In the U.S., a city that size likely would not have any public transit save school buses or the senior trolley. The only exception would be if it were a suburb of a larger city in which case the city's buses would extend out to the suburb. I am not sure if Innisfil is some isolated community or near a larger city, but either way this seems like a strange solution. It also seems strange that two buses are more than double the cost of one.
In the UK, a town of nearly 40,000 would have a public transport service which would link to the national rail grid. Most likely privatised of course, but we'd have it.
A gap in the other direction begins to appear in candidates with six or more years of experience, however, with white women in tech both asking for less than their white male counterparts and receiving it. Indeed, over time and across the country, white women in tech earn an average of.90 cents for every dollar made by their male peers for the same work.
The trick is you have to read more than the summary.
How are you certain they didn't ask for more and get knocked back?
I'd also like to see the percentages, companies rarely give out large percentage pay rises unless the job market is booming.
Democrats like Obama and both Clintons are very right leaning. They are no Howard Dean, Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders. Not that a 1 dimensional scale for measuring political views is a good metric, it lacks nuance. For example, I'm a Republican and believe in small decentralized government and in supporting small business owners, but I'm against the death penalty. Does that make me a liberal? Probably not.
Sounds like you've discovered what we in the ROTW call Thrid Way politics. A departure from strict left-right politics where you chose the best solution for a problem completely disregarding political philosophy, you can have a government that has both left and right policies (I.E. left on healthcare and right on trade restrictions).
BTW, there isn't really a left in the US, even Bernie Sanders is pretty much centre right on Europes scale. Obama was definately a bit right of centre, Hillary was right of him, not as far as GWB and Trump is so far beyond GWB's position that he makes GWB look like a modarate.
As for SJWs, treating people fairly is not really garbage, and has nothing to do with maxism. Most people who are upset by SJWs are upset because they've been called out on their bullshit. That most SJWs are women and are mostly targeting men has a lot to do with the vitriol that is spewed about SJWs. A lot of guys are just too old fashioned to want to here criticism from a woman. I don't care what gender someone is, as long as the criticism is valid and constructive. Usual response to SJWs is: I don't like what you're saying, so I'll mock you to take that power away from you. But that funny thing is you can't win that way (well at least *I* find it funny)
This.
A few years back, all those who complained about SJW's never used the word SJW, instead they would constantly bleat about Political Correctness. The problem is, they bleated so hard and so often that everyone started ignoring PC complains for the same reason people are starting to ignore SJW complaints... They're all bullshit.
SJW simply means "you've said something I dont like but cant rationally argue against it" and the vast majority of people now realise that. So much like PC, SJW now has little power.
When you have a choice between a Republican running as a Democrat and a Oligarch running as a Republican, is it any surprise that the latter wins?
Fixed that for you. Trump is as much a libertarian as Margret Thatcher was a communist.
And it is not just surprising that he won, it's shameful and destructive. It also says a lot about those who voted for him that they cant he was an oligarch.
Generally having a role removed from your list of duties is seen as a demotion, and the timing of this, after Ivanka's official installation in the White House, is highly suggestive that the rumored power struggle between Bannon and the Kushners has resolved itself in the Kushners' favor. Also note that there have been rumors that Bannon and Priebus weren't getting along all that well either. I don't expect Bannon to work for that much longer at the White House.
I suspect Trump was forced to remove Bannon from the NSC and will likely be forced to remove him from his other positions. Bannon might retain a strictly ceremonial position, but no actual power. Even the other republicans consider Bannon to be too extreme.
In 2035, on the cusp of losing the war Apple deployed an advanced protoype i1000 back to 1982, its job, to kill Richard Stallman whilst he was still a bearded activist.
We have enough illiterate morons to fill the grand canyon.
Despite the well spoken man on the BBC, the UK has the same problem (OK smaller population, but we could still fill the Thames twice over with idiots), there are plenty of English who couldn't speak the Queens English to save their lives. Also Australia has the same issue. If there isn't a basic account available for almost everyone, it indicates a problem with the banking system. Pensioners and retirees still need a bank account and they tend to be the most technologically illiterate (and still do most of their banking at the post office).
As much as I disagree with communism, I think a government owned bank (govt owned... not govt run) that only offers basic banking to set the minimum standard is a good idea. Want anything better than a basic transaction account, you have to go private. Private banks should set the gold standard, but not the minimum standard.
I like going to see movies on the big screen despite the fact the projector is operated by min wage slaves and the sound is turned up so loud it's blown half the speakers (which almost never get replaced), I can even get over the uncleanliness of the theatre itself (hey, try getting an apathetic teenage wage slave to run a vacuum) but what really turns me off theatres are 1. the ads and 2. the prices.
US$5.00 is sheer luxury, wanton extravagance. The cheapest I've seen a cinema ticket here in merry old England is £9, usually they're upwards of 11 squid. I also would complain about the snack bar prices (I like cinema popcorn) but I know why that is and it's not the cinema's fault. Your ticket barely covers the cost of the film royalties, snacks are how they pay for staff, rents, rent seekers, power, water, lawsuits from the people who got diabeetus from the massive soft drinks.
