Under Dutch law taxi drivers need a number of additional courses and successful completion of the certifications associated with them. In addition they are required to be screened for previous convictions pertaining to alchohol- or drug abuse, traffic violations, and inter-personal violence convictions.

There's no 'uber' in the Netherlands, just 'uberpop' which is an illegal taxi-driver with none of the training and none of the safe-guards 'normal' taxi drivers have to conform to. 'Uberpop' is promoting illegal taxi services.

Taxi drivers in the Netherlands behave themselves because the first DUI means they will never drive a taxi ever again. They don't beat up customers because they will never again, ever, work as a chauffeur, not even on a freight lorry. Run a number of red lights in a few years and you'll lose your VOG and with it your license to drive a taxi.

We used to have an America-styled mob company in every city. For instance: the TCA, Taxi Criminals Amsterdam, required large fees from its drivers, to protect them from 'damage' and to assign them rides. Heavy-handed law-enforcement did a lot of good. Uberpop seems to be determined to re-establish the New York-style cabbie from the late seventies.

The slowest offer of my ISP used to be 120/12Mbit/s. Recently they reinstated the 40/4Mbit/s option.

I like the '12' bit a whole lot more than the '120' bit of that offer. 12 is much, much better than the 0.768 ADSL delivered.

Another missing option: My ISP is gaming speedtests.

I pay for 120/12Mbit/s. I get in most speedtests 121/12.1Mbit/s. Which is suspicious by itself.

The point about the Dutch Sandwich is that an amazing array of companies and artist manage to export their earnings to a tax haven with almost any taxation at all.

Rumours has it that U2's 2011 world tour had a turnover of 750 million dollar and a profit of 150 million dollar, which shipped to Bermuda taxed at 0.25%. Thanks to a special deal with one Gerrit Zalm.

Sales tax eats away at the income of the record shop, the wholesale supplier and the CD factory. But the income of the record company and the (BIG) artist goes almost completely untaxed. Likewise, a big party of your Billy's price is intellectual property licensing ending up in other tax havens.

With regards to Ikea: The Delft store, sized 30.000m^2, shares it next to bottom-place with equal sized stores in Hengelo and Zwolle. Only the store in Amersfoort is smaller, with 29.000m^2. The nine other Dutch stores are larger. The store in Utrecht seems to be the fourth largest in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Ikea's world headquarters are (legally) on top of a smaller Ikea store somewhere in Delft, the Netherlands.

http://franchisor.inter-ikea.c... (down at the bottom..)

Carrying a thousand packages each.

Now imagine not thousands of cars and trucks on the road but literally millions of drones buzzing around, each with a single package.

Imagine the sound, the inevitable crashes, the energy consumption. (I'm lousy at math and making unsound assumptions but the figure I got was ten thousand times more energy to deliver a pound a mile away.. Keep in mind that the price of energy rises, and rises, and rises..)

Top Tip: In Finland the police isn't depending on 'revenue'. Policing Finland as a preset, defined budget. Any fines levied are a surplus to the states income, and police forces do not benefit in any way from their law enforcing activities. Finnish police has to account for security, safety and crimes solved, not for income from speeding tickets.

'All about the new Apple watch in 0:90'

What? 1:30 of advertising? command-W and FO.

As soon as it launches Blendtec will answer the question: Will It Blend?

Because I moved all my stuff from dropbox to mega, a few minutes ago.

You should come here more often.

Tell me, how much can you make with an unauthorised 1:1 copy of Saint Pauls Cathedral or Buckingham Palace?

Do you have room for either one in your garden?

Keyboard, trackpad, storage, battery life. (2.5 hours, versus 12 for the MBA? You kiddin' me?)

By the time this filtered through your TELEX British police already admitted they assume they have the wrong guy:

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/gr...

I still have this fax-to-email service running. For about 25 doctors and lawyers and one banker.

Most of them still use my complimentary email-with-pdf-to-printer-program.

Old technologies emulated by modern equipment.