I like this line of reasoning. I think the term for the culture that is developing would be a 'liability culture'.
Parent's admited oversimplification left out an important fact, though: that guilt and shame are not mutually exclusive. As presented, they appear to be alternatives on the same level. I suggest that they are on different levels, that the altenatives are between guilt and no guilt, between shame and no shame.
Ideally, in a perfect society, guilt should be enough. Each person ought to be able to recognize his failings and atone for them. I our less-than-perfect society, when guilt fails - as it often does - we have shame on the next level down, in which other's knowledge may serve to correct a person.
In this model, liability, or having to admit that you are wrong, is the third level, and serves as the safety net when guilt and shame are not sufficient. It is ultimately stronger in that it entails the use of force against the person and/or his property.
True, it is nasty, but it is better than no safety net.
The writer has obviously never been a CEO, or even stopped for more than ten seconds to think about what it might be like to be one, and what the reponsibilities are.
( Quotes from TFA are in italics )
... Condemning actions, pushing out wrongdoers and apologizing for mistakes counts as leadership right after a scandal breaks. Three weeks in it looks like standard corporate ass covering.
Maybe he likes to think before he acts, maybe even consult a lawyer or two. Do the stockholders really want a CEO who shoots from the hip? Especially on issues as important as this? We're talking about a multi-million dollar company here that is front page news. The decisions are big, maybe big enough to make or break the company. I'd take a week or three to think if I were making decisions on that scale.
Second, he took no questions, choosing instead to let an investigative attorney who works for him, do the talking.
He hired a pro to do the job right. I'll bet he hires a geek to run his IT dept, and an accountant to do his bookkeeping. Probably even has a professional janitorial staff clean his office. One of the primary rsponsibilities of management is to find good people and then delegate.
Lastly, he refused to do the obvious: acknowledge that HP's leak investigation was a bad idea from the beginning.
When you have an employee who is doing things that - in your opinion as managment - hurt the company, it is your obligation to the stockholders to find out who it is and stop them. Whether they be leakers, thieves, whatever, the CEO is responsible to the shareholders. Had nothing been done to stop leakers, and had that course of action turned out badly, then he looks even worse.
Not to demean their accomplishments ( I used to fly amateur - and model - rockets too, and greatly anjoyed it ) but let me know when they get into orbit. That is when really useful things can be done.
I'd contribute to a prize for that.
"Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one."
Sorry, but I disagree with one part what is otherwise an insightful post. Some people do benefit from shoddy vote counting equipment. Who? The party machinery of the two major parties who already have people in the polling places.
There are three qualifications for a person(s) who benefits:
1) they have to have a reasonable excuse for being in physical proximity to the machine.
2) They have to have a reasonable excuse for having a key. According to TFA, this is easy.
3) They have to be part of a group for whom a small margin of change change results in a benefit. ( if a Dem or Rep gets 51% instead of his predicted 48%, nobody really suspects. When some third party candidate gets 51% instead of his predicted 3.5%, that is too obvious. )
There are people who benefit. Unfortunately, these are the same bunch of people who give their stamp of approval on voting machines. The wolves are in charge of the henhouse here.
The constant privacy concerns on slashdot ( which, btw, I tend to agree with ) are, in this case, focused on the wrong end. The important issue is not the number of public cameras ( as at least one poster has noted, they are in a public area where you could have no expectation of privacy anyway ), but who has access to the other end.
A public webcam, which anybody can look at on the net, is very different from a public cam which only the cops get to look at. The people who control the data get to control the facts.
Rather than bemoaning the number of cameras and now their accompaning audio, you should be complaining about the fact that you don't have access to them.
Public crime is like bugs: if there are enough eyeballs, the problem will be fixed.
A teacher of mine back in the 70's told us about a hard drive - the size of a large washing machine, early 60's - whose bearings froze up. All of that rotational energy was transfered to the case, which ripped loose and chased him around the room, bouncing off the walls.
"Well, it's legal in this case, but it has nothing to do with our constitutional notion of free speech or the intellectual foundations of liberal democracy. Free speech does not establish an obligation for anyone to listen."
Also, for L4 and L5 to be stable, the Jupiter-like planet has to be about 25 times less massive than the sun, or smaller ( 24.7 ? I forget the exact number. ) As the sun gets small enough for L4 and L5 to be cool enough, the ratio drops below the crucial figure, and even L4 and L5 are not stable.
