The main problem with those self-checkout terminals isn't the scanner. It's the scale for the platform you're supposed to put your stuff on after scanning to make sure you scan all of your stuff. The scales are frequently out of calibration. And since California mandated the paper bag fee and most people bring re-usables now; it gets confused about the added weight of the grocery bags. Pretty much every time I goto Safeway and try to use the thing... which I avoid unless the other lines are too long... the employee they have monitoring them has to override it for me. (I use fairly hefty canvas bags, so it probably thinks I'm trying to steal a pint of ice cream or something. The scanner and card reader have never given me trouble though.
For my own.02, I'd mention that there are already a number of restaurants, both singular and small chains, in my area that already have iPad kiosks for ordering, or an iPhone app I can use to pre-order. Usually these are an optional convenience, but at Eatsa they're the only way to order. I've come to prefer these, when available, over placing my order with a cashier. And I'm not some Scrooge McDuck caricature who hates interacting with anyone who makes less money than I do. It's just because it's a superior way to do what fast food cashiers do.
With a self-order kiosk or app, the menu is clear and unambiguous. It doesn't suffer from the lack of space on menu boards, leading one to wonder if an item is discontinued or simply not being actively promoted. What modifications and substitutions are available, and how much they cost, is also clear and unambiguous. Done correctly, these systems can be tied into the inventory system, so an ingredient is unavailable it's simply not shown on the app. ApplePay or a credit card swipe is more convenient and sanitary than handling cash. And if there's a problem with my order, the emailed receipt with the details of what I entered makes it clear exactly who was at fault and whether I should suck it up because I ordered the wrong thing, or if they didn't deliver what I'd ordered and I need to have them replace it.
As more places try this system of ordering, I think more customers will realize its advantages. And whether the restaurants are motivated by the wage increase or not, the writing is on the wall here. After all, how often do people actually go into the bank and withdraw money via a human teller, vs. just using an ATM?
Dropbox! Holy shit! I'm not putting the product down, but how the fuck could they possibly employ even ten people full time, unless it's to maintain the infrastructure in the data center. The software was done many years ago and shouldn't need much maintenance. What IS there for them to DO?!? Somehow they're interstate with hundreds. That doesn't any sense, and well over 90% should be laid off and it wouldn't make any difference to the product at all.
Sales and support for their enterprise customers, I'd expect. Large customers tend to want a dedicated account manager and support engineer; no matter how reliable the product or service. My own employer for example has a rep from Amazon to "support" us. So far as I can tell, his main function is to pass along the occasional tidbit of NDA'd AWS roadmap to us in case it's something we'd want to be ready to use; and to pass the occasional feature request/suggestion back to Amazon. But we use enough of their services than when one of our own higher-ups said: "We'd like a dedicated account rep whom I can get on the phone any time I think there's an issue.", Amazon was happy to comply (And bill us for his salary, I'm sure.)
Also, the vast majority of all businesses fail. And that's no less true in tech. Failing businesses mean layoffs. And a lot of businesses being started means a lot of businesses failing. What would be more illuminating would be data as to how long the laid-off workers stay out of work, vs. bouncing into another startup or, as you mention, one of the larger companies.
Personally, I'm not going to start worrying until the contacts from recruiters trying to lure me out of my current job falls below a dull roar.
Indeed. A few weeks back, when it came out that some Facebook employees were enquiring if and how Facebook should act to prevent Trump winning the presidency, Zuckerberg shot them down. Also, Facebook is a sponsor of the republican party and their national convention this year in Cleveland. Zuckerberg is an east-coast (Westchester county), prep-school, ivy-league, blue blood. And he's known to pal around with the likes of Chris Christie.
Sure, a lot of liberal people work at Facebook. And maybe some of the left-leaning curators injected their own biases, consciously or not, into the feeds. But no way was it a result of a top-down policy.
Sabine Schmitz is definitely a good driver. And she was entertaining in the Top Gear segments featuring her. But can she carry the whole show as a presenter? It's one thing to be entertaining in a segment. It's another thing to present the whole show... repeatedly over the season/series... and remain as entertaining.
