Slashdot can post dupe stories about the dearth of programming training opportunities for kids, but they can reject a story I posted about a recent study showing a LACK of programming jobs?
Why should kids learn programming when they'll only be able to compete for a programming job if they take an East Indian's dollar-a-week salary?
If you're logging into anything remote at my boss's financial institution (bank included), um, well, we have 4 big security guards that wanna talk to you...
A free ranging sandbox game with one main quest, or even several, most of which would have 3-4 different ways to solve it. With a setup like Oblivion, that gives you countless different ways to stat-up.
I would also liberalize the game. a) you can infinitely jack up the stats of your weapons/armor, and your own skills and attributes, if you have the funds / magical items / ingredients to make it happen
b) the enemy has a high chance of stat'ing up right along with you and a high chance of packing equally jacked up armor and weapons. everything from hapless rats to some guy in enchanted daedric armor, reflect damage/magicka enchantments and all that. oops. time to pick a new tactic for taking him down! enemies can stat up even higher than you, too, so if you're resting on your laurels you can actually fall behind. the game can also spawn random people far stronger than you. I like that idea actually, it makes things more challenging.
c) other NPC's should be able to come up to you and ask for training. Or it should be an option in your dialog - as in, when you talk to someone and they happen to want training, the dialog will come up. you train them, get paid, and get 1/10 or 1/100 progress toward a raise in the relevant skill level. there should be quests to make you capable of training, and then the higher level trainer you are, the more stat progress you get from training someone. Imagine the time you'd sink in the game trying to be a trainer for ALL skills. then that NPC trains another NPC who might come back and be your enemy.
d) repeat c) for selling stuff. Why not go on a quest to buy a physical store and stock it and sell stuff? corrupt cops come by and shake you down and then you have more quests to put them down.
e) romance. yeah, romance. what's wrong with romance? you can kill people, why not have romance? at least then you can actually care about a character rather than just use 'em for stats or whatever.
f) keep the arena combat. please. all games need some kind of arena. kudos to Oblivion for introducing neverending arena combat with monsters and stuff. next time, though, bring us some daedra to play with. 2 dremora and one storm giant. major coolness!
g) tons of side quests. tons and tons.
h) take a page from Morrowind: you can join one faction but not its obviously opposed faction
i) random super bad NPC's come in town and kill random (non plot related) NPC's, get a bounty, and you can collect on it. of course, someone else is also trying to collect, too.
These guys would have me dump those 10 other law abiding, equally qualified competitors for a position. Screw that. I'm a liberal manager and I'm changing the whole data center and call center's policies to reflect a sensible, more efficient and employee-friendly workplace. But a 'no criminal record' policy is what I use to narrow the field down when I have a minumum of 650 resumes coming in daily.
Sorry, but "won't somebody think of the CRIMINALS" doesn't fly here.
Last time I read about women in gaming, years ago, it was all about a handful of "ubercute" gamer "babes" and of course Asia Carrera. Now the list starts out with women CEOs. Good stuff, now we're seeing some progress toward balance.
I stand by my claim that what is happening with Dead Rising is a taste of more egregious things to come. I'd rather deal with multiple players releasing different patches that make a broken game workable, than no hope for any patch.
I can't get a refund on this game. I'm flat out stuck with it. Capcom doesn't care if an unhappy customer asks them for a refund. Capcom doesn't have to care.
Anyone who bought Dead Rising for a standard def TV is screwed.
How else are we gonna fix that situation? "Bend over and take it up the butt from Capcom and deal with it" is not a valid answer.
I think that is a bit unfair. Capcom has been making games for a very long time, and aside from their tendency to produce sequel after sequel until a franchise runs dry (then modify it slightly, rinse, repeat), they've produced quite a few excellent games. Street Fighter, Megaman, and the Resident Evil series (especially 4) come to mind.
Now, if they repeatedly continue to ignore customers and release subsequent games in the same fashion, then it's time to boycott. They made a mistake, and they certainly know their own software better than the game players, and know how doable it is to fix it. Don't let one mistake in one game bias you so easily. I understand it is a large mistake, but it just doesn't make sense for them to do it purposely or to not fix it if it is an easy fix.