I lament the loss of cinemas, but its inevitable until movie studios change their pricing models to allow cinemas to make a profit. More people would come to the cinema if there were less ads and snacks were cheaper, even at current ticket prices.
An easy way to reach the large # of Americans that don't actually have bank accounts or credit. Smart.
Seriously, how many Americans are "unbanked".
That seems like an odd concept in the UK and other civilised countries where only those few repeatedly convicted of various kinds of banking and credit fraud are unable to get a free, basic account. Hell, even most of them can get one with police oversight.
Besides, given how Amazon currently works, how will the "unbanked" possibly deposit money into an Amazon account. Amazon requires me to provide a card for most purchases, I imagine this service would either require a card or bank transfers from another financial institution (again, not a problem for anyone over this side of the pond).
Based only on this description it sounds a lot like a new featured added to the existing gift card functionality already available. So it's not "amazon cash" it's "amazon adds bar code to gift cards". So effectively this is "native content" or maybe just really poorly written. Not sure which.
To me it sounds like yet another payment system adding complexity competing many other payment systems adding complexity.
PayPal did it right, they came out with a card in the standard bank card format (ISO/IEC 7810, ID-1). Apple, Google and whoever else are doing it wrong because they are more difficult to use and in most cases, are simply wrappers for a banking product that comes in a convent, ubiquitously accepted, standard ISO format.
I'd say both combined with it's low cost of operation for merchants When 30p of that £2 coffee is required just to pay for it, I'd rather use cash.
Also ease of use and relative security. If I lose cash, I only lose the face value of the notes, if my card is compromised, I could stand to lose a lot more. Given I'm not a careless oaf of an idiot, I don't lose cash on a regular basis... or ever really.
Beyond this, you cant shove plastic down a strippers G-string.
Seriously, it might be AWESOME to see some small nation switch to Bitcoin for its currency, so people would finally shut the fuck up when they see it crash under the load.
3.5 TPS. That's it. You can't run a small TOWN on 3.5 transactions per second.
As much as I agree with your point...
But how do you define a small town?
A town is widely considered to have a population of 1000 to 20,000 people, lets say a small town in the fourth (bottom) quartile of that. Up to 5000 pop. 3.5 transactions a second means that 210 transactions occur each minute, 12,600 transactions an hour, that means that every man, woman and child needs to make a transaction every 24 minutes (2.5 times an hour). This would be a difficult feat, even at multiple locations. You may experience a few seconds of delay at peak periods, other than that its not really a limitation for a small town. Now a large town of up to 100,000 pop (possibly more as towns are defined in the UK), then we're hitting a limit.
It depends. Legal tender laws only apply to debts. If you purchase the meal in an instant transaction (fast food), they can accept whatever they want to accept in trade. If they don't want to accept cash at that point, they don't have to.
For a full service restaurant where the bill comes at the end, the question is: Is that bill a debt?
Most likely, regardless of the answer to that question, they'll take cash if you raise a fuss. Can you imagine if that escalated to a police call? Cops already have to put up with all sorts of strange shit, but I'm imagining the restaurant manager rethinking a big part of his life when a cop asks him "You really want me to arrest him? For trying to pay his bill? With cash?"
A restaurant bill isn't really a debt, non-payment in these circumstances would be considered theft of service, at least in commonwealth countries but I'd be surprised if it was different in the US or Europe.
A restaurant is under no obligation to accept cash or credit cards as long as the payment methods are known to the customer before the product or service is ordered. Hence "no cheques accepted" signs that some of us are old enough to remember, personal cheques used to be a common method of payment.
When it comes to paying an actual debt, a debtor can put reasonable limits on how you can pay, or conditions on certain methods as long as its disclosed before the debt is agreed upon. For example, they can impose a credit card surcharge because they have to pay a charge to accept it or refuse to accept cash because they have no cash handling facilities. Also payment in legal tender must be reasonable. For example, if you have a £5,000 debt, a debtor can refuse to accept 2500 x £2 coins or even 1000 £5 notes where they would be obligated to accept 250 £20 notes.
The keyword here is reasonable.
Ooh, or a judge. Judges love cases that waste their time.
FYI, "legal tender" means that people are obligated to accept it in repayment of debts. If I owe you 10 ounces of silver, and I try to give you an equal "value" of Federal Reserve Notes instead, you can't refuse to accept it and then sue me for nonpayment. The courts will consider my offer of the legally-privileged notes as a full defense against that suit.
Within reason. If I owe you £10,000 I cant pay you in £2 coins. A debtor has the right to demand a reasonable form of payment. Paying in chickens means that the debtor has to wear the cost of converting chickens into whatever medium for trade is suitable for them. If the debtor is OK with that (say you owed £10,000 to KFC) then the debt can easily be paid in chickens. However if its not, debtors are within their rights to set limits on what kinds of payments they will accept.
