If you look at the 7/7 bombers, or the Manchester bomber, they were heavily invested in British culture and most of our values.
I'm calling bullshit on this. The Manchester bomber - Salman Abedi - is the one with which I'm familiar. He was from a traditional, "super religious" family, according to his neighbours.
I'm calling bullshit on this one.
The family had religious ties, but no more than many other Britons. However because the I word was involved, the media makes it out to be much worse.
As much as you try to dress it up in xenophobia, the fact is this person was a British born citizen, educated in British schools. Like it or not, British society was where this individual was born. Trying to use irrational hate and fear means that we'll never be able to treat the real cause.
Job prospects for youth post Brexit are a serious concern. Hey, but it's easier to blame That Thing You Hate.
I don't think there is _any_ chance of the Brexit negotiations not being catastrophic for the UK short-term. Long-term, the UK will have to re-apply to the EU, of course without all the special considerations they had before. But short-term, the EU needs to make an example out of the UK. It is a question of survival and the EU bureaucracy knows that. It is also very easy to do, just give the British the same conditions as any other non-EU country and they are massively screwed. I predict that is going to happen, because the whole British political landscape is living in a deranged fantasy about their worth to the EU and have done so for a long time. There is a large number of EU politicians that are glad to finally be rid of this petulant child that always needed something special in order to be satisfied and that never understood what teamwork means.
The best case scenario for the UK would be a second EU referendum. If we end up with a hung parliament, the Liberal Democrats (LDEM) will likely hold the deciding seats like they did in 2010.
LDEM are dead against leaving the EU and Article 50 can be revoked at any time, the EU has made that clear from the outset as they know that the EU will be weaker without the UK, they also know the UK will be decimated without the EU. So we can easily hold another referendum if enough politicians push for it.
The irony is that Corbyn is a eurosceptic, May was a Remainer. May had to enact Article 50 or face revolt and Corbyn is benefiting from May's bungling of Brexit. Realistically neither Labour or the Tories can be trusted to run the UK so a hung parliament is the best thing we can hope for.
My plan is to avoid travel by plane as much as I can. And if I really have to travel, then I'm going to leave my laptop at home. I don't trust the baggage handlers not to steal it, so checking in is not an option.
My plan is to sit back and wait for business travellers to raise hell. Here in Europe, train travel will eat air travels lunch even though air is faster (spending 2 hours waiting in airport lines here in Europe is rare) so the airlines will start raising hell after that. After the parties have lost so much funding, the ban will be revoked and all will be well.
Its amazing how short some people's memories are, after 9/11 they tried to entertain the idea of a laptop ban. This idea was quickly slapped down by business travellers and airlines.
History will judge these fools the same way as the inquisitors who tortured heretics to extract a confession. This is basically the same. Putting an innocent man (until proven guilty) in jail because he refuses to cooperate with the inquisition. And of course they create a precedent like this with a case involving children, so the public backlash would be limited. Where are alt-right patriots when you need them?
The so-called "Alt-Right" are in favour of this. Fascism and police states are the love child of authoritarianism the far right. If Trump could take them out of the human rights accords they would welcome it. The irony is, most "Alt-Right" dont realise that they need those rights until its too late.
Now I'd rather not wait for history to judge these fools, first because history works too slowly and secondly because history is written by the victors. If we don't oppose "alt-right" there is a chance they might win and then re-write history to favour the judges, painting them as forward thinking patriots.
The problem with the US is that Americans think that the constitution and bill of rights protects them. They don't, they are just pieces of paper and are only worth the value of the men who protect those rights. If quality people do not stand up for rights, if they meekly accept the violation of said rights because their bellies are full, houses are warm and it doesn't involve them then the result is to be ruled by tyrants and dictators. Freedom, fairness and justice are ideas, ideas that can be easily destroyed if not defended.
Sadly the somnamulant public is too comfortable and too disconnected from the individual this is happening to, to care.
It does happen, you put propane and nitrous on a turbo diesel and woot, good times.
OK, if you need to put NOS and a modified engine in a diesel to go as fast as a stock petrol car... why not just get the petrol car. I mean to go as fasts as a mildly warm hatchback a diesel needs a 4L triple turbo engine with an 18 speed dual clutch transmission. I'll just stick with my petrol for performance as it's lighter, faster and cheaper (and lightness is worth more than power in racing).
