McDonald's sells cheap food. This is the reason why, in America, "fresh food" is expensive.
I'm quite sure that people can cook a home meal for less than a McDonalds meal, especially if you have to drive there. Going to McDonalds is just less effort, and very tasty.
I've never done grocery shopping in the US... But your McDonalds is insanely cheap. US$5 will get you a nugget or big mac meal equivalent to a large in the ROTW. Here in the UK that is £6, which is about US$7.50... and it's not tax, food and drink for human consumption is zero rated (I think the drink is not VAT exempt for some reason though). I could easily make a meal that'll last for 3 sittings for that and I'm talking about something complex, not just beans and rice.
The problem is two fold.
1. It required me to cook the food. Now I don't mind cooking but sometimes I'm short on time and McDonalds is there.
2. It requires people to know how to make meals.
Fixing #1 is about time management, but fixing #2, well... if your parents were terrible cooks you're just going to have to learn yourself. Few people seem to care about changing this, as much as I dislike the Mockney Twat, Jamie Oliver produces some decent recipes that people can actually make in their own home with ingredients that are pretty handy unlike other celebrity chefs who assume everyone has some distilled tears of ophan lying about (right next to the eye of newt and Myrrh). He might be a total wanker, but he at least assumes his audience aren't hipsters.
I mean, Ikea sells pizza. I don't know why anyone would expect a furniture store to sell pizza but... here we are.
The problem with IKEA’s pizza is the damn instructions for making it. By the time you figure out how to attach the cheese, the special pepperoni connectors, etc., you’ll have starved to death.
Also the naming... Imagine telling your coworkers you're having a Stefan for dinner tonight.
None of this bullshit will stop until the fines become painful enough to make them think twice about doing it.
Painful as in, the fine will damn near bankrupt your entire business. The mere thought of a fine will cause all of your investors to panic sell any stock they own in your company.
But, that will never happen because the Goverment(s) LOVE access to all that data. They just don't like to admit to it. ( publicly )
Fines?
Fines are ineffective at discouraging behaviour. This behaviour will continue until some C level execs end up in the slammer.
Ultimately, it wasn't fines that reduced DUI, it was the instant loss of license. People value their ability to drive for 12 months over £2500.
As far as I know 48 hours is the default time period to allow for an email recipient to respond.
Will my inbox self destruct if I don't?
Honestly never heard that one and it doesn't ring true either.
The problem is that most people don't understand email. It's not a synchronous form of communication like a telephone, IM or face to face conversation. Email was designed to be asynchronous. This means you do not require an immediate response, if any response at all. People assuming their email requires a response, let alone an immediate response is wrong. If you're emailing me, you're giving me information that doesn't require an immediate response or maybe, just giving me information that doesn't require one.
Common courtesy is not emailing me about things I have no involvement in. The thing about common courtesy is that it isn't common.
So I have a choice with my leisure time, do I play the latest Medal of Snorefare 78 Rehashed edition where for £44 I can buy half a game and be expected to front up another 9 £6 transactions to get the full game...
Or I can play a game from a studio that interacts with it's community, cares about game-play, balance and re-playability, provides free content updates and fixes bugs (well, mostly)... Is it little wonder Paradox, Eleon and System Era see more of my money?
EA wen't off to chase the casual crowd with dumbed down "everyone gets a prize" and pay to win games. This had the nasty effect of alienating actual gamers who spend their money on games. Generic Sports 20XX isn't bringing in the money now they have to spend millions on advertising and people are realising that its the same game as last year.
Another problem is that they expect me to install yet another resource sucking, update popup producing crapware client to run their games. I refuse to do this, ergo EA lost me long ago, as did Ubisoft.
Mobile devices are based on the act of consumption, not content creation.
Yes you can "create" tweets and meme-grade content, but the more complex something is, the more tools you'll need for it. The existence of an operating system that allows you to manage files is a core function required for fluidity between the tools. Without that you're stuck with all-in-one solutions.
That is mainly a function of hardware. My old HTC Dream had a fantastic keyboard that you could use to write out several pages, on screen keyboards were a step backwards. If you need to do serious work you need a large screen, decent keyboard and a mouse (or other preferred pointing device like a stylus). There is no reason the ports for this can't be integrated into a phone except for Apple's penchant for eliminating physical connectors. We've already god mini HDMI, USB C that can effectively turn a phone sized device into a desktop.
Neither iOS nor Android has that level of user-manageable file integration, by design..
IOS might not, but Android does. If you don't like the built in one, you can choose from plenty that are available or write your own. The above is entirely a restriction on the IOS side (and I still think OSX will be depreciated and replaced with IOS, they're just making sure the water isn't too hot when the frogs are thrown in).
And what pray tell is the significance of 'ATILA' ?
Everything is something spelled backwards. Did anyone notice that captquark is krauqtpac spelled backwards! I mean its true... but so what?
ALITA is also a near homophone for 'a liter', and if you take the i out it's ALTA which is sometimes an abbreviation for Alberta; and you can also rearrange the letters to "A TAIL" or "A LIT A" what's a lit "A" i wonder?:p
It's also Spanish for "wing" as in "alitas de pollo" (chicken/buffalo wings)... Possibly could be a clue there.