These guys locked up the consoles with DRM so we can't patch them ourselves, they make games that are unbreakable, they jack up the price because it's a captive market, and when we get saddled with an unplayable game they tell us in so many sweet words to buzz off. Capcom, and more importantly MicroSoft and the DMCA, etc., set us up for this act of buggery, and now the buggery is afoot.
Why not call for a boycott? I want my game fixed. I paid for this, now I'm stuck with it. Capcom needs to be hit with whatever force is necessary so that I'm not stuck with a broken product. I'm sure others feel the same way.
If I reward Capcom with any further purchases, that is telling them that it's okay to stick me with this crap again in the future. In that case not only will I never get a fixed version of Dead Rising, but Capcom and other companies will start doing this in the future.
I'm going to be using Dead Rising as a shining example not to buy a console or its games: consumers are completely at the game makers' mercy on these systems. Completely.
Kids live longer today than they did before, so let's not all start talking about going back to the "simple life" where all the farm girls look like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.
You said you couldn't feed your family if something went wrong. I pointed out I'm in the same boat. Owner, not owner, it doesn't mean crap either way if the money ain't rolling in.
BTW I could help you with that one-paycheck-off thing, if ya want.:) What with being the owner and all, I could set ya up with a JP Morgan MM account. Good interest rates.
You are way out of your element on credit reporting. There are no laws regarding credit scoring, only credit reporting (FCRA). Just so you know, a hard pull only gives you a temporary FICO ding of about 5 points. Hard pulls for car loans and mortgages are grouped together, so if you rate-shop, you only lose 5 points. My point is, if your FICO went way down in 2004, it was for some other reason. You probably had a late payment. or your balances on your credit cards went way up, or you closed your oldest line. Something like that. You wouldn't even notice a hard pull. Google it and get educated. This stuff is important for all Americans to know.
Nope, no late payments, balances were dropping, no older credit lines closing. Our credit report actually outlined where things went up and went down. I didn't say my FICO went way down, either. I said it got dinged, it got a minor hit for exactly the amount that it would be hit if a "soft" pull was counted as a hard one, at exactly the time we were apartment hunting. I watch my reports once every 6 months.
Oh, c'mon. Small claims court costs under $100 in every jurisdiction I've ever heard of. My filings cost $49. Loser pays. So if you are so sure you're right, you've got nothing to lose. Also, poor people get legal aid for free, so your poor people argument is just wrong.
No, because not everyone knows about the poor legal aid. The up front costs are far scarier to the poor class than you or me, and even those in the right don't know if they're going to win. You're arguing theory and I'm arguing practice... and many LL's know how to bet.
That will give you an idea of what type of landlord you are dealing with. Looking at my personal credit report tells you nothing.
Sure it will. Like I said, it will tell me how likely you are to gank me with my deposit, etc. Your personal financial situation is even more important than your company's. Oh wait, you're right, no one ever embezzles money on the side. Man, how ignorant of me.
Yup. Then I told you that I check my employees and contractors as well, and I told you why. I think you ignored that part. Again, wake me when it's you who could be sued for your employees' misconduct. Until then, you just don't understand.
And I explained to you in detail why it is that your reasons for credit checking your employees and contractors were invalid and inaccurate, but you ignored that in depth and very detailed explanation in your mad rush to change this into a long winded discussion about rental credit checks. In fact, I'll recap: there's precious little you can't find out about a contractor by simply going back to check with their past clients. They'll tell you far more than a credit report will. Come on now, tell me, what does a credit report tell you about a contractor's conduct that a talk with the previous client can't? Besides, a really bad contractor will lose their license. Your contractors are licensed, are they not? Oh wait.. are they even legally able to work? (ok, that was cheap, sorry.)
A corporate officer? Going to jail? What are you, some kind of communist?
Look what happened the last time we put a corporate officer in jail, he had a heart attack. Your jealousy of the rich & powerful is overwhelmingly hateful in its magnitude.
Won't somebody think of the CEOs, oh the horror of it all!!!
Wake me when you're the owner, then. Your own assets aren't on the line. Something goes wrong for you, you might get a reprimand from the owner. Something goes wrong for me, my family doesn't eat.
I can get fired for a moderate snafu. Fortunately I've enough saved up that we would eat anyway.
