Neither in Mexico, nor in Canada did I ever experience such abyssimal treatment by border officials then in the US. Last I read, both are part of America.
I got the message loud and clear in 2002 (that was before the fingerprinting started) and haven't visited the US since (that's after about 20 previous visits, on which I parted with a significant amount of my tourist Euros).
While, depending on the airport, immigration to the US was never fun (hello! Miami) the whole affair got absolutely loathsome after DHS called the shots.
As a matter of fact I even refuse to transfer plains to a third country through the US, since you don't need to collect your bags and go through immigration and customs in transit on just about any European hub.
To conclude: I got the message loud and clear and here's hoping you're having a nice, slightly fascistic police state that makes all of you feel right at home.
Just to be clear: I'm not pissing on USians here. But what this administartion pulled off with a disregard of the most basic human rights (hello Mr. Torture President) is so depicable, that I for one certainly don't want anything of it.
Because somewhere along the line, in some capacity, they were burned by an unscrupulous IT person who lied about their level of competency.
Here in Switzerland a trial period (usually three month) is integral part of every work contract. Within this period both parties can back out from the contract with seven days notice.
After that the notice required by law is one month in the first year of employment, for the second to 10th year of employment, it's two month, and hereafter three month.
By law those terms can only be extended towards an extension of those periods. This often happens for director level jobs where the notification period may be six month or even a year. But I digress.
Methinks that this trial period covers exactly the issue you point out.
Yeah, filling a position is expensive and that's what, I suspect, those companies want to avoid. Then again, if you hire a slacker then your vetting process leaves much to desire. And if you need to kick your applicants into the testicles, dignity-wise then you deserve nothing else then worst slackers that the jobmarket has to offer.
I understand that the signature is mostly useless anyway,
I disagree. The signature came in very useful to me, after I got a Visa bill claiming that I ate pizza for 56bucks in Hartford, Connecticut (where I have never been in my life) while renting some 380$ UHaul geer in California at the same day (needless to say that I never ever rented anything at UHaul).
After a phone call they credited the UHaul rental, but insisted that it's my card that payed for the pizza in Hartford. I asked that they mail me a copy of the receipt and while the first eight digits of the card number matched my card (the rest was illegible) the signature certainly didn't match mine.
After informing the Visa chick she got slightly prissy and she informed me that she has to refer it to their security department, to which I jollyly agreed.
I never heard back since and I sure as hell never coughed up for a pizza in Connecticut.
Actually the security lock works pretty reliable on just about any Nokia phone I ever owned.
Sure, you could factory reset it, but, alas, that requires access to the keyboard, which is locked.
You can call the phone and accept calls while locked, but that's it. After the call it goes back into locked mode.
I'm not claiming it's 100% unhackable. Maybe you could flash the firmware (I wouldn't know). But in any case the security is not quite as innane as what Apple has implemented.
In my limited usage pattern file transfer is the essential feature. It let's me backup my phone, while, alas, not too fast, very reliably and convenient.
Unlike other chains, which are often a mix of company-owned and franchised units, each Best Western hotel is an independently owned and operated franchise. Best Western does not offer franchises in the traditional sense (where both franchisee and franchisor are operating for-profit), however. Rather, Best Western operates as a nonprofit membership association, with each franchisee acting and voting as a member of the association.
must have been swimming in their people's money to buy $5M in toilets. If I were a resident I'd be quite enraged over it.
The City of Zurich, with a population of roughly 400'000 has an annual budget of 18M Swiss Francs (17M $) for public toilets and the citizenship actually appreciates it.
It's probably all a matter of perspective, but I have the strong impression that USians really detest paying taxes for anything. Infrastucture, like clean public toilets, working and reliable public transports and a canal system that doesn't ooze shit stench out of the pavements has a price. And in other parts of the world citizens are willing to pay that via their taxes.
On the other hand, and American can get in a car and drive thousands of miles without crossing national borders or having their right to travel questioned.
Dude, you can travel from the very southern tip of Italy, or Portugal up to Norway without the need for a passport. If so inclined you can take a ferry in Norway to Island without requiring identification.
The difference to the US is that those are actually sovereign, European countries, whoms borders you cross.