So yes if you tried to pay a $50,000 debt in federal reserve notes worth $1 each, they can sue you for non payment.
Yes - it does seem to be a rather simple formula....
1. Check price direct from airline/rail company/hotel company
2. Check price on travel meta-search
3. Compare prices
4. Check that there are no significant differences in what you are getting
5. Pick lowest price.
6. Hotel allocates you the worst rooms.
Basically because you're punishing the hotel by making them pay commission, the hotel is not going to do any favours for you. A lot of hotels will give you the same price if you contact them. In my experience, booking through Expedia/Pricelilne or their myriad of sub brands is rarely cheaper though.
The thing is, it's nothing like buying a DVD from Amazon because that's the same product. You're not buying a product when you book a flight or accommodation, you're buying a service and yes, they will favour some over others. Those who book direct will be favoured over those who have forced the service to pay commission, return customers will be favoured over them.
Services are not usually mass produced, those that are, are usually of the lowest quality. That is why it's nothing like buying a DVD.
There are three simple steps to getting a better service without paying significantly more,
1) Book direct.
2) Be nice to the staff.
3) Be a return customer.
I've gotten more than a few room upgrades just by booking direct and being a repeat customer. A good hotel or airline wont treat you any differently for booking via a 3rd party, but they wont do you any favours either. If you want them to do favours for you, then you need to do right by them as well.
Quickest way to kill my loyalty is treating loyalty like a currency. I pay you for good service everytime. Not just for the times I present a magic "gimme decent service" card.
And any loyalty programme worth joining does exactly the opposite to that. The only major loyalty programme I'm a part of is Singapore Airlines Krisflyer programme. Now to get points on Krisflyer, you pretty much have to fly regularly on Singapore Airlines. Especially if you want actual status (that gives you access to lounges on an economy ticket). Singapore Airlines provides good service, even if you're not a Krisflyer member.
The problem that people have is that they like to play the service providers (hotels, airlines, etc..) off against 3rd party providers then expect the royal treatment. Soz, world does not work that way. If your loyalty is being treated like a currency, it is because you've used it like one.
The best part of the GP's comment was not to join a loyalty programme, but to book direct. This may be a little more expensive, but your deal is now directly with the provider. I try to always book direct and 9 times out of 10 it's the same price or cheaper. The problem hotels and airlines have is that they have to pay commission to be listed on Expedia/Priceline and then pay commission when they get booked. Not only this, the terms of service state that they cant offer cheaper prices on their own websites (this is illegal in some countries, so unenforceable in places like Australia, the UK and Europe). This is the reason Southwest does not appear on most 3rd party providers. Often hotels will price match if you call them because then they dont have to pay commission.
Booking direct already puts you above the tight fisted arseholes who look for the cheapest 3rd party provider. People who book through agents always get the worst rooms, at best they'll be treated the same. However when a hotel is overbooked, the free upgrade always goes to those who booked direct. Being a returning customer also helps, more than a few times I've been given a better room just for having stayed there before. Also, be nice to people. If you're a pain in the arse, that will be listed in a database and vice versa, if you were liked the staff will be willing to do more for you.
Apart from that, its worth signing up to their mailing lists. Hotels and Airlines will email better deals to return customers.
It matches supply with demand. If rents are too high the root problem is there isn't enough housing being built. All of this yelling about "greed" and "rent control" and even worse -- high minimum wage -- are just bandaids that won't solve the root of the problem.
That is a rather simplistic take on it.
You see, land is a finite resource, as is time and distance. In order to build more residences, you need to build further out. This opens up a can of worms with territories, local governments and what not... And that is just the first hurdle to overcome.
As you build further out, you increase the distance between residences and workplaces. This in turn increases travel times. Long travel times are not attractive to people so if you build too far out, you're not going to sell the houses. There are ways around this, such as decent light rail systems such as we have in England, but even from somewhere as close as Reading, it's an hour into London, assuming your work is near Paddington station. Also increasing population density increases congestion, congestion is not an attractive option to most people, especially families.
This is why people are willing to pay more for a shoe box in Zone 3 or 4 of London, because it decreases their travel times significantly. Things like rent controls are not bandaids, but remedies for when land owners get too greedy because demand is high.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution to this because the only solution is to start moving workplaces out of large cities, into smaller ones like many IT companies have done by moving out of London and into places like Slough, Staines, Reading and other places along the M4 corridor. This means their employees can have a shorter commute by avoiding London in it's entirety. This is hit and miss at best as a lot of companies flat out refuse to move out of London.
Beyond this, you need infrastructure. Roads, rail, water, power, public services (fire, police), private services (shops, amenities), schools, so on and so forth before people would even consider moving to a new development. These things do not simply spring out of the ground, they require money to build and that money comes from... government (even a lot of private developments are subsidised) and if these things are not very good, development stagnates as people sell up and move to better neighbourhoods.