And Schmitz would pretty much have to carry the whole show herself. The Stig doesn't talk. Chris Evans is okay for a bit, but gets tedious after about ten minutes. Joey from Friends... not only is he completely out of place, but is there anyone from that pantheon who is *not* totally insipid? And the others are so forgettable, I've already forgotten who they are.
You know... I once gave Truman the benefit of doubt; knowing that it was a different kind of war than any in my lifetime, and I wasn't there and making the decisions. I thought there was no way I could crawl into his mind when he was making the decisions. As it turns out, though, Truman kept diaries. And excerpts are published on the internet. I stopped reading when I saw the dehumanizing racism... the references to the Japanese people as "japs" and an individual as "the jap". That showed me what I needed to know about his thought processes and the kind of man he was. And he no longer gets the benefit of my doubt.
What amazes me is the fact that there are people who try to hold the current generation of Japanese... of any nationality actually... to blame for the misdeeds of old dead people from whom they happen to be descended. Real life is not Star Trek, and we are not Klingons. The "Sins of the Father" do not dishonor the next seven generations of real human beings.
Every decision maker involved in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is long dead. And if any members of the flight crew are still breathing, they're not long for this world. The same is true of Pearl Harbor, Dresden, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Bataan, etc. To continue to bear a grudge, especially when you're not even the actual person who was wronged, and double especially against people who weren't involved and likely not even born at the time; is just batshit irrational.
There was a story a few weeks ago about Facebook employees being upset that, when they wanted to use Facebook as a platform to prevent Trump from becoming president and how to so do, Zuckerberg shot them down. Facebook is also sponsoring Trump's national Republican convention in Cleveland. So no, Facebook does not have a top-down policy to suppress the republicans.
That doesn't mean that some random manager didn't tell a contractors to manipulate the "trending now" lists. And it doesn't mean that curators didn't inject their own biases, knowingly or not. Facebook is a big company, after all. But the notion that this is some big mind-control conspiracy? Absurd.
Also, it's worth noting that the original source for these allegations is an article from Gawker. And frankly, if that pack of asshats told me that the sun was hot and the sky blue, I'd still go outside and double-check before trusting their word.
Cute straw man. But that's an invalid analogy. Running an web server on port 80 is, by definition and RFC, an invitation with the message: "Come on in, look around, anywhere you can get to, go."
If you want to play the "house" analogy, the correct one is an open house that you've placed up for sale. You've invited the public in, with open doors, open windows, open rooms, for them to roam where they wish. But outside the rooms you've carefully curated for show; behind one door there is a basement into which you've dumped any unsightly furniture, appliances, or various other rubbish bits you don't really want the public to see as part of the sales process. This is also where the furnace, water heater, and various other infrastructure is located and visible. You've not marked or locked this door. And there's a loose step and the lights have gone, but you've overlooked this in prepping the rest of the house. One of the people who've come into your open house opens that door, stumbles on the step in the dark, and does you the courtesy of informing you of the hazard. Then, instead of being thanking him, being glad that no one was hurt, and fixing the step and lights; you flip your shit and fabricate some way to get the samaritan arrested.
It's not just about identity theft material. Plenty of parents certainly believe that it's their right... their duty even... to publicly humiliate their children. I'm really not sure how that could escape your notice. It's so pervasive that it's even become the sort of pop-culture cliche that makes it into Volkswagen commercials.
Well, there's also the issue that fingerprinting is for criminals and should never be a condition of employment. These onerous rules are imposed specifically to drive businesses like Uber and Lyft out of a market. If they'd complied, next year there would just be some new regulation to meet.
Yeah, I read Starship Troopers too. In the real world, plenty of fools and paranoiacs find their way into both the military and the government. So your solution doesn't address the problem at hand.
There is the old saying: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.". If Uber and Lyft let themselves get bullied into submission in one place, doesn't that set the precedent for it to happen everywhere? Hell, Google even left the largest market in the world when pushed too far. And we celebrated that move.