That's called the hidden cities strategy, but usually works the other way round:
You want to fly from Boston to Salt Lake City. A well known airline offers that flight for 899$. If you would have booked BOS > LAX then the offer would have been 399$ for all the way to Los Angeles. This is despite the fact that well known airline uses SLC as one of its major hubs and you actually have to switch planes in SLC.
What did the savvy traveler do? Why of course he got out in SLC and dumped the remaining coupon to LAX.
Another famous strategy was nested booking, which used the Saturday night stayover rule (flights where your return segment is on a Sunday or later are a lot cheaper, this is to gouge the business traveler). It works like this:
Wednesday JFK > MSP and Friday MSP > JFK : 1299$
Wednesday JFK > MSP, Monday MSP > JFK : 299$
So what you do is you buy two return tickets, like:
Wednesday JFK > MSP, Monday MSP > JFK : 299 and Friday MSP > JFK (with a return whenever the next week) : 249 $.
And ergo: You saved a lot of money.
I'm not sure if this still works nowadays, since the airlines naturally hate it and put all sorts of fine print into the T&C to prohibit that.
Airline pricing and yield management. A fascinating subject that never ceases to amaze.
Technically, Sony's rootkit should have brought entirely more damages
Actually this stint should have landed Thomas Hesse and some of his senior management SonyBMG cronies in the slammer for an extended stay.
The same, which would have happened to a pimply faced teenager from Iowa if he would have dared to pull a comparable stint and would have been rightfully convicted as a computer criminal.
It mystifies me until today how those douchebags got away that cheaply.
ust not for tax evasion in a foreign country (which I believe isn't illegal in Switzerland)
As a matter of fact tax evasion is illegal in Switzerland. It is however, as opposed to tax fraud, which is a crime, treated as a misdemeanor. If you are caught to have "forgotten" those 7500 francs income on your tax declaration you will be taxed on those and you pay a fine. It's certainly not legal.
Switzerland does however (and that's where other countries yell foul, because they don't make this distinction) distinguish between tax evasion ("forgetting" to declare income) and tax fraud (which in any case involve fraudulent or fake documentation, or, for example, not booking income as a corporate entity).
What pisses other countries off is that bank secrecy is not punctured in the first case (theoretically), while it always is when fraud is involoved. This goes also for inquiries by foreign government entities. Since tax evasion is not treated as a criminal act, such inquiries usually go unanswered in tax evasion cases.
That's more or less the gist of it, slightly simplified.
Pffffft, that was the sound of sequoia credibility dying a death
What credibility are you talking about?
After all those neato stints that just about every voting machine company tried to pull their credibility is somewhere between a San Francisco Tenderloin crack hooker and a timeshare salesman for quite some time now.
Thinking about it the hookers credibility is probably a lot better then the ones of those voting machine vendors.
A little COMMUNICATION with people in I.T. would get you approved to load a copy of BozoCAD on your PC.
I work for an investment bank and can guarantee you that the IT department will never allow me to install BozoCAD if it's not on the approved list. Even if it's on the approved list it must be sourced via the banks official channels.
Could I install BozoCAD? Sure, I have admin privileges on my box. It would also be a surefire way to be out of a job in no time if management found out.
You have to spend many thousands of dollars in the Church of Scientology before you learn about Xenu or what thetans "really are".
While there's a helluva lot valid criticism towards the COS I don't believe that the cost argument is really valid.
If some dupe wants to spend 500'000$ to read some really rotten science fiction, who am I to say he's wrong? Other people spend fortunes for gambling, substance habbits, sex, etc. I don't feel morally superior in any way, shape or form to judge such behaviour either.
Scientology sets up a table with a "Free Stress Test" (presumably designed to be rather Scientific-looking) first to attract passerbys
When they pester you with their stupid personality test (which only points out what a screwed up person you really are, no matter what) I found a simple and reliable method:
Explain to the friendly Scientologist[TM] that he probably is not allowed to talk to you, since you get Ritalin prescribed by your psych (Scieno-talk for psychiatrist / psychologists) then watch and wonder.
Slashdot Mirror
For about $5,000 you can buy a complete set of recording equipment - the necessary laptop, software, mics, etc. to go with your instruments.
I believe that Steve Albini may disagree with you.
If you don't know who he is, this essay is extremely interesting.
Personally I hope that he vexates the flying fuck out of those bastards.
The point is that your explanation is convincing.
Thank you.