I used to live in Perth, Western Australia. The city grew in leaps and bounds during the mining boom of the 2000's. However it's infrastructure remained terrible, houses were built further and further out but rail, road and other infrastructure were not built up to the standards of the inner suburbs... or in some cases not built at all. All this did was make it very expensive to live, you'd pay A$400,000 for a 3 by 2 out in Ellenbrook and then have to spend thousands per year and lose hours per day commuting.
Drones executing rural deliveries, launched from some sort of 'base truck' a human drives to a central location to launch and monitor multiple drones. That's pretty much the only use case for drone delivery.
Of course, a fully functional delivery system is symmetrical -- you can send stuff _back_ using the same channel. The base truck should also accept the farmer's *own* drone returning a non-functional item to Amazon.
I can actually think of a lot of use cases, such as rapid delivery when it would take a truck or van hours to reach from a distribution centre. In England this could be a lot of places. The problem is ensuring they have a safe place to land, the weather and are clear of any other flight paths. However none of these use cases are economical. Ultimately that is what is stopping drone based deliveries.
Terrorists are actually fairly slow at coming up with novel ideas. It literally took terrorists something like 100 years from the advent of automatic firearms to come up with and popularise the idea that you can simple grab a gun and spray bullets at a crowd in an enclosed space.
Let's not help these people by posting clever ideas online.
OK, how did this get modded up. The idea of "spray and pray" is pretty much as old as the automatic weapon itself. The first man portable sub machine guns were invented in WWI, circa 1915. They were used to mow down rooms full of people in the 1920's.
Terrorists aren't stupid. You're only kidding yourself if you think otherwise. Most terrorists tend to be highly educated because most of them from the middle east are young men who have trained to be an engineer but ended up finding out there aren't any good engineering jobs for them because the jobs went to the families and friends of the Sheiks and dictators and they cant get a job in the west because they hate Muzzies.
So what else does a motivated, angry, well educated young man do in a highly despotic society but take up an exciting career in blowing shit up.
Sarcasm aside, many Americans I suspect would be surprised to find out they dont hate us, but they feel they have little choice but to fight because they have precious few other opportunities. If we want to fight terror, maybe we should look at the underlying causes, not just senseless killing.
Have you any citations for drones saving lives? All the stories I hear involve extra judiciary killings which usually average 50 innocents killed per suspect.
Unarmed drones for thing like SAR (Search And Rescue), fire and natural disaster monitoring, border protection.
There are a lot of use for drones that will help or save lives.
Armed drones deployed for "civil protection" indicate a society is broken.
Also, am I the only one who just feels insulted when I pay >$10 for a movie ticket and then when I get into the theater, there's a dozen ads? I never see ads on Netflix. FFS, if you want people to use your service, stop insulting us!
No, you're not. The problem is theatres and it's not the fault of theatres. the $10 (LLLLLLLLLLLUXURY, across the pond we pay £11 for a ticket) you pay barely, or in many cases, does not even cover the cost of the film. Publishers are charging theatres huge amounts just to be able to show a film. All the revenue for theatres comes from the overpriced snacks, that's operating costs and profit.
So an open letter to the two whinging in the summary
Dear increasingly irrelevant people,
If you want more people to come to the cinema, then get your corporate overlords to lower the prices. People are willing to wait 6-12 months to see whatever dross you've scrapped out of your underwear. Let them know the good old days are gone and the internet cant be stopped. They can't force people into their revenue streams like the 80's, adapt or die.
Signed,
Film enthusiasts who dont like paying 11 squid for a ticket.
I've seen idiot patents let toddlers roam free at the end of the Santa Monica pier, jumping up and down on the seats/steps there shaking everybody up, and climb on and around complete strangers! If one of these kids gets snatched up, I hope both the perp and the idiot parent(s) both go to prison
The world is not safe for children! We must put them into special incubators until they are mature responsible adults that are raised exactly the way their parents want them to be raised./sarcasm
Yeah folks, kids run around, make noise, break things, and make mistakes. It's called "being a kid." If you can't handle that, I'd say the problem lies with you, not the kid that doesn't know what you, a complete stranger, are expecting from them.
Hi, the point is over here. You seem to have missed it.
The GP is complaining about parents that dont give a crap. They aren't paying attention to their kid. They're the kind of parent who lets their kid knock over every box on the bottom shelf and ignored the mess.
If I had of behaved the way you're defending, I would haven't of been able to sit for a week... And I'm someone who advocates non-violent methods of discipline where ever possible, but you still need discipline so that you don't have ratbag kids.
Take flights for example, I'm usually OK with a parent that makes an effort. Kids, being kids don't always fully understand what is going on with aircraft, know how to deal with changes in pressure and are a bit more sensitive to them than us adults... but FFS, I cant stand a parent who sits there sucking down the complementary booze whilst their little angel acts like a right little shit to everyone else.
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Cut me a check for the *overtime* value of the lost vacation.
Pretty simple.
No. There is no federal law requiring compensation for forfeited vacation time.
And that is just the beginning of what it wrong.