Closer to a PA (Personal Assistant) and that is pretty much it and how it's been done for decades. Rich people would hire people to take their calls, answer the door, et al 24/7. We also call them valets (calling them a butler is incorrect, butlers manage the household staff, a valet sees to his lordship's person).
My experience is in working in state government (in Australia). It's very, very hard to get through to a senator if you're not on his whitelist. Any unidentified number will be dropped or ignored. Public numbers for senators will go to their office where they'll get answered by receptionists (its a legal requirement for any politician in Australia to have a public number... but not for them to answer it personally).
You can give away smartphones for free, it wouldn't make much difference.
It's the damn carriers that are expensive, especially in Canada.
Here are the data-only plans from the three major carriers:
Rogers: $25/400MB
Bell: $30/500MB
Telus: $30/500MB
Yes, those are megabytes caps, in 2019. Not a typo.
Buy a 3UK SIM card and get 2 GB for £10 per month for use in Canada or 70 other countries (apologies, I don't know what the quid to loonie rate is and am too lazy to look it up but it wont be C$25).
It's also not Apple's cheapest iPhone. The cheapest iPhone currently being manufactured is the 7, currently selling for $449 USD. This has been Apple's pricing tier strategy for phones for more than a decade now, people shouldn't still be unable to figure this out.
Because then we need to compare that to another 2 yr old phone which costs a fraction of its release price. The Iphone 7 was released for US$650... People have figured it out, they've figured out you're paying 80% of the launch price for 2 yr old hardware.
First of all, it is important to realize that there can, in fact, be legitimate reasons to spoof a phone number... for example, calling from a direct dial out line for a business, but wanting the main business head office number to show up on the caller ID instead, which might even be located in a different country or state.
Already sorted in two ways in the UK.
1. We did away with regional number codes years ago, 0141 does not mean the originator is in Glasgow any more. Modern packet switched networks have made this redundant. By modern I mean the one's we've had installed for over 25 years.
2. Businesses do not buy a direct line for every single employee. They install what are called PABX (Private Automatic Branch Exchanges) which means you only need to plug 1 line in (but often will have more). So the person dialling out from that company can easily ID as the company's main number without spoofing.
There is no legitimate case for caller ID spoofing that cannot be solved though another method.
Wait, are you trying to insinuate that the "wealthy" have their own national phone system completely separate from the rest of us? Staggering. "Hey Bob, new rich guy, yup just hit the 15 million mark. We gotta install all that extra cabling to his house, and plumbing too. Crap! We also have to reprogram another group of servants to never ever ever ever ever ever EVER say a word about any of this. Oh jeez, we also have to train that schmuck on proper Rich Person Telephone Network use. I wonder if anyone let the Rich Person IT department know yet."
I get the joke... But some of it is closer to reality than you think.
Rich people do have separate communications networks, maybe not based in wires, in fact a lot of it is person based to ensure that not any idiot can accidentally call the Queen of England (I believe Prince Charles has an exception). Often rich or important people will not have a direct line that doesn't go through at least one form of filter, usually this is a person who redirects or dumps your call but now we've got heuristic programs to filter and VPNs to isolate networks.
Good news. The hub-and-spoke model needs to die a quick death. If that means taking impressive planes like the A380 with it, so be it. You haven't known anxiety unless you have been subjected to the experience of running around the airport with your handbag trying to catch the second leg of your flight (after the first leg has been delayed) because the flight after the one you are about to miss is scheduled for tomorrow at 6:30AM.
Never experienced this at all.
1. Because I don't have a hand bag.
2. Because I plan my flights better than that. If booked on separate tickets I leave enough time to ensure a delay will not cause any issues with my ongoing travel, if on the same ticket the airline is responsible for housing and feeding me until they can get me to my destination.
In fact I'm flying to South America via the US in a few months, even though they're on the same ticket I have ensured that I have a minimum of 3 hours to transit though Chigago O'Hare because you have to pass though security at US airports.
Plenty of airports have reached, or are reaching, their maximum capacity. If a single takeoff/landing could carry more passengers, that would be very welcome.
The problem with the A380 is that it creates more turbulence in the air around it than any other plane. This necessitates, for safety reasons, a longer delay between the A380 and the plane after it than is required for other planes. So if you have more passengers on each plane, but a longer wait between planes, that neutralizes the capacity advantage of the A380.
Only for airports that are congested, sadly this is London Heathrow with only two parallel runways and is the 7th busiest airport int he world.
The Wake Turbulence Class (WTC) of the A380 isn't the biggest issue however, the A380 was designed for flights between hubs that could handle it. The problem is that an A380 cant fit inside a normal airport gate (the bit with the boarding jetway) so this limited the number of airports it could land at more than its WTC.
The A380 is a fantastic aircraft to fly, more roomy than any twinjet, even on a crappy airline like QANTAS, let alone a good one like Singapore. They'll still be around for a while but without new ones, we're seeing a golden age of jet travel slowly die with it and be replaced with the ever shrinking seats on twinjets.
Let's look at a Happy Meal Analogy:
At McWendKing a burder is $5, fries $3 and soft drink $4. They also sell a Happy Meal (burder, fries and soft-drink) for $7. So I buy a Happy Meal, eat the burder and fries but leave the soft-drink cup on the pick up counter -- then the restaurant sues me for not filing my cup up at the fountain.