Neither in Mexico, nor in Canada did I ever experience such abyssimal treatment by border officials then in the US. Last I read, both are part of America.
Thus USians is valid in this context.
I got the message loud and clear in 2002 (that was before the fingerprinting started) and haven't visited the US since (that's after about 20 previous visits, on which I parted with a significant amount of my tourist Euros).
While, depending on the airport, immigration to the US was never fun (hello! Miami) the whole affair got absolutely loathsome after DHS called the shots.
As a matter of fact I even refuse to transfer plains to a third country through the US, since you don't need to collect your bags and go through immigration and customs in transit on just about any European hub.
To conclude: I got the message loud and clear and here's hoping you're having a nice, slightly fascistic police state that makes all of you feel right at home.
Just to be clear: I'm not pissing on USians here. But what this administartion pulled off with a disregard of the most basic human rights (hello Mr. Torture President) is so depicable, that I for one certainly don't want anything of it.
Because somewhere along the line, in some capacity, they were burned by an unscrupulous IT person who lied about their level of competency.
Here in Switzerland a trial period (usually three month) is integral part of every work contract. Within this period both parties can back out from the contract with seven days notice.
After that the notice required by law is one month in the first year of employment, for the second to 10th year of employment, it's two month, and hereafter three month.
By law those terms can only be extended towards an extension of those periods. This often happens for director level jobs where the notification period may be six month or even a year. But I digress.
Methinks that this trial period covers exactly the issue you point out.
Yeah, filling a position is expensive and that's what, I suspect, those companies want to avoid. Then again, if you hire a slacker then your vetting process leaves much to desire. And if you need to kick your applicants into the testicles, dignity-wise then you deserve nothing else then worst slackers that the jobmarket has to offer.
There aren't any in the UK (small country), but they are much more popular in the rest of Europe.
They are very common in Switzerland, which is a much smaller country, but for different reasons.
A lot of mountain passes are open for cars maybe 4 to 5 month a year and closed due to snow and weather conditions for the rest of the year.
Loading your car on a train may be the only way to get from one place to another by car.
In other cases it may significantly reduce the time required to get to your destination by car.
I understand that the signature is mostly useless anyway,
I disagree. The signature came in very useful to me, after I got a Visa bill claiming that I ate pizza for 56bucks in Hartford, Connecticut (where I have never been in my life) while renting some 380$ UHaul geer in California at the same day (needless to say that I never ever rented anything at UHaul).
After a phone call they credited the UHaul rental, but insisted that it's my card that payed for the pizza in Hartford. I asked that they mail me a copy of the receipt and while the first eight digits of the card number matched my card (the rest was illegible) the signature certainly didn't match mine.
After informing the Visa chick she got slightly prissy and she informed me that she has to refer it to their security department, to which I jollyly agreed.
I never heard back since and I sure as hell never coughed up for a pizza in Connecticut.
I'd call that a rather useful use of a signature.
Sure, you could factory reset it, but, alas, that requires access to the keyboard, which is locked.
You can call the phone and accept calls while locked, but that's it. After the call it goes back into locked mode.
I'm not claiming it's 100% unhackable. Maybe you could flash the firmware (I wouldn't know). But in any case the security is not quite as innane as what Apple has implemented.
File Transfer is not essential, but is nice
In my limited usage pattern file transfer is the essential feature. It let's me backup my phone, while, alas, not too fast, very reliably and convenient.
I'd call that kind of important.
From here :
Unlike other chains, which are often a mix of company-owned and franchised units, each Best Western hotel is an independently owned and operated franchise. Best Western does not offer franchises in the traditional sense (where both franchisee and franchisor are operating for-profit), however. Rather, Best Western operates as a nonprofit membership association, with each franchisee acting and voting as a member of the association.
must have been swimming in their people's money to buy $5M in toilets. If I were a resident I'd be quite enraged over it.
The City of Zurich, with a population of roughly 400'000 has an annual budget of 18M Swiss Francs (17M $) for public toilets and the citizenship actually appreciates it.
It's probably all a matter of perspective, but I have the strong impression that USians really detest paying taxes for anything. Infrastucture, like clean public toilets, working and reliable public transports and a canal system that doesn't ooze shit stench out of the pavements has a price. And in other parts of the world citizens are willing to pay that via their taxes.
On the other hand, and American can get in a car and drive thousands of miles without crossing national borders or having their right to travel questioned.