Diesel is even starting to lose at LeMans, endurance racing was pretty much the only form of Motorsports that diesels even existed in.
You know, I was thinking something like this just the other night. If WW does well, people will complain that it's just because of the gender angle. If WW does poorly....people will complain it's just because of the gender angle.
Point in short, people complain.
I'm certain the success has nothing to do with the fact Gal Gadot is smoking hot. Not like sex sells or anything.
Huh? I was watching Siskel & Ebert 30 years ago when looking for the good versus bad movies. Movie critics have been around almost as long as movie, and all Rotten Tomatoes did was bring a number of the better known or well-syndicated ones together to sort of give a statistical scoring.
Also as old as movie critics is studios blaming movie critics for their shitty movies bombing. It's a tired complaint. Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.
However most movie reviews could be bought off and in many cases, written directly by the studios. There were few exceptions like Siskel and Ebert or Margret and David... but that is also what kept them out of major publications. The fact is most papers and commercial TV would happily take payola to parrot whatever the studios wanted. The sad truth was, as good as they were they never disrupted the status quo.
It also helped that you could look up Siskel and Ebert's opinion at a moments notice, you had to watch or read their weekly publications and this was enough to make most people forget about what they panned.
They already don't check ID at the gate. They just scan the boarding pass (NOT "plane ticket") like you would scan a bar code in a supermarket. How would getting your face scanned be any faster than this?
They do check ID at the gate for international flights. However your point stands because reading biometrics against the data in my passport takes around 30 seconds compared to the 2 seconds it takes them to check my name against the one on my boarding pass.
Tickets and electronic tickets work fine. This isn't an issue. How about give us more space on the planes instead of spending money on this stuff?
This, a QR code can be read in less than a second, biometrics take longer. Australia has had biometric "smart gates" at incoming immigration at most airport, it takes at least 30 seconds to get a reliable read and match it to the biometric information on your passport. Sure this is preferable because it takes a human customs official 2 minutes to do the same job and you can have all gates open all the time. However with tickets and boarding passes this will just slow things down.
At Heathrow, almost all the check in is automated, if you dont have luggage you don't have to talk to a person until outgoing immigration. However they also keep plenty of staff around to help people with the automated check in.
Whilst I disagree with this by principle, it is not thoughtcrime.
Like many people who claim "thoughtcrime" you don't have any idea about what thoughtcrime is. Probably because you've never actually read Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Thoughtcrime was where the wrong facial expression could give you away, wearing a frown or a smile would be taken as a sign of seditious or subversive thoughts, so the term "thoughtcrime" was coined. The citizens and residents of Airstrip One would always wear a face of cautious optimism to avoid being charged with thoughtcrime.
In this case, he actually did something instead of being accused of just thinking it.
For hotels to actually be successful in clawing back the business from travel sites, they're going to have to be willing to take that 30% commission that they were giving the travel sites, and give it to the traveler as a discount.
They dont need to give us back the full 30%. Just 15-20% will be enough and many of them do if you call.
The problem is the T&C's for these sites demand that hotels cannot advertise a cheaper price than is listed on their site, This is illegal in Australia, probably most of Europe but it doesn't stop Expedia and Priceline from de-listing hotels that don't play ball.
There's an old Japanese proverb, if you believe everything you read you had better not read.
Any mention of the Daily Mail makes me think of that. A copy of the DM and it's equally contemptuous counterpart, the Sun usually find their way into the break room daily. The Daily Mail is like eating a bag of chocolate coated crisps, no nutritional value and the flavour combination is terrible. The DM is openly biased towards the extreme right however most of their articles are celebrity trash that makes E! look like quality journalism.
The Guardian is only slightly better than the DM or Sun because they use more elloquent language creating a minimum intellgence level required for readers. The DM targets the lowest common denominator.
Now I choose my news sources (read, multiple) based on a few factors.
1. Are they frequently sued for libel/slander. If yes, discount source.
2. Do they issue retractions for incorrect articles. if no, discount source.
3. Do articles present referenced, verifiable fact or opinion. If opinion, discount source.
4. Do they use emotional languages and through terminating cliche. If yes, discount source.
5. Who is funding them.
The Sun and DM fail the first four of these standards.