Lets put your analogy into perspective... You order this like you book a flight.
3 weeks in advance you order your Unhappy Meal, the restaurant then orders the various components of your meal for third parties, including paying the fountain machine owner for their services. When you turn up you just leave the cup there, so now the restaurant now has to pay another company to move it to the bin and DOES NOT get a refund from the soft drink company. Now imagine if every 10th person started doing this, the losses would start stacking up considering their profit margin on this was just $0.05. Because that is what is happening with airlines and hopefully now you see why your analogy is horribly, horribly wrong..
There is a reason you book flights rather than buy them. You're entering into a contract with the airline for a service (transportation), they have an obligation and duty of care to get you to your ticketed destination (and here in Europe, there are penalties for problems and delays), consumer law says you also have an obligation to fulfil your end of the contract which is travel to the ticketed destination. Failing to do so can cause the provider to incur losses, they are now legally entitled to pursue you for these losses.
I can easily see hidden city fines becoming legal in the airline industry, even in Europe and really, you only have yourselves to blame.
If it's cheaper to NOT TAKE A FLIGHT for the customer, what the hell are you selling?
THE AIRLINE HAS TO PAY THE AIRPORT THAT THE PASSENGER DEPARTED FROM AND THE AIRPORT THEY WERE SCHEDULED TO GO TO.
Do you understand that yet?
Last year I flew from LHR to LAX for £312, of this £ 172 were fees, duties and charges. So united flew me over 5,440 miles for £140 including sales taxes. The savings on me not being on half that flight are the square root of sweet fuck all considering they still have to pay for staff, the plane, support infrastructure, et al. regardless of if my arse is there or not. Fuel costs fuck all per pax.
The reason it costs more to go to IAD than through IAD is because airports can only charge for passengers arriving or departing, not passengers transiting.
Buying a ticket is a contract, You and the airline are agreeing that they will carry you between LHR and MSY via IAD. This means the airline agrees to pick up all costs associated with that travel, this is built into the ticket price you agreed upon. If you break this contract, you can be held liable for any losses that the provider incurs due to your failure to complete the contract and yes, this can include punitive payments to discourage the activity (and as the case is here in Europe, the the court and winners legal costs).
Most of/. seems to fail at basic consumer law. Merchants have rights as well you know.
I'm now more likely to fly Luftwaffe (note for Americans, I know it's Lufthansa, that's a joke). Not only are they Star Alliance so I can earn Krisflyer points but they are also one of the better rated European airlines.
Now I know they wont put up with the bollocks of selfish passengers, they'll be my first port of call for any travel into, around or through mainland Europe.
Airlines do everything in their power to cheat the customer. Just look at the overbooking practices.
Customers have almost no recourse.
Lufthansa is a European airline (and one of the better ones), we have consumer protection laws over here. The Airline enters into a contract with you and must meet it to the best of their ability or they owe you compensation (which is statutory in Europe).
This guy didn't "cheat the system" he bought a flight and didn't take it. Are you honestly suggesting that he is morally obligated to consume the seat he purchased?
No, this guy didn't cheat "the system", he cheated an airline. He entered into a contract with an airline which he broke, part of the contract was that the airline picks up all the costs involved with his transportation. These costs now include fees from an airport where the passenger was not scheduled to depart, possibly even fees from a country where the passenger was not scheduled to depart, costs and delays associated with trying to find their wayward passenger as they had an obligation to carry them to their final ticketed destination and these are just a few off the top of my head.
He had a contract with the airline, he was obligated to travel to his final ticketed destination as part of that contract. So he broke his contract. Now the airline is taking him to court for breaching it.
Do you also think that if you don't finish your meal the restaurant can sue you?
If you entered into a legally binding contract to finish the meal and not doing so caused them to incur charges and losses that would not be incurred otherwise, absolutely, absolutely they can sue you.
If you cant make accurate analogies, at least make them funny.
The airlines are presumably hoping for some sort of regulatory capture to distort the market
It's not regulatory capture which distorts the market. It's a quasi-monopoly. The places I've seen this behavior (missing a leg of a flight) benefit passengers most is at airports where one airline dominates - a hub. Back when Northwest was still around, Detroit was one of their hubs. Something like 80% of all the flights in and out of Detroit were Northwest. That reduced competition meant that Northwest had undue influence over the pricing for tickets in and out of Detroit. They exploited that to charge excessively high prices for tickets starting and ending in Detroit.
You've also got to remember that part of your air fare is paying:
1. The airport.
2. The local fees and taxes.
I'm not sure if they have to do this in the US, but over here in the UK the receipt details the additional taxes and fees you are paying. I had a flight last year between LHR and LAX for a bargain £312, over half of that were fees and taxes (not including VAT (sales tax) as we don't tax the tax component), the actual fare was £140.
Different airports cost different amounts to use, if I fly into London Luton airport it costs a lot less than London Heathrow (there's a reason for that, Luton is a hole), airline agreements mean that transit passengers are effectively free (the trade off for airports was a captive audience, which was worth it) but if a passenger departs using that airport they will pass on the extra fees to the airline who is obligated to pay, not to mention the time and money wasted searching for their wayward passenger. I'm actually surprised it's taken airlines this long to start fighting it.
