The people pulling or profiting from the "You owe the IRS money", "Your computer has a virus", and other assorted scams, all of them, need to go to jail, full stop. If the calls are originating in another country, then the US govt. needs to cooperate with the police in that country to make arrests happen. The US and India cooperated last year in shutting down one such scam center, so it's possible to do this.
If companies are attempting to sell legitimate goods and services but are violating the Do Not Call list, then those companies need to be fined heavily We're talking millions of dollars in civil penalties and disgorgement of profits. We need to send the message that you do not do this, ever, or there will be consequences.
and anything that either keeps me from spending an entire afternoon on public transport or taking my life in my hands trying to drive to the store is worth a pretty substantial price premium. The fact that online pricing is usually cheaper is just a bonus.
The exception is groceries and things like clothing where I might want to check things like fit or color or "feel" before buying. Or things I absolutely need now, like tools or parts or supplies to finish some kind of project that's blocking up my garage/driveway/workbench.
I suspect that as more countries and US states legalize recreational marijuana consumption, tobacconists will branch out into that market. They'll sell fancy bongs alongside the high-end cigars. "Weed sommeliers" capable of telling you the different kinds of highs you can get from different weed cultivars will become a thing, if they're not already.
For the most part, people put their phone numbers onto the Do Not Call list. They also switched from landlines to mobile phones, which are legally off limits for telemarketing, because the recipient of the call pays for the call.
That pretty much put telemarketing of legitimate goods and services out of business, and left telemarketing as an advertising venue to those who were willing to break the law in the first place either by calling people on the DNC list or by calling mobile phones. Once you're willing to break one law, what's several more? The telemarketers also moved offshore where the writ of US law mostly does not run. (Mostly. About a year ago, the US and Indian governments cooperated to bust a boiler-room full of fake-IRS scammers.)
A lot of people would suggest calling the store first before traveling any distance, but that's useless. Use the phone and call, and you get one of two answers. Either you get "Derp! I dunno!", or you get, "Sure, we got it! Come on down!" and then when you get there you find they don't have it, because the hump who answered the phone never bothered to go and look on the shelf.
I wish American ATMs dispensed $50s and $20s. They've been dispensing $20s and $10s since the 1980s, and meanwhile, inflation has meant that the USD has lost about half its value in the last thirty years.
Just like cable television, where you pay stupid amounts of money for a "package" that contains 39 crap channels you never watch just for the one channel you do want.
It's a global workforce, but housing and other cost-of-living expenses are local. Result: Americans are paying for a first-world cost of living while competing with third-world wages.
That's exactly what I was wondering. How is a concerted effort to force surge pricing any different from going on strike for higher pay? In both cases you're engaging in a collective action to refuse to work until your pay rate goes up. The only difference is that it's shorter term (minutes or hours rather than days or weeks) and there's no fixed picket line.
Telemarketers, at least the ones willing to break the law by calling people on the Do Not Call list, typically spoof caller ID, making it useless for return-call spamming. Sometimes, the spoofed number belongs to some innocent, unsuspecting third party, as with the "lower your electric bill!" scammer who called me a couple of hours ago. So at best, return call spamming would be useless and at worst you'd be harassing some innocent victim who got joe-jobbed.
There used to be a great version of the board game Risk for MacOS that I used to play in the '80s on a friend's Mac. I found a copy of it around 2000, but, it wouldn't run on OS 9 on my girlfriend's iMac nor in the Classic emulator on early versions of OSX. Miss that game.
Not a sign of a bad manager, but kind of a pair of horror stories:
Twice in the last five years I've been hired by a manager I got along great with during the interview process, only to be informed during my first few days that this person had resigned and his departure from the company was imminent. In my current role it meant that I was the lone person on my team left in the Boston office, with the rest of the team in an office thousands of miles away. In a role I was hired for five years ago, I was brought into a role I didn't have the skill set for, with the promise that I'd be given training to fill it. With the manager's departure, that promise was broken, and it was obvious that his replacement, who arrived some months later, expected someone in the role who actually knew how to do the job, and had no desire or intention of training someone.
I can hardly blame someone for leaving for greener pastures, but, both times, it's certainly left me in a difficult position. I'm someone who values good working relationships with people, and, in both cases, the loss of promising relationships with a manager has subtracted significant appeal from the job.
On a serious note, how do I avoid this in future roles? After the first time it happened, I joked that I should ask prospective managers, "Do you still see yourself at this company in six months?", but now I'm seriously thinking about asking that.
Exactly. Salary negotiation is a game and the first person to name a number loses. Asking someone their complete salary history is like saying to someone, "Let's play poker, only, i get to see all of your cards and you don't get to see any of mine." You wouldn't play poker with someone like that, would you? Similarly, don't go in to a job interview with someone like that. And furthermore, it's a red flag for how the company treats their employees. Run far, run fast.