L4 and L5 might exist, but as TFA notes the Hot Jupiter would have an orbit smaller than Mercury. They would be too hot. Even with an R or N, I suspect. They also would probably be gravity locked, which tends to produce lethal weather.
A week or so ago there was a thread here about stolen computers calling home. The problem still remaining was that most of them did not have GPS and could tell anybody where they were. However, if there were some central database of siesmiographic info, a computer could figure out where it was by triangulating the data from known locations.. Then it could call home and say "This is where I am. Come get me."
If you look more closely at
http://www.criminalattorney.com/pages/firm_article s_citizens_arrest.htm, which parent claims supports his position, you will note that the attorney quotes the California Penal Code:
A private person may arrest another: 1. For a public offense committed or attempted in his presence. 2. When the person arrested has committed a felony, although not in his presence. 3. When a felony has been in fact committed, and he has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed it. (C.P.C. 837).
He then proceeds to say: Unlike the California statute, which only permits citizen's arrests in cases of felony...
He is clearly in error here, for a 'public offense' includes virtually all felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions. This guy is trolling for clients.
To be precise about the definition of a 'public offense', I quote from ca.gov ( www.boc.ca.gov/Regulations/2004/RestitutionStats20 04.pdf ):
"CRIME" AND "PUBLIC OFFENSE" DEFINED.
A crime or public offense is an act committed or
omitted in violation of a law forbidding or
commanding it, and to which is annexed, upon
conviction, either of the following punishments:
Death;
Imprisonment;
Fine;
Removal from office; or,
Disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of
honor, trust, or profit in this State.
In the state of California ( where the sidewalk squashing occurred, BTW ) if you see it committed, you can make a citizen's arrest for almost anything. A felony, a misdemeanor, an infraction. Even something punishable by a fine. Even - as GP said - for jaywalking. The few offenses that are not 'public offenses' are things like jumping bail where it is not a violation of law, but a violation of a court order. All 49 other states are similar.
Most Americans do not seem to realize that in English common law - which is much of the bedrock of American law - the power to arrest is in theory the right of a citizen, and the cops are employees of the citizenry. ( This is why police in England originally carried whistles. They were to use them to alert or wake up the citizens who then would make the arrest. )
As we slowly become a police state, these roles are being reversed. Now, many people believe that only the cops can arrest.
My local Amvets thrift store has a pile of baskets as you walk in. And most of them have sombody else's logo on them. Not that I'm claiming that they are stolen, mind you, but there does seem to be a large market for secondhand baskets.
As the owner of a tangible piece of property, or as an agent ( employee ) of the owner, you have the right to grab people who steal from you. You can make a citizen's arrest. You just have to be able to convince a judge/jury in civil court that your actions are reasonable. You can use force, just no more than a judge considers neccesary.
You are a perfect example of what I am talking about in GP. ( And I mean no offense by saying that. ) Your employers decided to give you an incentive not to prevent shoplifting. They told you only the bad side of grabbing shoplifters. And you responded accordingly.
It all makes sense from their point of view. When they have multi-million dollar deep pockets they are a target for a lawsuit by a lawyer operating on contingency. Even if that lawyer knows that his odds of winning are only 1 in a 1000, it still makes sense for him to try it. So they take the low-risk approach.
But for me, whose total possesions would bring less than a 100 grand if seized and sold at fire sale, it does make sense for me and my employees to use force. I have relatively shallow pockets. I'm not a potential target for a contingency lawyer. No lawyer will touch a lawsuit against me unless the plantiff pays thousands up front.
It is kind of ironic. Criminal law codes permit them to grab people, but civil law ( as it is currently understood ) makes it unreasonable.
IANALBIAMTO (...but I am married to one )
And motivation is the key to enforcement
on
How Retailers Watch You
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I own a store ( a lot smaller than Best Buy ). I try to encourage my employees to think like the boss; to have the same goals and the same motivations. To accomplish this, one of their perks is to be able to consign merchandise here. When it sells, they get 80%, the house keeps 20%.
