a record of all pickups and drop-offs.

As opposed to a conventional taxi, where both the driver and passenger are complete unknowns.

Both approaches have their problems. Requiring drivers to have an upgraded license and appropriate insurance is certainly reasonable. The medallion system that a lot of large cities use is absurd.

And if we had more than 2 choices, we would. Right now, it's a duopoly and neither incumbent is willing to rock the boat.

What really needs to be done is to separate the providers from the last mile connection. A lot of ISPs could get in to the game if they only had to get their fiber to a local substation.

I place the odds at about 3:2 for incompetence over malfeasance. When you run that much money through a website for trading Magic cards, the probability of either is pretty good.

I think the biggest problem we encounter when moving to a new platform is looking at it and seeing everything that's wrong with it. Moving from C# Windows apps to HTML/JavaScirpt/CSS has been very frustrating because nothing works the way I think it should. It's a terrible platform, but that's just the way that things are done now, so you better get used to it and just accept it.

But to make a modern web app, you're going to need some additional frameworks on top of the HTML, JavaScript and CSS. So you've got jQuery and BootStrap and whatever else on top of whatever is assembling pages on the server side of things, MVC, or whatever else. So you've just got to dive in head first and fully commit yourself to doing things the new way or you're going to get left behind. I've seen old programmers who made the change, and I've seen guys cling to what they're comfortable with and slowly become obsolete. And that's why I'm using the Slashdot beta.

Over the last decade, everyone has already standardized on USB as the default. Everything I need to charge can be charged off a USB port, and I only need 2 different cables, one for my wife's iPod, and a micro USB for everything else.

The reason this is a terrible idea, is that when someone does come up with a better connector (for example, Apple's Lightning connector), they may not be able to produce/sell it because the standard has already been set. As usual, the EU is late to the party and trying to solve a problem that's already been solved, while potentially causing problems for the future.

Interest rates on credit cards are high for a reason - they're a high risk loan. People that carry credit card debt are at high risk for declaring bankruptcy. The system is working correctly. Meanwhile, I love my bank. Free checking, great service. Interstate competition in banking has been fantastic. I've got 6 separate banking options within walking distance of my house. 2 national, 2 local, 2 credit unions. Heck, there are only 4 liquor stores in walking distance.

In any event, separating health insurance from employment is a great thing. I know so many people who are afraid to leave their jobs for something better because they have some sort of long term health issue that they're afraid won't be covered if they end up on a new plan.

Have you actually read Atlas Shrugged? It's about creating "fair" competition by legislative fiat. I still don't get how Galt's Gulch could function without a bunch of low paid labor, but that's a separate problem. Whatever. Buying the coal mines and power plants from willing sellers is completely within the realm of free markets.

The real problem is that if you shut down the coal industry and all the cheap energy that comes with it, energy prices are going to go up, and this will in turn hurt the poor. The remaining coal assets will become that much more valuable and so this $50B number might be a bit small. And 10 years sounds like a naively short time period to accomplish this. It takes 10 years just to get a plan approved to build a nuclear power plant. Where's our electricity going to come from in the meantime?

Price seems to be about the same. For me, the big differentiator is the level of DRM. I avoid Steam as much as possible because it's a pain to let my kid play a game that I'm finished with. GOG is always my first choice.

Given that most XP users probably don't have a quality source for tech support, and most of these old XP machines are in a terrible state with untold numbers of programs installed and removed and installed again, I can't imagine a worse idea. Most of these older users will be perfectly happy to keep using XP until they have a real reason to use something else. Most likely because their old computer finally died or became horribly overrun with malware (which it probably already is, they just don't care).

I think they've lost their connection to the hobbyist market. Most guys I know start at SparkFun or other similar hobbyist site. RadioShack has a long way to go to catch up to where the hobbyist market is these days. And even at that, I don't know that you can make a viable retail business at it. As a cell phone kiosk, they're now having to compete with Best Buy, Target and WalMart. So what is the business case for RadioShack then?

Right now, they've got a brand name and a lot of small retail locations. I just don't know what they should be doing with it. Maybe just close down and liquidate. That may be the best way for them to return value to their shareholders. I hate to see anyone fail, but it may just be their time.

I started doing some of the lessons. Like any good programmer, I set about trying to do things in a way that was not intended. I was most disappointed to see that my modifications didn't work in the sandbox. Instead I was just prodded to do things in the approved fashion. It's a wonder that anyone learns anything these days.

Yeah, it would also double the cost of cell service. You'll just have to get used to getting most of your data needs from WiFi sources. I've got WiFi at home, work, most places I go to eat. That's the more small low power towers. They just aren't run by the cell companies. Actually, look for Comcast to become a major player in this space. They've been rolling out hardware to customers that functions as a WiFi hotspot for their other customers. It would be a small matter for them to adapt that for use on the major cell networks. Imagine Comcast picking up an extra $2/month for every cell phone in the US, and they don't need to deploy any extra infrastructure to do it, either.

However, while it's perfectly fine to remove your Google Glass while driving, leaving your screaming kid at a gas station or duct taping their mouth shut is somewhat frowned upon. The safety of Google Glass while driving is unknown at this point. And, as other commenters have pointed out, it's better to legislate distracted driving in the abstract than to try and define every instance that could cause impairment.

Nope. Smoking is prohibited under the guise of aircraft safety, which does fall under federal regulation. And even if it didn't, at this point in time, no airline would allow it. The FAA has already cleared phones on safety grounds, so this law banning in flight calls (as opposed to in flight data communications) is probably on shaky ground. It may be mooted as I think most airlines will ban voice calls anyway.

And it's even more embarrassing when I realize that I'm the idiot that wrote it.