I would expect that it was simply analytics. Take the ZIP codes in a city. Amazon knows the number of prime subscribers in each ZIP code. They know the dollars worth of sales in every ZIP code. Divide either figure by the square mileage of the ZIP code, and you get an easy metric. If it's above a certain threshold, add same-day. If it's not, don't. I'm sure in reality, the metrics are more complex... a combination of the two I mentioned, plus travel speeds on the roads in each ZIP code, distance from distribution nodes, lossage and replacement figures from packages that go missing, rental and administration of Amazon lockers if a lot of customers in that ZIP code use them, and so on. But I would bet good money that the decisions were 100% data-driven. I really, Really, REALLY doubt that Jeff Bezos has issued a directive that Amazon avoid offering services to it's non-white customers.
Well, there are plenty of objective measures you could use... SAT scores, for example. You could require a 1200 on the classic, or 1800 on the new recalibrated scale. Neither grammar rules nor mathematics have any racial or gender bias to them. It's not perfect, of course. Most obviously, the verbal section may be problematic for immigrant citizens for whom english is not their first language. And any examination is prone to some degree of studying to the test. Though I'm a bit less concerned about the latter. If you care enough about voting and citizenship to study for the exam in the first place, it's much more likely that you care enough to educate yourself on the issues as well. The point is, though, that it is certainly ought to be possible to come up with some examination that's neutral and blind to the civil rights act characteristics.
Sure, there's a bit of fail on the part of the airline. The Washington Post article though seems to indicate significantly less stupidity on the part of the airline and the authorities than in other cases such as that UC Berkeley student who was forbidden from flying for speaking in arabic to his uncle. In this case, most of delay was from the false accuser faking illness. Only after a period of feigned sickness did she leave her seat, speak to the flight crew, and make her accusation. Dr. Menzio was then briefly interviewed and allowed to fly, while his accuser was taken off the plane and sent home on another flight.
That's less than the ideal outcome, of course. One shouldn't be able to delay a whole planeload of passengers by pretending to be sick in the first place. If you're too sick to fly, get off. Otherwise stay onboard, suck it up, and suffer. But, barring a legitimate life-threatening emergency, the flight should keep to its schedule. And once the false accusation was made, they should have just told her to shut up and quit being stupid, or get off the plane herself.
But even when the authorities overreact (As in the case of that UCB student. And yes the airline employees and LEOs should be punished themselves for that debacle.) the root cause is still that fist vicious
little bigot who decided to falsely accuse an innocent person of being a terrorist in the first place. So yeah... while the airline and law enforcement deserve some criticism in this case (And some ended careers in the other.), the hammer does also need to be dropped... hard and without mercy... on the original false accuser.
This times a thousand. Filing false police reports is a crime. Perjury is a crime. There's a civil tort for libel or slander. And there's probably a whole slew of other legal penalties for falsely accusing someone of a crime that don't come to me pre-coffee. Hell... it's such an old taboo that there's even a commandment on the subject.
So why the hell are we not applying massive penalties to these shitwads who make up false accusations of terrorism? The airline should refund everyone on the plane their airfare, and take sue the accuser into the dirt for compensation. Then put her on trial and throw her away into prison for the false report.
Oh yeah... there should also be a social penalty. Those bigots should be ruthlessly named, shamed, and ridiculed.
But naming it "Boaty McBoatface" for the long term? Can you imagine a scientist who worked on that ship and putting that on your resume? I don't know what you do for a living, but supposing you're a programmer, imagine that some serious research project that you put years of your life into was given the official designation "Codey McCodeface," and when you tried to get other jobs or talk to people in other fields, you had to use that name to tell them what you had invested your work in. "What was your project?!? What, were you one of the idiots who worked on Clippy??"
Have you seen the ridiculous-sounding names of some companies these days? Do you remember the one from the dotcom days? Silly names like "Yik Yak" or "Yahoo!" are fairly common; as are made-up non-words like "Inktomi", as are deliberate misspellings like "Google" and random words that have nothing to do with their product or place in the market "Amazon". In the 1970s, "Apple" was a silly name for a computer company. A more "dignified" and "proper" name contemporary to the era would have been something like "Cuper-Tech" or "J&W Computers". No one looking at your resume cares about the name of your employers. They care about what you did at the company, and what you can do for your new company.