The last question is complex. I tend to avoid subscription and pay to read services as they have an extremely vested interest in giving their audience an echo chamber at the expense of fact and reason. Advertiser funded are a little bit more trustworthy as they need to maintain a larger audience to make money hence cant afford to be too obviously biased. Government funded are either very trustworthy or completely untrustworthy, the latter which are usually government mouthpieces like RT are easy to spot. The former tends to have a mandate to produce good content.
If they have a slant it isn't really greased by the same powers here.
The BBC is good because lefties think that it's right leaning and righties think its left leaning. If it keeps the two extremes confused, they're doing it right.
The BBC has one issue where the UK govt has neutered their ability to report of some things the UK govt does, it hasn't turned them into a mouthpeice like Russia Today. I prefer the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) because they've fought governments in Australia who've tried to gag the media (most recently the Abbott government) and they tend to publish more content.
Even if there is no difference in the price to direct booking there is one huge advantage: Expedia oversells rooms. I've had the experience of making a reservation with Expedia and turning up at a small US town in the middle of nowhere with the wife and kids on holiday to find that they overbooked the room. Fortunately, the staff had realized this and booked the only other remaining hotel room in the town so, thanks to their thoughtfulness we were ok, but after that experience, I have only ever used Expedia to find hotels and will never, ever use them again to book a room.
Booking direct has other advantages, even if you dont get a discount, you'll be ahead of the Expedia crowd in getting better rooms.
Because hotels have to pay Expedia and Priceline to get bookings, they automatically assign the worst rooms to guests who book via third parties and save the nice rooms for people who book direct.
There are three factors to getting a free or very cheap upgrade.
1) Book direct.
2) Be a repeat customer.
3) Be kind to the staff.
I've received many a room (and car) upgrade just by following these simple steps (which really are common sense) sometimes its just because they remembered me from last time. Room upgrades in the case of overbooking (or wanting to keep a few cheap rooms open for walk-ins and last minute bookings) will first go to preferred customers, then repeat customers and in both cases, will go to the ones that the staff like first. Nothing annoys a hotel receptionist more than a cheap arsehole waving a $20 in front of them thinking it gives them some kind of magic power, especially when a nice customer left a $20 tip not 10 minutes ago.
This really goes double for rental car staff, they get badly abused by so many customers because their vague request wasn't interpreted correctly and their sense of self-entitlement refuses to allow them to admit a mistake.
The company I work for frowns on workers who do not take time off. Management puts out on a regular occasion that paid time off is to be used, not stored.
And there is a legitimate reason management should do this. Perhaps they have studied the science behind this.
Numerous studies have shown that worker productivity increases with regular time off. The worker who takes 6 weeks of vacation in a year is going to get more done over the course of a year than a worker who takes 2 weeks. They may be out the office for an extra 4 weeks, but productivity increases enough that they get more done total.
Despite companies in the US resisting to increase vacation time, it's actually in their best interest to do so.
You see it's not about productivity but the illusion of control and maintaining a feeling of helplessness. If Employees felt empowered, they might start demanding other things like fair wages, paid overtime, reasonable working hours and worst of all, the boss would lose the ability to abuse them at his pleasure. The boss would have to start treating their workers with a modicum of respect, thus losing the illusion of control. If this happens, bonuses based on non-constructive KPI's will be lost, bosses will be forced to spend more time doing real work at the office instead of palming it off to subordinates. Golf games will be missed, causing a fall in course revenue, mistresses will stop receiving frequent gifts, causing the collapse of the cheap jewellery and celebrity endorsed fragrance industries.
Cant you see that European style worker protections will lead to the end of all things, even worse, you may end up with European style happiness.
In most EU countries the employer will be in trouble if they fail to let you take all your holiday. In fact they need to push you to use it all up, because if there is any significant amount (>1 day) left over it can open them up to legal problems.
And of course, EU citizens have a much higher minimum - in the UK it's 28 days, of which your employer can require you to take 8 on public holiday days like New Year's Day, but that still gives you 4 weeks a year. Currently if you do regular overtime that increases your holiday entitlement too.
In the UK you can be required to take your leave in that calendar year, in Australia you could bank leave for up to 36 months.
Some companies in the UK allow you to roll over a small amount (usually 5 days or less) because unpaid leave is a liability, they're not allowed to not pay it. I've already had a two week holiday this year and I've got 15 days left.
The more interesting question is, who the hell would want to go to that country anymore?
