I am way more willing to accept that you're an idiot and didn't notice that £50 got withdrawn from your account instead of the £40 and just gave your bank a free £10 than I am willing to accept that the ATM made an error. Those things are audited to hell, they do not ever make mistakes, they have no bugs.
Sorry, that's BS. I've personally experienced getting an extra $20 bill at an ATM. Twice. And I did double-check my printed receipt against the amount issued. As I recall, a couple of bills were stuck together (money isn't the cleanest stuff around...).
The bank teller I returned the money to in each case was surprised.
Besides, even if there was a mistake on the part of the ATM, what the hell was the teller going to do? She can't deposit it back on your account, because it's not yours. She doesn't have a "unknown origin" or "miscellaneous" option on her computer. You just gave the money to the employee and they pocketed it.
Possibly. But there would have been a camera recording that happening; I doubt a bank teller would risk their job over £10 or $20. More likely, I suspect, it was reported to the manager, and the manager initiated an audit of the cash in the ATM, which would have turned up the discrepancy.
Background checks aren't always all they're cracked up to be. Where I currently work, a background check is required of all new employees. My boss told me that when he first started several years ago, he'd been on the job for about a month when he was called into the office and summarily terminated, because the background check on his name came back with the information that he'd spent time in prison for a felony. He then had to research the information and prove that he was not the same person (it turned out to be relatively easy, as the other guy was either still in prison or had gone back) before he could get his job back. They now do the check before the employee's start date, but back then, they would go ahead and hire the person before it was completed.
Actually, that was Truman. Roosevelt died before the atomic bomb was finished. He might have ordered it to be used it on Japan, but he never got the chance.
"4) abolish the electoral college"................."fixing" US elections indeed, fixing it so large metropolitan centers and states elect every fucking president you fucking dope!
I've never understood that argument. That seems to me to be more of a problem under the Electoral College than under a direct popular vote system. If 51% of a large state votes one way and 49% votes the other way, the magic of the Electoral College transforms that into a 100% win of a huge block of electoral votes. As things stand, the candidates focus on the states deemed "in play", and ignore the "safe" states for either side. Small states only matter when the electoral vote of the large states is very evenly divided, regardless of whether the popular votes in those states is similarly divided.
The 99 cent administrative fee they're talking about is not the early termination fee. The administrative fee is one of those line-items on your monthly bill that drives up the actual rate you pay per month above the advertised rate (for advertising purposes, this fee "doesn't count"). What the article is referring to is Sprint's waiving the ETF for people who object to the increase in the administrative fee strongly enough to want to switch carriers.
Nice switch from ad misericordiam to ad hominem. In point of fact, I don't download music and never have. But your blatant appeal to pity immediately brought that skit to mind. In any case, I think the recording industry's problems have more to do with stubbornly clinging to an outdated business model than with people downloading music.
Even if the President's safety isn't more important than mine, the fact is that simply by being President, the holder of that office is subject to much greater risk from people wishing to harm him for whatever reason than I am. We've lost 4 of our 43 Presidents to assassins in our history, and that number could have been higher had circumstances of other attempts been slightly different. Greater occupational risk entitles someone to greater protection from that risk. Police get guns and bullet-proof vests, fire fighters get fire-retardant equipment and breathing masks, etc.
Yes, we have procedures in place to replace the President if necessary. But it's prudent to prevent it from being necessary in the first place. The election of a President is the reflection of the will of the people of the US. If we fail to protect him, that will can easily be overridden by the actions of a single individual or small group of individuals who choose to do so. If they manage to get both the President and Vice President, we end up with someone who wasn't elected to the office at all, and who could take us in a completely unexpected direction. It is the office that's important, not necessarily the current holder of it. But we do owe that person protection commensurate with the level of risk that has already been demonstrated to exist.
In any case, the real problem I have with making the President take commercial flights isn't so much the risk to the President (though that's clearly a consideration), as it is the risk to everyone else on board. Someone determined to take out the President wouldn't care about the collateral damage.
Way to pick on a few words and totally miss the point. I wasn't addressing the President's security and safety there, although those are important considerations too. I was saying that what you're proposing amounts to putting a plane load of innocent bystanders in harm's way because you're so focused on making the point that the President is just another US citizen (a point with which I agree, BTW, although with reservations). It is impossible to secure a commercial plane in the same way as Air Force One.