Yeah, GSA schedules are pretty cheap. They're utterly ruthless during purchasing negotiation since the government is such a huge customer. And the GSA often insist on those "most favored customer" pricing terms that they find so utterly unreasonable when someone else (like Apple) tries to negotiate the same.
But as you allude to, a huge part of the waste is in handouts to government contractors, not in the GSA schedules. I briefly worked for Lockheed Martin right out of college. And one of my projects involved a godawful-ancient HP-UX server. The thing pre-dated SCSI. I know that because, specifically, I had to fix up its backup processes after the tape drive bit it and started melting any tape you inserted into a puddle of goo. The peripheral interface was a relic, from before I was born, called HP-IB. Eventually, I was approved to add a mirrored hard drive to the backup mix. HP-IB hard drives being something you can't just order from Dell or Amazon or wherever; we had to goto a specialty vendor. And we paid $4500 for a 20MB external hard drive; and eventually another $6000 for a replacement tape drive.
And this wasn't for anything fancy. The HP server was just the controller and interface for a rack of diagnostic equipment. We could have replaced the whole thing with an off-the-shelf rackmount plus Linux for a quarter the cost, and had better performance and more capacity to boot. But some old DoD-approved spec sheet dictated that hardware, running that version of HP-UX, with HP-IB as the interface. So that's what we had to use. L/M spent over 10K for a 20MB hard drive and tape drive that Indiana Jones would think were obsolete rubbish if he found them in a crypt somewhere. That, plus $250/hr for my time, was of billed right on over to the government.
So yeah... as someone who was actually part of the "$600 hammers and $800 toilet seats" problem, I can vouch first-hand that it's true. In my own defense, I wasn't part of the problem for long. I left after about a year and have been steadfast about staying in the private sector, and avoiding companies that do business with the government, ever since.
So, how do you know your nicotine liquid is "medical grade". Is it certified as such? By who? I'll bet that it's not dispensed by a licensed pharmacy.
And your "vape pen" or "e-cig" or whatever is just as problematic, and also in need of real regulation. Durable medical equipment, these are not. Since it's still a grey-market semi-legit industry, they're mostly built in the darkest pits of China, of the cheapest... and not medical grade... parts and similarly subpar batteries... lithium batteries. There've already been a number of cases of them exploding, sometimes while charging, sometimes while in use, and sometimes just randomly. Basically, they're "hoverboards" in miniature.
Actually, I don't especially begrudge anyone their drug of choice. In the case of smoking or "vaping", it's just the method of ingestion that I find obnoxious. But I have an inherent distrust of the claims of head shops about their wares. Even in tolerant states like California, they're still unregulated and fairly sketchy outfits.
The Star Wars universe has a serious problem with technological stagnation.
It's not just analog levers and such, which you would actually expect a "hot dog" pilot like Han Solo to prefer over a Star-Trek-like "tell the computer what you'd like the ship to do and let it tend to the details" interface. The general advancement of technology is stagnant at best, and is possibly regressing.
Consider that in A New Hope, the heros are able to plug R2-D2 into the Death Star and "interpret the entire imperial network". At this point, R2-D2 is at least 30-year-old kit. That's the equivalent of being able to use a Macintosh Plus, IBM PC AT, or Trash-80 Color Computer 2, to completely pwn the Pentagon. Obviously, something is seriously wrong there.
You really can't compare civilian technology, given that the original movies and Ep. 7 all take place in the ass-end of space. But consider that the military state-of-the-art has actually regressed. Clone troopers could actually hit their targets, and their armor was actually useful. By Ep 4, the cloning technology has already been lost, their hardware has regressed, and the armor has become useless. TIE fighters underperform the fighters that the clone troopers utilized. Not a single battle droid is seen after. Imperial ships are, in general, manpower-intensive to an almost absurd degree (I believe the complement given for the crew size of a Star Destroyer is 32,000 (!!!).). And, FFS, we have better computer control and targeting foe weapons systems NOW than is evident in the entire Star Wars universe. A US Navy Aegis cruiser or destroyer could down an entire ISD's complement of TIE fighters (72) and have missiles and CWIS rounds to spare.
It gets worse if you consider expanded universe material such as KOTOR to be canon. That brings the period of total stagnation to literally *thousands* of years.