Right. Fewer and fewer people. But it is because of Trump. Not because flying there has become a ridiculous jump-the-hoops game that no self respecting person would ever subject himself to if he has any choice.
Hell, I'd seriously ponder flying to Canada and driving to the US if I ever have to go to any state within 1000 miles of the Canadian border.
As someone who has visited the US, it is entirely because of Trump that I'm looking at holidaying in South America and ways to avoid routing through the US. This laptop nonsense is case in point as to why. Putting nutjobs in charge is very off putting to a tourist who has a choice about where they holiday.
Except that you're wrong because the American tourism industry has already taken a divebomb, and is sure to continue even further if you can't take your laptop on a flight. https://www.independent.co.uk/...
Forget about tourism... This move will affect business travellers who are the bread and butter for airlines because the business traveller cant choose when and where they go, so they can be forced to pay higher prices. Airlines can survive a slump in tourist numbers, but a slump in business travel will kill them.
Crappy/. editing here. The summary said that the devices may be linked to the crash and the article implies that they may have caused a fire which caused the crash. Neither of these statements place blame,
A simple analogy, if you have a car crash because you were texting, the texting is the cause, but you are to blame.
I agree, except for the part about Putin being thrown out. I was under the impression that the economic consequences of corruption he brings would doom Russia. Indeed I can see it has hurt them short and long-term, and his actions have also brought economic sanctions. However, he's somehow managed to trick Russian people with propaganda, enough to keep some level of popularity despite terrible economic conditions.
Putin has (at least given the impression) that he has made Russia strong again. Russians experienced weak governance and poor economic conditions in the 90's and early 2000s. Whilst the poor economic conditions were always there, they at least had a powerful government prior to Gorby.
I have no illusions that Putin is a tyrant who got where he is through deceit and intimidation, but a strong leader is something that Russians like. I doubt he's as popular as he claims (106% approval rating or something as stupid), but I also doubt he's that unpopular either, so even with the worst case scenario with Trump, I cant see Putin going anywhere. Especially with the support of the oligarchs who really control Russia these days.
It took so long because you can't sue lawyers for malpractice. The rate at which lawyers are disbarred is about 0.08% per year. Compared to about 0.3% of doctors losing their license for malpractice. So either lawyers are 4x more honest than doctors, or self-policing by the American Bar Association is inadequate.
The corollary to that is that lawyers are 4 times less likely to be punished for improper, illegal or negligent practice.
Since lawyers insist being able to sue doctors for malpractice is vital for keeping the medical profession honest, why not let us sue lawyers for malpractice? After all, what's good for the goose...
If we're using the old goose/gander cliche, shouldn't we perform medical experimentation on the lawyers that get disbarred?
It looks like BAE has recently replaced most of its IT workforce with south Asian contractors.
OT: it's BA, not BAE. The latter is a different company concerned mainly with blowing up flying objects, along with people in them. Easy mistake to make though.
Just to clarify the parents point, BA is British Airways, a commercial airline operating out of the United Kingdom. BAE Systems, formerly British Aerospace, is a defence contractor who primarily works for the UK Government and produces amongst other things, the Harrier jump jet, the UK's Eurofighter Typhoons, M2/M3 Bradleys (via an acquisition of United Defence), Astute class submarines and Type 45 destroyers.
Despite BAE's impressive work it's the service in on BA flights that truly strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies.
Section 8 is a program that provide vouchers for people so that they can rent from private landlords.Like every other rental, it is the landlords' responsibility to maintain the premises, not the renters'.
After a fashion.
Tenants are responsible for the upkeep of the property, keeping the property in an acceptable state of cleanliness and taking reasonable steps to avoid damage. Landlords are required to repair any damage that was not caused intentionally or through neglect.
Sounds like both parties are failing in this "section 8", renters are being destructive or at the very least, neglectful and landlords are ignoring the problem until the local government does something about it. That being said, the GP has a point that benefits programs have been changed over the last 20 or so years to deliberately be dehumanising and as a result, end up being self perpetuating. A sad indictment of what our societies have become.
Slashdot Mirror
If you look at the 7/7 bombers, or the Manchester bomber, they were heavily invested in British culture and most of our values.
I'm calling bullshit on this. The Manchester bomber - Salman Abedi - is the one with which I'm familiar. He was from a traditional, "super religious" family, according to his neighbours.