In the U.S., a city that size likely would not have any public transit save school buses or the senior trolley. The only exception would be if it were a suburb of a larger city in which case the city's buses would extend out to the suburb. I am not sure if Innisfil is some isolated community or near a larger city, but either way this seems like a strange solution. It also seems strange that two buses are more than double the cost of one.
In the UK, a town of nearly 40,000 would have a public transport service which would link to the national rail grid. Most likely privatised of course, but we'd have it.
Speaking of reading skills:
A gap in the other direction begins to appear in candidates with six or more years of experience, however, with white women in tech both asking for less than their white male counterparts and receiving it. Indeed, over time and across the country, white women in tech earn an average of .90 cents for every dollar made by their male peers for the same work.
The trick is you have to read more than the summary.
How are you certain they didn't ask for more and get knocked back?
I'd also like to see the percentages, companies rarely give out large percentage pay rises unless the job market is booming.
Democrats like Obama and both Clintons are very right leaning. They are no Howard Dean, Ralph Nader or Bernie Sanders. Not that a 1 dimensional scale for measuring political views is a good metric, it lacks nuance. For example, I'm a Republican and believe in small decentralized government and in supporting small business owners, but I'm against the death penalty. Does that make me a liberal? Probably not.
Sounds like you've discovered what we in the ROTW call Thrid Way politics. A departure from strict left-right politics where you chose the best solution for a problem completely disregarding political philosophy, you can have a government that has both left and right policies (I.E. left on healthcare and right on trade restrictions).
BTW, there isn't really a left in the US, even Bernie Sanders is pretty much centre right on Europes scale. Obama was definately a bit right of centre, Hillary was right of him, not as far as GWB and Trump is so far beyond GWB's position that he makes GWB look like a modarate.
As for SJWs, treating people fairly is not really garbage, and has nothing to do with maxism. Most people who are upset by SJWs are upset because they've been called out on their bullshit. That most SJWs are women and are mostly targeting men has a lot to do with the vitriol that is spewed about SJWs. A lot of guys are just too old fashioned to want to here criticism from a woman. I don't care what gender someone is, as long as the criticism is valid and constructive. Usual response to SJWs is: I don't like what you're saying, so I'll mock you to take that power away from you. But that funny thing is you can't win that way (well at least *I* find it funny)
This.
A few years back, all those who complained about SJW's never used the word SJW, instead they would constantly bleat about Political Correctness. The problem is, they bleated so hard and so often that everyone started ignoring PC complains for the same reason people are starting to ignore SJW complaints... They're all bullshit.
SJW simply means "you've said something I dont like but cant rationally argue against it" and the vast majority of people now realise that. So much like PC, SJW now has little power.
When you have a choice between a Republican running as a Democrat and a Oligarch running as a Republican, is it any surprise that the latter wins?
Fixed that for you. Trump is as much a libertarian as Margret Thatcher was a communist.
And it is not just surprising that he won, it's shameful and destructive. It also says a lot about those who voted for him that they cant he was an oligarch.
Generally having a role removed from your list of duties is seen as a demotion, and the timing of this, after Ivanka's official installation in the White House, is highly suggestive that the rumored power struggle between Bannon and the Kushners has resolved itself in the Kushners' favor. Also note that there have been rumors that Bannon and Priebus weren't getting along all that well either. I don't expect Bannon to work for that much longer at the White House.
I suspect Trump was forced to remove Bannon from the NSC and will likely be forced to remove him from his other positions. Bannon might retain a strictly ceremonial position, but no actual power. Even the other republicans consider Bannon to be too extreme.
In 2035, on the cusp of losing the war Apple deployed an advanced protoype i1000 back to 1982, its job, to kill Richard Stallman whilst he was still a bearded activist.
Seriously, how many Americans are "unbanked".
We have enough illiterate morons to fill the grand canyon.
Despite the well spoken man on the BBC, the UK has the same problem (OK smaller population, but we could still fill the Thames twice over with idiots), there are plenty of English who couldn't speak the Queens English to save their lives. Also Australia has the same issue. If there isn't a basic account available for almost everyone, it indicates a problem with the banking system. Pensioners and retirees still need a bank account and they tend to be the most technologically illiterate (and still do most of their banking at the post office).
As much as I disagree with communism, I think a government owned bank (govt owned... not govt run) that only offers basic banking to set the minimum standard is a good idea. Want anything better than a basic transaction account, you have to go private. Private banks should set the gold standard, but not the minimum standard.
Ads. Ads. ADS. ADS.
This, a thousand times this.
I like going to see movies on the big screen despite the fact the projector is operated by min wage slaves and the sound is turned up so loud it's blown half the speakers (which almost never get replaced), I can even get over the uncleanliness of the theatre itself (hey, try getting an apathetic teenage wage slave to run a vacuum) but what really turns me off theatres are 1. the ads and 2. the prices.
US$5.00 is sheer luxury, wanton extravagance. The cheapest I've seen a cinema ticket here in merry old England is £9, usually they're upwards of 11 squid. I also would complain about the snack bar prices (I like cinema popcorn) but I know why that is and it's not the cinema's fault. Your ticket barely covers the cost of the film royalties, snacks are how they pay for staff, rents, rent seekers, power, water, lawsuits from the people who got diabeetus from the massive soft drinks.
