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Let me remind you what I said:

OpenStreetMap is not a serious competitor to Google Maps. Nobody is, last I checked.

One does not have to be a perfect replacement for a service right now to be a serious competitor. Just like cars were initially not a perfect replacement for carts, and yet were serious competition.

Plus, I'm not entirely convinced that OpenStreetMap would ever really get thorough terrestrial virtual presence even in major cities anyways... lacking the commercial incentive to go out of the way and take photographs exhaustively through every side street in major cities like Google does.

The lack of a commercial incentive is a double-edged sword. There are lots of places where people complain about the lack of Google StreetView coverage precisely because there's no commercial incentive. But with crowdsourced services like Mapillary and OpenStreetCam anyone interested in adding coverage can do so. Lack of commercial incentive mean the crowd contributes on what interests them, and isn't that what matters?

Plus there is commercial incentive to add coverage, in some countries at least. For instance in France cities collect taxes on advertising billboards but they need to inventory them. Sogefi can be hired to drive cars around to provide this inventory service and uses Mapillary for that, thus providing coverage in a lot of places. In another instance some towns, unhappy about the Google coverage, decided to improve the map for their territory to draw in tourists and put cameras on their garbage trucks. This type of partnership can be a cheap way to contribute pretty exhaustive street-level coverage. That said Google also has partners, among which Sogefi, so it's not like only OpenStreetMap benefits from the extra coverage.

Also, the belief that coverage will never be good enough can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then everyone loses.

Well on Paris, it is near an monopoly.
For 4 years, the state hasn't sold any new taxi license (the license is around 200k-230k EUR right now). Thus keeping the number of taxis in Paris at the same level.
But the biggest problem would be the G7 taxi company that his on a monopoly position on the Paris area (around 80-85% of taxis are linked someway or another to the G7 Taxi group, the others are the few independent that sill exists).
There is a nice article about the taxi lobby (and especially the G7 group) here:

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/economie/20150212.OBS2398/comment-le-roi-des-taxis-compte-contrer-uber-au-detriment-des-clients.html (in french though)

After he got the seeds, I suppose he was able to grow two crops, one exposed to Roundup, and the other pesticide-free.

So what's new here?

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/actualites/societe/20080908.OBS0447/la_scientologie_en_correctionnelle_pour_escroquerie_en_.html

[dragged to court for "fraud in an organized gang" ]

so they are taken for what they are

TFA states that french ISPs have "struck a deal" with the government, but the truth is that there's only the government claiming that.

Right after the statement hit the press, the ISPs issued their own statements through the President of the national FAI association representing them, telling how they had not been consulted and had not agreed to anything, how they had not changed position on the inefficiency of any filtering scheme, and how the statement by Mme Alliot-Marie was unilateral goobledegook lacking technical and juridical relevance.

You cannot compare US and French employment rate. All part-time burger flippers are counted as employed in the US and not employed in France. Furthermore, big parts of the workforce are eliminated from statistics in the US (convicts, for instance).

Dirty tricks have been played with measurement in France too (pushing people out of statistics for bureacratic reasons in early 2000), so the 12% and current stats measure different things. Lastly, the last numbers have been contested by the very people that published it (INSEE, see http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/speciales/politique /elysee_2007/20070125.OBS8702/nouvelle_polmique_su r_les_chiffres_du_chmage.html if you read french), and the 8.3% is probably very underestimated.

So, you are comparing a lie (8.3%) to something totally different (4.5%).

Is it a joke? Even very pro-nuke agencies think that it will kill approx 4000 persons, and this is based upon very very dubious data and methods (see below).

> Anyway, the site that you cite says that the 4000 people estimate is based on bad science.

Indeed. Official UN agencies try hard to let us think that the disaster will only kill 4000 persons, and the proposed site shows why it is not true, why the grand total is very probably way higher.

In France alone (2000 km from Chernobyl), a Nobel Prize (G. Charpak, physics, very pro-nuke) thinks that the disaster will kill approx 300 persons (French site). Many think that it will kill at least 100000 persons. Special bonus: don't neglect the teratogen and mutagen effects.

> you might want to consider other industrial disasters. When I was in college, 7
> people were killed in a collapse at a local coal fired plant

It did not irradiate an enormous area and did not release very dangerous stuff, some active during very long periods and some freely wandering around, flying with the wind. Is ther any possible comparison?

Flash mobs only pose a security risk if you are a fascist. I think with the advent of the cell phone and text messaging, the possibility of a coup d'etat in the developed world is slim to none. Before any would be junta could consolidate power there would be protests in the street, largely due to cell phones and text messaging. I think this a good thing. It safeguards our freedoms and if a few celebrities have to put up with mobs of teenage girls, then so be it.

Remember the 1991 August Coup in Mocba, where communists attempted to oust Yeltsin from power an put back the communists in power?

Ultimately it was defeated by people who phoned each other to assiege the russian parliament buildings.