Nobody who has ever been to a DMV in the United States could make the claim, with a straight face, that ID adds trust to a transaction. The naivete regarding the usefulness of ID is amazing considering the incompetence involved in its issuance.
Having said that, I recommend people not show their ID to use a credit card. It raises the risk of identity theft because you're forced to expose sensitive information about yourself (DOB, address) to people you don't know. Enough information, hypothetically, to allow for identity theft.
It's funny though, I believed the quote immediately, and even afterward I still wonder if it's an accurate criticism of Quebec government.
My knowledge of Quebec government is limited, but I have an odd litmus test. Quebec is the only jurisdiction in the US or Canada which doesn't offer personalized license plates. I haven't figured out why personalized license plates are an anglo thing, but I don't see why any jurisdiction wouldn't want to issue them. It's a win win for the citizenry and the state.
The fact that they don't hits me as "we've never done it before so why start now" thinking.
I like gmail, and I've entertained using it as my main email, but Eudora still has a bit more sophistication in its mail handling features that gmail lacks. Gmail's filtering is cool and will satisfy 95% of users, but Eudora's filtering is much more complex and is partially scriptable. (Automatically replying with a pre-written email if the subject satisfies certain criteria in the filter, or being able to forward an email that meets whatever criteria to more than one email address. These features may not be all that useful to your average power-user, but when I worked in a tech call center dealing with hundreds of emails per day, it was exactly what we needed.)
There are certain day to day things which I prefer the email client to webmail. If I wanted to attach 10 photographs into an email, I can do that drag and drop in Eudora. Unless there is another way with gmail, I either have to zip them into one file, or manually attach each photograph independently which just drives me insane. (If I'm dealing with a large attachment, I don't have to worry about how long it takes to send, Eudora runs the send in the background, whereas gmail locks up until the attachment is fully on their server.)
Another thing is that it's easier to work on multiple emails at the same time. I can keep a bunch of draft emails open as tabs and it's easy for me to see what I'm working on. I guess I could do the same in gmail, by having gmail open as multiple tabs, but is less elegant in terms of my browsing experience (and I hate saving an email as a draft, because while it's saved, it's no longer in front of me and I tend to forget about it.)
For example, if voter A arrives at 5:15 and voter B arrives at 5:17, but voter B knows all about voting and blows through the ballot in 1 minute while voter A has never voted before and takes 4
The timestamps are on the machines themselves and include an ending time stamp. If voter A gets there at 5.15 the machine will indicate they started voted then and, indeed, that voter A took a full 4 minutes to vote whereas voter B only took a minute voting from 5.17 to 5.18.
This is relevant to the integrity of the voting process.
Oh I agree with you entirely. However, for those purposes, the fact that a person voted need not be a public record. Voter registration records are kept for good reason, but a lot of the data contained are public for political purposes and not necessarily for the integrity of the voting process.
The closing time stamps allow you to figure out when voters take unequal lengths of time. In the example of that diagram, the first voter of the day takes so long that the voter who voted after them was voter #6. But the time stamps allow you to decode that.
You'd be right if there was only an opening time stamp.
The purpose of having the order they voted wasn't so they knew the order, it simply operated as an auditing mechanism.
In the days of paper ballots, the ballot had a small stub on it that had the ballot number. Once that number was recorded in the poll book, the number stub and the ballot stub were separated and the voter voted.
This allowed the poll workers to do periodic audits to maintain ballot control. If voter #150 just voted, and the next unused ballot is #151, then all is well in the precinct.
This system wasn't changed when machines were introduced. Either that was an oversight on the part of the legislature or they thought that the auditing mechanism was still useful in some way (today we have "Authorization to vote" slips which is a simulacrum of the number stub. When we used to have non-DRE machines without paper trails, the ATV slips were deposited in an envelope attached to the machine. Therefore, we could count the slips to make sure they matched the number of votes the machine counter indicated. Again, it was all for auditing and ballot control.)
This is an Ohio problem not a voting machine paper trail problem.
This is partially correct. It's most severe in Ohio because we're numbering the voters, but, hypothetically, an election day observer could just keep track of which voter voted on which machine, and then examine the paper trails at the end of the election and do the comparison with his notes. That could be a problem in any state with voting machines which have continuous roll paper trails and doesn't require the number of voters in order or the time stamps.