So they have an incentive to prevent shoplifting, for it could be their stuff going out the door. THe most extreme case was when one of my employees ran after an obvious shoplifter, and tacked him across the street. He had him pinned down on the sidewalk, stolen merchandise spilled in plain view. He yelled for the employee in the place across the street to please call the cops. The other employee refused because he 'didn't want to get involved.' After all, why should he? He was paid by the hour and got the same amount whether he tried or not.
"What we need to do is come to the realization that the ONLY way to make technically fragile public transit work is to promote an atmosphere where people do not want to attack us...
This is - IMHO - means violent retribution against anyone involved, their friends, their families, their countries, their religious centers, etc. ( Remember the couple of sentences in The Usual Suspects about the history of Kaiser Soze? I don't recall exactly, but it was something like: "...he killed their friends, he killed their families, he killed people who owed them money..." )
After the 9/11 attacks, we only clobbered the Taliban. Since it was clearly an Islamic oriented attack, backed by numerous Muslims in a handful of countries, we should have nuked Medina ( the second most important Muslim city ), followed by an announcement that if something like that were to happen again, Mecca ( the most important city ) would be next.
For those of us who like to consider ourselves civilized, this may seem a bit shocking. But it works. The people who are part of that culture know this. The crowning example is Assad, the ruler of Syria, and the city of Hama.
Hama was the third largest city in Syria, and was the Syrian headquarters to a Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood which sought to overthow Assad. In the 70's they killed several hundred people in car bomb attacks, and in 1980 tried to assasinate Assad. In 1982 Assad had finally had enough. He ordered the army to surround the city, and then to begin shelling it. Tanks, and poison gas were used also. After two weeks, the death toll was between 20 and 40,000 people.
That was 24 years ago, and the Brotherhood has not made another serious attempt to interfere with the government of Syria. Assad is still in charge. He is not a good man, and I do not admire him, but I give him credit for one thing: he knows what works in his culture.
It would not be good for any sort of marking that would hinder future development of the page.
Hmmm...true...perhaps the wiki should be divided into two sections: a 'vouched for' and an 'addendum' section; or a 'above the voucher' and 'below the voucher'. The expert of Wikipedia's choosing could vouch for the part that he considers correct, and anybody else could add newer stuff below.
Every now and then the expert would scan the newer parts, and if he liked what he saw, he could move his voucher down to include them. People could then boast "I write ATV." Or a criticism of a wiki contibutor: "He is a permanent BTV writer."
I always thought it would be a great idea if some group (a major university, perhaps) were to fork Wikipedia and make "confirmed correct" pages
Good idea, but there is no need to fork Wikipedia, just have a protected field for organizations or people who are considered athorities in their area. A cosmology article, for example, might have a note at the bottom that says "Roger Penrose has looked at this and vouches for it's accuracy". If somebody edits it, the field then reads "Prior to the most recent edit, this page was vouched for by Roger Penrose."
A person would think twice about changing something when the record would show that he thereby made it inferior.
Have you ever met a Radio Shack employee? Methinks they should all be fired (and replaced by someone who knows what they are talking about).
The most clueless Radio Sack employee that I ever dealt with was when I wanted a solar car battery charger. ( You've probably seen one, it's simply a cluster of photovoltaic cells connected to a cigarette lighter connector. Very useful for the second car that you drive once a month. ) I tried telling her what I was looking for, and she led me to a bunch of phone chargers that plugged into the cigarette lighter socket. After several more tries, it finally became obvious what the problem was. She knew that the cigarette lighter socket was connected to the battery. She knew that batteries could be charged. But she did not understand that electricity could flow either way on a wire. It was a new concept for her.
I left in a hurry, fearful that her head might explode.
Back when I was a lad, we had actually write with pen on paper, address envelopes, lick our own stamps, and trudge to the post office
You had a Post Office??? You had it easy! We only had pony express, and we had to run to catch him because he never stopped here. But the behavior was exactly the same then too...some people would take a week to chisel a response.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, it's a Roland P article, of course....
I like this line of reasoning. I think the term for the culture that is developing would be a 'liability culture'.
Parent's admited oversimplification left out an important fact, though: that guilt and shame are not mutually exclusive. As presented, they appear to be alternatives on the same level. I suggest that they are on different levels, that the altenatives are between guilt and no guilt, between shame and no shame.