What if you needed to go somewhere else because of an emergency? Should you really be forced to take every leg of a flight you have booked?
If it's an emergency during your 3 hour stopover at AMS, then you should notify the airline immediately, they might even be able to assist you with returning to your destination. Even if you fail to do that, all you have to do is reasonably demonstrate that in court (or even before the court date, the airline will drop the issue if they know they will lose).
If they don't want people getting off midway through a series of flights, maybe try not pricing an entire trip with multiple legs less than the individual flight to the city in the middle. Their own byzantine pricing system is what led to this result.
Erm, no. This is done for a reason as different countries and airports have different pricing structures for travellers. Especially here in Europe where transits are effectively free. If a passenger disembarks at a different airport the airlines are charged a fee for that airport as well as the airport the passenger was meant to disembark at. The airlines are not responsible for the pricing system.
If they were smart they'd take advantage of such travelers and allow them to cancel some of the legs after booking, as a way to illuminate pricing errors in the system. Then they'd have an open seat someone else could fill as well. Win -Win.
Nope, Airlines already know the costs involved so passengers leaving half way through do not help them one iota. In fact it costs the airline money as they have a contractual obligation to carry that passenger to their booked final destination. So they spend time and money looking for the passenger who has departed the airport.
The reason airlines are suing over this is because it's causing them damage. Lufthasna is a European airline, so they'll need to demonstrate a loss in the court (that's just how the justice system works here). Before now they've been forced to adsorb the costs by raising ticket prices. I really don't want air travel getting more expensive of complex because some people think they're above the rules.
What kind of bizarre prize packaging is that? If you win 72 mil, the last thing you'd care about is any particular car tossed in.
I would if it were a Noble... I'd save myself £350,000.
But seriously, these scams work by targeting our greed (desire for material wealth) and exploiting the naive. So adding in the car is another way to keep the victim from thinking that this is a scam.
The usual argument against stopping spoofing is that the average person won't answer the calls from a cold caller telemarketers.
That should not be a problem. If a telemarketer with a call center in India or the Philippines wants to spoof an American number, that is fine. But they need to own both the originating number and the spoofed number, and it needs to be traceable back to them, so they can be held accountable for illegal behavior.
That is actually an easy one to get around with modern VOIP systems and happens here in the UK. You set up a number in Birmingham that is basically a PABX connected to a VOIP back end. The back end goes back to India via a data connection (VPN or otherwise). So the number isn't spoofed, it's actually is a line connected in Birmingham... But you get connected to "Steve from London" with a very thick subcontinental accent who knows about the car accident I didn't have (common scam here in the UK, ambulance chasers looking for clients who have "whiplash").
If you want to reduce spam calls, we need to punish the companies profiting from cold calling.
BTW, we have a few British Indians but they'll be "Sanjay from London" and have an Estuary accent.
Maybe the fact that companies aren't moving out of California means that the market has already spoken, and that making a shitty state low-tax doesn't make up for being a shitty state. Maybe those low-tax states should raise taxes and become better places to live to attract those companies.
It's so strange to assume that really rich companies (or billionaires) care so much about saving 10% off their taxes that they'll take a heavy hit to their quality of life. I mean, they could save more than that by moving from a private jet to first-class or a 250' yacht to a 200' yacht. And they don't.
This, That low tax state is a low tax state because it's shitty already. Moving out to Bumfuck, Montana sounds good for a tax write off but then you realise how much up front you'd need to spend just getting the basics set up like power, internet, water. The capex in moving alone would kill the tax savings for a decade. Then you realise that 80% of your workforce doesn't want to move to the worst performing schools in the country and are looking for jobs at your competitors.. It costs money to hire people, even more money to hire people in places where they don't want to live.
Somebody showed me Grand Theft Auto when it came out. Moral reasoning skills?
Video games are a way to explore how we'd feel about doing things that are considered morally questionable without actually doing any harm. When I accidentally gun down a civvie when playing a game, I feel pretty crap about it, that gives me an indication in real life that I wouldn't really like going around and hurting innocent people. By the same token a lot of games are set up to reward helpful or selfless acts, I.E. give RandomDyingNPC a medpack and he goes and tells the town what a good fellow you are and the merchants give you a 10% discount. OTOH, gun down a few members of the local town council and they'll stop trading with you.
GTA isn't a good example because it's designed to be a game where you can be chaotic, but even GTA takes a moral stance on things. The worst player character, Tommy Vercetti still showed certain virtues (I.E. was loyal to his friends), even Trevor Phillips' fucked up sense of morality had reason to it and was used as an example of what not to do. However to look at morals in video games the Bethedsa/Obsidian RPG's are the best examples (Fallout 3/NV/4, KOTOR) light side made you respected, dark side made you feared.
OTOH, if you went out and played competitive sports, you're taught that selfishness and arrogance are good virtues... No-one ever gets a trophy for the most assists in sports.
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McDonald's sells cheap food. This is the reason why, in America, "fresh food" is expensive.