Continuous roll paper trails are used for their simplicity. What is needed to prevent observers from doing the above are paper trails with a paper cutter to ensure the votes aren't kept in order permanently.
For that matter why should anyone have access to the records of who voted at all?
The reason that data is public is because it's useful for politicians and their campaigns. For instance, if only 20% of registered voters show up to vote for the odd-year city council races, then the data of which 20% show up is invaluable. The city council candidates only need to send out campaign materials to those voters who reliably vote at those elections and can ignore people who only show up for the presidential elections.
Another example is that the poll workers (at least here in Ohio) maintain several lists of voters who voted during the day (it's a slight pain in the ass actually because someone has to be assigned to the boring job of checking off on two or three lists who came in to vote.)
Those lists are posted periodically during the day...I want to say the first one is posted at 11am.
So at 11am, a list of all the registered voters in the precinct is posted, with check marks next to the names of the voters who voted.
During the presidential election, people working for the campaigns come down and look at the lists. If they know that John Smith is a registered Republican voter (party registration is another public record) and they see he hasn't voted by 11am, they might give him a call to make sure he comes by. If he hasn't voted by 4pm (which I believe is the posting of the last list) then they might send someone over to his house because they know he is an older gentlemen who has voted consistently Republican for decades now and his vote will be invaluable.
I find those voter lists postings a terrible pain, particularly because they're an obligation of the poll workers but their purpose is to help the candidates themselves, not the integrity of the voting process itself.
Then, you stand at the booth, mull over your unknown, least-hated, or no-competition candidates. It's actually quite rare that people walk away from the voting booths in the exact same order that they went into them.
This is exactly what's happening in Ohio but I contend the accuracy is still high. Remember, the "opening" time stamp is printed when the poll worker opens the machine for the next voting session. It so happens that the ES&S machines have a cartridge that the poll worker inserts in the front of the machine which makes it ready for voting so typically that opening time stamp is printed before the voter even stands at the machine.
Once that happens, it doesn't matter how long the voter takes to mull over their choices, thanks to the closing time stamp, which is printed once the voter presses the "vote" button. (If there were only an opening time stamp, then yes, the time it takes for the voter to vote would muck up the accuracy.)
If voter #10 took half an hour to vote then the timestamps will indicate that and you know to look for the next voters on the other machines which weren't monopolized by the slow voter.
Why can't they have the people who make there ATMs work on the voting systems?
The elections machines have been subjected to numerous public tests, the results of which are available to everyone. The ATMs have not. We are told that the ATMs are dependable and secure, but I don't think we really know and I haven't seen much from the banking industry that implies that they are somehow all that much more sophisticated computer security wise than anyone else.
I believe the main reason that ATMs aren't a security issue is because it'd take too long to stand there to hack the machine and the payoff isn't all that great. You can rob a bank in a minute with a gun and get a few grand.
I think it ought to be increased significantly (and given the narrow streets and the volume of people, closing off some of the road to traffic (or at least to buses only) would be a step in the right direction.
Well, essentially, according to what you said and my own understanding, the 8 pound fee has now become a "cost of doing business" in London, like any other. The people who were marginal (for whom 8 GBP is a lot of money) have either stopped coming into London or have restructured their costs/finances so that they can continue coming in.
Whoever these people are, a lot of them seem to have the ability to swallow the cost or pass it on to others. If they are passing it on to others, then a 50 GBP fee won't deter them, they will continue passing the cost on. But at 50 GBP, it just becomes this weird tax whose cost will be distributed to people who never even enter London--through the passing of costs.
*The security line ID checker occasionally checking people's IDs, then turning around to talk to his co-worker and letting people pass, then randomly checking IDs.
The ID checker is not employed by the TSA and ID checking is not considered a responsibility of the TSA. The ID checker is either employed by the airlines or the local airport authority or some combination thereof (you can verify this by the fact that they wear a different uniform from TSA agents. I left from San Antonio airport a few days back and the ID checkers wore a shirt with the San Antonio airport logo.)
If you look at the TSA website, you will find nothing about IDs--it's considered the responsibility of the carrier. I don't believe TSA cares whether the IDs are checked or not, and they have not made any statement one way or another regarding that. (The John Gillmore "ID to fly case" didn't reveal anything because the government said that the regulations regarding ID to fly are a "secret" and could not be revealed in court. After much soul searching, I have come to the conclusion that DHS' policy regarding ID to fly is that there is no policy and the airlines have made it up on their own to satisfy their own purposes--which is preventing the resale of advanced purchase airline tickets.)