> Also, how can Cupertino be broke, I would imagine > property taxes there would be through the roof, > housing prices certainly are.
Prop 13.
The baby boomers decided a long time ago that they would rather take a few extra vacations every year than fund the schools and infrastructure that would enable the following generations to enjoy the same level of wealth that they were handed by the WW2 generation.
Slashdot Mirror
The main problem with those self-checkout terminals isn't the scanner. It's the scale for the platform you're supposed to put your stuff on after scanning to make sure you scan all of your stuff. The scales are frequently out of calibration. And since California mandated the paper bag fee and most people bring re-usables now; it gets confused about the added weight of the grocery bags. Pretty much every time I goto Safeway and try to use the thing... which I avoid unless the other lines are too long... the employee they have monitoring them has to override it for me. (I use fairly hefty canvas bags, so it probably thinks I'm trying to steal a pint of ice cream or something. The scanner and card reader have never given me trouble though.
For my own .02, I'd mention that there are already a number of restaurants, both singular and small chains, in my area that already have iPad kiosks for ordering, or an iPhone app I can use to pre-order. Usually these are an optional convenience, but at Eatsa they're the only way to order. I've come to prefer these, when available, over placing my order with a cashier. And I'm not some Scrooge McDuck caricature who hates interacting with anyone who makes less money than I do. It's just because it's a superior way to do what fast food cashiers do.
With a self-order kiosk or app, the menu is clear and unambiguous. It doesn't suffer from the lack of space on menu boards, leading one to wonder if an item is discontinued or simply not being actively promoted. What modifications and substitutions are available, and how much they cost, is also clear and unambiguous. Done correctly, these systems can be tied into the inventory system, so an ingredient is unavailable it's simply not shown on the app. ApplePay or a credit card swipe is more convenient and sanitary than handling cash. And if there's a problem with my order, the emailed receipt with the details of what I entered makes it clear exactly who was at fault and whether I should suck it up because I ordered the wrong thing, or if they didn't deliver what I'd ordered and I need to have them replace it.
As more places try this system of ordering, I think more customers will realize its advantages. And whether the restaurants are motivated by the wage increase or not, the writing is on the wall here. After all, how often do people actually go into the bank and withdraw money via a human teller, vs. just using an ATM?
Sales and support for their enterprise customers, I'd expect. Large customers tend to want a dedicated account manager and support engineer; no matter how reliable the product or service. My own employer for example has a rep from Amazon to "support" us. So far as I can tell, his main function is to pass along the occasional tidbit of NDA'd AWS roadmap to us in case it's something we'd want to be ready to use; and to pass the occasional feature request/suggestion back to Amazon. But we use enough of their services than when one of our own higher-ups said: "We'd like a dedicated account rep whom I can get on the phone any time I think there's an issue.", Amazon was happy to comply (And bill us for his salary, I'm sure.)
Also, the vast majority of all businesses fail. And that's no less true in tech. Failing businesses mean layoffs. And a lot of businesses being started means a lot of businesses failing. What would be more illuminating would be data as to how long the laid-off workers stay out of work, vs. bouncing into another startup or, as you mention, one of the larger companies.
Personally, I'm not going to start worrying until the contacts from recruiters trying to lure me out of my current job falls below a dull roar.
Indeed. A few weeks back, when it came out that some Facebook employees were enquiring if and how Facebook should act to prevent Trump winning the presidency, Zuckerberg shot them down. Also, Facebook is a sponsor of the republican party and their national convention this year in Cleveland. Zuckerberg is an east-coast (Westchester county), prep-school, ivy-league, blue blood. And he's known to pal around with the likes of Chris Christie.
Sure, a lot of liberal people work at Facebook. And maybe some of the left-leaning curators injected their own biases, consciously or not, into the feeds. But no way was it a result of a top-down policy.
Sabine Schmitz is definitely a good driver. And she was entertaining in the Top Gear segments featuring her. But can she carry the whole show as a presenter? It's one thing to be entertaining in a segment. It's another thing to present the whole show... repeatedly over the season/series... and remain as entertaining.
