Competition, other ideas and implementations can only be good for everybody!

Hope to Thor, that everything works out for Jolla and their vision!

• No matter how you look at it, we're all in trouble.

More fear mongering. I'm looking at it from a perspective where we're not in trouble at all. Are you planning on drinking fluids from a sick person? No? Neither am I. So please lose the "we're all gonna die" attitude.

Keep up the strawman arguments. Nobody ever opposed verifying the accusations. But when you turn those verifications into a full-blown investigation into the accusor, you know darned well you've gone too far and in the wrong direction, troll.

I would agree with you if it is shown Lyft is pulling the same shenanigans, but I've seen not one bit of such evidence. Never forget that it is possible for only one side to be wrong in a dispute. If you punch me in the face, I am not equally to blame as you.

This goes beyond "being a dick." It is systemic creation of contracts that are intended to be broken and cause Lync financial loss in order to help Uber's business. I don't see how that's not actionable.

So as a consumer, why do I care?

1) Because hopefully you're a moral being and recognize that this is immoral, wrong behavior on Uber's part.

2) Because in the long run this is going to cost you money. If Uber runs Lyft out of business, you can be sure Uber will be able to raise its prices. Further, even if they don't, this is raising Lyft's costs and they will pass those on to you. Or Lyft won't have a taxi available when you need one because it was on another Uber-induced wild goose chase.

But I really hope #1 is the main reason you'd object. I'm sorry if #2 is.

The agency has been officially outed as GoatCHQ.

It's called Reddit.

• Fraud would be charging without notice, and without offering an opt-out.

Sorry, wrong. Fraud is intentionally charging someone for something they did not order. This falls right into that category. OP is under no obligation to read his email to prevent being charged thousands for an item he did not want.

Or doesn't know how to program. Not saying I'm one of those, but there is a place in this world for nurses and cooks and carpenters who know their trades quite well but not how to construct an algorithm in a computer.

Or were you trolling?

See, that's exactly how the U.S. should do it. It is moronic that we have to pay 3rd parties to submit data and money to the government. But we are responsible if the data is wrong, not the bad programmers.

I'm not following this. Software (I use TaxAct) is quite good at making sure to ask you a lot of detailed questions about your life events and situation. Software can make sure to ask these questions and not forget one like a human can. If you, the end-user, neglect to check a box that says (for example), "I donated a car this year", then that's your fault not the software's. If you're trying to say the accountant would ask "Hey, are you sure you didn't donate a car?" and you respond "Oh yeah...you're right, I did," then OK, the human is better at coaxing info out of you (or inducing you to lie.) Personally, I'll stick to software.

• Can we get someone on the Slashdot staff that has actually some experience of the operating system in use by 96% of the population please?

It's not even correct for the other 4%. On Mac OS X, Silverlight absolutely alerts the user that their version is out of date and a single "OK" click will download the new version for them.