I actually believe that he told the truth straightforward. The technicality was sufficient to prevent his entry to the US (though, it's probably not enforced regularly.) He doesn't claim that he was treated unfairly (as I recall) just that the technicality is a bit arcane and stupid overall.
Yeah, ok. I don't think you know the details. You're just speculating.
What details are you suggesting I missed? Unless he is fibbing in his blog entry (linked in the summary) it had all the information necessary. No need to speculate.
If the people in the US were paying his company in Germany for him to present then he is a contractor, working in the US.
Under the Visa Waiver Program, an individual working in such a scenario is not considered "working in the US" until they hit 90 days. "The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa." From here.
I'm sure if I flew over to Germany they'd be all cool with me [a non-citizen/resident] just taking up any old job.
He wasn't "taking up any old job" he was simply doing training for a conference. Under the right circumstances, he needs no visa to do that, but the right circumstances require just the right wording on paper.
And for what it's worth, if you flew over to Germany you could do the same--be sent over for business purposes--for 90 days, without a visa.
How is this a technicality? He didn't have a visa to do the work here that he had contracted for.
Because at its very essence the visa wasn't needed--all that was needed was a piece of paper saying that he was working for a company in Germany who was sending him, instead of going over and being "employed" by a company as a trainer in the US.
This is dictionary definition of technicality. One sentence needed to be worded slightly differently even though both sentence variants meant, in terms of the business relationship, basically the same thing. One variant makes the immigration bureaucracy happy, the other blows a multi-thousand dollar trip.
It makes sense not to report the loss for a while.
I've wondered if they considered not reporting it stolen at all. I have a feeling they did, and, at least for their needs, that would have been the right choice.
Once the tape was reported stolen, newspapers hounded the intern--the Columbus Dispatch reported on his identity and even his facebook status. Undoubtedly he's become a scapegoat.
As far as I'm concerned, the lesson I took from the media jumping all over the guy was that if something similar happened again, you should just sweep it under the table and let the others be damned.
This OECD chart is probably a better way of comparing income. It is GDP per head in order of ranking, and is not selected nations. You will note in the footnote that the PPP algorithm changes things a bit--such as Japan dropping because of it's high costs. (I don't know what goes into the PPP algorithm. For instance, health care takes up about 15% of US GDP but in Western Europe it's usually 8-10%. Does the PPP algorithm take into account higher health care costs in the US? I don't know for sure but I suspect it does. So the higher cost of health care in the US should already be built into the calculation that created that chart.)
Having said that, the chart does not take into account things like GNI. Ireland is doing extremely well, but since it's a highly export based economy now, and a lot of what it makes goes overseas, this chart implies it's doing slightly better than it really is.
And this is before paying for what other countries have already paid for, like healthcare and schooling.
If you are comparing statistics like median income from nation to nation, taxes aren't taken into account from that anyway, which is what pays for healthcare and schooling. So in that regard, the numbers are comparable without difficulty. If a PPP algorithm has been run on the data set than healthcare/schooling has been taken into account in some way in all countries.
Here in the US, 40% of the population gets distributed less than 1% of the wealth (while the top 1% controls 38% of all wealth)
I know and can confirm the latter statistic. I can't find the former but have no reason to believe it to be untrue, but there is a caveat to how those statistics can be read. Household wealth is assets-liabilities, and quite a lot of Americans have too much debt to have any wealth at all, regardless of their income. My parents, for instance, have a household income of $140k/year but between their mortgage, credit card, motor vehicle and other debts, they would be considered as having no wealth for statistical purposes and fall into that 40%, despite their fairly good household income.
iMac -- made the "minimalist" move of omitting the floppy. I remember thinking at the time back in the late 90's this would create a data island, and being quite uncomfortable with the decision -- today, most would feel this was a smart move, and the ubiquitous USB drive has replaced the clunky floppy. Overall, a success.
I've reflected on this, and I do agree it's a success. Though it happened just a bit too early--USB drives didn't come onto the scene in a big way for 3-4 years after the iMac was introduced. A lot of people at the time of the first iMac were adding external floppy drives (some of them high capacity ones) to cope. So I hesitate to call this a success simply because Apple had to wait around for other technologies to catch up.
