"We've given the unions far too much power."
Oh my God you have no idea what a union is there for do you?
A union is a body of people who work in a particular field who band together to make sure their rights are not trodden on by corporations. You know you've got a minimum wage yeah? If it wasn't for unions you'd still be working for a pittance. If it wasn't for unions YOU would have precisely NO protection from whatever the company wants to do to your rights. There are only labour laws because of unions.
I don't expect you americans to understand this- it's not like it's taught in your history classes!
If you think you'd be paid a fair wage or given basic holiday rights and sickness protection without unionisation you are VERY VERY wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_and_employment _law
Basically, the union embodies more of "living, breathing human citizens" than any corporate or political body presently existing. They're there to protect your rights as a worker, and the only reason you think otherwise is because you've been fed a lot of negative publicity over there. I mean, is it the union that causes you to lose your job because you took part in a picket, or is it the company being unreasonable? I would be inclined to think it's the latter.
"Who gives gifts of several hundreds of dollars in electronics?"
Most of the people I know get and give cash for christmas, so they just put the lot together and splash out on their shiny gadget of choice. Common sense really.
I know a lot of middle class parents overindulge their children though...
"How about a chemistry set?"
Hmmmm.... America, the country that bans running at school because it's too dangerous. Can you see parents like that buying little Jimmy a chemistry set? Bye bye house. Bye bye garden. Bye bye little Jimmy. Nah, they whinge enough about broken legs playing football. They're not gonna go for that!
Oh yeah, that's smart. Lets say the kid gets kidnapped. The alarm means the phone gets found. Yeah, unlikely situation, but something worth thinking about, my phone would be my first thought if I got in trouble. Does silent mode put the alarm on silent? Can it be disabled?
I, for one, am already annoyed by the fact people can get hold of me when I don't choose to be gotten hold of, if that makes any sense at all... I don't want people to be able to find me too. I like to be able to say I'm at work when I'm actually at the pub. Or when I'm off sick but actually at a mate's house. I wouldn't buy one. If I was a mother I might think differently.
Radio is the single worst form of distribution of modern times. Between mouthy DJs, repetitive and annoying advertisement and frankly awful music, dragged out from some record label's production lines, I can't stand the radio. Personal opinion of course. All of the functions radio used to occupy have been replaced by better media. The music's always the latest offering from old news and it's repetitive. Same songs all the time. Digital radio is hardly any better. I prefer to just rip my mates' CD collections. A couple of mp3 discs and I'm happy for hours. If I really like an album I'll go out and buy it. I don't want to hear normal releases because they're never representative of the whole album. One or two singles playing over and over is enough to put me off the band/DJ forever! I used to like The Offspring, until Pretty Fly was overplayed.
Some sites register a lot of variations, google for one. The amount of times I've typed Gogle or gooogl and hundreds of other variations. The problem is, it's not very cost effective and there's obviously going to be too many variations. I mean, what if you accidentally type a variation which the company hasn't actually registered itself? One that a phisher has registered. If they make the site appear convincing you can't possibly tell which variations are fine and which aren't! People just need to pay more attention to what they're typing.
I work on technical support for a major ISP in England. Yes I appreciate that's pretty basic. It never ceases to amaze me how many people blame us for spam, and the calls we get about it increase every day.
The major problem is that the usernames for the broadband are email addresses which can't be changed. And they'd not fixed email addresses either. The domain is fixed, but everything before the @ isn't. This means that we're getting hammered with spam right now, and there's nothing our customers can do about it if they're stupid enough to use the email address supplied with their account. It must be very annoying to get 300+ emails per day addressed to rxkcytszw@name.withheld.co.uk. All saying that you've sent an email to some random address and it's been blocked.
Mail delivery failure messges are now in the top 10 of reasons customers contact us. A year ago I'd never even heard of it. I'm sick of having to tell people basic stuff like run a virus scan. Is there a simple site somewhere that'll tell (idiot) customers how to protect their PCs? Surely there must be!
On a different note, I have a hotmail address on which I have never received a single spam message. What ARE these people doing!!!?