And regarding the credit inquiry lowering their score, educate yourself about credit scores by googling soft pulls vs. hard pulls. When a LL pulls credit, it's a soft pull, which doesn't affect the credit score. Again, you're way out of your element on credit reporting, so that's ok that you didn't know that.
Then why wasn't that the case with how it dinged our credit rating back in 2004? Did the law change?
Regarding your wife, she got her money. What's the problem? That's what mediation and small claims court are for. To resolve disputes like this. I'm sure the LL had his side of the story as well.
Mediation/court isn't cheap. Which is why LL's do it; they're gambling they can keep that deposit and their victims are too scared or too poor to pony up the cash to take them on.
Anyhow, you say you want to pry into a landlord's record, and I think that's smart to do. But you're not getting my credit report. It doesn't tell you anything you need to know about me.
Sure it does. It'll tell me how financially strapped you are, thus the likelihood that you're going to make me fight for my deposit. That's the same logic that you used with employee applicants.
Excellent point. Ok, try this one on for size. I do the same screening process for an employee as I do for a renter. All of my handymen. All of my contractors. Anyone who gets a master key goes through a complete credit, reference, and criminal check. Why? Lawyers. If one of my employees should be accused of improper conduct, I could be sued for not screening properly. After all, why should I screen residents who get a key to one unit harder than a handyman who gets a master? That could be construed as negligence.
So there you have it. Credit checks for employees, and we're back on topic.
Not even close. The standards for credit checking your contractors isn't the same as with renters. You explained the reasons for credit checking an employee and, one by one, I explained that there were more accurate alternatives. That's when you retreated into talking about processing rental applicants.
You're a little bit out of your element here with respect to landlord/tenant issues, but that's to be expected since you are not in the business. I'm happy to answer your questions, though.
Likewise, you were way out of your league with regards to employment issues, what with me being a manager. Glad to see you're sticking with rentals, which though being off topic, might also be more your expertise.
In my business, it's obvious. I price my units to rent, and I receive many applications. I simply don't have the time to spend 10 or 20 minutes on each application. If I can eliminate an application in 10 seconds for $10, you bet I'm going to do it.
But that's a convenience. Why should your convenience be translated into a right to tear through someone's entire life? Do you realize that reading someone's credit rating brings their rating down? All for looking for a place to rent? You're making it harder for that person in other areas. Of course who cares about the little guy, he's a pathetic worm, he should be made to suffer for coming to you.
But there's one other big reason that credit reports are better than not being "sloppy, lazy, etc." Some applicants check the "don't contact my current landlord without my permission" box, since they don't want their current LL to know that they are looking. I imagine that happens way more often in hiring situations. Candidates don't want their current employer to know that they are looking to leave, and I don't blame them. What do you do when you can't call on their current employer? Current Landlord data is not available from Uncle Sam.:-)
Yes, indeed, current landlord data isn't available from Uncle Sam. I'm not sure why there should be a "don't check my current landlord" option, so you got me there since I've never seen that option on any of my 5 rental apps. I'm sure in some states they have it, though. As for the current employer issue, again Uncle Sam is my hookup on that.
Well, if you ask that way, you're rejected. But if you were to ask, "What are your move-out policies related to security deposit refunds?" I would simply show you my standard moveout letter that says in the first paragraph, "We want to make sure that you receive your entire security deposit back. In order for us to do this, you will need to perform the following items:" At any rate, my credit report would not show my record of security deposit refunds.
I didn't mean to put it that way; it was a hypothetical question. The thing is, a lot of landlords will do funky things like wait for a sucker who doesn't do a departure walk through in person, and say things like said renter had pet damage when there wasn't any, and deny their deposit. My wife had that happen to her and we had to go to mediation to get her money. You can't, like, post these complaints online or the landlords will threaten a libel suit! See how you guys are protected? (This is why, of course, I advise people to accompany a landlord in a walk through.)
I'm sure that you, as a landlord, have heard about landlords nailing 5-year tenants for carpet repairs on 5 year old carpets when (California, at least) state law says you can't do that to tenants who've been there for 2 years?
I'd like to know about this behavior if I were a renter. I mean, you get to pry deep into my life, right, so why can't I pry into the sly ways in which landlords might possibly pick on tenants? Right?
Hopefully the condition of the unit will tell you what you need to know, but feel free to speak with any current tenant. I'll hold the unit for you once I receive a security deposit.