Can you imagine getting on a "soft-key" elevator? I think it would be cool at first, then really annoying.
I could. One thing that I'd love in an elevator but have never seen is each button operating as a toggle switch. Accidentally pressed the button for floor 6 but didn't want to go there? Press the 6 button again and it deselects.
In my opinion, getting fired was the least you deserved. Unfortunately, it appears that you blame the rules and not yourself.
Uhh...I'm not the parent, but I don't believe s/he was blaming the rules or anyone else for that matter. It sounds to me that he didn't know of the rule and it was an honest mistake (and an easy mistake too, because done anywhere else it would be a non-issue.) After all, the parent noted that it was only his 3 day on the job.
Since the firing had no long term effects, it doesn't sound like it has any big effect on anything.
3. If the plane is high enough that parachutes will be of any use, it's impossible to open most exit doors as pressure seals them against the inside of the fuselage.
Well to be fair, the doors can be redesigned. Passenger doors on commercial aircraft are designed with pressure sealing, but the cargo bay doors don't necessarily work that way on all aircraft.
However, the other reason for not having parachutes in commercial aircraft is, assuming that your 1-4 issues can be solved, they still aren't useful. Just about no airplane crashes from that height. (I guess they would have been useful in the United DC-10 situation at Sioux City, but that was a 1 in a million crash.)
But at what point will the Federal Government try to link federal funds & REAL ID complaince?
I believe they would have already if they could.
As I've understood things, the link between federal funds and making a state do things is not as easy as people think. For instance, the drinking age and the.08 BAC level are often discussed.
But the connection there is easy (though I disagree with it.) The federal government collects taxes via gasoline and uses those taxes to build highways in the states. They decided they don't want drunk 19 year olds or people with.09 blood levels on the highways *they* (the feds) paid for. So if a state doesn't want to enforce the laws the feds want, the feds will just stop funding the highways and let the states do it on their own.
I don't think there is anything that the feds fund now that they can threaten to take away.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody who has ever been to a DMV in the United States could make the claim, with a straight face, that ID adds trust to a transaction. The naivete regarding the usefulness of ID is amazing considering the incompetence involved in its issuance.
Having said that, I recommend people not show their ID to use a credit card. It raises the risk of identity theft because you're forced to expose sensitive information about yourself (DOB, address) to people you don't know. Enough information, hypothetically, to allow for identity theft.
It's funny though, I believed the quote immediately, and even afterward I still wonder if it's an accurate criticism of Quebec government.
My knowledge of Quebec government is limited, but I have an odd litmus test. Quebec is the only jurisdiction in the US or Canada which doesn't offer personalized license plates. I haven't figured out why personalized license plates are an anglo thing, but I don't see why any jurisdiction wouldn't want to issue them. It's a win win for the citizenry and the state.
The fact that they don't hits me as "we've never done it before so why start now" thinking.
*goes back to gmail*
I like gmail, and I've entertained using it as my main email, but Eudora still has a bit more sophistication in its mail handling features that gmail lacks. Gmail's filtering is cool and will satisfy 95% of users, but Eudora's filtering is much more complex and is partially scriptable. (Automatically replying with a pre-written email if the subject satisfies certain criteria in the filter, or being able to forward an email that meets whatever criteria to more than one email address. These features may not be all that useful to your average power-user, but when I worked in a tech call center dealing with hundreds of emails per day, it was exactly what we needed.)
There are certain day to day things which I prefer the email client to webmail. If I wanted to attach 10 photographs into an email, I can do that drag and drop in Eudora. Unless there is another way with gmail, I either have to zip them into one file, or manually attach each photograph independently which just drives me insane. (If I'm dealing with a large attachment, I don't have to worry about how long it takes to send, Eudora runs the send in the background, whereas gmail locks up until the attachment is fully on their server.)
Another thing is that it's easier to work on multiple emails at the same time. I can keep a bunch of draft emails open as tabs and it's easy for me to see what I'm working on. I guess I could do the same in gmail, by having gmail open as multiple tabs, but is less elegant in terms of my browsing experience (and I hate saving an email as a draft, because while it's saved, it's no longer in front of me and I tend to forget about it.)