Simply by being President, the holder of that office attracts the attention of people who disagree with his (or her, should we one day elect a woman) policies, and are willing to use violence to express that disagreement. There is a reason there is so much security surrounding the President; nearly 10% of our Presidents to date have died at the hands of an assassin, and there have been a few unsuccessful attempts on the lives of Presidents as well.
We have a Vice President and the laws of succession in place because, despite our best efforts, there is no way to guarantee that a President will live to serve a full term. This doesn't make it okay to disregard the safety of the President, and it certainly doesn't make it okay to say, "Well, he's just another citizen, so we're going to make him take commercial flights so he remembers that, and if someone happens to shoot down the plane he's on, the passengers can die knowing that their President shared their fate".
While it's a pleasant thought, the reality is that the President is a target of many kooks and enemies of the US. If we put him on a commercial flight, the odds are good that the flight wouldn't make it to its destination. Do you really want to put a plane load of passengers at such risk, just to satisfy your fantasy of bringing the President down to our level?
I'm thinking you don't understand the term "weapon of mass destruction". It doesn't refer to just any old weapon; it refers to a weapon capable of destroying many people (or multiple buildings, etc.) simultaneously. The types of weapons back then did their damage at the retail level; the nukes and chemical/biological agents we have today do it at the wholesale level.
It would have to be one damn big rock to kill several people at once.
People have a tendency to make typos when they are upset. The parent poster was understandably upset about the ignorance on display in the grandparent post.
Someone with a heavy Massachusetts accent would call it a 'draw'. Similarly, 'Korea' is pronounced like people in the rest of the country would pronounce 'career', and vice-versa. It's a little surreal for a transplant, such as myself.
You need to put them in with HTML tags (i.e., the letters "br" enclosed in angle brackets) or else select "Plain Old Text" in the pull-down menu next to the Preview/Submit buttons.
The point is not protectionism. The point is that the H1-B program is being used to create a class of indentured servants, who are pushing native US workers out of jobs while being exploited themselves.
After I got laid off from HP nearly 3 years ago, I fully expected to have another IT-related job long before my severance package and unemployment ran out. Instead, I've lost my house, declared bankruptcy, and am now working as a security guard, making less than 1/3 of what I used to earn with health coverage that sucks hard (nice fat deductible to discourage me from ever seeing a doctor for anything short of a life-threatening emergency, limited prescription coverage, etc.). As far as the statistics are concerned, I'm fully employed and the politicians don't have to worry about the impact I have on their precious numbers (never mind the impact their policies have had on my family and me).
In the year and a half I've been there, I've performed well enough that I've managed to become the 2nd in command and stand to become the site manager if my boss moves on. At which point I'll move up to making maybe 40% of what I used to. Sweet.
Equal doesn't mean identical. People should have equal rights under the law, no matter what race they happen to be. Yes, there are differences between races. Darker skinned people handle the sun better than lighter skinned people, and lighter skinned people do better in colder climates. As far as intelligence and ability is concerned, individual differences overwhelm any racial ones that might exist; there are brilliant and stupid people in all races.
What are you talking about? The blogger is not a Comcast employee, and this has nothing to do with employer retaliation for speaking one's mind. Way to not RTFS, let alone RTFA!
Well, I think that kind of depends on where you are, how complex and well-marked the roads are, and how familiar you are with the area. If you're in the Boston area (where I live), it's easy to feel like, "You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all different". The streets are haphazardly laid out and those responsible for putting up street signs frequently seem to be of the opinion that if you don't already know what street you're on, you don't belong here. Maps tend to be of less utility in such a situation than you might think.
Not to mention, many (most?) GPS systems will give you voice directions, not just display the visual layout. You can pay attention to the road and still listen to the directions.
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I am way more willing to accept that you're an idiot and didn't notice that £50 got withdrawn from your account instead of the £40 and just gave your bank a free £10 than I am willing to accept that the ATM made an error. Those things are audited to hell, they do not ever make mistakes, they have no bugs.
Sorry, that's BS. I've personally experienced getting an extra $20 bill at an ATM. Twice. And I did double-check my printed receipt against the amount issued. As I recall, a couple of bills were stuck together (money isn't the cleanest stuff around...).
The bank teller I returned the money to in each case was surprised.
