It's partly about their business and partly about public safety. Taxi services have higher insurance rates as well as safety inspections of both the cars and the drivers.

Look, this ride share serves is every bit as dangerous as hitchhiking. You are taking your chances with it that you won't be robbed of everything you have with you and your naked corpse found in the remotest part of California.

This case isn't over with yet. Like the OJ Simpson case there will be the inevitable wrongful death civil suit where the bar is far lower than the reasonable doubt bar. So until the outcome of that trial is over, I don't expect the streets of Florida to be that bad.

There is also another reason...

You haven't worked for a state agency before if you think the "customer" is the emergency management team. It is the IT departments that have control of all the equipment as well as have the responsibility for its maintenance and upkeep.

Having said all that, is it really the job of even the IT department to fix a flaw in equipment supplied by a vendor? Or is it the job of the vendor (who usually has a maintenance contract for it) to do that fixing?

It has been happening since before the 1800 yet we live hundreds of times better than they did in the 1800

That depends on how you define "better". Life was far simpler then than it is now. Wages were increasing instead of staying flat or declining like it is today and exploration of new horizons and inventions were more plentiful and beneficial to society than they are today. Today we have diseases that were unheard of then, economies that are so interdependent globally that the slightest ripple will be felt world wide and technology that is pretty much stagnant due to a patent regime that is totally unsustainable.

Human kind has a way of making it work out. As long as we keep working on world issues we will make it.

Unless we so fuck up the world all in the name of the mighty dollar that humans can no longer live on it. Then only the rich will be able to escape to spread their nastiness to the next world they will inhabit.

Completely relevant.
Facebook has no obligation to police content to comply with the laws of any nation except the USA.
Everyone else can fuck right on off. Let the government of Italy (try to) block Facebook if they're actually serious about it.

Leaving aside the international question, even in the US contracts entered into by a minor are considered invalid. Facebook does nothing to try to actively restrict access to legal adults even according to US law. There is nothing legally that Facebook can do to enforce an invalid contract such as their AUP. That is the angle the Italians are taking and to me it seems a valid one.

If they fly less than 500ft (and most do) then they are not in the Air Traffic space.

Which completely ignores helicopter traffic... (News, police, medical air lifts, etc...)

The alternative is to offer him the training he is supposedly lacking. If he refuses then that is grounds for dismissal. This is my biggest beef with the corporate world. They want you current but do nothing to provide you the necessary tools or the time to stay current.

Because it prevents the original owner from regaining control.

Your point fails because even on hardwired lines there are charges for the safety network (911 fees they are generally called). If you want to talk fairness then what you are proposing is the landline users pay for it when you don't have to. Doesn't sound very fair to me. And taking it out of the general revenue means those who don't use it (for whatever reason) are subsidizing those that do. Again, it doesn't sound fair to me.

The point is, there are inequities all over the topic of taxes. Whether it comes from general revenue or not. And these are services that have to be paid at some point. Cell phones have caused a special headache for emergency response (911) because of their mobile nature. Getting a true fix on them can be a daunting task and increases that cost. That is why the tax as you put it is higher.

On a side note, when was the last time you saw a pay phone in a city these days? Ever try to call 911 without using your cell? Trust me, it is one of the most challenging things to have to go through.

General revenue is also a tax. I fail to see the point of what pot of gold it is plucked from. It makes far more sense to me to have the users of that safety network support it.

Why should spectrum auctions (i.e. my cell phone bill) pay for a public safety network?

Because you are a member of that public. Go ahead and say that line the next time you need 911. Keep that line in your head the next severe weather outbreak happens and you need to take shelter. Keep that in mind after the disaster when you are trying to piece back together the remnants of your life....

What typically happens when you write to these asshats is they pass the letter on to a lowly state official to answer. I have answered many a congressional letters from the public that would have gotten them a faster answer had they contacted me directly. You see, once a congressional comes down we answer back to the congress critter who in turn copies that response back to the person. The same happens on the federal level. They pass it off to anyone else to answer, usually the same agency the person is whining about.

In short, when something happens the congress critter is the least involved yet seems to be the first that people whine to.

Whether short term or long term is irrelevant. when you go into debt you are running at a deficit. You are spending more than you have on hand. That is a deficit.

More than the over 5 months a year they get already? That is about how many breaks Congress takes a year. And they can ignore you just as well at home as in DC. After all, you aren't the big contributors to their campaign.

Everyone harps on about the Congressional budget. It is a document that means absolutely nothing. It doesn't have to be voted on by the house, signed by the president nothing. It is a wish list only. The House, Senate and Presidential budgets mean zilch. They are solely used to beat up the others with politically. It isn't like the budgets set around the kitchen table at home.

And while we are on the subject, if you have any debt whatsoever, you are running at a deficit. I argue there isn't a household in America that isn't running a deficit. Mortgages, credit cards, bank loans, student loans, etc are all deficit spending. The only difference is the size of income vs. deficit and the fact that every 6 months Congress goes through the pain of having to couple the spending they already did with the artificial boundary they setup known as the debt ceiling.

Today's Congress lives on crisis of their own making. And the effect on the very real economy is devastating. Everything from the current sequester to the debt ceiling is of their own doing. It is little wonder their popularity ratings are in the single digits.