I'm calling bullshit on this one.
The family had religious ties, but no more than many other Britons. However because the I word was involved, the media makes it out to be much worse.
As much as you try to dress it up in xenophobia, the fact is this person was a British born citizen, educated in British schools. Like it or not, British society was where this individual was born. Trying to use irrational hate and fear means that we'll never be able to treat the real cause.
Job prospects for youth post Brexit are a serious concern. Hey, but it's easier to blame That Thing You Hate.
I don't think there is _any_ chance of the Brexit negotiations not being catastrophic for the UK short-term. Long-term, the UK will have to re-apply to the EU, of course without all the special considerations they had before. But short-term, the EU needs to make an example out of the UK. It is a question of survival and the EU bureaucracy knows that. It is also very easy to do, just give the British the same conditions as any other non-EU country and they are massively screwed. I predict that is going to happen, because the whole British political landscape is living in a deranged fantasy about their worth to the EU and have done so for a long time. There is a large number of EU politicians that are glad to finally be rid of this petulant child that always needed something special in order to be satisfied and that never understood what teamwork means.
The best case scenario for the UK would be a second EU referendum. If we end up with a hung parliament, the Liberal Democrats (LDEM) will likely hold the deciding seats like they did in 2010.
LDEM are dead against leaving the EU and Article 50 can be revoked at any time, the EU has made that clear from the outset as they know that the EU will be weaker without the UK, they also know the UK will be decimated without the EU. So we can easily hold another referendum if enough politicians push for it.
The irony is that Corbyn is a eurosceptic, May was a Remainer. May had to enact Article 50 or face revolt and Corbyn is benefiting from May's bungling of Brexit. Realistically neither Labour or the Tories can be trusted to run the UK so a hung parliament is the best thing we can hope for.
Encrypting your dead tree notebook must have taken forever
Have you seen the state of my writing, I put most doctors to shame. Encryption is built in.
My plan is to avoid travel by plane as much as I can. And if I really have to travel, then I'm going to leave my laptop at home. I don't trust the baggage handlers not to steal it, so checking in is not an option.
My plan is to sit back and wait for business travellers to raise hell. Here in Europe, train travel will eat air travels lunch even though air is faster (spending 2 hours waiting in airport lines here in Europe is rare) so the airlines will start raising hell after that. After the parties have lost so much funding, the ban will be revoked and all will be well.
Its amazing how short some people's memories are, after 9/11 they tried to entertain the idea of a laptop ban. This idea was quickly slapped down by business travellers and airlines.
History will judge these fools the same way as the inquisitors who tortured heretics to extract a confession. This is basically the same. Putting an innocent man (until proven guilty) in jail because he refuses to cooperate with the inquisition. And of course they create a precedent like this with a case involving children, so the public backlash would be limited. Where are alt-right patriots when you need them?
The so-called "Alt-Right" are in favour of this. Fascism and police states are the love child of authoritarianism the far right. If Trump could take them out of the human rights accords they would welcome it. The irony is, most "Alt-Right" dont realise that they need those rights until its too late.
Now I'd rather not wait for history to judge these fools, first because history works too slowly and secondly because history is written by the victors. If we don't oppose "alt-right" there is a chance they might win and then re-write history to favour the judges, painting them as forward thinking patriots.
The problem with the US is that Americans think that the constitution and bill of rights protects them. They don't, they are just pieces of paper and are only worth the value of the men who protect those rights. If quality people do not stand up for rights, if they meekly accept the violation of said rights because their bellies are full, houses are warm and it doesn't involve them then the result is to be ruled by tyrants and dictators. Freedom, fairness and justice are ideas, ideas that can be easily destroyed if not defended.
Sadly the somnamulant public is too comfortable and too disconnected from the individual this is happening to, to care.
A diesel in a drag race?
It does happen, you put propane and nitrous on a turbo diesel and woot, good times.
OK, if you need to put NOS and a modified engine in a diesel to go as fast as a stock petrol car... why not just get the petrol car. I mean to go as fasts as a mildly warm hatchback a diesel needs a 4L triple turbo engine with an 18 speed dual clutch transmission. I'll just stick with my petrol for performance as it's lighter, faster and cheaper (and lightness is worth more than power in racing).
Diesel is even starting to lose at LeMans, endurance racing was pretty much the only form of Motorsports that diesels even existed in.