I'm quite sure that people can cook a home meal for less than a McDonalds meal, especially if you have to drive there. Going to McDonalds is just less effort, and very tasty.
I've never done grocery shopping in the US... But your McDonalds is insanely cheap. US$5 will get you a nugget or big mac meal equivalent to a large in the ROTW. Here in the UK that is £6, which is about US$7.50... and it's not tax, food and drink for human consumption is zero rated (I think the drink is not VAT exempt for some reason though). I could easily make a meal that'll last for 3 sittings for that and I'm talking about something complex, not just beans and rice.
The problem is two fold.
1. It required me to cook the food. Now I don't mind cooking but sometimes I'm short on time and McDonalds is there.
2. It requires people to know how to make meals.
Fixing #1 is about time management, but fixing #2, well... if your parents were terrible cooks you're just going to have to learn yourself. Few people seem to care about changing this, as much as I dislike the Mockney Twat, Jamie Oliver produces some decent recipes that people can actually make in their own home with ingredients that are pretty handy unlike other celebrity chefs who assume everyone has some distilled tears of ophan lying about (right next to the eye of newt and Myrrh). He might be a total wanker, but he at least assumes his audience aren't hipsters.
I mean, Ikea sells pizza. I don't know why anyone would expect a furniture store to sell pizza but... here we are.
The problem with IKEA’s pizza is the damn instructions for making it. By the time you figure out how to attach the cheese, the special pepperoni connectors, etc., you’ll have starved to death.
Also the naming... Imagine telling your coworkers you're having a Stefan for dinner tonight.
None of this bullshit will stop until the fines become painful enough to make them think twice about doing it.
Painful as in, the fine will damn near bankrupt your entire business. The mere thought of a fine will cause all of your investors to panic sell any stock they own in your company.
But, that will never happen because the Goverment(s) LOVE access to all that data. They just don't like to admit to it. ( publicly )
Fines?
Fines are ineffective at discouraging behaviour. This behaviour will continue until some C level execs end up in the slammer.
Ultimately, it wasn't fines that reduced DUI, it was the instant loss of license. People value their ability to drive for 12 months over £2500.
As far as I know 48 hours is the default time period to allow for an email recipient to respond.
Will my inbox self destruct if I don't?
Honestly never heard that one and it doesn't ring true either.
The problem is that most people don't understand email. It's not a synchronous form of communication like a telephone, IM or face to face conversation. Email was designed to be asynchronous. This means you do not require an immediate response, if any response at all. People assuming their email requires a response, let alone an immediate response is wrong. If you're emailing me, you're giving me information that doesn't require an immediate response or maybe, just giving me information that doesn't require one.
Common courtesy is not emailing me about things I have no involvement in. The thing about common courtesy is that it isn't common.
EA, Ubisoft, et al. are not.
So I have a choice with my leisure time, do I play the latest Medal of Snorefare 78 Rehashed edition where for £44 I can buy half a game and be expected to front up another 9 £6 transactions to get the full game...
Or I can play a game from a studio that interacts with it's community, cares about game-play, balance and re-playability, provides free content updates and fixes bugs (well, mostly)... Is it little wonder Paradox, Eleon and System Era see more of my money?
EA wen't off to chase the casual crowd with dumbed down "everyone gets a prize" and pay to win games. This had the nasty effect of alienating actual gamers who spend their money on games. Generic Sports 20XX isn't bringing in the money now they have to spend millions on advertising and people are realising that its the same game as last year.
Another problem is that they expect me to install yet another resource sucking, update popup producing crapware client to run their games. I refuse to do this, ergo EA lost me long ago, as did Ubisoft.
Mobile devices are based on the act of consumption, not content creation.
Yes you can "create" tweets and meme-grade content, but the more complex something is, the more tools you'll need for it. The existence of an operating system that allows you to manage files is a core function required for fluidity between the tools. Without that you're stuck with all-in-one solutions.
That is mainly a function of hardware. My old HTC Dream had a fantastic keyboard that you could use to write out several pages, on screen keyboards were a step backwards. If you need to do serious work you need a large screen, decent keyboard and a mouse (or other preferred pointing device like a stylus). There is no reason the ports for this can't be integrated into a phone except for Apple's penchant for eliminating physical connectors. We've already god mini HDMI, USB C that can effectively turn a phone sized device into a desktop.
Neither iOS nor Android has that level of user-manageable file integration, by design..
IOS might not, but Android does. If you don't like the built in one, you can choose from plenty that are available or write your own. The above is entirely a restriction on the IOS side (and I still think OSX will be depreciated and replaced with IOS, they're just making sure the water isn't too hot when the frogs are thrown in).
"the heroine's name is ATILA spelled backwards?"
And what pray tell is the significance of 'ATILA' ?
Everything is something spelled backwards. Did anyone notice that captquark is krauqtpac spelled backwards! I mean its true... but so what?
ALITA is also a near homophone for 'a liter', and if you take the i out it's ALTA which is sometimes an abbreviation for Alberta; and you can also rearrange the letters to "A TAIL" or "A LIT A" what's a lit "A" i wonder? :p
It's also Spanish for "wing" as in "alitas de pollo" (chicken/buffalo wings)... Possibly could be a clue there.
That sounds suspiciously like a secretary.