I lament the loss of cinemas, but its inevitable until movie studios change their pricing models to allow cinemas to make a profit. More people would come to the cinema if there were less ads and snacks were cheaper, even at current ticket prices.
An easy way to reach the large # of Americans that don't actually have bank accounts or credit. Smart.
Seriously, how many Americans are "unbanked".
That seems like an odd concept in the UK and other civilised countries where only those few repeatedly convicted of various kinds of banking and credit fraud are unable to get a free, basic account. Hell, even most of them can get one with police oversight.
Besides, given how Amazon currently works, how will the "unbanked" possibly deposit money into an Amazon account. Amazon requires me to provide a card for most purchases, I imagine this service would either require a card or bank transfers from another financial institution (again, not a problem for anyone over this side of the pond).
Based only on this description it sounds a lot like a new featured added to the existing gift card functionality already available. So it's not "amazon cash" it's "amazon adds bar code to gift cards". So effectively this is "native content" or maybe just really poorly written. Not sure which.
To me it sounds like yet another payment system adding complexity competing many other payment systems adding complexity. PayPal did it right, they came out with a card in the standard bank card format (ISO/IEC 7810, ID-1). Apple, Google and whoever else are doing it wrong because they are more difficult to use and in most cases, are simply wrappers for a banking product that comes in a convent, ubiquitously accepted, standard ISO format.
Is anonymity, not ubiquity.
I'd say both combined with it's low cost of operation for merchants When 30p of that £2 coffee is required just to pay for it, I'd rather use cash.
Also ease of use and relative security. If I lose cash, I only lose the face value of the notes, if my card is compromised, I could stand to lose a lot more. Given I'm not a careless oaf of an idiot, I don't lose cash on a regular basis... or ever really.
Beyond this, you cant shove plastic down a strippers G-string.
Seriously, it might be AWESOME to see some small nation switch to Bitcoin for its currency, so people would finally shut the fuck up when they see it crash under the load.
3.5 TPS. That's it. You can't run a small TOWN on 3.5 transactions per second.
As much as I agree with your point...
But how do you define a small town?
A town is widely considered to have a population of 1000 to 20,000 people, lets say a small town in the fourth (bottom) quartile of that. Up to 5000 pop. 3.5 transactions a second means that 210 transactions occur each minute, 12,600 transactions an hour, that means that every man, woman and child needs to make a transaction every 24 minutes (2.5 times an hour). This would be a difficult feat, even at multiple locations. You may experience a few seconds of delay at peak periods, other than that its not really a limitation for a small town. Now a large town of up to 100,000 pop (possibly more as towns are defined in the UK), then we're hitting a limit.
It depends. Legal tender laws only apply to debts. If you purchase the meal in an instant transaction (fast food), they can accept whatever they want to accept in trade. If they don't want to accept cash at that point, they don't have to.
For a full service restaurant where the bill comes at the end, the question is: Is that bill a debt?
Most likely, regardless of the answer to that question, they'll take cash if you raise a fuss. Can you imagine if that escalated to a police call? Cops already have to put up with all sorts of strange shit, but I'm imagining the restaurant manager rethinking a big part of his life when a cop asks him "You really want me to arrest him? For trying to pay his bill? With cash?"
A restaurant bill isn't really a debt, non-payment in these circumstances would be considered theft of service, at least in commonwealth countries but I'd be surprised if it was different in the US or Europe.
A restaurant is under no obligation to accept cash or credit cards as long as the payment methods are known to the customer before the product or service is ordered. Hence "no cheques accepted" signs that some of us are old enough to remember, personal cheques used to be a common method of payment.
When it comes to paying an actual debt, a debtor can put reasonable limits on how you can pay, or conditions on certain methods as long as its disclosed before the debt is agreed upon. For example, they can impose a credit card surcharge because they have to pay a charge to accept it or refuse to accept cash because they have no cash handling facilities. Also payment in legal tender must be reasonable. For example, if you have a £5,000 debt, a debtor can refuse to accept 2500 x £2 coins or even 1000 £5 notes where they would be obligated to accept 250 £20 notes.
The keyword here is reasonable.
Ooh, or a judge. Judges love cases that waste their time.
This.
The cops aren't too thrilled either.
FYI, "legal tender" means that people are obligated to accept it in repayment of debts. If I owe you 10 ounces of silver, and I try to give you an equal "value" of Federal Reserve Notes instead, you can't refuse to accept it and then sue me for nonpayment. The courts will consider my offer of the legally-privileged notes as a full defense against that suit.
Within reason. If I owe you £10,000 I cant pay you in £2 coins. A debtor has the right to demand a reasonable form of payment. Paying in chickens means that the debtor has to wear the cost of converting chickens into whatever medium for trade is suitable for them. If the debtor is OK with that (say you owed £10,000 to KFC) then the debt can easily be paid in chickens. However if its not, debtors are within their rights to set limits on what kinds of payments they will accept.