You know, I was thinking something like this just the other night. If WW does well, people will complain that it's just because of the gender angle. If WW does poorly....people will complain it's just because of the gender angle.
Point in short, people complain.
I'm certain the success has nothing to do with the fact Gal Gadot is smoking hot. Not like sex sells or anything.
Huh? I was watching Siskel & Ebert 30 years ago when looking for the good versus bad movies. Movie critics have been around almost as long as movie, and all Rotten Tomatoes did was bring a number of the better known or well-syndicated ones together to sort of give a statistical scoring.
Also as old as movie critics is studios blaming movie critics for their shitty movies bombing. It's a tired complaint. Anyone who seriously thought a Baywatch reboot or yet another Johnny Depp pirate film were going to be smash hits ought to be forced into early retirement.
However most movie reviews could be bought off and in many cases, written directly by the studios. There were few exceptions like Siskel and Ebert or Margret and David... but that is also what kept them out of major publications. The fact is most papers and commercial TV would happily take payola to parrot whatever the studios wanted. The sad truth was, as good as they were they never disrupted the status quo.
It also helped that you could look up Siskel and Ebert's opinion at a moments notice, you had to watch or read their weekly publications and this was enough to make most people forget about what they panned.
They already don't check ID at the gate. They just scan the boarding pass (NOT "plane ticket") like you would scan a bar code in a supermarket. How would getting your face scanned be any faster than this?
They do check ID at the gate for international flights. However your point stands because reading biometrics against the data in my passport takes around 30 seconds compared to the 2 seconds it takes them to check my name against the one on my boarding pass.
Tickets and electronic tickets work fine. This isn't an issue. How about give us more space on the planes instead of spending money on this stuff?
This, a QR code can be read in less than a second, biometrics take longer. Australia has had biometric "smart gates" at incoming immigration at most airport, it takes at least 30 seconds to get a reliable read and match it to the biometric information on your passport. Sure this is preferable because it takes a human customs official 2 minutes to do the same job and you can have all gates open all the time. However with tickets and boarding passes this will just slow things down.
At Heathrow, almost all the check in is automated, if you dont have luggage you don't have to talk to a person until outgoing immigration. However they also keep plenty of staff around to help people with the automated check in.
Thoughtcrime!
Whilst I disagree with this by principle, it is not thoughtcrime.
Like many people who claim "thoughtcrime" you don't have any idea about what thoughtcrime is. Probably because you've never actually read Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Thoughtcrime was where the wrong facial expression could give you away, wearing a frown or a smile would be taken as a sign of seditious or subversive thoughts, so the term "thoughtcrime" was coined. The citizens and residents of Airstrip One would always wear a face of cautious optimism to avoid being charged with thoughtcrime.
In this case, he actually did something instead of being accused of just thinking it.
For hotels to actually be successful in clawing back the business from travel sites, they're going to have to be willing to take that 30% commission that they were giving the travel sites, and give it to the traveler as a discount.
They dont need to give us back the full 30%. Just 15-20% will be enough and many of them do if you call.
The problem is the T&C's for these sites demand that hotels cannot advertise a cheaper price than is listed on their site, This is illegal in Australia, probably most of Europe but it doesn't stop Expedia and Priceline from de-listing hotels that don't play ball.
There's an old Japanese proverb, if you believe everything you read you had better not read.
Any mention of the Daily Mail makes me think of that. A copy of the DM and it's equally contemptuous counterpart, the Sun usually find their way into the break room daily. The Daily Mail is like eating a bag of chocolate coated crisps, no nutritional value and the flavour combination is terrible. The DM is openly biased towards the extreme right however most of their articles are celebrity trash that makes E! look like quality journalism.
The Guardian is only slightly better than the DM or Sun because they use more elloquent language creating a minimum intellgence level required for readers. The DM targets the lowest common denominator.
Now I choose my news sources (read, multiple) based on a few factors. 1. Are they frequently sued for libel/slander. If yes, discount source.
2. Do they issue retractions for incorrect articles. if no, discount source.
3. Do articles present referenced, verifiable fact or opinion. If opinion, discount source.
4. Do they use emotional languages and through terminating cliche. If yes, discount source.
5. Who is funding them.
The Sun and DM fail the first four of these standards.