Closer to a PA (Personal Assistant) and that is pretty much it and how it's been done for decades. Rich people would hire people to take their calls, answer the door, et al 24/7. We also call them valets (calling them a butler is incorrect, butlers manage the household staff, a valet sees to his lordship's person).
My experience is in working in state government (in Australia). It's very, very hard to get through to a senator if you're not on his whitelist. Any unidentified number will be dropped or ignored. Public numbers for senators will go to their office where they'll get answered by receptionists (its a legal requirement for any politician in Australia to have a public number... but not for them to answer it personally).
You can give away smartphones for free, it wouldn't make much difference.
It's the damn carriers that are expensive, especially in Canada.
Here are the data-only plans from the three major carriers:
Rogers: $25/400MB
Bell: $30/500MB
Telus: $30/500MB
Yes, those are megabytes caps, in 2019. Not a typo.
Buy a 3UK SIM card and get 2 GB for £10 per month for use in Canada or 70 other countries (apologies, I don't know what the quid to loonie rate is and am too lazy to look it up but it wont be C$25).
We all knew he was talking about current releases. The Iphone 7 is 2 years past release and the Iphone SE is positively ancient.
I'm sure I can get a Pixel 2 for about $200 from some back room seller too. Being disingenious only makes you look like an idiot.
It's also not Apple's cheapest iPhone. The cheapest iPhone currently being manufactured is the 7, currently selling for $449 USD. This has been Apple's pricing tier strategy for phones for more than a decade now, people shouldn't still be unable to figure this out.
Because then we need to compare that to another 2 yr old phone which costs a fraction of its release price. The Iphone 7 was released for US$650... People have figured it out, they've figured out you're paying 80% of the launch price for 2 yr old hardware.
First of all, it is important to realize that there can, in fact, be legitimate reasons to spoof a phone number... for example, calling from a direct dial out line for a business, but wanting the main business head office number to show up on the caller ID instead, which might even be located in a different country or state.
Already sorted in two ways in the UK.
1. We did away with regional number codes years ago, 0141 does not mean the originator is in Glasgow any more. Modern packet switched networks have made this redundant. By modern I mean the one's we've had installed for over 25 years.
2. Businesses do not buy a direct line for every single employee. They install what are called PABX (Private Automatic Branch Exchanges) which means you only need to plug 1 line in (but often will have more). So the person dialling out from that company can easily ID as the company's main number without spoofing.
There is no legitimate case for caller ID spoofing that cannot be solved though another method.
Wait, are you trying to insinuate that the "wealthy" have their own national phone system completely separate from the rest of us? Staggering. "Hey Bob, new rich guy, yup just hit the 15 million mark. We gotta install all that extra cabling to his house, and plumbing too. Crap! We also have to reprogram another group of servants to never ever ever ever ever ever EVER say a word about any of this. Oh jeez, we also have to train that schmuck on proper Rich Person Telephone Network use. I wonder if anyone let the Rich Person IT department know yet."
I get the joke... But some of it is closer to reality than you think.
Rich people do have separate communications networks, maybe not based in wires, in fact a lot of it is person based to ensure that not any idiot can accidentally call the Queen of England (I believe Prince Charles has an exception). Often rich or important people will not have a direct line that doesn't go through at least one form of filter, usually this is a person who redirects or dumps your call but now we've got heuristic programs to filter and VPNs to isolate networks.
Good news. The hub-and-spoke model needs to die a quick death. If that means taking impressive planes like the A380 with it, so be it. You haven't known anxiety unless you have been subjected to the experience of running around the airport with your handbag trying to catch the second leg of your flight (after the first leg has been delayed) because the flight after the one you are about to miss is scheduled for tomorrow at 6:30AM.
Never experienced this at all.
1. Because I don't have a hand bag.
2. Because I plan my flights better than that. If booked on separate tickets I leave enough time to ensure a delay will not cause any issues with my ongoing travel, if on the same ticket the airline is responsible for housing and feeding me until they can get me to my destination.
In fact I'm flying to South America via the US in a few months, even though they're on the same ticket I have ensured that I have a minimum of 3 hours to transit though Chigago O'Hare because you have to pass though security at US airports.
Plenty of airports have reached, or are reaching, their maximum capacity. If a single takeoff/landing could carry more passengers, that would be very welcome.
The problem with the A380 is that it creates more turbulence in the air around it than any other plane. This necessitates, for safety reasons, a longer delay between the A380 and the plane after it than is required for other planes. So if you have more passengers on each plane, but a longer wait between planes, that neutralizes the capacity advantage of the A380.
Only for airports that are congested, sadly this is London Heathrow with only two parallel runways and is the 7th busiest airport int he world.
The Wake Turbulence Class (WTC) of the A380 isn't the biggest issue however, the A380 was designed for flights between hubs that could handle it. The problem is that an A380 cant fit inside a normal airport gate (the bit with the boarding jetway) so this limited the number of airports it could land at more than its WTC.
The A380 is a fantastic aircraft to fly, more roomy than any twinjet, even on a crappy airline like QANTAS, let alone a good one like Singapore. They'll still be around for a while but without new ones, we're seeing a golden age of jet travel slowly die with it and be replaced with the ever shrinking seats on twinjets.