For example, if voter A arrives at 5:15 and voter B arrives at 5:17, but voter B knows all about voting and blows through the ballot in 1 minute while voter A has never voted before and takes 4
The timestamps are on the machines themselves and include an ending time stamp. If voter A gets there at 5.15 the machine will indicate they started voted then and, indeed, that voter A took a full 4 minutes to vote whereas voter B only took a minute voting from 5.17 to 5.18.
The graph in the article explains this well.
This is relevant to the integrity of the voting process.
Oh I agree with you entirely. However, for those purposes, the fact that a person voted need not be a public record. Voter registration records are kept for good reason, but a lot of the data contained are public for political purposes and not necessarily for the integrity of the voting process.
Take a look at the diagram that was made here.
The closing time stamps allow you to figure out when voters take unequal lengths of time. In the example of that diagram, the first voter of the day takes so long that the voter who voted after them was voter #6. But the time stamps allow you to decode that.
You'd be right if there was only an opening time stamp.
The purpose of having the order they voted wasn't so they knew the order, it simply operated as an auditing mechanism.
In the days of paper ballots, the ballot had a small stub on it that had the ballot number. Once that number was recorded in the poll book, the number stub and the ballot stub were separated and the voter voted.
This allowed the poll workers to do periodic audits to maintain ballot control. If voter #150 just voted, and the next unused ballot is #151, then all is well in the precinct.
This system wasn't changed when machines were introduced. Either that was an oversight on the part of the legislature or they thought that the auditing mechanism was still useful in some way (today we have "Authorization to vote" slips which is a simulacrum of the number stub. When we used to have non-DRE machines without paper trails, the ATV slips were deposited in an envelope attached to the machine. Therefore, we could count the slips to make sure they matched the number of votes the machine counter indicated. Again, it was all for auditing and ballot control.)
This is an Ohio problem not a voting machine paper trail problem.
This is partially correct. It's most severe in Ohio because we're numbering the voters, but, hypothetically, an election day observer could just keep track of which voter voted on which machine, and then examine the paper trails at the end of the election and do the comparison with his notes. That could be a problem in any state with voting machines which have continuous roll paper trails and doesn't require the number of voters in order or the time stamps.
Continuous roll paper trails are used for their simplicity. What is needed to prevent observers from doing the above are paper trails with a paper cutter to ensure the votes aren't kept in order permanently.
For that matter why should anyone have access to the records of who voted at all?
The reason that data is public is because it's useful for politicians and their campaigns. For instance, if only 20% of registered voters show up to vote for the odd-year city council races, then the data of which 20% show up is invaluable. The city council candidates only need to send out campaign materials to those voters who reliably vote at those elections and can ignore people who only show up for the presidential elections.
Another example is that the poll workers (at least here in Ohio) maintain several lists of voters who voted during the day (it's a slight pain in the ass actually because someone has to be assigned to the boring job of checking off on two or three lists who came in to vote.)
Those lists are posted periodically during the day...I want to say the first one is posted at 11am.
So at 11am, a list of all the registered voters in the precinct is posted, with check marks next to the names of the voters who voted.
During the presidential election, people working for the campaigns come down and look at the lists. If they know that John Smith is a registered Republican voter (party registration is another public record) and they see he hasn't voted by 11am, they might give him a call to make sure he comes by. If he hasn't voted by 4pm (which I believe is the posting of the last list) then they might send someone over to his house because they know he is an older gentlemen who has voted consistently Republican for decades now and his vote will be invaluable.
I find those voter lists postings a terrible pain, particularly because they're an obligation of the poll workers but their purpose is to help the candidates themselves, not the integrity of the voting process itself.
Then, you stand at the booth, mull over your unknown, least-hated, or no-competition candidates. It's actually quite rare that people walk away from the voting booths in the exact same order that they went into them.
This is exactly what's happening in Ohio but I contend the accuracy is still high. Remember, the "opening" time stamp is printed when the poll worker opens the machine for the next voting session. It so happens that the ES&S machines have a cartridge that the poll worker inserts in the front of the machine which makes it ready for voting so typically that opening time stamp is printed before the voter even stands at the machine.
Once that happens, it doesn't matter how long the voter takes to mull over their choices, thanks to the closing time stamp, which is printed once the voter presses the "vote" button. (If there were only an opening time stamp, then yes, the time it takes for the voter to vote would muck up the accuracy.)
If voter #10 took half an hour to vote then the timestamps will indicate that and you know to look for the next voters on the other machines which weren't monopolized by the slow voter.