So yes if you tried to pay a $50,000 debt in federal reserve notes worth $1 each, they can sue you for non payment.
Yes - it does seem to be a rather simple formula....
1. Check price direct from airline/rail company/hotel company
2. Check price on travel meta-search
3. Compare prices
4. Check that there are no significant differences in what you are getting
5. Pick lowest price.
6. Hotel allocates you the worst rooms.
Basically because you're punishing the hotel by making them pay commission, the hotel is not going to do any favours for you. A lot of hotels will give you the same price if you contact them. In my experience, booking through Expedia/Pricelilne or their myriad of sub brands is rarely cheaper though.
The thing is, it's nothing like buying a DVD from Amazon because that's the same product. You're not buying a product when you book a flight or accommodation, you're buying a service and yes, they will favour some over others. Those who book direct will be favoured over those who have forced the service to pay commission, return customers will be favoured over them.
Services are not usually mass produced, those that are, are usually of the lowest quality. That is why it's nothing like buying a DVD.
There are three simple steps to getting a better service without paying significantly more,
1) Book direct.
2) Be nice to the staff.
3) Be a return customer.
I've gotten more than a few room upgrades just by booking direct and being a repeat customer. A good hotel or airline wont treat you any differently for booking via a 3rd party, but they wont do you any favours either. If you want them to do favours for you, then you need to do right by them as well.
Quickest way to kill my loyalty is treating loyalty like a currency. I pay you for good service everytime. Not just for the times I present a magic "gimme decent service" card.
And any loyalty programme worth joining does exactly the opposite to that. The only major loyalty programme I'm a part of is Singapore Airlines Krisflyer programme. Now to get points on Krisflyer, you pretty much have to fly regularly on Singapore Airlines. Especially if you want actual status (that gives you access to lounges on an economy ticket). Singapore Airlines provides good service, even if you're not a Krisflyer member.
The problem that people have is that they like to play the service providers (hotels, airlines, etc..) off against 3rd party providers then expect the royal treatment. Soz, world does not work that way. If your loyalty is being treated like a currency, it is because you've used it like one.
The best part of the GP's comment was not to join a loyalty programme, but to book direct. This may be a little more expensive, but your deal is now directly with the provider. I try to always book direct and 9 times out of 10 it's the same price or cheaper. The problem hotels and airlines have is that they have to pay commission to be listed on Expedia/Priceline and then pay commission when they get booked. Not only this, the terms of service state that they cant offer cheaper prices on their own websites (this is illegal in some countries, so unenforceable in places like Australia, the UK and Europe). This is the reason Southwest does not appear on most 3rd party providers. Often hotels will price match if you call them because then they dont have to pay commission.
Booking direct already puts you above the tight fisted arseholes who look for the cheapest 3rd party provider. People who book through agents always get the worst rooms, at best they'll be treated the same. However when a hotel is overbooked, the free upgrade always goes to those who booked direct. Being a returning customer also helps, more than a few times I've been given a better room just for having stayed there before. Also, be nice to people. If you're a pain in the arse, that will be listed in a database and vice versa, if you were liked the staff will be willing to do more for you.
Apart from that, its worth signing up to their mailing lists. Hotels and Airlines will email better deals to return customers.
It matches supply with demand. If rents are too high the root problem is there isn't enough housing being built. All of this yelling about "greed" and "rent control" and even worse -- high minimum wage -- are just bandaids that won't solve the root of the problem.
That is a rather simplistic take on it.
You see, land is a finite resource, as is time and distance. In order to build more residences, you need to build further out. This opens up a can of worms with territories, local governments and what not... And that is just the first hurdle to overcome.
As you build further out, you increase the distance between residences and workplaces. This in turn increases travel times. Long travel times are not attractive to people so if you build too far out, you're not going to sell the houses. There are ways around this, such as decent light rail systems such as we have in England, but even from somewhere as close as Reading, it's an hour into London, assuming your work is near Paddington station. Also increasing population density increases congestion, congestion is not an attractive option to most people, especially families.
This is why people are willing to pay more for a shoe box in Zone 3 or 4 of London, because it decreases their travel times significantly. Things like rent controls are not bandaids, but remedies for when land owners get too greedy because demand is high.
Unfortunately there is no easy solution to this because the only solution is to start moving workplaces out of large cities, into smaller ones like many IT companies have done by moving out of London and into places like Slough, Staines, Reading and other places along the M4 corridor. This means their employees can have a shorter commute by avoiding London in it's entirety. This is hit and miss at best as a lot of companies flat out refuse to move out of London.
Beyond this, you need infrastructure. Roads, rail, water, power, public services (fire, police), private services (shops, amenities), schools, so on and so forth before people would even consider moving to a new development. These things do not simply spring out of the ground, they require money to build and that money comes from... government (even a lot of private developments are subsidised) and if these things are not very good, development stagnates as people sell up and move to better neighbourhoods.