And Schmitz would pretty much have to carry the whole show herself. The Stig doesn't talk. Chris Evans is okay for a bit, but gets tedious after about ten minutes. Joey from Friends... not only is he completely out of place, but is there anyone from that pantheon who is *not* totally insipid? And the others are so forgettable, I've already forgotten who they are.
You know... I once gave Truman the benefit of doubt; knowing that it was a different kind of war than any in my lifetime, and I wasn't there and making the decisions. I thought there was no way I could crawl into his mind when he was making the decisions. As it turns out, though, Truman kept diaries. And excerpts are published on the internet. I stopped reading when I saw the dehumanizing racism... the references to the Japanese people as "japs" and an individual as "the jap". That showed me what I needed to know about his thought processes and the kind of man he was. And he no longer gets the benefit of my doubt.
What amazes me is the fact that there are people who try to hold the current generation of Japanese... of any nationality actually... to blame for the misdeeds of old dead people from whom they happen to be descended. Real life is not Star Trek, and we are not Klingons. The "Sins of the Father" do not dishonor the next seven generations of real human beings.
Every decision maker involved in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is long dead. And if any members of the flight crew are still breathing, they're not long for this world. The same is true of Pearl Harbor, Dresden, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Bataan, etc. To continue to bear a grudge, especially when you're not even the actual person who was wronged, and double especially against people who weren't involved and likely not even born at the time; is just batshit irrational.
There was a story a few weeks ago about Facebook employees being upset that, when they wanted to use Facebook as a platform to prevent Trump from becoming president and how to so do, Zuckerberg shot them down. Facebook is also sponsoring Trump's national Republican convention in Cleveland. So no, Facebook does not have a top-down policy to suppress the republicans.
That doesn't mean that some random manager didn't tell a contractors to manipulate the "trending now" lists. And it doesn't mean that curators didn't inject their own biases, knowingly or not. Facebook is a big company, after all. But the notion that this is some big mind-control conspiracy? Absurd.
Also, it's worth noting that the original source for these allegations is an article from Gawker. And frankly, if that pack of asshats told me that the sun was hot and the sky blue, I'd still go outside and double-check before trusting their word.
Or you start a write-in campaign for Mr. Robert Drop Tables.
Obligatory xkcd:
https://xkcd.com/327/
Cute straw man. But that's an invalid analogy. Running an web server on port 80 is, by definition and RFC, an invitation with the message: "Come on in, look around, anywhere you can get to, go."
If you want to play the "house" analogy, the correct one is an open house that you've placed up for sale. You've invited the public in, with open doors, open windows, open rooms, for them to roam where they wish. But outside the rooms you've carefully curated for show; behind one door there is a basement into which you've dumped any unsightly furniture, appliances, or various other rubbish bits you don't really want the public to see as part of the sales process. This is also where the furnace, water heater, and various other infrastructure is located and visible. You've not marked or locked this door. And there's a loose step and the lights have gone, but you've overlooked this in prepping the rest of the house. One of the people who've come into your open house opens that door, stumbles on the step in the dark, and does you the courtesy of informing you of the hazard. Then, instead of being thanking him, being glad that no one was hurt, and fixing the step and lights; you flip your shit and fabricate some way to get the samaritan arrested.
It's not just about identity theft material. Plenty of parents certainly believe that it's their right... their duty even... to publicly humiliate their children. I'm really not sure how that could escape your notice. It's so pervasive that it's even become the sort of pop-culture cliche that makes it into Volkswagen commercials.
Well, there's also the issue that fingerprinting is for criminals and should never be a condition of employment. These onerous rules are imposed specifically to drive businesses like Uber and Lyft out of a market. If they'd complied, next year there would just be some new regulation to meet.
Yeah, I read Starship Troopers too. In the real world, plenty of fools and paranoiacs find their way into both the military and the government. So your solution doesn't address the problem at hand.
There is the old saying: "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.". If Uber and Lyft let themselves get bullied into submission in one place, doesn't that set the precedent for it to happen everywhere? Hell, Google even left the largest market in the world when pushed too far. And we celebrated that move.