Why can't they have the people who make there ATMs work on the voting systems?
The elections machines have been subjected to numerous public tests, the results of which are available to everyone. The ATMs have not. We are told that the ATMs are dependable and secure, but I don't think we really know and I haven't seen much from the banking industry that implies that they are somehow all that much more sophisticated computer security wise than anyone else.
I believe the main reason that ATMs aren't a security issue is because it'd take too long to stand there to hack the machine and the payoff isn't all that great. You can rob a bank in a minute with a gun and get a few grand.
You might look for a group of recovering Lotus Notes addicts... ...and find out if that is a disease which is genetic or inherited.
I think it ought to be increased significantly (and given the narrow streets and the volume of people, closing off some of the road to traffic (or at least to buses only) would be a step in the right direction.
Well, essentially, according to what you said and my own understanding, the 8 pound fee has now become a "cost of doing business" in London, like any other. The people who were marginal (for whom 8 GBP is a lot of money) have either stopped coming into London or have restructured their costs/finances so that they can continue coming in.
Whoever these people are, a lot of them seem to have the ability to swallow the cost or pass it on to others. If they are passing it on to others, then a 50 GBP fee won't deter them, they will continue passing the cost on. But at 50 GBP, it just becomes this weird tax whose cost will be distributed to people who never even enter London--through the passing of costs.
*The security line ID checker occasionally checking people's IDs, then turning around to talk to his co-worker and letting people pass, then randomly checking IDs.
The ID checker is not employed by the TSA and ID checking is not considered a responsibility of the TSA. The ID checker is either employed by the airlines or the local airport authority or some combination thereof (you can verify this by the fact that they wear a different uniform from TSA agents. I left from San Antonio airport a few days back and the ID checkers wore a shirt with the San Antonio airport logo.)
If you look at the TSA website, you will find nothing about IDs--it's considered the responsibility of the carrier. I don't believe TSA cares whether the IDs are checked or not, and they have not made any statement one way or another regarding that. (The John Gillmore "ID to fly case" didn't reveal anything because the government said that the regulations regarding ID to fly are a "secret" and could not be revealed in court. After much soul searching, I have come to the conclusion that DHS' policy regarding ID to fly is that there is no policy and the airlines have made it up on their own to satisfy their own purposes--which is preventing the resale of advanced purchase airline tickets.)
Driving is NOT A RIGHT! It is a PRIVILEGE
My law dictionary (Blacks 7th edition) considers the two words to be synonymous with each other. What is the difference?
There's two sides to every story.
I actually believe that he told the truth straightforward. The technicality was sufficient to prevent his entry to the US (though, it's probably not enforced regularly.) He doesn't claim that he was treated unfairly (as I recall) just that the technicality is a bit arcane and stupid overall.
Yeah, ok. I don't think you know the details. You're just speculating.
What details are you suggesting I missed? Unless he is fibbing in his blog entry (linked in the summary) it had all the information necessary. No need to speculate.
If the people in the US were paying his company in Germany for him to present then he is a contractor, working in the US.
Under the Visa Waiver Program, an individual working in such a scenario is not considered "working in the US" until they hit 90 days. "The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) enables nationals of certain countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa." From here.
I'm sure if I flew over to Germany they'd be all cool with me [a non-citizen/resident] just taking up any old job.
He wasn't "taking up any old job" he was simply doing training for a conference. Under the right circumstances, he needs no visa to do that, but the right circumstances require just the right wording on paper.
And for what it's worth, if you flew over to Germany you could do the same--be sent over for business purposes--for 90 days, without a visa.
How is this a technicality? He didn't have a visa to do the work here that he had contracted for.
Because at its very essence the visa wasn't needed--all that was needed was a piece of paper saying that he was working for a company in Germany who was sending him, instead of going over and being "employed" by a company as a trainer in the US.
This is dictionary definition of technicality. One sentence needed to be worded slightly differently even though both sentence variants meant, in terms of the business relationship, basically the same thing. One variant makes the immigration bureaucracy happy, the other blows a multi-thousand dollar trip.
It makes sense not to report the loss for a while.
I've wondered if they considered not reporting it stolen at all. I have a feeling they did, and, at least for their needs, that would have been the right choice.
Once the tape was reported stolen, newspapers hounded the intern--the Columbus Dispatch reported on his identity and even his facebook status. Undoubtedly he's become a scapegoat.