Let's look at a Happy Meal Analogy:
At McWendKing a burder is $5, fries $3 and soft drink $4. They also sell a Happy Meal (burder, fries and soft-drink) for $7. So I buy a Happy Meal, eat the burder and fries but leave the soft-drink cup on the pick up counter -- then the restaurant sues me for not filing my cup up at the fountain.
Lets put your analogy into perspective... You order this like you book a flight.
.
3 weeks in advance you order your Unhappy Meal, the restaurant then orders the various components of your meal for third parties, including paying the fountain machine owner for their services. When you turn up you just leave the cup there, so now the restaurant now has to pay another company to move it to the bin and DOES NOT get a refund from the soft drink company. Now imagine if every 10th person started doing this, the losses would start stacking up considering their profit margin on this was just $0.05. Because that is what is happening with airlines and hopefully now you see why your analogy is horribly, horribly wrong.
There is a reason you book flights rather than buy them. You're entering into a contract with the airline for a service (transportation), they have an obligation and duty of care to get you to your ticketed destination (and here in Europe, there are penalties for problems and delays), consumer law says you also have an obligation to fulfil your end of the contract which is travel to the ticketed destination. Failing to do so can cause the provider to incur losses, they are now legally entitled to pursue you for these losses.
I can easily see hidden city fines becoming legal in the airline industry, even in Europe and really, you only have yourselves to blame.
If it's cheaper to NOT TAKE A FLIGHT for the customer, what the hell are you selling?
THE AIRLINE HAS TO PAY THE AIRPORT THAT THE PASSENGER DEPARTED FROM AND THE AIRPORT THEY WERE SCHEDULED TO GO TO.
/. seems to fail at basic consumer law. Merchants have rights as well you know.
Do you understand that yet?
Last year I flew from LHR to LAX for £312, of this £ 172 were fees, duties and charges. So united flew me over 5,440 miles for £140 including sales taxes. The savings on me not being on half that flight are the square root of sweet fuck all considering they still have to pay for staff, the plane, support infrastructure, et al. regardless of if my arse is there or not. Fuel costs fuck all per pax.
The reason it costs more to go to IAD than through IAD is because airports can only charge for passengers arriving or departing, not passengers transiting.
Buying a ticket is a contract, You and the airline are agreeing that they will carry you between LHR and MSY via IAD. This means the airline agrees to pick up all costs associated with that travel, this is built into the ticket price you agreed upon. If you break this contract, you can be held liable for any losses that the provider incurs due to your failure to complete the contract and yes, this can include punitive payments to discourage the activity (and as the case is here in Europe, the the court and winners legal costs).
Most of
What could go wrong?
I'm now more likely to fly Luftwaffe (note for Americans, I know it's Lufthansa, that's a joke). Not only are they Star Alliance so I can earn Krisflyer points but they are also one of the better rated European airlines.
Now I know they wont put up with the bollocks of selfish passengers, they'll be my first port of call for any travel into, around or through mainland Europe.
Airlines do everything in their power to cheat the customer. Just look at the overbooking practices.
Customers have almost no recourse.
Lufthansa is a European airline (and one of the better ones), we have consumer protection laws over here. The Airline enters into a contract with you and must meet it to the best of their ability or they owe you compensation (which is statutory in Europe).
This guy didn't "cheat the system" he bought a flight and didn't take it. Are you honestly suggesting that he is morally obligated to consume the seat he purchased?
No, this guy didn't cheat "the system", he cheated an airline. He entered into a contract with an airline which he broke, part of the contract was that the airline picks up all the costs involved with his transportation. These costs now include fees from an airport where the passenger was not scheduled to depart, possibly even fees from a country where the passenger was not scheduled to depart, costs and delays associated with trying to find their wayward passenger as they had an obligation to carry them to their final ticketed destination and these are just a few off the top of my head.
He had a contract with the airline, he was obligated to travel to his final ticketed destination as part of that contract. So he broke his contract. Now the airline is taking him to court for breaching it.
Do you also think that if you don't finish your meal the restaurant can sue you?
If you entered into a legally binding contract to finish the meal and not doing so caused them to incur charges and losses that would not be incurred otherwise, absolutely, absolutely they can sue you.
If you cant make accurate analogies, at least make them funny.
It's not regulatory capture which distorts the market. It's a quasi-monopoly. The places I've seen this behavior (missing a leg of a flight) benefit passengers most is at airports where one airline dominates - a hub. Back when Northwest was still around, Detroit was one of their hubs. Something like 80% of all the flights in and out of Detroit were Northwest. That reduced competition meant that Northwest had undue influence over the pricing for tickets in and out of Detroit. They exploited that to charge excessively high prices for tickets starting and ending in Detroit.
You've also got to remember that part of your air fare is paying:
1. The airport.
2. The local fees and taxes.
I'm not sure if they have to do this in the US, but over here in the UK the receipt details the additional taxes and fees you are paying. I had a flight last year between LHR and LAX for a bargain £312, over half of that were fees and taxes (not including VAT (sales tax) as we don't tax the tax component), the actual fare was £140.