I would expect that it was simply analytics. Take the ZIP codes in a city. Amazon knows the number of prime subscribers in each ZIP code. They know the dollars worth of sales in every ZIP code. Divide either figure by the square mileage of the ZIP code, and you get an easy metric. If it's above a certain threshold, add same-day. If it's not, don't. I'm sure in reality, the metrics are more complex... a combination of the two I mentioned, plus travel speeds on the roads in each ZIP code, distance from distribution nodes, lossage and replacement figures from packages that go missing, rental and administration of Amazon lockers if a lot of customers in that ZIP code use them, and so on. But I would bet good money that the decisions were 100% data-driven. I really, Really, REALLY doubt that Jeff Bezos has issued a directive that Amazon avoid offering services to it's non-white customers.
Well, there are plenty of objective measures you could use... SAT scores, for example. You could require a 1200 on the classic, or 1800 on the new recalibrated scale. Neither grammar rules nor mathematics have any racial or gender bias to them. It's not perfect, of course. Most obviously, the verbal section may be problematic for immigrant citizens for whom english is not their first language. And any examination is prone to some degree of studying to the test. Though I'm a bit less concerned about the latter. If you care enough about voting and citizenship to study for the exam in the first place, it's much more likely that you care enough to educate yourself on the issues as well. The point is, though, that it is certainly ought to be possible to come up with some examination that's neutral and blind to the civil rights act characteristics.
Sure, there's a bit of fail on the part of the airline. The Washington Post article though seems to indicate significantly less stupidity on the part of the airline and the authorities than in other cases such as that UC Berkeley student who was forbidden from flying for speaking in arabic to his uncle. In this case, most of delay was from the false accuser faking illness. Only after a period of feigned sickness did she leave her seat, speak to the flight crew, and make her accusation. Dr. Menzio was then briefly interviewed and allowed to fly, while his accuser was taken off the plane and sent home on another flight.
That's less than the ideal outcome, of course. One shouldn't be able to delay a whole planeload of passengers by pretending to be sick in the first place. If you're too sick to fly, get off. Otherwise stay onboard, suck it up, and suffer. But, barring a legitimate life-threatening emergency, the flight should keep to its schedule. And once the false accusation was made, they should have just told her to shut up and quit being stupid, or get off the plane herself.
But even when the authorities overreact (As in the case of that UCB student. And yes the airline employees and LEOs should be punished themselves for that debacle.) the root cause is still that fist vicious
little bigot who decided to falsely accuse an innocent person of being a terrorist in the first place. So yeah... while the airline and law enforcement deserve some criticism in this case (And some ended careers in the other.), the hammer does also need to be dropped... hard and without mercy... on the original false accuser.
This times a thousand. Filing false police reports is a crime. Perjury is a crime. There's a civil tort for libel or slander. And there's probably a whole slew of other legal penalties for falsely accusing someone of a crime that don't come to me pre-coffee. Hell... it's such an old taboo that there's even a commandment on the subject.
So why the hell are we not applying massive penalties to these shitwads who make up false accusations of terrorism? The airline should refund everyone on the plane their airfare, and take sue the accuser into the dirt for compensation. Then put her on trial and throw her away into prison for the false report.
Oh yeah... there should also be a social penalty. Those bigots should be ruthlessly named, shamed, and ridiculed.
Have you seen the ridiculous-sounding names of some companies these days? Do you remember the one from the dotcom days? Silly names like "Yik Yak" or "Yahoo!" are fairly common; as are made-up non-words like "Inktomi", as are deliberate misspellings like "Google" and random words that have nothing to do with their product or place in the market "Amazon". In the 1970s, "Apple" was a silly name for a computer company. A more "dignified" and "proper" name contemporary to the era would have been something like "Cuper-Tech" or "J&W Computers". No one looking at your resume cares about the name of your employers. They care about what you did at the company, and what you can do for your new company.
Yeah, GSA schedules are pretty cheap. They're utterly ruthless during purchasing negotiation since the government is such a huge customer. And the GSA often insist on those "most favored customer" pricing terms that they find so utterly unreasonable when someone else (like Apple) tries to negotiate the same.