Glad you added the ask-the-tenant thing; after a nice long walk through in our last rental place, we discovered a LOT of flaws that only another tenant would have known about.
Welfare has failed? How so? I see plenty of people ahead of me in the supermarket with WIC vouchers and cards. Next?
Your laissez-faire island paradise awaits you. You're not wanted in the US anymore. Should I buy you a boat ticket? I promise it won't be on the Government's dime!
How many people have actually made distributable games using the Linux kit? Are they free, like they are for the PC community?
And your commentary about developers making money cuts right to my point - PC games let the gamers control their own experience. PC gaming might be a "niche" in your book, but in PC gamers' book it means more freedom and less lock-in.
That takes time and effort. My credit reports cost less than $10. It's a little different for me because I'm screening apartment rental applicants. But, seriously, if I can eliminate a deatbeat in 10 seconds, why should I waste my time trying to track down former landlords?
Because taking the time means the report will be more accurate and less invasive? Why should others be victimized by someone else's sloppy, lazy, corner-cutting investigative tactics?
Though a credit report is sometimes more justified for rental issues than employment, that is granted.
How do I know it's the candidate's former employer and not his Uncle Irving? If the credit report looks fishy, I'm going to be extra careful about who I'm speaking with on the phone.
As I said, inquiring with Uncle Sam will show he's an employer and not a relative. And those records are free for the last 7 years; furthermore, the applicant will need to request them and show them to you. No sweat off your back.
Then again I manage assets probably several times greater than yours; dogged thoroughness, taking one's time to do it all right the first time, and absolute accuracy at all costs are essential to my continued employment; for me, a credit report is the most vague and inaccurate measure of someone's value/danger to my organization. With apartment managers accuracy and all that might not be so essential.
I see no reason for my renters to inquire into my financial background. Perhaps if there were a good reason, I'd consider it. But as it stands, it's me who's being asked to trust the renter to pay reliably and not cause thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars worth of damage to my property.
How about your record of screwing over other people for their rent deposit? Judgements for and against you in that regard? How about your past maintenance issues? The thefts on your property? Actual security response time? Oh, I can come up with a whole host of 'em. Your tenants are trusting you with their lives, not to mention their property.
As I said, renters themselves can tell you what happened with that tenant. If they have no rental history well then a credit check is a last resort. But then again this whole/. article was about employment credit checks, and now this discussion has moved onto rental credit checks, which again I will say is sometimes more justified.
By the way, when a customer inquires about you and you tell them your background, why are they required to just trust your word but you're not required to just trust their word? You're trusting them with your assets, they're trusting you with their assets and lives...
In case you haven't noticed, the U.S. has been cleaning up, protecting, rescuing, and establishing democracy in the rest of the world since we became a nation. Now all of the sudden we are supposed to care about what they think? The U.N. has been corrupt and our so called allies have been making deals with our enemies. What else is new?
Wow, you really know how to win friends and influence people. Remember, though, that without that evil cowardly France, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War.
BTW your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you. When are you going to emigrate? Or are you going to continue to whine about the evil socialistic liberals?
Economics is trade. Trade is made easier through currency. Money is currency. Greed is human's desire to have more "stuff," therefore any economic system will have Greed. All we can do is to try to make sure people play fairly. Socialism is not the answer.
Actually, it is. It has kept America stable where more capitalist nations have collapsed and where more socialist banana republics have also collapsed. The United States is a balance of capitalism and socialism, and its survival is proof that you're wrong. Socialism, in a limited form, can survive, and has survived.
Capitalism, in its pure form, has failed.
Next?
BTW your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you.
I am not for unrestrained capitalism.
Then you are automatically in favor of some measure of socialism, Komrad!
BTW your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you. When are you going to emigrate? Or are you going to continue to whine about the evil socialistic liberals?
However, your theory does not make sense anyway. A large middle class equates to more people with enough money to buy your products, making you even richer. The U.S. has a very large middle class compared to other nations. Communist countries do not have a middle class. The rich work in high government, and everyone else is poor.
Wow, you slew that straw man brutally with righteous power. We both agree that Communist countries are evil: I even pointed out that they haven't lasted. I also pointed out that partial socialism - such as practiced in the US - has lasted far longer.
Now be nice to that straw man, he's quite fragile.