Ideally, in a perfect society, guilt should be enough. Each person ought to be able to recognize his failings and atone for them. I our less-than-perfect society, when guilt fails - as it often does - we have shame on the next level down, in which other's knowledge may serve to correct a person.
In this model, liability, or having to admit that you are wrong, is the third level, and serves as the safety net when guilt and shame are not sufficient. It is ultimately stronger in that it entails the use of force against the person and/or his property.
True, it is nasty, but it is better than no safety net.
The writer has obviously never been a CEO, or even stopped for more than ten seconds to think about what it might be like to be one, and what the reponsibilities are.
... Condemning actions, pushing out wrongdoers and apologizing for mistakes counts as leadership right after a scandal breaks. Three weeks in it looks like standard corporate ass covering.
( Quotes from TFA are in italics )
Maybe he likes to think before he acts, maybe even consult a lawyer or two. Do the stockholders really want a CEO who shoots from the hip? Especially on issues as important as this? We're talking about a multi-million dollar company here that is front page news. The decisions are big, maybe big enough to make or break the company. I'd take a week or three to think if I were making decisions on that scale.
Second, he took no questions, choosing instead to let an investigative attorney who works for him, do the talking.
He hired a pro to do the job right. I'll bet he hires a geek to run his IT dept, and an accountant to do his bookkeeping. Probably even has a professional janitorial staff clean his office. One of the primary rsponsibilities of management is to find good people and then delegate.
Lastly, he refused to do the obvious: acknowledge that HP's leak investigation was a bad idea from the beginning.
When you have an employee who is doing things that - in your opinion as managment - hurt the company, it is your obligation to the stockholders to find out who it is and stop them. Whether they be leakers, thieves, whatever, the CEO is responsible to the shareholders. Had nothing been done to stop leakers, and had that course of action turned out badly, then he looks even worse.
Not to demean their accomplishments ( I used to fly amateur - and model - rockets too, and greatly anjoyed it ) but let me know when they get into orbit. That is when really useful things can be done.
I'd contribute to a prize for that.
"Finding out that computer systems can be tampered with and that some large-scale enterprise-class systems can have shoddy security, physical and otherwise, should come as no surprise to us, particularly in this community. On this particular issue, a generic security key is used because of key management issues and the fact that casual access is what's being prevented. Neither of which excuses this or any of the numerous other glaring shortcomings and flaws in this equipment. No one - citizen, politician, or party - benefits from universally shoddy security on electronic voting systems. No one."
Sorry, but I disagree with one part what is otherwise an insightful post. Some people do benefit from shoddy vote counting equipment. Who? The party machinery of the two major parties who already have people in the polling places.
There are three qualifications for a person(s) who benefits:
1) they have to have a reasonable excuse for being in physical proximity to the machine.
2) They have to have a reasonable excuse for having a key. According to TFA, this is easy.
3) They have to be part of a group for whom a small margin of change change results in a benefit. ( if a Dem or Rep gets 51% instead of his predicted 48%, nobody really suspects. When some third party candidate gets 51% instead of his predicted 3.5%, that is too obvious. )
There are people who benefit. Unfortunately, these are the same bunch of people who give their stamp of approval on voting machines. The wolves are in charge of the henhouse here.
The constant privacy concerns on slashdot ( which, btw, I tend to agree with ) are, in this case, focused on the wrong end. The important issue is not the number of public cameras ( as at least one poster has noted, they are in a public area where you could have no expectation of privacy anyway ), but who has access to the other end.
A public webcam, which anybody can look at on the net, is very different from a public cam which only the cops get to look at. The people who control the data get to control the facts.
Rather than bemoaning the number of cameras and now their accompaning audio, you should be complaining about the fact that you don't have access to them.
Public crime is like bugs: if there are enough eyeballs, the problem will be fixed.
A teacher of mine back in the 70's told us about a hard drive - the size of a large washing machine, early 60's - whose bearings froze up. All of that rotational energy was transfered to the case, which ripped loose and chased him around the room, bouncing off the walls.
"Well, it's legal in this case, but it has nothing to do with our constitutional notion of free speech or the intellectual foundations of liberal democracy. Free speech does not establish an obligation for anyone to listen."
But don't most people survive flogging?
Maybe I'm old-fashioned. But in my day we called it 'lying'.
Thank you, editors.