Right now plug-in cars are mostly pretty expensive (e.g. Tesla). The primary market for them seems to be people who are wealthy enough to own single-family homes or townhouse style condos in urban environments, where it's easy enough to add a charging port in the garage or on the side of your house. What do people propose doing for charging infrastructure when plug-in cars move their way down the price scale, within reach of people who rent apartments and have to park on the street far from the nearest electrical outlet? Even if you're lucky enough to rent a place that has an off-street driveway spot for your car, good luck getting your landlord to add anything like that. Or are there going to be "public" charging ports that exact exorbitant rates for charging your car, creating yet another way in which being poor is expensive?
Without a good plan to provide equitably-priced charging infrastructure for the masses, the whole thing bears a distinct whiff of champagne socialism.
This entire contretemps is what has led me to finally dump FacePlant entirely. I was considering getting off of it until after the election, because a goodly number of my friends' postings are "all politics, all the time", and (1) that's plain boring to read and (2) it's detrimental to my emotional well-being to be in a space where peoples' outrage levels are cranked up to 11 all the time, even when I agree with them. This is just the straw that broke the camel's back. My friends know how and where to get in touch with me, if they're so inclined--I have a presence on other social media, and they can always pick up a phone and call, or text.
"one Metropolitan Police officer found the name of a victim so funny that he attempted to take a photo of the driving license and send it to his friend over Snapchat."
The parents of those kids, who got accustomed to their kids' "academic elite" status through twelve years of schooling, will also have to adjust to the fact that their children are no better than average in their new environment. Lay off the kid FFS, stop treating a "B" like it's an "F", and realize that they'll do OK in life if they manage to graduate.
Kids also need to be taught how to cope with parents who still act like a "B" is equivalent to an "F".
was the venue of choice for patent trolls for a long time, because they were notoriously friendly to plaintiffs in such cases. Looks like that particular gravy train may have stopped.
Seconded on Unchecky. Another thing crapware installers commonly do is obfuscate below multiple layers of double-negatives: "Are you sure you don't want to not install Crapware Toolbar now?" So even the reasonably savvy and aware can be misled into making the wrong choice. Unchecky helps greatly with that.
Another option is to use Ninite for installing all sorts of useful stuff, including Java. Ninite automatically unchecks all the crapware checkboxes as well.
I have a small rescue tool that includes a seat belt cutter and a spring-loaded punch for shattering a car window (e.g. if you get trapped in a car that's gone into water). My girlfriend got me that after the father of a mutual friend died when his car went off a dock into Cape Cod Bay.
Slashdot Mirror
The people pulling or profiting from the "You owe the IRS money", "Your computer has a virus", and other assorted scams, all of them, need to go to jail, full stop. If the calls are originating in another country, then the US govt. needs to cooperate with the police in that country to make arrests happen. The US and India cooperated last year in shutting down one such scam center, so it's possible to do this.
If companies are attempting to sell legitimate goods and services but are violating the Do Not Call list, then those companies need to be fined heavily We're talking millions of dollars in civil penalties and disgorgement of profits. We need to send the message that you do not do this, ever, or there will be consequences.
and anything that either keeps me from spending an entire afternoon on public transport or taking my life in my hands trying to drive to the store is worth a pretty substantial price premium. The fact that online pricing is usually cheaper is just a bonus.
The exception is groceries and things like clothing where I might want to check things like fit or color or "feel" before buying. Or things I absolutely need now, like tools or parts or supplies to finish some kind of project that's blocking up my garage/driveway/workbench.
Obviously, more Americans need to be raised with Der Struwwelpeter.
I suspect that as more countries and US states legalize recreational marijuana consumption, tobacconists will branch out into that market. They'll sell fancy bongs alongside the high-end cigars. "Weed sommeliers" capable of telling you the different kinds of highs you can get from different weed cultivars will become a thing, if they're not already.
For the most part, people put their phone numbers onto the Do Not Call list. They also switched from landlines to mobile phones, which are legally off limits for telemarketing, because the recipient of the call pays for the call.
That pretty much put telemarketing of legitimate goods and services out of business, and left telemarketing as an advertising venue to those who were willing to break the law in the first place either by calling people on the DNC list or by calling mobile phones. Once you're willing to break one law, what's several more? The telemarketers also moved offshore where the writ of US law mostly does not run. (Mostly. About a year ago, the US and Indian governments cooperated to bust a boiler-room full of fake-IRS scammers.)
A lot of people would suggest calling the store first before traveling any distance, but that's useless. Use the phone and call, and you get one of two answers. Either you get "Derp! I dunno!", or you get, "Sure, we got it! Come on down!" and then when you get there you find they don't have it, because the hump who answered the phone never bothered to go and look on the shelf.
I wish American ATMs dispensed $50s and $20s. They've been dispensing $20s and $10s since the 1980s, and meanwhile, inflation has meant that the USD has lost about half its value in the last thirty years.
On IRC we used to tell noobs that typing "/sign" followed by your sun sign would get you your horoscope. Amazing how many people fell for it.
Just like cable television, where you pay stupid amounts of money for a "package" that contains 39 crap channels you never watch just for the one channel you do want.
It's a global workforce, but housing and other cost-of-living expenses are local. Result: Americans are paying for a first-world cost of living while competing with third-world wages.