Besides, even if there was a mistake on the part of the ATM, what the hell was the teller going to do? She can't deposit it back on your account, because it's not yours. She doesn't have a "unknown origin" or "miscellaneous" option on her computer. You just gave the money to the employee and they pocketed it.
Possibly. But there would have been a camera recording that happening; I doubt a bank teller would risk their job over £10 or $20. More likely, I suspect, it was reported to the manager, and the manager initiated an audit of the cash in the ATM, which would have turned up the discrepancy.
-Mike
Background checks aren't always all they're cracked up to be. Where I currently work, a background check is required of all new employees. My boss told me that when he first started several years ago, he'd been on the job for about a month when he was called into the office and summarily terminated, because the background check on his name came back with the information that he'd spent time in prison for a felony. He then had to research the information and prove that he was not the same person (it turned out to be relatively easy, as the other guy was either still in prison or had gone back) before he could get his job back. They now do the check before the employee's start date, but back then, they would go ahead and hire the person before it was completed.
-Mike
Actually, that was Truman. Roosevelt died before the atomic bomb was finished. He might have ordered it to be used it on Japan, but he never got the chance.
-Mike
"4) abolish the electoral college"................."fixing" US elections indeed, fixing it so large metropolitan centers and states elect every fucking president you fucking dope!
I've never understood that argument. That seems to me to be more of a problem under the Electoral College than under a direct popular vote system. If 51% of a large state votes one way and 49% votes the other way, the magic of the Electoral College transforms that into a 100% win of a huge block of electoral votes. As things stand, the candidates focus on the states deemed "in play", and ignore the "safe" states for either side. Small states only matter when the electoral vote of the large states is very evenly divided, regardless of whether the popular votes in those states is similarly divided.
-Mike
The 99 cent administrative fee they're talking about is not the early termination fee. The administrative fee is one of those line-items on your monthly bill that drives up the actual rate you pay per month above the advertised rate (for advertising purposes, this fee "doesn't count"). What the article is referring to is Sprint's waiving the ETF for people who object to the increase in the administrative fee strongly enough to want to switch carriers.
Are you sure you read the article? :)
-Mike
Nice switch from ad misericordiam to ad hominem. In point of fact, I don't download music and never have. But your blatant appeal to pity immediately brought that skit to mind. In any case, I think the recording industry's problems have more to do with stubbornly clinging to an outdated business model than with people downloading music.
-Mike
Reminds me of a Saturday Night Live fake ad: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/82/82ntexxon.phtml
"Texxon. Do what we say, and nobody gets hurt."
-Mike
Even if the President's safety isn't more important than mine, the fact is that simply by being President, the holder of that office is subject to much greater risk from people wishing to harm him for whatever reason than I am. We've lost 4 of our 43 Presidents to assassins in our history, and that number could have been higher had circumstances of other attempts been slightly different. Greater occupational risk entitles someone to greater protection from that risk. Police get guns and bullet-proof vests, fire fighters get fire-retardant equipment and breathing masks, etc.
Yes, we have procedures in place to replace the President if necessary. But it's prudent to prevent it from being necessary in the first place. The election of a President is the reflection of the will of the people of the US. If we fail to protect him, that will can easily be overridden by the actions of a single individual or small group of individuals who choose to do so. If they manage to get both the President and Vice President, we end up with someone who wasn't elected to the office at all, and who could take us in a completely unexpected direction. It is the office that's important, not necessarily the current holder of it. But we do owe that person protection commensurate with the level of risk that has already been demonstrated to exist.
In any case, the real problem I have with making the President take commercial flights isn't so much the risk to the President (though that's clearly a consideration), as it is the risk to everyone else on board. Someone determined to take out the President wouldn't care about the collateral damage.
-Mike
Way to pick on a few words and totally miss the point. I wasn't addressing the President's security and safety there, although those are important considerations too. I was saying that what you're proposing amounts to putting a plane load of innocent bystanders in harm's way because you're so focused on making the point that the President is just another US citizen (a point with which I agree, BTW, although with reservations). It is impossible to secure a commercial plane in the same way as Air Force One.
Simply by being President, the holder of that office attracts the attention of people who disagree with his (or her, should we one day elect a woman) policies, and are willing to use violence to express that disagreement. There is a reason there is so much security surrounding the President; nearly 10% of our Presidents to date have died at the hands of an assassin, and there have been a few unsuccessful attempts on the lives of Presidents as well.
