Why does the US have such an antiquated banking system? Hell, a lot of places still need checks because they won't take plastic!
I've had bank accounts in the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada and the US.
Canada is basically the US in this context..banks are no better. They do have email money transfers though.
Which is something every other damn country has. A way to transfer money between bank accounts of individuals securely and free. The only option in the US has been paypal or chase quickpay.
Not to mention the reliance on checks (ridiculous!) and the problems with ACH fraud. Again, in no other country has my account number been secret information which I have to protect. The worst thing people could do is put money into my account.
I don't want to have to install a shitty roku box just to play certain premium content, when I invested in a SmartTV and should be able to play it through DLNA.
What's that? My SmartTV has an App for Amazon VOD? That's great, except for when I am traveling for work and want to watch it on my Linux Laptop....
It's not just about making content available, it's about making it available in a standard format.
At the moment piracy offers a better product for free than the paid product.
I'm pretty sure the pirated copy is available in higher quality also.
Piracy is still the best, or in some cases the only option until companies wake up.
Lets see
- If I want a particular show, not the entire channel or package that requires that channel
- If I don't want to wait months (or years if in a different country) after it has aired to watch it
- If I want to have it in a standard format that doesn't require proprietary crap (e.g. mkv, avi, mp4)
- If I want to watch it ad free
- If I want to watch something that isn't otherwise released to Netflix or whatever...
Oh, and for the anti-piracy whingers:
- It's not stealing, it's copying. You may think the activity morally wrong, but that doesn't make it stealing - Every download is not a lost sale. A bunch of stuff I wouldn't pay for in the first place. - It has nothing to do with entitlement. It's about opportunity and choice.
I would Gladly pay $5/episode for something like Breaking Bad, a show I enjoyed greatly.
I had to download it, as I'm not going to pay for an entire package of channels just to watch one show, and there is no way to watch it the night it airs in a way I can play on mplayer with Linux or stream to my TV using DLNA.
While Breaking Bad doesn't show the intricate details of manufacturing crystal meth, it does accurately show the reactions of law enforcement and the cartels when a new player is in town, and it is genius in how the protagonist managed to skirt the odds.
But sure, just keep being pretentious thinking your watching better TV, which consists of sharks and guys blowing stuff up while pretending to be scientists.
Renting out a room in your apartment for a week out of every month, or even just when you go on vacation shouldn't be illegal, and doesn't inconvenience anyone, despite what nosey neighbors may think.
It's ridiculous that it is at all illegal, as it is pretty far removed from being an illegal hotel, which has a rather narrow definition.
I don't think even three months is enough time, sorry. I spent about a year backpacking across Europe, living in the UK for 2 years and Germany for a year and a half. Even then, I don't feel that well informed to make such broad comparisons as you have done.
I would agree that the quality of life is better in many ways in the US, but it is at the expense of the poorer classes. In Europe, the distribution is a lot more fair, and so the quality of life is far, far, far higher on average.
As for services vs taxes..., not only do they have decent health care regardless of your income, which is a basic right in most 1st world countries, they have other benefits that the US is so far behind in it isn't funny.
Education...the children are actually educated. No child left behind nonsense, and no paying off student loans for a significant portion of your working life.
Parental leave...vacation time....all far ahead of the US, and contribution greatly to a greater quality of life.
The US is ahead superficially...big houses and SUV's....but it isn't sustainable, and we are starting to see that in this country.
I'd do this. What's the issue? It's unlikely someone is going to be at the ready to record that information or memorize it on the first time hearing it without being prepared, and in the worst case scenario I'm completely covered by my bank.
Conventional thinking is not that intelligence is primarily genetic. It's that multiple factors play a role and we don't entirely know to what extents, or which is the most significant.
Everything you continue to say is so goddamn wrong.
Your post loses credibility when you start it by deliberately playing semantics and misconstruing the OPs statement.
If you have to do that to make your argument, why is the rest of what you wrote worth reading?
Yet, I did read it. You seem to miss the point of the OPs post. He could have articulated it better, but nonetheless it is clear.
What we say to be impossible is based on our current understanding, which is woefully inadequate for making such bold assertions.
Your saying that certain things are 100% impossible, indicates you don't have the est understanding of science. So maybe don't go around correcting people, mmmmkay.
Exactly. It's ridiculous the pedestal we place Einstein on.
I'd be willing to bet that many smarter than average people have larger than average corpus callosums. It doesn't seem like something that would be unique to Einstein.
Since Einstein, I think we have people who are without a doubt more intelligent, I mean just check this list.
Einstein made a breakthrough that would have inevitable happened anyway, because he was curious, smart, confident and able to think critically.
Putting him on a pedestal to the point where we study his brain like this just shows how ignorant and how low average intelligence is.
Slashdot Mirror
I've lived in the US for some time, based in NYC.
There are still a lot of places that won't take plastic. Rental agencies, for instance.
That's only in Canada. Not the US.
Why does the US have such an antiquated banking system? Hell, a lot of places still need checks because they won't take plastic!
I've had bank accounts in the UK, Australia, Germany, Canada and the US.
Canada is basically the US in this context..banks are no better. They do have email money transfers though.
Which is something every other damn country has. A way to transfer money between bank accounts of individuals securely and free. The only option in the US has been paypal or chase quickpay.
Not to mention the reliance on checks (ridiculous!) and the problems with ACH fraud. Again, in no other country has my account number been secret information which I have to protect. The worst thing people could do is put money into my account.
So many issues....
That's not the point though.
I don't want to have to install a shitty roku box just to play certain premium content, when I invested in a SmartTV and should be able to play it through DLNA.