PS: Your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you. When are you going to emigrate? Or are you going to continue to whine about the evil socialistic liberals?
Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot can post dupe stories about the dearth of programming training opportunities for kids, but they can reject a story I posted about a recent study showing a LACK of programming jobs?
Why should kids learn programming when they'll only be able to compete for a programming job if they take an East Indian's dollar-a-week salary?
If you're logging into anything remote at my boss's financial institution (bank included), um, well, we have 4 big security guards that wanna talk to you...
How about also teaching civics and Constitutional law to politicians (who spy on their citizens), ethics to CEOs (hello, HP?), and so on?
I'd remote log into my PC in that case.
Merge Deus Ex with Oblivion/Morrowind.
A free ranging sandbox game with one main quest, or even several, most of which would have 3-4 different ways to solve it. With a setup like Oblivion, that gives you countless different ways to stat-up.
I would also liberalize the game.
a) you can infinitely jack up the stats of your weapons/armor, and your own skills and attributes, if you have the funds / magical items / ingredients to make it happen
b) the enemy has a high chance of stat'ing up right along with you and a high chance of packing equally jacked up armor and weapons. everything from hapless rats to some guy in enchanted daedric armor, reflect damage/magicka enchantments and all that. oops. time to pick a new tactic for taking him down! enemies can stat up even higher than you, too, so if you're resting on your laurels you can actually fall behind. the game can also spawn random people far stronger than you. I like that idea actually, it makes things more challenging.
c) other NPC's should be able to come up to you and ask for training. Or it should be an option in your dialog - as in, when you talk to someone and they happen to want training, the dialog will come up. you train them, get paid, and get 1/10 or 1/100 progress toward a raise in the relevant skill level. there should be quests to make you capable of training, and then the higher level trainer you are, the more stat progress you get from training someone. Imagine the time you'd sink in the game trying to be a trainer for ALL skills. then that NPC trains another NPC who might come back and be your enemy.
d) repeat c) for selling stuff. Why not go on a quest to buy a physical store and stock it and sell stuff? corrupt cops come by and shake you down and then you have more quests to put them down.
e) romance. yeah, romance. what's wrong with romance? you can kill people, why not have romance? at least then you can actually care about a character rather than just use 'em for stats or whatever.
f) keep the arena combat. please. all games need some kind of arena. kudos to Oblivion for introducing neverending arena combat with monsters and stuff. next time, though, bring us some daedra to play with. 2 dremora and one storm giant. major coolness!
g) tons of side quests. tons and tons.
h) take a page from Morrowind: you can join one faction but not its obviously opposed faction
i) random super bad NPC's come in town and kill random (non plot related) NPC's, get a bounty, and you can collect on it. of course, someone else is also trying to collect, too.
These guys would have me dump those 10 other law abiding, equally qualified competitors for a position. Screw that. I'm a liberal manager and I'm changing the whole data center and call center's policies to reflect a sensible, more efficient and employee-friendly workplace. But a 'no criminal record' policy is what I use to narrow the field down when I have a minumum of 650 resumes coming in daily.
Sorry, but "won't somebody think of the CRIMINALS" doesn't fly here.
Prove to me your talents. That's what I need. That and a criminal background check that comes up negative.
Last time I read about women in gaming, years ago, it was all about a handful of "ubercute" gamer "babes" and of course Asia Carrera. Now the list starts out with women CEOs. Good stuff, now we're seeing some progress toward balance.
Please read H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine".
I mean the book. Not the movie.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35/35.txt
Read it all the way through. It is alarmingly relevant to this particular discussion.
How'd you find that out? I love doing research like that. :D
Just yesterday the console gurus were telling us how PC Games require expensive upgrades and consoles do not. This is too funny.
I stand by my claim that what is happening with Dead Rising is a taste of more egregious things to come. I'd rather deal with multiple players releasing different patches that make a broken game workable, than no hope for any patch.
I can't get a refund on this game.
I'm flat out stuck with it.
Capcom doesn't care if an unhappy customer asks them for a refund.
Capcom doesn't have to care.
Anyone who bought Dead Rising for a standard def TV is screwed.
How else are we gonna fix that situation? "Bend over and take it up the butt from Capcom and deal with it" is not a valid answer.
Nominate that one for the best of Slashdot.