We have a Vice President and the laws of succession in place because, despite our best efforts, there is no way to guarantee that a President will live to serve a full term. This doesn't make it okay to disregard the safety of the President, and it certainly doesn't make it okay to say, "Well, he's just another citizen, so we're going to make him take commercial flights so he remembers that, and if someone happens to shoot down the plane he's on, the passengers can die knowing that their President shared their fate".
-Mike
While it's a pleasant thought, the reality is that the President is a target of many kooks and enemies of the US. If we put him on a commercial flight, the odds are good that the flight wouldn't make it to its destination. Do you really want to put a plane load of passengers at such risk, just to satisfy your fantasy of bringing the President down to our level?
-Mike
No, that was Susan Oliver. The scene was from "The Cage" (the original pilot episode, which became the two-part "The Menagerie").
-Mike
Yeah, that makes sense. Bankrupt ourselves in an effort to bankrupt our potential enemies. That'll show 'em!
-Mike
I'm thinking you don't understand the term "weapon of mass destruction". It doesn't refer to just any old weapon; it refers to a weapon capable of destroying many people (or multiple buildings, etc.) simultaneously. The types of weapons back then did their damage at the retail level; the nukes and chemical/biological agents we have today do it at the wholesale level.
It would have to be one damn big rock to kill several people at once.
-Mike
People have a tendency to make typos when they are upset. The parent poster was understandably upset about the ignorance on display in the grandparent post.
-Mike
Someone with a heavy Massachusetts accent would call it a 'draw'. Similarly, 'Korea' is pronounced like people in the rest of the country would pronounce 'career', and vice-versa. It's a little surreal for a transplant, such as myself.
-Mike
You need to put them in with HTML tags (i.e., the letters "br" enclosed in angle brackets) or else select "Plain Old Text" in the pull-down menu next to the Preview/Submit buttons.
-Mike
If you click on the score, you'll see there's no moderation on this comment. It's his karma score that's making it come out at -1.
-Mike
Um.... A.D.D. much?
-Mike
You're referring, of course, to that noted climatologist, Rush Limbaugh?
-Mike
The point is not protectionism. The point is that the H1-B program is being used to create a class of indentured servants, who are pushing native US workers out of jobs while being exploited themselves.
After I got laid off from HP nearly 3 years ago, I fully expected to have another IT-related job long before my severance package and unemployment ran out. Instead, I've lost my house, declared bankruptcy, and am now working as a security guard, making less than 1/3 of what I used to earn with health coverage that sucks hard (nice fat deductible to discourage me from ever seeing a doctor for anything short of a life-threatening emergency, limited prescription coverage, etc.). As far as the statistics are concerned, I'm fully employed and the politicians don't have to worry about the impact I have on their precious numbers (never mind the impact their policies have had on my family and me).
In the year and a half I've been there, I've performed well enough that I've managed to become the 2nd in command and stand to become the site manager if my boss moves on. At which point I'll move up to making maybe 40% of what I used to. Sweet.
-Mike
Equal doesn't mean identical. People should have equal rights under the law, no matter what race they happen to be. Yes, there are differences between races. Darker skinned people handle the sun better than lighter skinned people, and lighter skinned people do better in colder climates. As far as intelligence and ability is concerned, individual differences overwhelm any racial ones that might exist; there are brilliant and stupid people in all races.
-Mike
What are you talking about? The blogger is not a Comcast employee, and this has nothing to do with employer retaliation for speaking one's mind. Way to not RTFS, let alone RTFA!
-Mike
Well, I think that kind of depends on where you are, how complex and well-marked the roads are, and how familiar you are with the area. If you're in the Boston area (where I live), it's easy to feel like, "You are in a maze of little twisty passages, all different". The streets are haphazardly laid out and those responsible for putting up street signs frequently seem to be of the opinion that if you don't already know what street you're on, you don't belong here. Maps tend to be of less utility in such a situation than you might think.
Not to mention, many (most?) GPS systems will give you voice directions, not just display the visual layout. You can pay attention to the road and still listen to the directions.
-Mike
What, are you suggesting He doesn't believe in Himself???
-Mike
How do they expect me to buy into this, when I've yet to get paid for all those emails I forwarded for Microsoft's testing!
-Mike