What's that? My SmartTV has an App for Amazon VOD? That's great, except for when I am traveling for work and want to watch it on my Linux Laptop....
It's not just about making content available, it's about making it available in a standard format.
At the moment piracy offers a better product for free than the paid product.
I'm pretty sure the pirated copy is available in higher quality also.
1) It's not stealing, stop repeating that ignorant nonsense
2) You seemed to miss the DRM free part of my post. That isn't due to an ideological stance, but a practical need.
I knew BB was available, it still wasn't available without DRM.
Sorry, but I'm not installing iTunes, which doesn't let me play it through DLNA anyway.
Did you miss the part about wanting to watch it on Linux or through DLNA?
iTunes is a massive fail, and I don't believe it was on iTunes the night it aired.
Piracy is still the best, or in some cases the only option until companies wake up.
Lets see
- If I want a particular show, not the entire channel or package that requires that channel
- If I don't want to wait months (or years if in a different country) after it has aired to watch it
- If I want to have it in a standard format that doesn't require proprietary crap (e.g. mkv, avi, mp4)
- If I want to watch it ad free
- If I want to watch something that isn't otherwise released to Netflix or whatever...
Oh, and for the anti-piracy whingers:
- It's not stealing, it's copying. You may think the activity morally wrong, but that doesn't make it stealing
- Every download is not a lost sale. A bunch of stuff I wouldn't pay for in the first place.
- It has nothing to do with entitlement. It's about opportunity and choice.
I would Gladly pay $5/episode for something like Breaking Bad, a show I enjoyed greatly.
I had to download it, as I'm not going to pay for an entire package of channels just to watch one show, and there is no way to watch it the night it airs in a way I can play on mplayer with Linux or stream to my TV using DLNA.
Your loss media companies....
Your arrogance is astounding.
While Breaking Bad doesn't show the intricate details of manufacturing crystal meth, it does accurately show the reactions of law enforcement and the cartels when a new player is in town, and it is genius in how the protagonist managed to skirt the odds.
But sure, just keep being pretentious thinking your watching better TV, which consists of sharks and guys blowing stuff up while pretending to be scientists.
For someone so critical of so much TV, I find it funny one of the few things you deem worthy to watch is Mythbusters.
This explains where you have obtained your poor understanding of science.
It's an extreme case that people are renting out their apartment and having different people every few nights.
What about the people that want to try and recoup something by renting out their apartment while on vacation?
How is that different from having a friend housesit from the neighbors perspective?
man doesn't refer to male, but to people, e.g. mankind. Nothing sexist about it, you ignorant hick.
Nonsense. And I do live in NYC.
Renting out a room in your apartment for a week out of every month, or even just when you go on vacation shouldn't be illegal, and doesn't inconvenience anyone, despite what nosey neighbors may think.
It's ridiculous that it is at all illegal, as it is pretty far removed from being an illegal hotel, which has a rather narrow definition.
I don't think even three months is enough time, sorry. I spent about a year backpacking across Europe, living in the UK for 2 years and Germany for a year and a half. Even then, I don't feel that well informed to make such broad comparisons as you have done.
I would agree that the quality of life is better in many ways in the US, but it is at the expense of the poorer classes. In Europe, the distribution is a lot more fair, and so the quality of life is far, far, far higher on average.
As for services vs taxes..., not only do they have decent health care regardless of your income, which is a basic right in most 1st world countries, they have other benefits that the US is so far behind in it isn't funny.
Education...the children are actually educated. No child left behind nonsense, and no paying off student loans for a significant portion of your working life.
Parental leave...vacation time....all far ahead of the US, and contribution greatly to a greater quality of life.
The US is ahead superficially...big houses and SUV's....but it isn't sustainable, and we are starting to see that in this country.
I think the empirical evidence shows that gun control does work in western nations...just look at Australia, Canada and the UK....
What makes you confident you saw enough of western europe to judge the quality of life?
I'd do this. What's the issue? It's unlikely someone is going to be at the ready to record that information or memorize it on the first time hearing it without being prepared, and in the worst case scenario I'm completely covered by my bank.
What exactly is the issue?
what would you have had to debug on the router itself?
Experience is overrated. There are a lot of people who have experience fixing peoples computers, and don't know jack shit.
Do you have to buy special wireless cards to facilitate it as an AP? I imagine the built in wireless card isn't great for routing.
Conventional thinking is not that intelligence is primarily genetic. It's that multiple factors play a role and we don't entirely know to what extents, or which is the most significant.
Everything you continue to say is so goddamn wrong.
Your post loses credibility when you start it by deliberately playing semantics and misconstruing the OPs statement.
If you have to do that to make your argument, why is the rest of what you wrote worth reading?
Yet, I did read it. You seem to miss the point of the OPs post. He could have articulated it better, but nonetheless it is clear.
What we say to be impossible is based on our current understanding, which is woefully inadequate for making such bold assertions.
Your saying that certain things are 100% impossible, indicates you don't have the est understanding of science. So maybe don't go around correcting people, mmmmkay.
Way to misread and twist what I said AC.
Exactly. It's ridiculous the pedestal we place Einstein on.
I'd be willing to bet that many smarter than average people have larger than average corpus callosums. It doesn't seem like something that would be unique to Einstein.
Since Einstein, I think we have people who are without a doubt more intelligent, I mean just check this list.
Einstein made a breakthrough that would have inevitable happened anyway, because he was curious, smart, confident and able to think critically.
Putting him on a pedestal to the point where we study his brain like this just shows how ignorant and how low average intelligence is.
How is that a reason to mod someone down? I should have modded you down for that stupid post.