That's exactly what I was wondering. How is a concerted effort to force surge pricing any different from going on strike for higher pay? In both cases you're engaging in a collective action to refuse to work until your pay rate goes up. The only difference is that it's shorter term (minutes or hours rather than days or weeks) and there's no fixed picket line.
Telemarketers, at least the ones willing to break the law by calling people on the Do Not Call list, typically spoof caller ID, making it useless for return-call spamming. Sometimes, the spoofed number belongs to some innocent, unsuspecting third party, as with the "lower your electric bill!" scammer who called me a couple of hours ago. So at best, return call spamming would be useless and at worst you'd be harassing some innocent victim who got joe-jobbed.
There used to be a great version of the board game Risk for MacOS that I used to play in the '80s on a friend's Mac. I found a copy of it around 2000, but, it wouldn't run on OS 9 on my girlfriend's iMac nor in the Classic emulator on early versions of OSX. Miss that game.
to one month's rent. I'm sure Attorney General Healey is going to be very interested in this.
Not a sign of a bad manager, but kind of a pair of horror stories:
Twice in the last five years I've been hired by a manager I got along great with during the interview process, only to be informed during my first few days that this person had resigned and his departure from the company was imminent. In my current role it meant that I was the lone person on my team left in the Boston office, with the rest of the team in an office thousands of miles away. In a role I was hired for five years ago, I was brought into a role I didn't have the skill set for, with the promise that I'd be given training to fill it. With the manager's departure, that promise was broken, and it was obvious that his replacement, who arrived some months later, expected someone in the role who actually knew how to do the job, and had no desire or intention of training someone.
I can hardly blame someone for leaving for greener pastures, but, both times, it's certainly left me in a difficult position. I'm someone who values good working relationships with people, and, in both cases, the loss of promising relationships with a manager has subtracted significant appeal from the job.
On a serious note, how do I avoid this in future roles? After the first time it happened, I joked that I should ask prospective managers, "Do you still see yourself at this company in six months?", but now I'm seriously thinking about asking that.
Exactly. Salary negotiation is a game and the first person to name a number loses. Asking someone their complete salary history is like saying to someone, "Let's play poker, only, i get to see all of your cards and you don't get to see any of mine." You wouldn't play poker with someone like that, would you? Similarly, don't go in to a job interview with someone like that. And furthermore, it's a red flag for how the company treats their employees. Run far, run fast.
Right now plug-in cars are mostly pretty expensive (e.g. Tesla). The primary market for them seems to be people who are wealthy enough to own single-family homes or townhouse style condos in urban environments, where it's easy enough to add a charging port in the garage or on the side of your house. What do people propose doing for charging infrastructure when plug-in cars move their way down the price scale, within reach of people who rent apartments and have to park on the street far from the nearest electrical outlet? Even if you're lucky enough to rent a place that has an off-street driveway spot for your car, good luck getting your landlord to add anything like that. Or are there going to be "public" charging ports that exact exorbitant rates for charging your car, creating yet another way in which being poor is expensive?
Without a good plan to provide equitably-priced charging infrastructure for the masses, the whole thing bears a distinct whiff of champagne socialism.
This entire contretemps is what has led me to finally dump FacePlant entirely. I was considering getting off of it until after the election, because a goodly number of my friends' postings are "all politics, all the time", and (1) that's plain boring to read and (2) it's detrimental to my emotional well-being to be in a space where peoples' outrage levels are cranked up to 11 all the time, even when I agree with them. This is just the straw that broke the camel's back. My friends know how and where to get in touch with me, if they're so inclined--I have a presence on other social media, and they can always pick up a phone and call, or text.
"one Metropolitan Police officer found the name of a victim so funny that he attempted to take a photo of the driving license and send it to his friend over Snapchat."
Peter Ian Staker?
The parents of those kids, who got accustomed to their kids' "academic elite" status through twelve years of schooling, will also have to adjust to the fact that their children are no better than average in their new environment. Lay off the kid FFS, stop treating a "B" like it's an "F", and realize that they'll do OK in life if they manage to graduate.
Kids also need to be taught how to cope with parents who still act like a "B" is equivalent to an "F".
was the venue of choice for patent trolls for a long time, because they were notoriously friendly to plaintiffs in such cases. Looks like that particular gravy train may have stopped.
Big difference: BDSM is all about consent, while systemd was shoved down everyone's throat while everyone's safewords got ignored.
Seconded on Unchecky. Another thing crapware installers commonly do is obfuscate below multiple layers of double-negatives: "Are you sure you don't want to not install Crapware Toolbar now?" So even the reasonably savvy and aware can be misled into making the wrong choice. Unchecky helps greatly with that. Another option is to use Ninite for installing all sorts of useful stuff, including Java. Ninite automatically unchecks all the crapware checkboxes as well.
I have a small rescue tool that includes a seat belt cutter and a spring-loaded punch for shattering a car window (e.g. if you get trapped in a car that's gone into water). My girlfriend got me that after the father of a mutual friend died when his car went off a dock into Cape Cod Bay.
"Character is what you are in the dark."
—American evangelist Dwight L. Moody, as quoted by Lord John Whorfin in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension