The same sorts of arguments were trotted out at the beginning of the jet age too.

I read the biography of a US pilot who missed out on WWII due to age, and upon beginning training in jets was told that "these are too fast for dog fighting, you'll never see your opponent".

He then went on to dog fight in F-86's in the Korean War.

The taxis where I live are none of the things you listed, they are clean, and the drivers are (mostly) polite. They also know where they are going.

This has not always been the case, the industry was heavily regulated and protected until the mid 1980's, which made taxis expensive and inflexible (a taxi could not be hailed from the street for instance, passengers could only be picked up from taxi stands).

Then came deregulation, almost completely, and several times a smoking wreck would break down halfway to my destination, (if the driver even knew where he was going) which usually involved shouting and threats.

I don't use taxis as much as I used to, but it sounds like the issue where you live is poor regulations.

I'm old enough to remember the days before the Taxis industry in New Zealand was deregulated. You couldn't hail a cab in the street, the only place they would pick you up from was a taxi stand.

I have pretty much concluded that the purpose of the "right to be forgotten" ruling is so that rich and/or politically connected individuals can have their online lives edited.

The man in the link above may well be embarrassed by the story, but there's no suggestion he had done anything illegal, so if he objects, he should be able to go to the publisher of the site.

Yes, quite.

We had to have this very conversation with several excitable mothers at my children's primary school a few years ago. There was a sudden demand that all Wi-Fi be turned off because it would turn the children into mutants, (or something).

Fortunately at a meeting called to discuss the issue one of the fathers, who may have been a electrical engineer, explained the safety issues in such simple terms that even the homeopathic medicine users couldn't refute him, and they lost the vote about 50 - 3.

So a job listing website has a "Chief Economist" on staff?

What the fuck for? Its a job listing website.

Especially Chelsea Clinton, who apparently is the Clinton foundation's "point person" on Computer Science whatever that means, despite never studying CS. It looks like she's being set up as another generation of Clinton politicians.

It's a not very surprising head line really, "Cartel members cheat their customers". The fact that the FCC might start to regulate them a little bit might change their behavior, at least until the next round of "campaign contributions" when the rules will change again.

My Mother-in-Law told me after a trip to the US that she liked Americans, she said they're kind and good natured and very friendly, but she could never get over how everything in the US is for sale. She was a practicing Catholic, but would go to any Christian church if she felt the need. She told me she always felt a little dirty after attending church in some of the evangelical churches she came across, as if she had just done business with the mafia. I think that is how your political system works, sold to the highest bidder. There's no way the corrupt politicians and their financial backers are going to allow ordinary people to muscle in on the action. Mayday PAC is a nice idea, but has no chance of changing anything. There's too much money at stake.

I feel very strongly that this young women whose bland, derivative music holds no interest for me should be paid a lot of money by this music service I will actively avoid using.

I had a conversation with a friend seeking tech advice just this weekend. She wanted to know why she should update her laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I could not give her a reason why she should. The laptop has a Core i5 processor, and 4 GB of RAM, which can be upgraded to 8 GB according to the ASUS website. When her drive fails at some stage, and I put an SSD drive in for her, it will run Windows 7 even better, and she will still have no reason to upgrade.

About 3 days profit, I think. (I could stand to be corrected).

Why not just reform your Byzantine 18th Century electoral system? It's so corrupt that the two parties involved keep any potential opposition out.. Oh, OK I get it now.

The country I live in has a Government supported and Taxpayer funded private Internet infrastructure provider. The monopolies regulator have been defunded and may have been captured anyway. This will force the access prices to fall so that ISP's can compete on price and service, as God intended. I don't care if it's a boondoggle or not. It will encourage competition.

Frozen Bubble is very awesome. So was Mandrake. I used it for a while in the early 2000's as it was the only distro that worked out of the box with some cheap modem I had. The problem was the other distro's caught up with, and went past Mandrake.