Also, for L4 and L5 to be stable, the Jupiter-like planet has to be about 25 times less massive than the sun, or smaller ( 24.7 ? I forget the exact number. ) As the sun gets small enough for L4 and L5 to be cool enough, the ratio drops below the crucial figure, and even L4 and L5 are not stable.
L4 and L5 might exist, but as TFA notes the Hot Jupiter would have an orbit smaller than Mercury. They would be too hot. Even with an R or N, I suspect. They also would probably be gravity locked, which tends to produce lethal weather.
L2 ( the only shady one ) is not stable. Sorry.
A week or so ago there was a thread here about stolen computers calling home. The problem still remaining was that most of them did not have GPS and could tell anybody where they were. However, if there were some central database of siesmiographic info, a computer could figure out where it was by triangulating the data from known locations.. Then it could call home and say "This is where I am. Come get me."
If you look more closely at http://www.criminalattorney.com/pages/firm_article s_citizens_arrest.htm, which parent claims supports his position, you will note that the attorney quotes the California Penal Code:
0 04.pdf ):
A private person may arrest another: 1. For a public offense committed or attempted in his presence. 2. When the person arrested has committed a felony, although not in his presence. 3. When a felony has been in fact committed, and he has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed it. (C.P.C. 837).
He then proceeds to say: Unlike the California statute, which only permits citizen's arrests in cases of felony...
He is clearly in error here, for a 'public offense' includes virtually all felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions. This guy is trolling for clients.
To be precise about the definition of a 'public offense', I quote from ca.gov ( www.boc.ca.gov/Regulations/2004/RestitutionStats2
"CRIME" AND "PUBLIC OFFENSE" DEFINED. A crime or public offense is an act committed or omitted in violation of a law forbidding or commanding it, and to which is annexed, upon conviction, either of the following punishments: Death; Imprisonment; Fine; Removal from office; or, Disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit in this State.
In the state of California ( where the sidewalk squashing occurred, BTW ) if you see it committed, you can make a citizen's arrest for almost anything. A felony, a misdemeanor, an infraction. Even something punishable by a fine. Even - as GP said - for jaywalking. The few offenses that are not 'public offenses' are things like jumping bail where it is not a violation of law, but a violation of a court order. All 49 other states are similar.
Most Americans do not seem to realize that in English common law - which is much of the bedrock of American law - the power to arrest is in theory the right of a citizen, and the cops are employees of the citizenry. ( This is why police in England originally carried whistles. They were to use them to alert or wake up the citizens who then would make the arrest. )
As we slowly become a police state, these roles are being reversed. Now, many people believe that only the cops can arrest.
As I wrote earlier, IANALBIAMTO.
My local Amvets thrift store has a pile of baskets as you walk in. And most of them have sombody else's logo on them. Not that I'm claiming that they are stolen, mind you, but there does seem to be a large market for secondhand baskets.
As the owner of a tangible piece of property, or as an agent ( employee ) of the owner, you have the right to grab people who steal from you. You can make a citizen's arrest. You just have to be able to convince a judge/jury in civil court that your actions are reasonable. You can use force, just no more than a judge considers neccesary.
...but I am married to one )
You are a perfect example of what I am talking about in GP. ( And I mean no offense by saying that. ) Your employers decided to give you an incentive not to prevent shoplifting. They told you only the bad side of grabbing shoplifters. And you responded accordingly.
It all makes sense from their point of view. When they have multi-million dollar deep pockets they are a target for a lawsuit by a lawyer operating on contingency. Even if that lawyer knows that his odds of winning are only 1 in a 1000, it still makes sense for him to try it. So they take the low-risk approach.
But for me, whose total possesions would bring less than a 100 grand if seized and sold at fire sale, it does make sense for me and my employees to use force. I have relatively shallow pockets. I'm not a potential target for a contingency lawyer. No lawyer will touch a lawsuit against me unless the plantiff pays thousands up front.
It is kind of ironic. Criminal law codes permit them to grab people, but civil law ( as it is currently understood ) makes it unreasonable.
IANALBIAMTO (
I own a store ( a lot smaller than Best Buy ). I try to encourage my employees to think like the boss; to have the same goals and the same motivations. To accomplish this, one of their perks is to be able to consign merchandise here. When it sells, they get 80%, the house keeps 20%.