The last question is complex. I tend to avoid subscription and pay to read services as they have an extremely vested interest in giving their audience an echo chamber at the expense of fact and reason. Advertiser funded are a little bit more trustworthy as they need to maintain a larger audience to make money hence cant afford to be too obviously biased. Government funded are either very trustworthy or completely untrustworthy, the latter which are usually government mouthpieces like RT are easy to spot. The former tends to have a mandate to produce good content.
If they have a slant it isn't really greased by the same powers here.
The BBC is good because lefties think that it's right leaning and righties think its left leaning. If it keeps the two extremes confused, they're doing it right.
The BBC has one issue where the UK govt has neutered their ability to report of some things the UK govt does, it hasn't turned them into a mouthpeice like Russia Today. I prefer the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) because they've fought governments in Australia who've tried to gag the media (most recently the Abbott government) and they tend to publish more content.
Even if there is no difference in the price to direct booking there is one huge advantage: Expedia oversells rooms. I've had the experience of making a reservation with Expedia and turning up at a small US town in the middle of nowhere with the wife and kids on holiday to find that they overbooked the room. Fortunately, the staff had realized this and booked the only other remaining hotel room in the town so, thanks to their thoughtfulness we were ok, but after that experience, I have only ever used Expedia to find hotels and will never, ever use them again to book a room.
Booking direct has other advantages, even if you dont get a discount, you'll be ahead of the Expedia crowd in getting better rooms.
Because hotels have to pay Expedia and Priceline to get bookings, they automatically assign the worst rooms to guests who book via third parties and save the nice rooms for people who book direct.
There are three factors to getting a free or very cheap upgrade.
1) Book direct.
2) Be a repeat customer.
3) Be kind to the staff.
I've received many a room (and car) upgrade just by following these simple steps (which really are common sense) sometimes its just because they remembered me from last time. Room upgrades in the case of overbooking (or wanting to keep a few cheap rooms open for walk-ins and last minute bookings) will first go to preferred customers, then repeat customers and in both cases, will go to the ones that the staff like first. Nothing annoys a hotel receptionist more than a cheap arsehole waving a $20 in front of them thinking it gives them some kind of magic power, especially when a nice customer left a $20 tip not 10 minutes ago.
This really goes double for rental car staff, they get badly abused by so many customers because their vague request wasn't interpreted correctly and their sense of self-entitlement refuses to allow them to admit a mistake.
The company I work for frowns on workers who do not take time off. Management puts out on a regular occasion that paid time off is to be used, not stored.
And there is a legitimate reason management should do this. Perhaps they have studied the science behind this.
Numerous studies have shown that worker productivity increases with regular time off. The worker who takes 6 weeks of vacation in a year is going to get more done over the course of a year than a worker who takes 2 weeks. They may be out the office for an extra 4 weeks, but productivity increases enough that they get more done total.
Despite companies in the US resisting to increase vacation time, it's actually in their best interest to do so.
You see it's not about productivity but the illusion of control and maintaining a feeling of helplessness. If Employees felt empowered, they might start demanding other things like fair wages, paid overtime, reasonable working hours and worst of all, the boss would lose the ability to abuse them at his pleasure. The boss would have to start treating their workers with a modicum of respect, thus losing the illusion of control. If this happens, bonuses based on non-constructive KPI's will be lost, bosses will be forced to spend more time doing real work at the office instead of palming it off to subordinates. Golf games will be missed, causing a fall in course revenue, mistresses will stop receiving frequent gifts, causing the collapse of the cheap jewellery and celebrity endorsed fragrance industries.
Cant you see that European style worker protections will lead to the end of all things, even worse, you may end up with European style happiness.
In most EU countries the employer will be in trouble if they fail to let you take all your holiday. In fact they need to push you to use it all up, because if there is any significant amount (>1 day) left over it can open them up to legal problems.
And of course, EU citizens have a much higher minimum - in the UK it's 28 days, of which your employer can require you to take 8 on public holiday days like New Year's Day, but that still gives you 4 weeks a year. Currently if you do regular overtime that increases your holiday entitlement too.
In the UK you can be required to take your leave in that calendar year, in Australia you could bank leave for up to 36 months.
Some companies in the UK allow you to roll over a small amount (usually 5 days or less) because unpaid leave is a liability, they're not allowed to not pay it. I've already had a two week holiday this year and I've got 15 days left.
The more interesting question is, who the hell would want to go to that country anymore?