As far as I'm concerned, the lesson I took from the media jumping all over the guy was that if something similar happened again, you should just sweep it under the table and let the others be damned.
This OECD chart is probably a better way of comparing income. It is GDP per head in order of ranking, and is not selected nations. You will note in the footnote that the PPP algorithm changes things a bit--such as Japan dropping because of it's high costs. (I don't know what goes into the PPP algorithm. For instance, health care takes up about 15% of US GDP but in Western Europe it's usually 8-10%. Does the PPP algorithm take into account higher health care costs in the US? I don't know for sure but I suspect it does. So the higher cost of health care in the US should already be built into the calculation that created that chart.)
Having said that, the chart does not take into account things like GNI. Ireland is doing extremely well, but since it's a highly export based economy now, and a lot of what it makes goes overseas, this chart implies it's doing slightly better than it really is.
And this is before paying for what other countries have already paid for, like healthcare and schooling.
If you are comparing statistics like median income from nation to nation, taxes aren't taken into account from that anyway, which is what pays for healthcare and schooling. So in that regard, the numbers are comparable without difficulty. If a PPP algorithm has been run on the data set than healthcare/schooling has been taken into account in some way in all countries.
Here in the US, 40% of the population gets distributed less than 1% of the wealth (while the top 1% controls 38% of all wealth)
I know and can confirm the latter statistic. I can't find the former but have no reason to believe it to be untrue, but there is a caveat to how those statistics can be read. Household wealth is assets-liabilities, and quite a lot of Americans have too much debt to have any wealth at all, regardless of their income. My parents, for instance, have a household income of $140k/year but between their mortgage, credit card, motor vehicle and other debts, they would be considered as having no wealth for statistical purposes and fall into that 40%, despite their fairly good household income.
iMac -- made the "minimalist" move of omitting the floppy. I remember thinking at the time back in the late 90's this would create a data island, and being quite uncomfortable with the decision -- today, most would feel this was a smart move, and the ubiquitous USB drive has replaced the clunky floppy. Overall, a success.
I've reflected on this, and I do agree it's a success. Though it happened just a bit too early--USB drives didn't come onto the scene in a big way for 3-4 years after the iMac was introduced. A lot of people at the time of the first iMac were adding external floppy drives (some of them high capacity ones) to cope. So I hesitate to call this a success simply because Apple had to wait around for other technologies to catch up.
Can you imagine getting on a "soft-key" elevator? I think it would be cool at first, then really annoying.
I could. One thing that I'd love in an elevator but have never seen is each button operating as a toggle switch. Accidentally pressed the button for floor 6 but didn't want to go there? Press the 6 button again and it deselects.
In my opinion, getting fired was the least you deserved. Unfortunately, it appears that you blame the rules and not yourself.
Uhh...I'm not the parent, but I don't believe s/he was blaming the rules or anyone else for that matter. It sounds to me that he didn't know of the rule and it was an honest mistake (and an easy mistake too, because done anywhere else it would be a non-issue.) After all, the parent noted that it was only his 3 day on the job.
Since the firing had no long term effects, it doesn't sound like it has any big effect on anything.
3. If the plane is high enough that parachutes will be of any use, it's impossible to open most exit doors as pressure seals them against the inside of the fuselage.
Well to be fair, the doors can be redesigned. Passenger doors on commercial aircraft are designed with pressure sealing, but the cargo bay doors don't necessarily work that way on all aircraft.
However, the other reason for not having parachutes in commercial aircraft is, assuming that your 1-4 issues can be solved, they still aren't useful. Just about no airplane crashes from that height. (I guess they would have been useful in the United DC-10 situation at Sioux City, but that was a 1 in a million crash.)
But at what point will the Federal Government try to link federal funds & REAL ID complaince?
.08 BAC level are often discussed.
.09 blood levels on the highways *they* (the feds) paid for. So if a state doesn't want to enforce the laws the feds want, the feds will just stop funding the highways and let the states do it on their own.
I believe they would have already if they could.
As I've understood things, the link between federal funds and making a state do things is not as easy as people think. For instance, the drinking age and the
But the connection there is easy (though I disagree with it.) The federal government collects taxes via gasoline and uses those taxes to build highways in the states. They decided they don't want drunk 19 year olds or people with
I don't think there is anything that the feds fund now that they can threaten to take away.