So they have an incentive to prevent shoplifting, for it could be their stuff going out the door. THe most extreme case was when one of my employees ran after an obvious shoplifter, and tacked him across the street. He had him pinned down on the sidewalk, stolen merchandise spilled in plain view. He yelled for the employee in the place across the street to please call the cops. The other employee refused because he 'didn't want to get involved.' After all, why should he? He was paid by the hour and got the same amount whether he tried or not.
You're assuming that it would be spelled correctly.
"What we need to do is come to the realization that the ONLY way to make technically fragile public transit work is to promote an atmosphere where people do not want to attack us...
This is - IMHO - means violent retribution against anyone involved, their friends, their families, their countries, their religious centers, etc. ( Remember the couple of sentences in The Usual Suspects about the history of Kaiser Soze? I don't recall exactly, but it was something like: "...he killed their friends, he killed their families, he killed people who owed them money..." )
After the 9/11 attacks, we only clobbered the Taliban. Since it was clearly an Islamic oriented attack, backed by numerous Muslims in a handful of countries, we should have nuked Medina ( the second most important Muslim city ), followed by an announcement that if something like that were to happen again, Mecca ( the most important city ) would be next.
For those of us who like to consider ourselves civilized, this may seem a bit shocking. But it works. The people who are part of that culture know this. The crowning example is Assad, the ruler of Syria, and the city of Hama.
Hama was the third largest city in Syria, and was the Syrian headquarters to a Islamist movement called the Muslim Brotherhood which sought to overthow Assad. In the 70's they killed several hundred people in car bomb attacks, and in 1980 tried to assasinate Assad. In 1982 Assad had finally had enough. He ordered the army to surround the city, and then to begin shelling it. Tanks, and poison gas were used also. After two weeks, the death toll was between 20 and 40,000 people.
That was 24 years ago, and the Brotherhood has not made another serious attempt to interfere with the government of Syria. Assad is still in charge.
He is not a good man, and I do not admire him, but I give him credit for one thing: he knows what works in his culture.
It would not be good for any sort of marking that would hinder future development of the page.
Hmmm...true...perhaps the wiki should be divided into two sections: a 'vouched for' and an 'addendum' section; or a 'above the voucher' and 'below the voucher'. The expert of Wikipedia's choosing could vouch for the part that he considers correct, and anybody else could add newer stuff below.
Every now and then the expert would scan the newer parts, and if he liked what he saw, he could move his voucher down to include them. People could then boast "I write ATV." Or a criticism of a wiki contibutor: "He is a permanent BTV writer."
I always thought it would be a great idea if some group (a major university, perhaps) were to fork Wikipedia and make "confirmed correct" pages
Good idea, but there is no need to fork Wikipedia, just have a protected field for organizations or people who are considered athorities in their area. A cosmology article, for example, might have a note at the bottom that says "Roger Penrose has looked at this and vouches for it's accuracy". If somebody edits it, the field then reads "Prior to the most recent edit, this page was vouched for by Roger Penrose."
A person would think twice about changing something when the record would show that he thereby made it inferior.
Have you ever met a Radio Shack employee? Methinks they should all be fired (and replaced by someone who knows what they are talking about).
The most clueless Radio Sack employee that I ever dealt with was when I wanted a solar car battery charger. ( You've probably seen one, it's simply a cluster of photovoltaic cells connected to a cigarette lighter connector. Very useful for the second car that you drive once a month. ) I tried telling her what I was looking for, and she led me to a bunch of phone chargers that plugged into the cigarette lighter socket. After several more tries, it finally became obvious what the problem was. She knew that the cigarette lighter socket was connected to the battery. She knew that batteries could be charged. But she did not understand that electricity could flow either way on a wire. It was a new concept for her.
I left in a hurry, fearful that her head might explode.
They won't be able to find a job working with computers.
...Although, yeah, I do kinda feel sorry for them when they get laid off like that.
These are Radio Shack people. They don't know anything about computers anyway.
Back when I was a lad, we had actually write with pen on paper, address envelopes, lick our own stamps, and trudge to the post office
You had a Post Office??? You had it easy! We only had pony express, and we had to run to catch him because he never stopped here. But the behavior was exactly the same then too...some people would take a week to chisel a response.