Dude, you can travel from the very southern tip of Italy, or Portugal up to Norway without the need for a passport. If so inclined you can take a ferry in Norway to Island without requiring identification.
The difference to the US is that those are actually sovereign, European countries, whoms borders you cross.
More here.
As I described it to a friend: Imagine there's a three week G8 summit in town, where you are forced to drink Carslberg beer.
You want to fly from Boston to Salt Lake City. A well known airline offers that flight for 899$. If you would have booked BOS > LAX then the offer would have been 399$ for all the way to Los Angeles. This is despite the fact that well known airline uses SLC as one of its major hubs and you actually have to switch planes in SLC.
What did the savvy traveler do? Why of course he got out in SLC and dumped the remaining coupon to LAX.
Another famous strategy was nested booking, which used the Saturday night stayover rule (flights where your return segment is on a Sunday or later are a lot cheaper, this is to gouge the business traveler). It works like this:
Wednesday JFK > MSP and Friday MSP > JFK : 1299$
Wednesday JFK > MSP, Monday MSP > JFK : 299$
So what you do is you buy two return tickets, like:
Wednesday JFK > MSP, Monday MSP > JFK : 299 and Friday MSP > JFK (with a return whenever the next week) : 249 $.
And ergo: You saved a lot of money.
I'm not sure if this still works nowadays, since the airlines naturally hate it and put all sorts of fine print into the T&C to prohibit that.
Airline pricing and yield management. A fascinating subject that never ceases to amaze.
Actually this stint should have landed Thomas Hesse and some of his senior management SonyBMG cronies in the slammer for an extended stay.
The same, which would have happened to a pimply faced teenager from Iowa if he would have dared to pull a comparable stint and would have been rightfully convicted as a computer criminal.
It mystifies me until today how those douchebags got away that cheaply.
rBST is most certainly not approved or allowed in the EU. Hormones in animals for meat production are also verboten.
When you buy US beef herearound (which is usually of quite good quality) they need to label it that it may contain growth hormones and antibiotics.
(With apologies to Ross Thomas)
As a matter of fact tax evasion is illegal in Switzerland. It is however, as opposed to tax fraud, which is a crime, treated as a misdemeanor. If you are caught to have "forgotten" those 7500 francs income on your tax declaration you will be taxed on those and you pay a fine. It's certainly not legal.
Switzerland does however (and that's where other countries yell foul, because they don't make this distinction) distinguish between tax evasion ("forgetting" to declare income) and tax fraud (which in any case involve fraudulent or fake documentation, or, for example, not booking income as a corporate entity).
What pisses other countries off is that bank secrecy is not punctured in the first case (theoretically), while it always is when fraud is involoved. This goes also for inquiries by foreign government entities. Since tax evasion is not treated as a criminal act, such inquiries usually go unanswered in tax evasion cases.
That's more or less the gist of it, slightly simplified.
Here would be a start, for example.
call me cluelessAnd yes, I call you clueless.
What credibility are you talking about?
After all those neato stints that just about every voting machine company tried to pull their credibility is somewhere between a San Francisco Tenderloin crack hooker and a timeshare salesman for quite some time now.
Thinking about it the hookers credibility is probably a lot better then the ones of those voting machine vendors.
Or to paraphrase Ross Thomas:
If three people know about it it's a conspracy;
If five people are involved it's a convention...
I work for an investment bank and can guarantee you that the IT department will never allow me to install BozoCAD if it's not on the approved list. Even if it's on the approved list it must be sourced via the banks official channels.
Could I install BozoCAD? Sure, I have admin privileges on my box. It would also be a surefire way to be out of a job in no time if management found out.
While there's a helluva lot valid criticism towards the COS I don't believe that the cost argument is really valid.
If some dupe wants to spend 500'000$ to read some really rotten science fiction, who am I to say he's wrong? Other people spend fortunes for gambling, substance habbits, sex, etc. I don't feel morally superior in any way, shape or form to judge such behaviour either.
When they pester you with their stupid personality test (which only points out what a screwed up person you really are, no matter what) I found a simple and reliable method:
Explain to the friendly Scientologist[TM] that he probably is not allowed to talk to you, since you get Ritalin prescribed by your psych (Scieno-talk for psychiatrist / psychologists) then watch and wonder.
Works like a charm.