Slashdot Mirror
"We've given the unions far too much power." Oh my God you have no idea what a union is there for do you? A union is a body of people who work in a particular field who band together to make sure their rights are not trodden on by corporations. You know you've got a minimum wage yeah? If it wasn't for unions you'd still be working for a pittance. If it wasn't for unions YOU would have precisely NO protection from whatever the company wants to do to your rights. There are only labour laws because of unions. I don't expect you americans to understand this- it's not like it's taught in your history classes! If you think you'd be paid a fair wage or given basic holiday rights and sickness protection without unionisation you are VERY VERY wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_and_employment _law
Basically, the union embodies more of "living, breathing human citizens" than any corporate or political body presently existing. They're there to protect your rights as a worker, and the only reason you think otherwise is because you've been fed a lot of negative publicity over there. I mean, is it the union that causes you to lose your job because you took part in a picket, or is it the company being unreasonable? I would be inclined to think it's the latter.
"Who gives gifts of several hundreds of dollars in electronics?" Most of the people I know get and give cash for christmas, so they just put the lot together and splash out on their shiny gadget of choice. Common sense really. I know a lot of middle class parents overindulge their children though... "How about a chemistry set?" Hmmmm.... America, the country that bans running at school because it's too dangerous. Can you see parents like that buying little Jimmy a chemistry set? Bye bye house. Bye bye garden. Bye bye little Jimmy. Nah, they whinge enough about broken legs playing football. They're not gonna go for that!
Oh yeah, that's smart. Lets say the kid gets kidnapped. The alarm means the phone gets found. Yeah, unlikely situation, but something worth thinking about, my phone would be my first thought if I got in trouble. Does silent mode put the alarm on silent? Can it be disabled? I, for one, am already annoyed by the fact people can get hold of me when I don't choose to be gotten hold of, if that makes any sense at all... I don't want people to be able to find me too. I like to be able to say I'm at work when I'm actually at the pub. Or when I'm off sick but actually at a mate's house. I wouldn't buy one. If I was a mother I might think differently.
Radio is the single worst form of distribution of modern times. Between mouthy DJs, repetitive and annoying advertisement and frankly awful music, dragged out from some record label's production lines, I can't stand the radio. Personal opinion of course. All of the functions radio used to occupy have been replaced by better media. The music's always the latest offering from old news and it's repetitive. Same songs all the time. Digital radio is hardly any better. I prefer to just rip my mates' CD collections. A couple of mp3 discs and I'm happy for hours. If I really like an album I'll go out and buy it. I don't want to hear normal releases because they're never representative of the whole album. One or two singles playing over and over is enough to put me off the band/DJ forever! I used to like The Offspring, until Pretty Fly was overplayed.
Some sites register a lot of variations, google for one. The amount of times I've typed Gogle or gooogl and hundreds of other variations. The problem is, it's not very cost effective and there's obviously going to be too many variations. I mean, what if you accidentally type a variation which the company hasn't actually registered itself? One that a phisher has registered. If they make the site appear convincing you can't possibly tell which variations are fine and which aren't! People just need to pay more attention to what they're typing.
I work on technical support for a major ISP in England. Yes I appreciate that's pretty basic. It never ceases to amaze me how many people blame us for spam, and the calls we get about it increase every day. The major problem is that the usernames for the broadband are email addresses which can't be changed. And they'd not fixed email addresses either. The domain is fixed, but everything before the @ isn't. This means that we're getting hammered with spam right now, and there's nothing our customers can do about it if they're stupid enough to use the email address supplied with their account. It must be very annoying to get 300+ emails per day addressed to rxkcytszw@name.withheld.co.uk. All saying that you've sent an email to some random address and it's been blocked. Mail delivery failure messges are now in the top 10 of reasons customers contact us. A year ago I'd never even heard of it. I'm sick of having to tell people basic stuff like run a virus scan. Is there a simple site somewhere that'll tell (idiot) customers how to protect their PCs? Surely there must be! On a different note, I have a hotmail address on which I have never received a single spam message. What ARE these people doing!!!?