I see an upcoming innovation in geek land.
These guys locked up the consoles with DRM so we can't patch them ourselves, they make games that are unbreakable, they jack up the price because it's a captive market, and when we get saddled with an unplayable game they tell us in so many sweet words to buzz off. Capcom, and more importantly MicroSoft and the DMCA, etc., set us up for this act of buggery, and now the buggery is afoot.
Why not call for a boycott? I want my game fixed. I paid for this, now I'm stuck with it. Capcom needs to be hit with whatever force is necessary so that I'm not stuck with a broken product. I'm sure others feel the same way.
If I reward Capcom with any further purchases, that is telling them that it's okay to stick me with this crap again in the future. In that case not only will I never get a fixed version of Dead Rising, but Capcom and other companies will start doing this in the future.
I'm going to be using Dead Rising as a shining example not to buy a console or its games: consumers are completely at the game makers' mercy on these systems. Completely.
At least we can demand and get patches.
I bought Dead Rising for the 360 and its text is utterly unreadable.
This definitely calls for a letter writing campaign. This'll be the first AND last Capcom game my wife and I buy, and we will let them know that.
Unfortunately this is capitalist America and in this economy, corporations never listen to their customers anymore.
Kids live longer today than they did before, so let's not all start talking about going back to the "simple life" where all the farm girls look like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.
You said you couldn't feed your family if something went wrong. I pointed out I'm in the same boat. Owner, not owner, it doesn't mean crap either way if the money ain't rolling in.
BTW I could help you with that one-paycheck-off thing, if ya want.
Nope, no late payments, balances were dropping, no older credit lines closing. Our credit report actually outlined where things went up and went down. I didn't say my FICO went way down, either. I said it got dinged, it got a minor hit for exactly the amount that it would be hit if a "soft" pull was counted as a hard one, at exactly the time we were apartment hunting. I watch my reports once every 6 months.
No, because not everyone knows about the poor legal aid. The up front costs are far scarier to the poor class than you or me, and even those in the right don't know if they're going to win. You're arguing theory and I'm arguing practice... and many LL's know how to bet.
Sure it will. Like I said, it will tell me how likely you are to gank me with my deposit, etc. Your personal financial situation is even more important than your company's. Oh wait, you're right, no one ever embezzles money on the side. Man, how ignorant of me.
And I explained to you in detail why it is that your reasons for credit checking your employees and contractors were invalid and inaccurate, but you ignored that in depth and very detailed explanation in your mad rush to change this into a long winded discussion about rental credit checks. In fact, I'll recap: there's precious little you can't find out about a contractor by simply going back to check with their past clients. They'll tell you far more than a credit report will. Come on now, tell me, what does a credit report tell you about a contractor's conduct that a talk with the previous client can't? Besides, a really bad contractor will lose their license. Your contractors are licensed, are they not? Oh wait.. are they even legally able to work? (ok, that was cheap, sorry.)
A corporate officer? Going to jail? What are you, some kind of communist?
Look what happened the last time we put a corporate officer in jail, he had a heart attack. Your jealousy of the rich & powerful is overwhelmingly hateful in its magnitude.
Won't somebody think of the CEOs, oh the horror of it all!!!
I can get fired for a moderate snafu. Fortunately I've enough saved up that we would eat anyway.
Then why wasn't that the case with how it dinged our credit rating back in 2004? Did the law change?
Mediation/court isn't cheap. Which is why LL's do it; they're gambling they can keep that deposit and their victims are too scared or too poor to pony up the cash to take them on.
Sure it does. It'll tell me how financially strapped you are, thus the likelihood that you're going to make me fight for my deposit. That's the same logic that you used with employee applicants.
Not even close. The standards for credit checking your contractors isn't the same as with renters. You explained the reasons for credit checking an employee and, one by one, I explained that there were more accurate alternatives. That's when you retreated into talking about processing rental applicants.
Likewise, you were way out of your league with regards to employment issues, what with me being a manager. Glad to see you're sticking with rentals, which though being off topic, might also be more your expertise.
But that's a convenience. Why should your convenience be translated into a right to tear through someone's entire life? Do you realize that reading someone's credit rating brings their rating down? All for looking for a place to rent? You're making it harder for that person in other areas. Of course who cares about the little guy, he's a pathetic worm, he should be made to suffer for coming to you.