I used to live in Perth, Western Australia. The city grew in leaps and bounds during the mining boom of the 2000's. However it's infrastructure remained terrible, houses were built further and further out but rail, road and other infrastructure were not built up to the standards of the inner suburbs... or in some cases not built at all. All this did was make it very expensive to live, you'd pay A$400,000 for a 3 by 2 out in Ellenbrook and then have to spend thousands per year and lose hours per day commuting.
Drones executing rural deliveries, launched from some sort of 'base truck' a human drives to a central location to launch and monitor multiple drones. That's pretty much the only use case for drone delivery.
Of course, a fully functional delivery system is symmetrical -- you can send stuff _back_ using the same channel. The base truck should also accept the farmer's *own* drone returning a non-functional item to Amazon.
I can actually think of a lot of use cases, such as rapid delivery when it would take a truck or van hours to reach from a distribution centre. In England this could be a lot of places. The problem is ensuring they have a safe place to land, the weather and are clear of any other flight paths. However none of these use cases are economical. Ultimately that is what is stopping drone based deliveries.
Terrorists are actually fairly slow at coming up with novel ideas. It literally took terrorists something like 100 years from the advent of automatic firearms to come up with and popularise the idea that you can simple grab a gun and spray bullets at a crowd in an enclosed space.
Let's not help these people by posting clever ideas online.
OK, how did this get modded up. The idea of "spray and pray" is pretty much as old as the automatic weapon itself. The first man portable sub machine guns were invented in WWI, circa 1915. They were used to mow down rooms full of people in the 1920's.
Terrorists aren't stupid. You're only kidding yourself if you think otherwise. Most terrorists tend to be highly educated because most of them from the middle east are young men who have trained to be an engineer but ended up finding out there aren't any good engineering jobs for them because the jobs went to the families and friends of the Sheiks and dictators and they cant get a job in the west because they hate Muzzies.
So what else does a motivated, angry, well educated young man do in a highly despotic society but take up an exciting career in blowing shit up.
Sarcasm aside, many Americans I suspect would be surprised to find out they dont hate us, but they feel they have little choice but to fight because they have precious few other opportunities. If we want to fight terror, maybe we should look at the underlying causes, not just senseless killing.
Have you any citations for drones saving lives? All the stories I hear involve extra judiciary killings which usually average 50 innocents killed per suspect.
Unarmed drones for thing like SAR (Search And Rescue), fire and natural disaster monitoring, border protection.
There are a lot of use for drones that will help or save lives.
Armed drones deployed for "civil protection" indicate a society is broken.
If you want those guys than ban the Indians are let the Syrians in. They're not just escaping poverty, they're escaping genocide.
Indians may be the wrong colour, but Syrians are the wrong religion and that makes them worse.
Also, am I the only one who just feels insulted when I pay >$10 for a movie ticket and then when I get into the theater, there's a dozen ads? I never see ads on Netflix. FFS, if you want people to use your service, stop insulting us!
No, you're not. The problem is theatres and it's not the fault of theatres. the $10 (LLLLLLLLLLLUXURY, across the pond we pay £11 for a ticket) you pay barely, or in many cases, does not even cover the cost of the film. Publishers are charging theatres huge amounts just to be able to show a film. All the revenue for theatres comes from the overpriced snacks, that's operating costs and profit.
So an open letter to the two whinging in the summary
Dear increasingly irrelevant people, If you want more people to come to the cinema, then get your corporate overlords to lower the prices. People are willing to wait 6-12 months to see whatever dross you've scrapped out of your underwear. Let them know the good old days are gone and the internet cant be stopped. They can't force people into their revenue streams like the 80's, adapt or die.
Signed,
Film enthusiasts who dont like paying 11 squid for a ticket.
The world is not safe for children! We must put them into special incubators until they are mature responsible adults that are raised exactly the way their parents want them to be raised. /sarcasm
Yeah folks, kids run around, make noise, break things, and make mistakes. It's called "being a kid." If you can't handle that, I'd say the problem lies with you, not the kid that doesn't know what you, a complete stranger, are expecting from them.
Hi, the point is over here. You seem to have missed it.
The GP is complaining about parents that dont give a crap. They aren't paying attention to their kid. They're the kind of parent who lets their kid knock over every box on the bottom shelf and ignored the mess.
If I had of behaved the way you're defending, I would haven't of been able to sit for a week... And I'm someone who advocates non-violent methods of discipline where ever possible, but you still need discipline so that you don't have ratbag kids.
Take flights for example, I'm usually OK with a parent that makes an effort. Kids, being kids don't always fully understand what is going on with aircraft, know how to deal with changes in pressure and are a bit more sensitive to them than us adults... but FFS, I cant stand a parent who sits there sucking down the complementary booze whilst their little angel acts like a right little shit to everyone else.
Aaaaaaand he was a Muslim convert. What's your point? That if we hadn't imported tons of Islam he would still have converted?
He was converted whilst serving in one of Her Majesties fine institutions.
So perhaps if he was locked up less, he wouldn't have converted. I see why you like spurious reasoning, it's fun.