But as you allude to, a huge part of the waste is in handouts to government contractors, not in the GSA schedules. I briefly worked for Lockheed Martin right out of college. And one of my projects involved a godawful-ancient HP-UX server. The thing pre-dated SCSI. I know that because, specifically, I had to fix up its backup processes after the tape drive bit it and started melting any tape you inserted into a puddle of goo. The peripheral interface was a relic, from before I was born, called HP-IB. Eventually, I was approved to add a mirrored hard drive to the backup mix. HP-IB hard drives being something you can't just order from Dell or Amazon or wherever; we had to goto a specialty vendor. And we paid $4500 for a 20MB external hard drive; and eventually another $6000 for a replacement tape drive.
And this wasn't for anything fancy. The HP server was just the controller and interface for a rack of diagnostic equipment. We could have replaced the whole thing with an off-the-shelf rackmount plus Linux for a quarter the cost, and had better performance and more capacity to boot. But some old DoD-approved spec sheet dictated that hardware, running that version of HP-UX, with HP-IB as the interface. So that's what we had to use. L/M spent over 10K for a 20MB hard drive and tape drive that Indiana Jones would think were obsolete rubbish if he found them in a crypt somewhere. That, plus $250/hr for my time, was of billed right on over to the government.
So yeah... as someone who was actually part of the "$600 hammers and $800 toilet seats" problem, I can vouch first-hand that it's true. In my own defense, I wasn't part of the problem for long. I left after about a year and have been steadfast about staying in the private sector, and avoiding companies that do business with the government, ever since.
So, how do you know your nicotine liquid is "medical grade". Is it certified as such? By who? I'll bet that it's not dispensed by a licensed pharmacy.
And your "vape pen" or "e-cig" or whatever is just as problematic, and also in need of real regulation. Durable medical equipment, these are not. Since it's still a grey-market semi-legit industry, they're mostly built in the darkest pits of China, of the cheapest... and not medical grade... parts and similarly subpar batteries... lithium batteries. There've already been a number of cases of them exploding, sometimes while charging, sometimes while in use, and sometimes just randomly. Basically, they're "hoverboards" in miniature.
Actually, I don't especially begrudge anyone their drug of choice. In the case of smoking or "vaping", it's just the method of ingestion that I find obnoxious. But I have an inherent distrust of the claims of head shops about their wares. Even in tolerant states like California, they're still unregulated and fairly sketchy outfits.
A mainframe that runs on Windows XP? I doubt it... a lot.
The Star Wars universe has a serious problem with technological stagnation.
It's not just analog levers and such, which you would actually expect a "hot dog" pilot like Han Solo to prefer over a Star-Trek-like "tell the computer what you'd like the ship to do and let it tend to the details" interface. The general advancement of technology is stagnant at best, and is possibly regressing.
Consider that in A New Hope, the heros are able to plug R2-D2 into the Death Star and "interpret the entire imperial network". At this point, R2-D2 is at least 30-year-old kit. That's the equivalent of being able to use a Macintosh Plus, IBM PC AT, or Trash-80 Color Computer 2, to completely pwn the Pentagon. Obviously, something is seriously wrong there.
You really can't compare civilian technology, given that the original movies and Ep. 7 all take place in the ass-end of space. But consider that the military state-of-the-art has actually regressed. Clone troopers could actually hit their targets, and their armor was actually useful. By Ep 4, the cloning technology has already been lost, their hardware has regressed, and the armor has become useless. TIE fighters underperform the fighters that the clone troopers utilized. Not a single battle droid is seen after. Imperial ships are, in general, manpower-intensive to an almost absurd degree (I believe the complement given for the crew size of a Star Destroyer is 32,000 (!!!).). And, FFS, we have better computer control and targeting foe weapons systems NOW than is evident in the entire Star Wars universe. A US Navy Aegis cruiser or destroyer could down an entire ISD's complement of TIE fighters (72) and have missiles and CWIS rounds to spare.
It gets worse if you consider expanded universe material such as KOTOR to be canon. That brings the period of total stagnation to literally *thousands* of years.
> Also, how can Cupertino be broke, I would imagine
> property taxes there would be through the roof,
> housing prices certainly are.
Prop 13.
The baby boomers decided a long time ago that they would rather take a few extra vacations every year than fund the schools and infrastructure that would enable the following generations to enjoy the same level of wealth that they were handed by the WW2 generation.