Different airports cost different amounts to use, if I fly into London Luton airport it costs a lot less than London Heathrow (there's a reason for that, Luton is a hole), airline agreements mean that transit passengers are effectively free (the trade off for airports was a captive audience, which was worth it) but if a passenger departs using that airport they will pass on the extra fees to the airline who is obligated to pay, not to mention the time and money wasted searching for their wayward passenger. I'm actually surprised it's taken airlines this long to start fighting it.
What if you needed to go somewhere else because of an emergency? Should you really be forced to take every leg of a flight you have booked?
If it's an emergency during your 3 hour stopover at AMS, then you should notify the airline immediately, they might even be able to assist you with returning to your destination. Even if you fail to do that, all you have to do is reasonably demonstrate that in court (or even before the court date, the airline will drop the issue if they know they will lose).
If they don't want people getting off midway through a series of flights, maybe try not pricing an entire trip with multiple legs less than the individual flight to the city in the middle. Their own byzantine pricing system is what led to this result.
Erm, no. This is done for a reason as different countries and airports have different pricing structures for travellers. Especially here in Europe where transits are effectively free. If a passenger disembarks at a different airport the airlines are charged a fee for that airport as well as the airport the passenger was meant to disembark at. The airlines are not responsible for the pricing system.
If they were smart they'd take advantage of such travelers and allow them to cancel some of the legs after booking, as a way to illuminate pricing errors in the system. Then they'd have an open seat someone else could fill as well. Win -Win.
Nope, Airlines already know the costs involved so passengers leaving half way through do not help them one iota. In fact it costs the airline money as they have a contractual obligation to carry that passenger to their booked final destination. So they spend time and money looking for the passenger who has departed the airport.
The reason airlines are suing over this is because it's causing them damage. Lufthasna is a European airline, so they'll need to demonstrate a loss in the court (that's just how the justice system works here). Before now they've been forced to adsorb the costs by raising ticket prices. I really don't want air travel getting more expensive of complex because some people think they're above the rules.
What kind of bizarre prize packaging is that? If you win 72 mil, the last thing you'd care about is any particular car tossed in.
I would if it were a Noble... I'd save myself £350,000.
But seriously, these scams work by targeting our greed (desire for material wealth) and exploiting the naive. So adding in the car is another way to keep the victim from thinking that this is a scam.
The usual argument against stopping spoofing is that the average person won't answer the calls from a cold caller telemarketers.
That should not be a problem. If a telemarketer with a call center in India or the Philippines wants to spoof an American number, that is fine. But they need to own both the originating number and the spoofed number, and it needs to be traceable back to them, so they can be held accountable for illegal behavior.
That is actually an easy one to get around with modern VOIP systems and happens here in the UK. You set up a number in Birmingham that is basically a PABX connected to a VOIP back end. The back end goes back to India via a data connection (VPN or otherwise). So the number isn't spoofed, it's actually is a line connected in Birmingham... But you get connected to "Steve from London" with a very thick subcontinental accent who knows about the car accident I didn't have (common scam here in the UK, ambulance chasers looking for clients who have "whiplash").
If you want to reduce spam calls, we need to punish the companies profiting from cold calling.
BTW, we have a few British Indians but they'll be "Sanjay from London" and have an Estuary accent.
Maybe the fact that companies aren't moving out of California means that the market has already spoken, and that making a shitty state low-tax doesn't make up for being a shitty state. Maybe those low-tax states should raise taxes and become better places to live to attract those companies.
It's so strange to assume that really rich companies (or billionaires) care so much about saving 10% off their taxes that they'll take a heavy hit to their quality of life. I mean, they could save more than that by moving from a private jet to first-class or a 250' yacht to a 200' yacht. And they don't.
This, That low tax state is a low tax state because it's shitty already. Moving out to Bumfuck, Montana sounds good for a tax write off but then you realise how much up front you'd need to spend just getting the basics set up like power, internet, water. The capex in moving alone would kill the tax savings for a decade. Then you realise that 80% of your workforce doesn't want to move to the worst performing schools in the country and are looking for jobs at your competitors.. It costs money to hire people, even more money to hire people in places where they don't want to live.
Somebody showed me Grand Theft Auto when it came out. Moral reasoning skills?
Video games are a way to explore how we'd feel about doing things that are considered morally questionable without actually doing any harm. When I accidentally gun down a civvie when playing a game, I feel pretty crap about it, that gives me an indication in real life that I wouldn't really like going around and hurting innocent people. By the same token a lot of games are set up to reward helpful or selfless acts, I.E. give RandomDyingNPC a medpack and he goes and tells the town what a good fellow you are and the merchants give you a 10% discount. OTOH, gun down a few members of the local town council and they'll stop trading with you.
GTA isn't a good example because it's designed to be a game where you can be chaotic, but even GTA takes a moral stance on things. The worst player character, Tommy Vercetti still showed certain virtues (I.E. was loyal to his friends), even Trevor Phillips' fucked up sense of morality had reason to it and was used as an example of what not to do. However to look at morals in video games the Bethedsa/Obsidian RPG's are the best examples (Fallout 3/NV/4, KOTOR) light side made you respected, dark side made you feared.
OTOH, if you went out and played competitive sports, you're taught that selfishness and arrogance are good virtues... No-one ever gets a trophy for the most assists in sports.