Right. Fewer and fewer people. But it is because of Trump. Not because flying there has become a ridiculous jump-the-hoops game that no self respecting person would ever subject himself to if he has any choice.
Hell, I'd seriously ponder flying to Canada and driving to the US if I ever have to go to any state within 1000 miles of the Canadian border.
As someone who has visited the US, it is entirely because of Trump that I'm looking at holidaying in South America and ways to avoid routing through the US. This laptop nonsense is case in point as to why. Putting nutjobs in charge is very off putting to a tourist who has a choice about where they holiday.
I often recall this piece of sagely advice from guitarist Robert Fripp, talking to author Tony Bacon:
TB: What advice would you give a young musician?
RF: Never fly Air Iberia.
TB: No, seriously.
RF: Seriously. Never ever fly Air Iberia.
Guess who owns Iberia now?
Except that you're wrong because the American tourism industry has already taken a divebomb, and is sure to continue even further if you can't take your laptop on a flight.
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
Forget about tourism... This move will affect business travellers who are the bread and butter for airlines because the business traveller cant choose when and where they go, so they can be forced to pay higher prices. Airlines can survive a slump in tourist numbers, but a slump in business travel will kill them.
Crappy /. editing here. The summary said that the devices may be linked to the crash and the article implies that they may have caused a fire which caused the crash. Neither of these statements place blame,
A simple analogy, if you have a car crash because you were texting, the texting is the cause, but you are to blame.
I agree, except for the part about Putin being thrown out. I was under the impression that the economic consequences of corruption he brings would doom Russia. Indeed I can see it has hurt them short and long-term, and his actions have also brought economic sanctions. However, he's somehow managed to trick Russian people with propaganda, enough to keep some level of popularity despite terrible economic conditions.
Putin has (at least given the impression) that he has made Russia strong again. Russians experienced weak governance and poor economic conditions in the 90's and early 2000s. Whilst the poor economic conditions were always there, they at least had a powerful government prior to Gorby.
I have no illusions that Putin is a tyrant who got where he is through deceit and intimidation, but a strong leader is something that Russians like. I doubt he's as popular as he claims (106% approval rating or something as stupid), but I also doubt he's that unpopular either, so even with the worst case scenario with Trump, I cant see Putin going anywhere. Especially with the support of the oligarchs who really control Russia these days.
It took so long because you can't sue lawyers for malpractice. The rate at which lawyers are disbarred is about 0.08% per year. Compared to about 0.3% of doctors losing their license for malpractice. So either lawyers are 4x more honest than doctors, or self-policing by the American Bar Association is inadequate.
The corollary to that is that lawyers are 4 times less likely to be punished for improper, illegal or negligent practice.
Since lawyers insist being able to sue doctors for malpractice is vital for keeping the medical profession honest, why not let us sue lawyers for malpractice? After all, what's good for the goose...
If we're using the old goose/gander cliche, shouldn't we perform medical experimentation on the lawyers that get disbarred?
It looks like BAE has recently replaced most of its IT workforce with south Asian contractors.
OT: it's BA, not BAE. The latter is a different company concerned mainly with blowing up flying objects, along with people in them. Easy mistake to make though.
Just to clarify the parents point, BA is British Airways, a commercial airline operating out of the United Kingdom. BAE Systems, formerly British Aerospace, is a defence contractor who primarily works for the UK Government and produces amongst other things, the Harrier jump jet, the UK's Eurofighter Typhoons, M2/M3 Bradleys (via an acquisition of United Defence), Astute class submarines and Type 45 destroyers.
Despite BAE's impressive work it's the service in on BA flights that truly strikes fear into the hearts of our enemies.
Section 8 is a program that provide vouchers for people so that they can rent from private landlords.Like every other rental, it is the landlords' responsibility to maintain the premises, not the renters'.
After a fashion.
Tenants are responsible for the upkeep of the property, keeping the property in an acceptable state of cleanliness and taking reasonable steps to avoid damage. Landlords are required to repair any damage that was not caused intentionally or through neglect.
Sounds like both parties are failing in this "section 8", renters are being destructive or at the very least, neglectful and landlords are ignoring the problem until the local government does something about it. That being said, the GP has a point that benefits programs have been changed over the last 20 or so years to deliberately be dehumanising and as a result, end up being self perpetuating. A sad indictment of what our societies have become.