Yes, indeed, current landlord data isn't available from Uncle Sam. I'm not sure why there should be a "don't check my current landlord" option, so you got me there since I've never seen that option on any of my 5 rental apps. I'm sure in some states they have it, though. As for the current employer issue, again Uncle Sam is my hookup on that.
I didn't mean to put it that way; it was a hypothetical question. The thing is, a lot of landlords will do funky things like wait for a sucker who doesn't do a departure walk through in person, and say things like said renter had pet damage when there wasn't any, and deny their deposit. My wife had that happen to her and we had to go to mediation to get her money. You can't, like, post these complaints online or the landlords will threaten a libel suit! See how you guys are protected? (This is why, of course, I advise people to accompany a landlord in a walk through.)
I'm sure that you, as a landlord, have heard about landlords nailing 5-year tenants for carpet repairs on 5 year old carpets when (California, at least) state law says you can't do that to tenants who've been there for 2 years?
I'd like to know about this behavior if I were a renter. I mean, you get to pry deep into my life, right, so why can't I pry into the sly ways in which landlords might possibly pick on tenants? Right?
Glad you added the ask-the-tenant thing; after a nice long walk through in our last rental place, we discovered a LOT of flaws that only another tenant would have known about.
Welfare has failed? How so? I see plenty of people ahead of me in the supermarket with WIC vouchers and cards. Next?
Your laissez-faire island paradise awaits you. You're not wanted in the US anymore. Should I buy you a boat ticket? I promise it won't be on the Government's dime!
How many people have actually made distributable games using the Linux kit? Are they free, like they are for the PC community?
And your commentary about developers making money cuts right to my point - PC games let the gamers control their own experience. PC gaming might be a "niche" in your book, but in PC gamers' book it means more freedom and less lock-in.
Because taking the time means the report will be more accurate and less invasive? Why should others be victimized by someone else's sloppy, lazy, corner-cutting investigative tactics?
Though a credit report is sometimes more justified for rental issues than employment, that is granted.
As I said, inquiring with Uncle Sam will show he's an employer and not a relative. And those records are free for the last 7 years; furthermore, the applicant will need to request them and show them to you. No sweat off your back.
Then again I manage assets probably several times greater than yours; dogged thoroughness, taking one's time to do it all right the first time, and absolute accuracy at all costs are essential to my continued employment; for me, a credit report is the most vague and inaccurate measure of someone's value/danger to my organization. With apartment managers accuracy and all that might not be so essential.
How about your record of screwing over other people for their rent deposit? Judgements for and against you in that regard? How about your past maintenance issues? The thefts on your property? Actual security response time? Oh, I can come up with a whole host of 'em. Your tenants are trusting you with their lives, not to mention their property.
As I said, renters themselves can tell you what happened with that tenant. If they have no rental history well then a credit check is a last resort. But then again this whole
By the way, when a customer inquires about you and you tell them your background, why are they required to just trust your word but you're not required to just trust their word? You're trusting them with your assets, they're trusting you with their assets and lives...
which come from Japan.
I just want to clarify.. the RIAA can't sue me for that, can they?
Wow, you really know how to win friends and influence people. Remember, though, that without that evil cowardly France, we wouldn't have won the Revolutionary War.
BTW your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you. When are you going to emigrate? Or are you going to continue to whine about the evil socialistic liberals?
Actually, it is. It has kept America stable where more capitalist nations have collapsed and where more socialist banana republics have also collapsed. The United States is a balance of capitalism and socialism, and its survival is proof that you're wrong. Socialism, in a limited form, can survive, and has survived.
Capitalism, in its pure form, has failed.
Next?
BTW your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you.
Then you are automatically in favor of some measure of socialism, Komrad!
BTW your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you. When are you going to emigrate? Or are you going to continue to whine about the evil socialistic liberals?
Wow, you slew that straw man brutally with righteous power. We both agree that Communist countries are evil: I even pointed out that they haven't lasted. I also pointed out that partial socialism - such as practiced in the US - has lasted far longer.
Now be nice to that straw man, he's quite fragile.
PS: Your desert island laissez-faire paradise is calling you. When are you going to emigrate? Or are you going to continue to whine about the evil socialistic liberals?